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Correspondence from Aleister Crowley to Gerald Kelly
[On notepaper of Langham Motel Paris.]
[Undated: circa 1903?]
My dear G.
Thanks for your amusing note and enclosure. I felt at the time you were only bitter because you felt yourself wrong. May not the "red herring" consist only in one's own inability to see the actual import of the discussion? I am the only living man who can equal you in argument and I give you my word of honour that I am always serious, sincere and as lucid as I can be.
But since you describe Back [Ivor Back] as a surgical shop-walker for which I think you ought to beg his pardon—I can hardly complain if I am a mental cardsharper in your eyes.
It was a bad hunch. I admit it.
Letters intended for me find me more easily if addressed "Lord Boleskine" without further circumlocution or ambiguity. I am entitled to this address and I intend to assert it. "Aleister Crowley" is of course a "nom-de-plume" now, and a name for literary uses only, Is not courtesy "old-fashioned"?
You write charmingly even when you think you want to quarrel: but all that is no odds, you can only make me angry by attacking my wife [Rose Kelly]—and that I hope you will be too much of a gentleman to do, in the future. Also it only annoys her if you try and influence my conduct through her. Don't write hurried letters: sit and smoke.
Yours ever as ever.
Aleister.
P.S. This letter is to be read with a pipe in good order. If an agreeable response is not forthcoming, try a grain of calomel and read it again.
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