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Correspondence from John Quinn to Aleister Crowley
April 29, 1915.
Dear Mr. Crowley:
I have been driven today and it seems that I have been spending the whole day in the subways—coming down in the subway, going uptown for a business engagement for lunch in the subway, coming back to the office in the subway for about half an hour, then up in the subway again to Stuyvesant Square to attend a memorial service, then down in the subway again to the office, and now I am going up in the subway again for dinner. The subway is a great institution and most convenient. But I prefer sauntering.
The John [Augustus John] drawing came last night.
I enclose my check to your order for the amount named in my letter, namely $215, being for the following:
I cheerfully agree to your request not to tell anybody what prices I have paid you. I shouldn’t do that anyway.
All I can say to you, and I say it sincerely, is that I am sorry if you have been in financial embarrassments. But if you knew the number of demands that are made upon me, and the number of requests and appeals that have been made to me, you would realize how hard it has been for me to respond to those that I felt I had to respond to and how painful it has been to me to refuse so many others. The condition is not a recent one but it has existed since before the war. No one anticipated the war and I had bought rather heavily in art things before the war began, and everybody swooped down on Americans who owed money particularly from England and France. Collections have been poor since and the number of demands that there have been upon me have been seemingly endless.
What I have done therefore in the way of your books and manuscripts, while all I felt I reasonably could do, has been done without any grudging, and I can only say that you are not personally indebted to me and I wish you luck.
Yours very truly,
John Quinn
Aleister Crowley, Esq., 40 West 36th Street, New York City.
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