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Correspondence from Aleister Crowley to Gerald Kelly
[Undated: circa February 1903]
Dear G.
Having deposited that which had so long etc etc I w. my d. p. and (in spite of the dramatic collapse) feel better. You are treading the s and t road while I stick (for the present) to the p.p. of d. and reck not my own rede.
We have a little salon of our own down here. Beresford is not exhibiting: if he were, his pictures would for their relative excellence, stand out like lighthouses on a dark night. I have just been looking at the pics. (they are not yet hung) and I have come upstairs to be sick. As for Monte [Carlo], I hope to go to-morrow: but Humphreys has promised to motor me over in a day or two so I may wait. Needless to say, I do not play a system: in vain you reproach me with "It is the Pyrrhoniam of a Pilate". I shall lump the lump I mean to lump and then loop the loop I mean to loop. But I have a system which cannot lose. I play a louis—anywhere—if I win: if I lose, I Leonce de Miranda for that time—expecting no miracle, as I do not accept McGregor's idea of a female Holy Ghost. That's all my system, and it never fails. If the genito-urinary system fails, that's not my fault and there is always Dr Patterson and the Injection Payrat.
Later. I am beginning to doubt whether Nice is dull after all. To-day I began very badly: playing billiards in despair, I cut the cloth—first time in my life! I sneaked away unperceived, luckily, went to the reading-room, and tore a newspaper. In disgust, I went out, met a charming girl and had a real good old-fashioned face fuck in the grounds. I returned for tea; fearful of the fatal third tearing, I ripped up the table-cloth with my penknife, and made a successful evening of it by preaching the Good Law to Humphries, winning 5 fr at the Little Horses, meeting the girl I'd been hunting ever since the Masked Ball; meeting a third girl and getting another v.g. o-f.f.f. And that's what I call a middlingish marnings work!
Away with this new fangled Melisande Friggery! (and you can tell E (and S) I said so).
I resume Saturday, after the best girl game. By an artifice, I shall have secured another v.g. o-f.f.f. with the accent on each word separately accentuated. But, fine as the weather is, a place may be too hot for one—and the moral of that is I am off to Monte to win-or lose (die is absurd) and then p.d.q. back to Paris where obscurity may help me and blot the hole where I squat. Of course if I won very largely, I might liquidate the Hotel and hold high my head amongst honest men again
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