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Correspondence from Aleister Crowley to Dr. Murray Leslie
Hotel Lavenue Place de Rennes. Paris.
June 3rd. [19]08.
Dear Leslie,
Your letter only reached me this evening. I will come to England only if you think it necessary. The position is this:
Life with Rose [Rose Kelly] is intolerable while she locks me out of the house, insults her own guests at my table, uses foul language to servants, reels up Bond St charging into passers-by, goes from crises to crises of hysteria, tells people wild and impossible lies about me etc etc etc ad nauseum.
My duty to myself is not to stand it; my duty to her is to get her cured if at all possible.
I gather from Mr. Eckenstein [Oscar Eckenstein] that you were not in favour of sending her to a home for a year (or less) If so, of course I have nothing to say.
The only alternative that I can see is to give her everything she wants. This I have offered to do—to take her into the country for a month with baby [Lola Zaza Crowley], so as to give her nerves a rest, and then to return to London. There are only two conditions attached:
1) that in London the house is to be managed by a responsible woman
2) that if she breaks out again she resigns all claims to the custody of the child, to myself.
I have gone away to secure these terms, and I shall stay away until they are complied with. If they are not complied with then I shall start proceedings for separation, stop her allowance, get my [illegible] to remove her furniture, and in every way possible cut myself off from her. I need hardly say that the unwilling evidence of Colonel Gormley and Eckenstein, as well as the impartial evidence of Fuller [J.F.C. Fuller] and yourself would result in any application to have Mrs. Kelly [Blanche Kelly] and my mother [Emily Crowley] appointed joint guardians of the child, [illegible], accepted by the Court! I have taken legal advice, and there is no doubt of this whatever. [I do not know whether you realize to what an extent Rose is subject to insane delusions: e.g.: she insists excitedly that Ivor Back (FRCS at George's men) is writing Hymn to the Virgin Mary, and will cut me out; that she has inside knowledge of the Dublin Castle Mystery—dozens of things of this sort which [illegible] and these delusions do lead her to violence]
If you can think of any other [illegible] than the one I have offered which would be more acceptable to her, please forward it.
But I will not live in a house alone with her and a drunken ex-Piccadilly prostitute (called a servant, God knows why) as was the case when I left. I insist absolutely on having somebody there to see that when she falls downstairs and kills herself it is not said that I hit her with a crowbar, and that when she tries to strangle the baby she may be prevented. I am not going to have life a long string of 'scenes', and sleep in an atmosphere like a charnel-house let lose.
His House in Order is the play I'm at just now.
It's off my chest: now please give me and Rose the best advice you have. I know it's an ungrateful task; but I at least will thank you.
Yours very truly.
Aleister Crowley.
P.S. To sum up there are 3 possibilities
1) Rose is to go to a home.
2) My scheme—a responsible person in the house.
3) Your scheme—whatever that may be.
If you will make up your mind very decidedly as what you want, you can trust me to back you with the whole weight of my authority and fighting force.
(My nerves were utterly rotten by the last year's [illegible]; this month in Venice and Paris has got them fairly straight again)
Yrs a.c.
To W. Murray Leslie, Esq, M.D. 74 Cadogan Place, Slocum Square, London. S.E., Angleton.
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