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Correspondence from Aleister Crowley to Norman Mudd
Nefta
Nov. 18/23 e.v.
Jubilee
Care Frater,
93
This is my Jubilee—just 25 years ago at this hour I was in Great Queen Street wondering whether I should come through my initiation alive! The Oscultation came off more or less—4.08 A.M. to 12.11 P.M. and since then I have been paying for it, and paying a Hell of a price! I have been down to some very bad places. The trouble is that it doesn't seem worth while pulling oneself up. This sort of thing has been grieving me very seriously in the last 3 years. It is really urgent that I should be fed on hope. My weakness wants practical confirmation of the faith that my work is worth while. Very few people recognize my extreme and even morbid sensitiveness; my dauntlessness is pure Freudian protection. I am perfectly happy when working and am a hog for work; but as I grow older, . . .
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call my own with a proper study and studio, a library, people to look after me, a decent climate. I believe one can buy a chateau in Austria with a park, 5000 years old, for about half a crown. I wouldn't mind that, but a head quarters, our own property, with reasonable comfort and complete absence of worry is quite essential. I would like Hardelot near Bologne as well as anywhere. This and a headquarters in Sweden for business is the 1st. thing to attend to and the way to get it is to vindicate me, to work up general sympathy, to point out that I have never done a . . .
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is the impropriety of some of my writing which of course must be shown to be the highest morality. It must be hammered into people that I am the only living poet of the first rank and that can certainly be done. You should persuade some well-known critic to make his fortune by making mine. Back this up by arousing indignation and the reaction in my favour will supply sufficient capital to put things on a proper basis. You should get to London as soon as you can and concentrate your efforts on this programme. What with the Hag [The Confessions of Aleister Crowley] and other unpublished work the retrieving and marketing of my stock and the repub[lication] of selected masterpieces you should be able to raise your £20 000 within a year.
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which was ridiculous with his name on The Star in the West. He [J.F.C. Fuller] had a slightly swelled head about the value of his work to me. It was the fly and the ox. I showed my independence by writing the section for No. V in 2 days (it would have taken him 4 months). He should have learnt a lesson and did in fact agree to resume his work. Then he tried to put pressure on me to sue The Looking Glass. My best friends Feilding [Everard Feilding], Radclyffe [Raymond Radclyffe] and Marston [Guy Marston], representing the aristocracy, journalism and officialdom agreed that such action would be madness. They were all men of the world and highly placed in their respective departments. My own judgment concurred with theirs and the result of Leila Waddell's action and Jones's [George Cecil Jones] showed their good sense. Fuller's brother was a member of the firm which had acted for me against Mathers [MacGregor Mathers]. They used Fuller as a cat's paw to get my business. Then Fuller made the dreadful mistake of taking it upon himself to prescribe tasks for Probationers—in direct contravention of the essential spirit of the Grade. The man must work purely on his own initiative for that first year. Further, he showed gross incompetence when Lloyd appealed to him about Pranayama and Fuller had no idea how to put him straight on the simplest point of the practice. On the top of this—we were working in apparent harmony at the time—he bunged in without a word of warning the astounding agreement by which I was to forfeit £100 every time I mentioned his name. I thought it treacherous and unmanly; and, in view of the accompanying threat something very like blackmail, there was only one possible reply, which was to mention his name not as a valued colleague, as before, but as the object of rebuke.
I had noted for some time the tendency to disown me. Jones would not call me in his libel action and tried to . . .
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to such degrading expedients by sheer necessity. Consider my responsibilities as Lea [Leah Hirsig], Shumway [Ninette Shumway], yourself and others who have trusted me. I find it Kingly to feel no shame is such humiliations—noblese oblige.
93 93/93
Thy Sire
The Beast 666
It is really up to you and your executive A.I. [Eddie Saayman] and Co. to give me the opportunity to show my Royal Qualities. Part of the error in the general view of me comes from my absolute royal contempt for the opinions even of those whom I love and respect most. I disdain to explain my attitude and actions. I make an exception of you in your capacity as being my own mind in the [illegible].
666.
P.P.S. You'll have seen how Achad [Charles Stansfeld Jones] has tried to pretend that he doesn't know me—"his speech destroyeth him" with a vengeance. You'll have to make all such people take an absolute stand for or against me. This The cowardly conforming with respectability—they call it policy—rots the Soul. Even when they are honestly working a stratagem at first—Events always force them into real treachery. People must [illegible] their boats, and defy fate from the start; it's the only way to assure integrity and to stay [illegible]!
666.
I have great hope of your getting Everard Feilding into line. He is simply knocked sideways by my proof of the praeterhuman origin of AL. It is too good to be true. He refuses to go into it thoroughly and make sure. You could convince him and get him to back us. I think also you could persuade Raymond Radclyffe to root for us. He doesn't care much about Magick but he knows I am the only Eng[lish] poet alive. He has great influence in the city and the journalistic world. He is an old man, very blasé and cynical, but it would give him something to live for to devote himself to putting me where I belong. Once in London, you could make sense on all these point. The plan is to put it to all "Are you a King or a slave".—not shilly-shally [?] with them.
666.
P.P.P.P.S. I have written more odds and ends of poetry since being here than for years past. It's the freedom from anxiety that lets my spirit loose. So count yourself the perpertrator of: 16 or 17 sonnets in French on the Desert and Nefta. Several odd sonnets and short [illegible] on Nefta and various serious themes. About a dozen Oaths.
[N.B. Your liking the Book of Oaths encouraged me to go on and do better. I had utterly lost heart about them—[illegible] altogether, in fact. If you can only get some publisher to accept anything of mine or even to republish them or selections from old work my Muse will revive for good. At present, though I can dash off a short thing, I can't take the trouble to conceive anything big, as I could and should at once if I knew somebody wanted it. Note how I did the D.F. [Diary of a Drug Fiend] and the Hag—gigantic labours—on the strength of the contracts.]
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