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JOHN BULL London, England 28 April 1923
WE TRAP THE TEMPTRESS.
The opportunity to trap Aleister Crowley’s principle agent in this country came to us unexpectedly, and it is safe to say that in his exposure of the wiles of the wicked our Special Commissioner has never had an easier task. Naturally there was need to resort to artifice of a simple kind; otherwise not even the ingenuous Jane Wolff [Jane Wolfe], stupid for all her duplicity, would have consented to give the game away.
A meeting was arranged for Sunday afternoon at four o’clock in the neighbourhood of Piccadilly Tube station. The proffered invitation of our representative to a Piccadilly restaurant was readily accepted. The resulting interview described, below, confirmed the whole of the information published in recent issues concerning the movements of Aleister Crowley, his visit to London and his unceasing efforts to extend the corrupt sphere of influence which has its centre at the Sicilian Abbey, whose monstrous record we have exposed.
A middle-aged woman, with grey hair bobbed in a girlish manner, with the speaking eyes of a film actress, Jane Wolff was dressed quietly in brown, a costume to which a purple jumper gave a touch of colour. She wore a dainty hat and a grey fur collarette, clasped tightly round her neck. One might have taken her for the manageress of one of the West End department houses, going out for an afternoon cup of tea.
The interview was marked throughout with effusive demonstrations from Jane at the pleasure of meeting our representative, to whom, under pressure, she actually confided the secret of her present address.
She gave it as 56, Russell Square, London, W.C., where she said she was staying temporarily. She added that she was negotiating for a studio where she could make safe and secret appointments with clients.
She went away satisfied with the results of her interview.
She will not know until she reads these lines that she walked into a carefully prepared trap.
The prospective clients, out of whom she had hoped to life at least a hundred guineas for the “Master,” has outmatched her cunning. They were not the guiless dupes she had thought them.
They were the Special Commissioner of John Bull, and the witness he took with him!
Crowley and the woman Wolff who works with him, thought they were escaping all observation in London, merely because they had evaded the attention of the police.
Their movements, however, have been known to this journal since Crowley, as we announced recently, came secretly to England to enlist new victims, and to replenish his exchequer which he is anxious to do by the sale of pictures.
It was not possible at first to get into direct touch with the elusive and dangerous Jane Wolff. We learned, however, that she could be communicated with through a firm called the Western Engraving Company, describes as die sinkers and press makers, of 18, Broad Street, Golden Square, W.1.
On enquiry there, our Special Commissioner was told that Jane Wolff was very busy with engagements, but she could be met by special appointment by people who were willing and able to pay the Cefalu fees.
The arrangement was then made for the meeting at Piccadilly Circus, certain details of dress being agreed upon for identification.
We propose to tell the whole story of this interview without any reservation, because it shows that the King of Depravity and his satellites are still working their sordid business in devious and underground ways.
Miss Wolff was an excellent conversationalist, a well-spoken and gushing middle-aged woman. She was quite a stranger in London. It was her first visit. The talk ranged from the orchestra to music in general and to grand opera in particular. There was mention of Wagner and Puccini, and then of the Russian Ballet, of Pavlova and Lopokova, Kyasht and Massine, and all the great dancers.
Jane was most interested in this high brow conversation. But she soon began to show that she was still more interested in her prospective clients. She discovered that the younger one of the two had “speaking eyes.” They were eloquent of inspiration for love. And when she touched upon love she became ecstatic.
Ordinary love, she explained, was as well left alone. Such love affairs must be broken off if you are to have the inspiration of soul. “Always keep up there,” she said, pointing her manicured hand upwards, “and never come down. If you do, love is dead.”
The two clients were deeply impressed. Then our Commissioner was delicately flattered. He was told that he had genius, not the ordinary genius that revealed itself and produced great works of art, but a hidden and mute genius that had never been brought out.
In one way alone could it be really developed and made manifest. The “Master” could do it—Aleister Crowley, the great Seer, the Wonderful Wizard, the Master of Knowledge of the Fruit of the Tree of Good and Evil!
To achieve this great thing it would be necessary for the two clients to go to Sicily, to become residents in the rockbound Abbey of Café. Jane would cheerfully fix that up. The fee would be the mere trifle of fifty guineas each, payable in advance, plus the cost of traveling and other incidentals and the course of “study” would have to be for at least three months.
Eloquently she dilated on the prospect. All that the clients would have to do would be to go into residence there and submit themselves to the “Master,” doing whatsoever he should demand of them!
The clients were much impressed. But they wanted more details. What was meant by giving themselves up entirely into Crowley’s hands? Jane Wolff began to explain with the enthusiasm of a devotee.
The work would be hard. They might at first, find the atmosphere awful. They would have to be initiated into the taking of drugs, in the Crowley manner, which was safe and pleasant. The drugs are an essential part of the system. It may be that the drugs might produce in those who took them tendencies and passions that were ordinarily regarded as vile and bestial. That did not matter.
Aleister Crowley, the eloquent lecturer on Free Love, would deal with all these unpleasant manifestations in the Crowley manner. He would teach them the beauty of ugliness, the secret joy of what an ignorant world denounced as depravity. |