|
William Wynn Westcott to Arthur Cadbury-Jones
396 Camden Road, London, N.
March 27, [19]10
Private and Confidential
Care R.[ight] W.[orshipful] Frater,
I return the draft H[igh] C[ouncil] notice; you can omit 3, it was read as one of my speeches last time at special council.
I hope all will go well at Sheffield—their proof notice ought to be here by now.
I will leave Equinox [No.] 3 at your house tomorrow—I don't think you can have read the page which attacks me—it could only have been written when half crazy over the defection of his pupils—and as he wrote it, he says, from information given by a swindler he should have said subsequently he could not support his charges.
Ten years ago I got declarations from 2 witnesses that I had had trans[late]d German letters from S.D.A., [Anna Sprengel] and of course he knew about it—and accepted them as true so long as it served his purpose. He may still be fiery and malicious, so try every smooth means first to get the retraction at any rate one of the present date, and one dated soon after December 23, 1900 also if possible. H.[oros] was convicted Dec. 20—while M. [MacGregor Mathers] was in Paris.
After the slander by him of Feb[ruar]y 16, 1 900, he made a contract never to speak again in my discredit and this was duly signed and sealed May 12, 1900, even before the Horos trial. The words are "nor will Mathers attempt in any way to make any statement to his friends or the public derogatory to the position and standing of the aforesaid W.W.W. [William Wynn Westcott] in the world."
To go back to 1886-1887, I find I have two letters from him as to cipher MSS. of Rev. A.F.A. Woodford—in which he wishes to write up new rituals from them, that is as to the G.D. [Golden Dawn] grades 0° to 4°. I have also a letter from M. to me from Bradford in 1888 in which he says he has told Pattinson about my correspondent "S.D.A. who is abroad". How can he now honestly believe "The letters were sham ones?" If he will do all I want I will give him a five pound note: don't let it look like bribery.
Yours sincerely,
W.W.W.
|