INNOCENCE ABROAD

By Emily Clark

London, England

1931

(page 18)

The Reviewer—An Experiment

in Southern Letters.

In November 1920 someone said at a party in Richmond: “Let’s start a little magazine.” The only book-page carried by a Richmond newspaper at that time had just died, quietly and suddenly. Hunter Stagg and I had assisted at its death-bed. We may, indeed, have been a part of the disease which killed it. “We will start,” the talk continued, “a fortnightly book-review. Richmond has always been full of writers, and why should not books be reviewed here?” . . .

[ . . . ]

. . . In addition to the American contributors with whose relationship to our magazine this book is concerned, John Galsworthy, Douglas Goldring, Arthur Machen, Ronald Firbank, Gertrude Stein, Edwin Muir, and Aleister Crowley sent us manuscripts from Europe. . . . Of this group Aleister Crowley alone was apparently unsatisfied with fame. Mr. Crowley, unsolicited, sent us an essay ["Another Note on Cabell"] in 1923, immediately after the publication of his The Diary of a Drug Fiend. He is, of course, a mystic and had retired to Abbey of Thelema in Sicily, where the password among the initiated was “Love is the law.” We accepted his essay, and in reply received a letter beginning: “The Reviewer, Dear Sir: Do what thou wilt is the whole of the law.” There followed a concise, business-like demand for payment. In conclusion: Love is the law, love under will. Yours sincerely, N. Mudd, Secretary to Mr. Crowley.” There was, however, no further complaint from Mr. Crowley, when we explained that, in the affairs of The Reviewer, love was literally the law.

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