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Correspondence from Aleister Crowley to Gerard Aumont
[DRAFT]
May 31 [1924] [Draft letter dictated by Crowley to Leah Hirsig]
My dear colleague
Yours of May 22. I am very concerned to hear of your illness. From your previous letter I had thought of it as a trifling indisposition. Please take care of yourself. May I as an old wanderer in hot countries remind you that European habits are terribly dangerous. At the same time, it is fatal to try to imitate the natives.
The best course seems to me to be to eat and drink in great moderation, also to avoid overstrain and exposure, behave in short, rather as if you were a permanent invalid. Excuse my butting in but I am really rather proud to think that in all my years of travel in the most dangerous parts of the world I never had any serious illness save malaria which I acquired before I knew the ropes and even so managed to drive out of my system by proper treatment. The hardest maxim for a young man is this: never take unnecessary exercise. A stroll after sundown is about the limit of wisdom. Sweating keeps me in condition.
If you thus patiently build up reserves of strength, you can on occasion perform miracles of endurance. I have walked 30 miles a day through thick jungle carrying a heavy double barrelled expedition rifle in the outside temperature of 120 and the inside 105. One last recommendation—avoid European Society, most of it is degrading anyhow and dreadfully boring. Philosophical conversation with enlightened Arabs duly deliberate, with plenty of coffee and kief are on the other hand excellent to repose, mind and body.
Your grandfather now dismissed you with his blessing and we get to business. You are quite right about attempts to vivisect the D.F. His health won't stand it. I will accordingly tell K. whose literary advisor P.P. is a good poet of the Baudelaire [Charles Baudelaire] School and an excellent critic, that he cannot treat the book as a [illegible] novel. (I may mention that on several occasions editors have proposed to cut my work. I have always replied "Certainly—go right ahead" and then laughed at then when they found that my pattern is so intricate and intricate that to snap a single thread unravels the whole web.)
May I make one suggestion that you get a typewriter. Occasionally I fail completely to read a sentence. It would save both time and money in the long run. I hope to have one myself in a week or 2. Our [illegible] of [illegible] being quite clear, I think it would really be better if despite the distance for you to sign all contracts and handle the whole affair. I only appearing so to speak, as your agent to carry out your definite instructions. For one thing, I may not be near Paris much longer, for another, you know French law and literary custom and etiquette. I don't and am likely to make all sorts of absurd gaffes which might be hard to remedy. Probably I was very tactless with Cendre Gide [?]. I ought in fact to be put in a glass case within iron bars. I am pretty to look at but should never be let loose.
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