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Correspondence from Aleister Crowley to J.F.C. Fuller
The Clubhouse Hoylake [illegible]
20 . 10. 11.
Dear Fuller,
I answer your letter Qabalistically backwards.
Liverpool was my Reno; the Reduction suit was to have been heard in Edinburgh on the 31st; but they have now 'discharged the diet of Proof' (which means postponed the case) as even medical men have a last realized that Rose [Rose Kelly] is insane, and have locked her up accordingly. I presume there will be no great trouble.
As to the 'agreement' you proposed, it was simply silly. You had been misled by Raffalovich's [George Raffalovich] lies about me, I suppose. But I may as well tell you straight out, my chief interest in you doing the Temple [The Temple of Solomon the King] was that you were my friend, my second, that I thought I couldn't do it myself. Well, I find I can.
You'd better face it: you thought yourself indispensable to me, and that I was weak enough to agree to anything you might propose. I am a very patient person, and people mistake my mood. I am continuing to be patient, though you refuse me the courtesy that any casual stranger might have granted, that of using an MS. to save myself the trouble of recopying.
You seem to have got swelled head; the Equinox without Fuller is nothing to anybody. Yet I am being congratulated by many people on having no more or such bad prose. I deny it; I am a friend of yours; but that doesn't improve the prose!
But I whole-heartedly affirm that you have no living superior at geometrical and quasi-geometrical drawing; and having done me about 7 superb plates, I thought you might (after several years close friendship) have finished the one or two that you had begun, to please me, if for no other reason.
But you prefer to write me rather unpleasant letters; you can easily be very rude in answer to this. But you might have risen at one time to the conception of the 'soft answer'.
You need not think I mind being forsaken in extremity. Neuburg [Victor B. Neuburg] and Raffalovich prepared me. I hear Neuburg got quite a lot of money for deserting me. About the others I don't know; but if I'd been rich, I'd have paid Raffalovich myself!
Yours ever
Aleister Crowley
Captain J.F.C. Fuller 89 Overstrand Mansions Battersea Park S.W.
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