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Correspondence from William Wynn Westcott to J.W. Brodie-Innes
December 1909
Private and Confidential
Best thanks for your letter. I believe Mathers drew up the Shemham lecture from British Museum researches, but I have no definite recollections it is not a lecture I wrote.
As to Crowley. I am intensely annoyed that he should have printed the Rituals in his Equinox and I believe he must be a very bad man, and I wish he were banished for ever from this realm and planet. But as to legal proceedings, I think it would be wise to grin and bear it. Mathers [MacGregor Mathers] as well as C.[rowley] has enemies here who would be raked up to say unpleasant things in the witness box. Then M.[athers] as a ten years resident in Paris would have to deposit security for costs.
Remember that M. treated me in a very harsh fashion some years ago, and apart from the source of the G.D. [Golden Dawn] knowledge, I am the only person who could prove he wrote the Rituals and so could claim the copyright. To get me as an amiable witness he would need to consider my feelings and position, and even then it would be very awkward for his case when counsel asked him—is not W.[estcott] the person you charged with forgery in these very Society matters? This must not be forgotten. It would be a very serious thing, for me as a J.P. and a Coroner to get brought in at all in a secret society case and I should want ample guarantees from him that he would safeguard my reputation, before I enter upon any preliminary correspondence even, upon these Society matters. He and you and I have all sworn to keep G.D. matters secret and I for one will not break my oath except by order of a Judge in Court.
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