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Correspondence from Aleister Crowley to H. M. Holman Hunt (of Parker Garret and Co. Solicitors.)
7 January 1924.
What you told Mr. Hammond is, I fear like that the soldier said—not evidence. You did not tell it to me. The fact that your alleged account—which I do not remember to have seen however—is outstanding should be reason enough for my declining to fight a corporation with millions at its back. The Sunday Express made sure that I was penniless before printing its lies. I did all I could: and now a man I knew but slightly, a professor—Norman Mudd of Trinity—of mathematics has given up his chair in order to be free to make the truth appear.
My establishment at Cefalu is flourishing as usual—thanks for kind enquiries. No accusation is made against me by any authority in Italy, or reason alleged for Mussolini's action. It could not have been the use of the word Tyrol (as I have done in my Memoirs [The Confessions of Aleister Crowley] for that is a crime punishable with a long term of imprisonment.)
Excuse me if I suggest that you may be acting short-sightedly our mother-wit should have assured you in the first week of knowing me that I am a man of honour—the strictest and extremely sensitive and grateful. The persecution of innocence cannot go on for ever; and when I come out on top you will have reason—moral and material—to be glad that you did your best to help me win through, as I hope you will; but if not, I hope you are yet man enough to feel ashamed that you did not do your utmost for a man of your own college, a great poet—and a brother Mason—in most undeserved distress.
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