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Correspondence from W. B. Yeats to John Quinn
[21 March 1915]
[ . . . ]
I am interested in what you say of Crowley. I knew him 16 or 17years ago but dropped him on finding that he lived under false names and left various districts without paying his debts. Lord Middlesex was one of his names, another was that of a Russian nobleman. I was also in a case against him. He dropped the case rather than go into the witness box. He is I think mad, but has written about six lines, amid much foul rhetoric, of real poetry. I asked about him at Cambridge, and a man described him being dragged out of the dining hall by a porter, thrown out, struggling, because of the indecency of his conversation. He is an English and French type. You I think have nothing like him. He used to be a handsome fellow.
He [Frank Harris] is probably as uneasy and as restless as Crowley is mad, and so without judgment—a tragid figure. I was told the other day in London that the authorities would arrest both men on their return, but that may be no more true than the other war rumours.
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