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Correspondence from Aleister Crowley to Gerald Kelly
Yokohama.
[Undated: circa July 1901]
Dear Gerald.
You are a good boy and I am a good boy and I am right and you are right and everything is quite correct.
Yours forwarded. Japan is a fraud of the basest sort.
You are surely joking about Shelley? I haven't got Tann. [Tannhäuser]. I guess it's waiting for me at Hongkong.
I have changed the 'label' from Dramatic Poem to Comedy. But it's really a history like the Soul of Osiris which indeed it sums up though in a different manner.
To change the key. This is in strictest possible confidence. I have had the greatest love-affair of my long and arduous career (arduous is good).
Her name was Mary Beaton [Mary Rogers]. Think of it! Absolutely the most beautiful woman I have seen, of the imperial type, yet as sweet and womanly as I ever knew. Moreover, a lady to her finger tips. I call her Alice in the poems you will read about her, as she preferred that name. She was travelling for her health in Hawaii where we met. We loved and loved chastely. (She has a hub [husband] and kids—one boy with her). I made her come here with me. On the boat we fell to fucking, of course, but—here's the miracle!—we won through and fought our way back to chastity and far deeper truer love.
Now she's gone and forgotten but her sweet and pure influence saved my soul. (Heb. Nephesch)
I lust no more—What never? Well—hardly ever! What do I care? for his bloody whores? Does G.F.K. [Gerald F. Kelly] ask? Listen my buck.
The affair was 50 days from start to finish. It [Alice: an Adultery] is written in 50 sonnets; a fake introduction like W.S. but better and a fake criticism. Also lyrics, interspersed between the days (some of these I enclosed with Book I of Orpheus) and one now. I know all the obvious things you'll say. But the tout ensemble is going to be great. I can't explain at length I will send you a copy when typed.
You say hurry up and come back. I am hurrying as far as Colombo. There I am not my own master for awhile. May be I shall come practically right through to London. Quien sabe? It depends on occult considerations, on climbing considerations, and on poetry considerations.
I wish you'd buck up with occultism so that I didn't have to talk with all this damned reticence. I have done none myself lately—there's been love and poetry going. Also my ideas are changing and fermenting. You will not recognise my mind when I get back.
I am very calm and happy and fairly energetic at the same time.
No more now.
Ever as ever.
A.C.
If you write, do so by return: to c/o P. & O. S.S. Co. Colombo Ceylon. It's the best chance.
P.S. Your landscapes are of course futile—all landscapes are. But the practice will do you good and good and good.
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