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Correspondence from Aleister Crowley to Raoul Loveday
[circa October 1922]
I hope you will come p.d.q. and bring Betty [Betty May]. I honestly tell you that the best hope for your married life is to get out of the sordid atmosphere of 'Bohemian' London. I was really disgusted the other night at the Harlequin. Your songs were good—but what an audience! You are an Oxford man and you don't want your wife in a corner throned on a pile of ordure.
It is ridiculous to knock people down for continuing their old program. When Betty married a decent man, she should have cut that crowd with a sharp knife. Also, you should have seen to it she did so . . .
Excuse me for playing the Heavy Father; but I like you both so much that I hate to think of the catastrophe which I can see just round the corner. You are both of you accustomed to a certain amount of comfort and decency: and—how does Keats begin Part II of Lamia? At this moment, under the influence of Love, Betty can break with the gluey past. But you must give her a chance to breathe fresh air, and live a clean life. Cefalu represents that chance.
Does it surprise you that the notoriously wicked A.C. should write thus? If so, you have not understood that he is a man of brutal commonsense, and a loyal friend. So come and live in the open air amid the beauty of Nature . . . Beak Street and Fitzroy Street are horrors unthinkable even in Rome; and Rome is a cesspool compared with Cefalu . . .
The society of Scholars, of free women, and of delightful children will indeed be a great change for Betty; but it is what she needs most. There is in her not only a charming woman, but a good one; and she will develop unsuspected glories, given a proper environment. In London she has not one single decent influence, except your own; and however deeply and truly she may love you, she won't be able to resist "la nostalgie de la boue" for ever
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