THE DAILY EXPRESS

London, England

14 January 1933

(page 15)

THE TALK of LONDON.

Friday the 13th, was for me a day of traditional calamity.

I awoke sneezing. My telephone was out of order. I found that I had no razor-blades left. I had to go to the dentist. Before lunch I was fastened on, ineluctably, by the runner-up to the champion bore of the Athenaeum.

It was, naturally, foggy and damp.

I shall be superstitious for the rest of my life.

Later—and this, of course, was not so unlucky—I met Colonel the Hon. Fred Cripps in Piccadilly. He had on his voluminous tweed cloak, which has a fatal fascination for camera-men on any racecourse.

Later still. I met Mr. Aleister Crowley, the magician.

He is now staying at a fashionable West-end hotel; but told me that he is busy preparing a new supply of his unguentum sabbati—the ointment with which all good witches anoint themselves before their famous Sabbaths (so unlike the tranquil Sabbaths of Sutherland or Glasgow).

It is a powerful love-charm.