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Correspondence from Norman Mudd to Aleister Crowley
[circa February 1926]
Enclosed a list of all the diagrams and drawings which (according to Hopfer [Oskar Hopfer]) you have asked him to do. Five of the coloured ones (those marked G.) were taken along by Germer [Karl Germer]. A few, five or six, still remain to be done, but Hopfer will have finished them all when he comes again in a fortnight. But Two of them—the Emperor and Empress Colour Scales—he cannot finish until he knows the proper colours for the ellipse, parabola, and hyperbola. Please let me know this as soon as possible.
All the rest I have checked from time to time, and they seem all right. Are there any instructions to be given Hopfer when he has finished the few remaining diagrams; or is he to just keep hold of them, awaiting arrangements for publication? Germer paid Hopfer some money before leaving Weida, but I do not know how much of Hopfer's bill this was supposed to cover.
Hopfer's compassionate heart melted when he visited us and saw we were in difficulties. He bought us one whole pound of real coffee, some butter, sausage, and cigarettes. He is in difficulties himself. An old friend of his and his wife, who fell out with Tränker [Heinrich Tränker] when Hopfer himself did, has joined Tränker again, and has celebrated the holy alliance by making trouble between Hopfer and his wife's parents. I don't understand exactly what happened, and I gather that this 'wife' is not a wife, but only the mother of Hopfer's baby. Anyway there has been a domestic upheaval which has messed up Hopfer's work and finances. I gather that Tränker has not taken any hand in the matter personally.
a) Hopfer has always taken purple to be purpur which is a sort of crimson. How would you describe purple? None of us are very sure of it.
b) He wants to know whether or not he is to do the double design called 'The Lid of the Pastos' in Equinox III. He cannot remember whether you said Yes or No.
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