THE MEXICAN HERALD

Mexico City, Mexico

18 August 1901

(page 16)

AN AWFUL BOOK.

The Noted Chevalier O'Rourke

Out-Swinburnes Swinburne.

When the Chevalier O'Rourke [Chevalier O'Rourke—pseudonym of Aleister Crowley] was in Mexico we thought him Awfully Simple; now he has written a Poem which shows he is Simple Awful. So is the Poem. It is so Morally Unhealthy that it had to be quarantined on the Way to the land of the Aztecs: and of so Burning a Nature that the Covers are of Asbestos, and it Carries a Fire Insurance Policy. It is a Book which no Self Respecting Girl would permit her Mother to read: and One which few real Respectable men would permit themselves to Overlook.

The Chevalier O'Rourke is the Stage Name of the English Importation who answered to the Cognomen of Aleister Crowley in the Home of Shamrock II, and who first Stampeded the public of San Francisco Lane by his Inimitable Combination of Knickerbockers, Long Hair, and Inseparable Pipe, and a general Bug-House Make-up. His After-Celebrity came when, with an Alpenstock and his man Friday Eckenstein [Oscar Eckenstein], he trampled the snowy Breast of Ixtaccihuatl, and chewed bits of the Alabaster Neck of the White Lady, to Quench his Burning Thirst.

Previous to That he had Prolonged the Horrors of the Spanish-American Pleasantness by a Book of Greeting to the New Republic, which has since Been equaled in its effect only by the long Drought in the Corn Belt and the Steel Strike. But his latest Riot of Rhyme has the War Production Beat a Mile, and Then Some, with the Decameron of Bocaccio Away Back in the Ruck, and Ella Wheeler Wilcox on ice among the Also Rans. It is so bad that the Author is afraid to Read it Again, lest he be corrupted. In short, it is Destined to be Among the Most Popular Books of the Season.

The Effervescence is Called "The Mother's Tragedy and Other Poems." The "and Other Poems" belong just a block beyond where the trolley stops for "Mother's Tragedy" in Spotted Town. The Chevalier Evidently becomes Intoxicated with the Exuberance of his own Verbosity and seeks to Give Artistic Versimilitude to an otherwise Bald and Unconvincing Narrative. He gets There on All Fours with the Verisimilitude, even if the Art is lacking. "And Other Poems" made the Book so Bad that the Chevalier had to Print it Privately, and the Name of the Printer is as completely Lost as Teddy Roosevelt.

Dr. A. W. Parsons is among those in the city who believed in the literary ability of the Chevalier, and to him the author has sent a copy of his book. The doctor compares the general work of the Chevalier to that of the poet Swinburne, for in his better moods he has brought out some of the sweetest songs of love and nature, but his last production seems in a class of badness by itself.

"The Mother's Tragedy" is the story of an illegitimate son who has been reared in ignorance of the identity of his parents. In time he falls in love with his own mother, whose fondness for her son restrains her from telling him the degrading story of his birth, and he forces the conclusion by a proposal of marriage to his mother. He raves in scenes of beautiful depths of love when she in agony refuses his suit. She is finally compelled to reveal the awful truth to her son to prevent his self-destruction. The denouement is heart-rending.