AQS on a pink 7.75 x 6.25 album page, Houdini writes: “Glasgow Sept 23/04. ‘Stone walls do not a prison make, or iron bars a cage.’ Yours with best wishes to you all from we all. Harry Handcuff Houdini.” At the bottom of page he has penned the inscription, “To Mrs. Schubert.” His wife, Bess, has added “’Little me too’ Mrs. Beatrice Houdini.” In very good condition, with scattered soiling and staining, heaviest along the edges, but not visually affecting Houdini’s strong signature or sentiment. The page is still in its worn autograph album that also features dozens of other signatures including: Vesta Tilley, Lillie Langtry, Chung Ling Soo (in English and 'Chinese' characters - to the reverse of Langtry), George Robey (with detailed self-caricature), George Grossmith, Wee Georgie Wood (with handwritten verse), John Philip Sousa (with musical quotation from 'The Fairest of the Fair'), George Formby Sr., and many other stage performers.
As with every other venue at which Houdini performed, his September 1904 appearances in Glasgow drew huge crowds. To promote the show, he arranged to be nailed into a specially built box...and in true Houdini fashion escaped within 15 minutes. It is the theme of ‘escape’ from Richard Lovelace’s 17th century poem, ‘To Althea, from Prison,’ that Houdini writes here—choosing the beginning of the last stanza to quote here. As unique as that selection may be, more enticing is decision to add his nickname to his signature—a nod to his prominence as an escape artist—and the formalized signature of his beloved wife, Bess.
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