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Correspondence from Aleister Crowley to Gerald Kelly
Hotel D'Iéna. Paris.
[Postmarked October 1904]
Dear Gerald.
R [Rose Kelly] like an ass forgot to give you my long explanatory letter. The point is not R's 'entreaties' (no doubt true) e.g. if X, in pain asks Ivor [Ivor Back] for morphia, no blame attaches to X (a mere fool) but to Ivor who knows in case of harm coming.
The details are utterly immaterial. Everyone is lying, anyway; probably even the chemist is pestling a poisoned potion behind his crimson lights.
But G Chesterton [G.K. Chesterton]—a dumb fellow so far.
Thanks for your trouble, which I am sorry to have caused. But Ivor will have told you that the danger was serious.
I had to go to Paris. All went well. I am not wroth with you for telling Ivor and the Guv, they having balls. It's cunts I'm skeery of.
Trot out your Brit. P. and I will find the loggerheads!
As to the cash it's cunts again making trouble.
R. is wrong not to pay B.K. [Blanche Kelly] but on the other hand B.K. promised to pay R's expenses for the trip. If this happened between men they would strike a balance. R. owes £10 about, B.K. about £20 or £30. So it is absurd to fuss. I (I personally myself Ego Aleister Crowley) shall refuse to be made a cat's paw any longer for these feminine frays. It's only a try-on to get a ballster to take an interest in them. They're like spoilt pet dogs—all of them. So let us keep aloof—I don't think we should have quarrelled before, save for false representations on the part of womb-artists. Ann lied, you remember, but I don't believe she new it. Their idea is to arouse sympathy; they suppress or subtly alter to suit; they rarely fabricate—"more rarely" because they lack the imagination in common with other high mental faculties; being fools, they usually fail even to attract the sympathy. A[nn] has written me any number of exquisite letters to stir me up against F.F.K. [Reverend F. F. Kelly], B.K. and yourself. This time I had the wit to see through it. I know they bully her—and so do you, don't deny it!—but that is no reason for embroiling an already strained situation. I propose that R. shall Vaugirard me for a bit here and return with but a cursory call or none at the Vicarage. There is no doubt that your charming family are much nicer to outsiders; you do bicker dreadfully between yourselves; and I think the painter G.K. [Gerald Kelly] like the poet A.C. had best follow Christ's advice about leaving father mother—etc—all the prohibited degrees in fact—and follow Art.
The above is really my doctrine of Non-interference—call it the Primrose doctrine, an you will.
But I'm sure you will subscribe to it.
Yours more than ever.
Aleister Crowley.
P.S. A.C. as soon as I can settle in a flat.
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