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Correspondence from George MacNie Cowie to Aleister Crowley
14 Glenisla Gardens, Edinburgh.
22 Nov XIII [1917]
Care Frater.
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.
I am sorry you are ill again. I have just received a sum of £8 odds from F.B. [Frank Bennett] Australia in payment of books, so it's your own money. I am returning it with a request to send it direct to S.J. [Charles Stansfeld Jones]. I had directed Windram [James Windram] to do the same if he had any to send, but he isn't a soft nut.
I should have told you last letter that the tenant [of Boleskine] B. [Mrs. Brook] is dead and this may cause complications. Anyway our solicitor was notified that there will be a delay in the payment of the quarter's rent due Oct 1. This means that there is not enough in his hands to meet the heavy taxes due in a month or two, and I can't help. Their payment swamped me last time and I've never been able to replace that last bit of capital. There is also a serious trouble about the mortgages [on Boleskine]—I can't go into details—You should be able to understand how serious things are here, the food problem will soon become acute. I can't go any more into details of my own private affairs in open letters, but the most I can do after paying my own taxes will be to pay the everlasting storage charges.
It would be worse than useless, it would be fatal, to try to squeeze anything out of the B[rethren]. Such as care to keep on paying their dues know that it is expected, but there is no compulsion. None of them have had any notion of contributing a sixpence beyond their just dues, much less of parting with their last shilling. That literally happened in my own case last year, but it's too one-sided a business to go on. In one way and another the Lodge has cost me more than the total contributions of the members, and all lost uselessly thanks to your 'politics'. There is not the rudiments even of a pimp in me, the B[rethren] would take me for that, and it would be the last goodbye. They are all perfectly aware that any one sending anything will be arrested and (I must be frank) it was thoughtfully rubbed in by the police that you were known to ruin everyone you could get hold of! which was news to most.
To make it worse the Rosy Dreamer [Mary Davies] has taken a line of action, in an endeavour to rehabilitate herself, that, whatever the result to herself, will completely lose her the confidence of all but a very few of the B[rethren]. This is so much so that I've had to abandon my intention of going up [to London] for the New Year—I can never go now except at a regular holiday time. I can't afford it anyway, but it's the uselessness that decides me. By Easter things may be better, but not if all the woe you prophesy happens.
The present situation as regards sending money is of your own creation. I thought you were human enough to take it sporting, and enjoy, rather than grim sardonic humour of the position of the unappeaceable [sic] passion for the Hun has landed you in. (Not that I believe in it). But please keep on this game, it's good for me, as you are only turning me into flint. I was a pap-headed pawn just so long as there was nobody by myself to get hurt by my silly vice of generosity. It's different now, you had better interfere between a wild beast-ess and her cubs as between me and people who have trusted me. They know exactly what would happen if I were pappy enough to give in to you and would think I was made of albumen.
I know you are never left in absolute want, indeed that comes out unconsciously in your letter and I have no more visions of you living on old boots. It's all right you should want 'extras', but why not say so. Think of me putting up with Gold Flakes, pinching myself of holidays and all that, to share with you.
The livelihood of (with one exception) the male B[rethren] would, as they know, be endangered or worse, if I had acted as you wised. I'm not telling them, or they'd think it very strange, that after that, you should call on them for yours.
One other thing, I WILL NOT have any communication with D.L. and P.G. I said little about it, but it was about the most mortifying interview of my life, and I swore I'd see you damned before I went again. Not but what they became civil in the end. In another way, you are trying to make me break the equivalent of a magical oath, in which my own will power is at stake.
Now proceed, call me a B.S. and send along meningitis or any other meancuss thing. I set my face a flint against the beastly glint! (Trinolnitroglycerine on the brain to blast the obstinate Ego to atoms specially requested. I'm progressing however, if only you'd exercise the Fourth Dimension of the Sphinx about DROSS.
How pleasant all might be, bit for this everlasting trouble over dross. Letters are a sad bother now, my leisure is cut down so I must stop. Ask for money again next letter—I like it! It's bad form, if you grumble at being paid in your own coin. I'll send you extracts from the poems of the great nobleman you love, and from the immortal autobiography of your fat 'protégé'! Ha! does the galled Beast wince?
Remember, O it's impossible to send you full details of many things, I cannot discussing [sic] own and other people's affairs in open letters.
Love is the law, love under will.
Ever fraternally. Even if it does not look like it.
George M Cowie.
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