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THE ILLUSTRATED POLICE NEWS London, England 4 December 1909 (page 15)
AN ECCENTRIC HUSBAND.
AN UNHAPPY SECOND MARRIAGE WITH A KILTED "LORD."
The story of a widow’s second marriage to an eccentric Scottish landowner who assumed the title of a peer and studied cabalistic science was told in the Court of Session, Edinburgh, before Lord Salvesen. It was an action for divorce by Edith Rose Kelly [Rose Kelly], aged thirty-five, against her husband, Alister Crowley.
The petitioner, examined by Mr. Jameson, said she was the daughter of the Rev. F. F. Kelly, vicar of Camberwell. She was married in 1897 to Captain Frederick Thomas Skerrett [Frederick Thomas Skerrett], who died in August, 1899. In 1902 she was staying in Paris with her brother, Mr. Gerald F. Kelly, an artist, and there made the acquaintance of the defendant.
“Was he then calling himself Alister Crowley?” asked the counsel.—No. He was then Count Skellet. I knew, however, his real name was Alexander Edward Crowley. Later he called himself Macgregor, to identify himself with Scotland.
In July, 1903, the petitioner went
to Strathpeffer, and again met Mr. Crowley, whose name had
then become Alister Crowley Macgregor. He tried to identify
himself with Scotland as much as possible, and bought a home
in Inverness-shire named
Boleskine, and used to wear the kilt and all that sort
of thing. At Strathpeffer on August 11 he asked her to marry
him, and she consented. They were married next day in
Scottish fashion, and went to stay at Boleskine. Shortly
after the marriage the defendant assumed the name of Lord
Boleskine, because people in Scotland, he said, took the
names of their property.
The petitioner: Oh yes. In June, 1904, a child [Nuit Ma Ahathoor Hectate Sappho Jezebel Lilith] was born, which died twenty-one months later. Then for a year we travelled about together in the East. At Hong-Kong my husband left me, saying he would return home by America, and telling me to go straight home. The petitioner said she was very annoyed at being thus left, having regard to her condition, and she came back to England to her father’s house, and there gave birth to her second child [Lola Zaza], in September, 1903. Her husband rejoined her, and they lived at Chislehurst for two years, and in March, 1908, went to Warwick Road, London, where he was becoming a little impecunious. She had left him last summer because he had been treating her cruelly. Before that he had asked her to take care of a child, saying it was for one of his most intimate friends, and she believed that until she accidentally opened a letter addressed to him, which gave the address of the mother, a Miss Zwee. She went to see that woman and learned that the defendant himself was the father of the child. Miss Zwee had been a milliner in the Burlington Arcade.
Mr. Kelly, the artist, brother of the petitioner, gave additional details of the defendant. They became acquainted at Cambridge, where, in 1897, both were undergraduates. The defendant had curious ideas of how to fit up a house, and when he bought Boleskine he had one room covered with mirrors, which he called a temple. He was a cabalist and studied ancient MSS. Boleskine was a big house; he heard it cost £4000, and defendant’s many objects of art were stored in it. When the witness went to Strathpeffer in 1903 the defendant was appearing in the complete Highland costume and his Macgregor Tartan was very bright.
Further evidence proved the defendant’s misconduct, and Lord Salvesen granted a decree, with custody of the child, to the petitioner and alimony £1 a week. |