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Correspondence from William Butler Yeats to George Russell
18 Woburn Buildings Euston Road
Wednesday [2 May 1900]
My dear Russell:
[ . . . . ]
Private
Our recent quarrell with Macgregor [MacGregor Mathers] has been a small triumph for our clairvoyants and thaumaturgists. Once all legal and practical argument urged us to immediate action; and our clairvoyants held us back on the ground that if we waited he would 'do something so outrageous' that our waverers would waver no more but that if we didn't wait we would have disaster, We waited and he behaved in several amazing ways and sent over a certain unspeakable mad person [Aleister Crowley] to represent him. We put Macgregor out and are solid against him. We found out that his unspeakable mad person had a victim [Lillian Horniblow], a lady who was his mistress and from whom he extorted large sums of money. Two or three of our thaumaturgists after, I think, consulting their master, called her up astrally, and told her to leave him. Two days ago (and about two days after the evocation) she came to one of our members (she did not know he was a member) and told a tale of perfectly medeaval iniquity—of positive torture and agreed to go to Scotland Yard and there have her evidence taken down. Our thaumaturgists had never seen her, nor had she any link with us of any kind. It and much else that has happened lately is a clear proof of the value of systemic training even in these subtle things. The unspeakable mad person is a much worse Captain Roberts and has gone into this dispute with us in part, because of our refusal to teach him and in part to earn knowledge from Macgregor. Macgregor apart from certain definite ill doings and absurdities, on which we had to act, has behaved with dignity and even courtesy—A fine nature gone to wrack. At last we have got a perfectly honest order, with no false mystery and no mystagogues of any kind. Everybody is working as I have never seen them work, and we have faught our fight without one discourteous phrase or irrelevant issue.
Yrs Sny
W B Yeats
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