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Correspondence from Aleister Crowley to Norman Mudd
Chelles [Seine-et-Marne] [Paris]
June 22/24
Dear O.P.V.
I assume no news is good news. (Enclosed letter shows Jones is frightened; will plead he's simply doing his best for my interest. He must not be allowed to get away with this.
Last night I collected Tommy Earp and took him to dinner at Strix where I can sign the bill. He said he was rather short of cash. He asked several questions about my finances. I explained that I was not allowed to know anything, even about the past. We had a most delightful, frank and friendly dinner. He seemed to doubt the correctness of your attitude, thought there was a taint of revenge in it. I explained that we were fighting for a principle for the freedom and honour of English letters and for the protection of the artist against common blackguardism. He admitted that I had done much to convince him of the nobility and necessity of our action. He began to see that he could hardly evade some responsibility as a poet, to maintain the cause. What really enlightened him was, I think, a quite simple remark about perspective. I said "suppose all this were a century old you couldn't doubt who was acting rightly". He saw it in a flash.
He also saw my impersonal position and was quite annoyed that Crossing the Abyss was so much like hard work. "I am not I, I am an hollow tube to bring down fire from heaven"! (He seems to have been favourably impressed by the fact that you never mentioned your own hardships, so much so that I had to explain that my own experience was a luxury, provided by the generous Gods, to fit me to deal with certain problems.)
He was also impressed by my demonstration of the damage done by blackmailing libel, whether [illegible] false—Bradlaugh, Parnell Dilk, Roseberry and now Birkenhead—doubtless many others. I showed how poets, B.V., Dowson, Crackenthorpe, Middleton etc. [illegible] had been cut short and practically murdered by open or concealed attacks on their private life. Further, we cannot tell how damage is being done to people that we don't know at all—people who never get far enough to show their calibre.
Birkenhead might well help were it proved to him that our victory would put the Conservative Party in his hands, as it would. Our main objective must be to establish the right of reply as part of the English Law of Libel. Further, the onus of providing any statement must be wholly on the man who makes it. It must be irrelevant and barred, to cross examine a man who complains that he is accused of piracy, as to whether he is a Molinist. My personal case is chiefly valuable for 3 reasons
1. The outrage was entirely unprovoked.
2. The libels were totally baseless.
3. Appalling damage to quite innocent persons whose names the libeller does not even know, can be proved.
You need to keep these points in mind—principles, not persons. Avoid carefully putting yourself in the wrong and every defect you suffer will be an extra factor in the final victory.
You should be able to get great help from absolute strangers who are interested either personally or ethically, in fair play in politics (In politics I include literature etc.) What is to prevent Douglas [James Douglas] exposing Augustus John's Harem? Note how Lloyd George had to square "The People" in the adultery innuendo. Note the intrigues over the Marconi [?] prosecutions. There must be thousands of people in England in good positions who are paying blackmail in cash or servitude and thousands more trembling lest the lightning should strike out of a clear sky at any moment.
The trouble is that everyone is willing to sacrifice his comrade. People are glad to have others exposed that it may distract the attention of the blackmailers from themselves. It is up to you to prove that all decent people are in the same boat. We must not stop till the river is clear of pirates.
Note the impossibility of a man who has any character at all, clearing it; for character implies individuality, which is the real crime in the eyes of the public. Suppose one man specializes in Assyriology [?]. That fact makes him so eccentric that he cannot possibly prove that he is not a drug addict. Dr. Travers (further of [illegible] chemist) was practically ostracized and his West End practice seriously damaged because he was a member of the Anthropological Society which in those days, was evidence of bare-faced sexual perversion of the most complex kind.
Note Wells' "Ann Veronica", James Joyce, Zola translations, Balzac ditto, (presented while originals were sold freely. Shaw, of course, Mrs. Warren and others. Wells not attacked personally tho' his irregularities were notorious. Geo. Moore, Thos. Hardy, Tess and Jude denounced as obscene. Wilde, D.H. Lawrence, ? Marsfield, Strackey, Galsworthy, Garnett, Barker.
666 per 31-666-31 [Leah Hirsig]
P.S. Re Jones—You might get at him by bringing Civil Suit for damages caused by interference with my arrangement with Bourcier. The whole story would come out in opening statement.
P.P.S. Earp leaves for London at one. He knows a man interested in the Hag [The Confessions of Aleister Crowley]—You'd better get in touch with him re this and anything else.
P.P.P.S. Kempler is evidently very hard up and should jump at a proposal. Tommy (Earp) might well invest a thousand on understanding that there was a specialty of publishing the sort of book in which we are interested.
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