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Correspondence from Aleister Crowley to Wilfred Merton
[on the stationary of The Equinox]
21 Warwick Road London S.W.
2/8/9
My dear Wilfred,
It is true; you have been an abject beast is a negative way! I have had a good deal of trouble; my wife [Rose Kelly], after whose health you so kindly inquire, is now recognized to be as hopeless as it was always feared—by the best authorities—that she was. I suppose you are too innocent to know what is wrong, though sometimes it seemed that nobody could mistake it for a minute.
Anyhow, she is no longer here.
My prospects of help from V. [Vanity] Fair are a little better, the ass Towell being relegated to oblivion. Harris is off round the world, and Norman Roe takes the responsibility.
Victor [Victor B. Neuburg], now installed as my Private Secretary, is further obtaining great repute as a Saint. The record of his Austerities and Devotions is as terrible as it is beautiful.
I hope you'll find it possible to come to the rescue over the Baudelaire [Charles Baudelaire]—unless I can get V.F. [Vanity Fair] to take it and pay me—or over my Selections. I have had them chosen by seven or eight different people and no bawdy ones are admitted. They make a book of some 200 pp 8vo in the style of Oscar Wilde's poems; small [illegible], double leaded. Think of it.
We shall be glad to see you back in London. Hope of going away is a fitful gleam of moonlight through the flying wrack of Equinox proofs and other business. My wife's collapse has about finished me. The agony of it is nothing—that has been going on with hardly any intermission for 3 years, and the nerves which work it are incapable of sending any more messages—but the practical difficulties are immense. The house is on my hands and I've no income; less than more, for I owe £60 a year! So it keeps me busy trying.
Send me good news of yourself soon. Neuburg sends love.
Yours,
Aleister Crowley.
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