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Correspondence from Aleister Crowley to Gerald Yorke
55 Avenue de Suffren, Paris VII
October 30th, 1928.
Care Frater:
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.
Last night I had to send Marie [Maria de Miramar] down to the Bourse with a telegram for you, and I spent the whole evening talking over the situation with Hunt [Carl de Vidal Hunt] instead of doing the important work I had planned.
Really I should be glad when Saturn has got clear of your Herschel!
However there seems to have been some sort of a special providence in it. It is a very good thing that these matters should be cleared up once and for all. I will deal with the points in your letter seriatim.
1. If you and Hunt or any other person supposes that the world contains treasure sufficient to induce me to allow any inaccurate statements, or even any statements made in slipshod English, to go out over my signature, you had better buy a new thinking machine. I don't care in the least what rubbish people write; and the more money I can get out of it the better I shall be pleased, but 'Honorem meum nemine sabo'. The matter, I think can be arranged quite well by stating the serial to have been compiled by Hunt from my Memoirs [The Confessions of Aleister Crowley] with my authorization.
2. I am perfectly aware of the extreme inconvenience of the button etc.[1] The obvious reply is that your remarks would have been more fitly addressed to the German usurper. One of the reasons is a feeling of simple loyalty to a king who is in exile. If he came to the throne I should be the first to clamour to have him garroted. There are of course magical and other reasons into which I need not enter, but there is no deception in the matter; and on the Continent people don't take the same view of the matter as in England. Since the lamented death of Citizen Capet no one has had a shadow of right to be called even Monsieur. The whole system is different here primarily because there was no primogenitor.
The practical point is that to act in the way you presumably suggest would be to acquiesce in the criticism which would be perfectly ridiculous and have the worst possible effect.[2]
3. I very much doubt whether you are at all right in your estimate of Kasimira's character. As you yourself pointed out to Hunt, she has been of considerable value in the past and has always acted with extreme decency. Her behaviour, when plunged into the Fontainebleau ordeal, was beyond all praise, and in all subsequent crises she has acquitted herself nobly. It rather amuses me that you should give her credit for the one thing which she does not particularly deserve. I should have got into very much better physical shape (and very much more quickly) if I had been alone tramping the desert.
Her physical senses, as you know, are praeternaturally acute; and she suffers in ways which we can't begin to understand, any more than we can appreciate the effect of the Spirit's Chain on the recalcitrant demon. Her tantrums, unreasonable and outrageous as they are, seem to be the shrieks of an animal who is being vivisected. In those states she is not responsible for what she says any more than a supposed criminal in the Scavenger's Daughter with the thumb-screw gauge machine 333.[3] For instance, having gone to really a great deal of trouble to get the facts about her boy's career, she would not send on the information to you—on some ground perfectly trivial; so trivial that I forget it. I think it was that she had her own money, and did not want help from anybody, and was not going to be dependent!
She does not understand the subjunctive mood, or the precise weight to attach to any statement of fact or expression of opinion. And she has no sense of humour. If you say to her "you must be crazy", she wants the Lunacy Commissioners to intervene with the judgment that she is in full possession of her mental faculties etc. She is also liable to create misunderstandings by this same unfamiliarity with the English language. She strenuously denies that she received any $400.00. She merely talked volubly about hoping to get it. Hunt did not understand this, and of course the fat was in the fire. Now (personally pending investigation) I believe her statement. I cannot believe that even a Slav woman can be so finished a comedian as to weep in season and out of season, and whether other people are there or not, over a misfortune which has not occurred.
In the course of last night's fireworks, the principal display was the further statement by Hunt that the capital was acutely available, that the letter sent by Mrs. Reynolds [Rosa Reynolds] was written for the sole purpose of being sent on to you and deceiving you about the situation, and that the covering letter was destroyed.
Now if this statement is correct, a gross and mean fraud has been perpetrated, and the matter cannot possibly rest where it is. I will not be a party to any such intrigues. If at any time I am mixed up in any way with any criminal action, I make a point of demanding a full investigation. It is part of my magical formula that I should be able to show that I have never at any time associated myself with any of the forms of dishonesty with which people prominent in the Occult world have always been associated. Now, if I sit tight at the present moment, it is quite clear that I make myself an accomplice. My position would be absolutely impossible, for I should be acquiescing in the misappropriation of Miss Eaton's [Cora Eaton] money. (With regard to yours the position is a little different, as you specifically left me a free hand as to how I should dispose of it).
Now I am not going to have it on record that I, for one moment, condoned or winked at any action which would jeopardize the capital entrusted to us by Miss Eaton. The utmost I would do would be this. Supposing that, say, a thousand pounds fell from the skies unconditionally, I would just pay off all debts, tell the criminal to go and get herself hanged some where else, and start afresh. But, pending this golden shower, I cannot see anything much for it, but to make a will in which my estate is to be administered for the benefit of the creditors—which it would then be amply adequate to do—and shoot myself.
Hunt explains earnestly that any kind of scandal at this moment would destroy the whole work which we are trying to do. But that work is based upon my personal integrity and my success, which involved a doubt being legitimately cast upon that integrity, would vitiate the entire base of the syllogism. I don't care what scandal might result. I do not care if I have to sleep under one of the numerous bridges over the Seine—some of which are artistically beautiful, and others, I understand, more hospitable. I don't care what happens in any sense whatever. My first consideration is to keep my honor unsmirched. It would not make a difference to me if I were certain that a jury would condemn my action. A miscarriage of justice does not hurt one. What I can not do is to allow suspicion, even if that suspicion existed only in my own mind, that I was being induced by some material advantage to acquiesce in fraud.
Hunt's statement is, of course, so monstrous that it is hard not to believe that there is some misunderstanding. The motive of Kasimira's action, taken as a whole, is totally inadequate. Her conduct would imply such complex perversity as to be inhuman. If we build this statement into our logical structure we can only ask ourselves, why in heaven's name she does not simply go off and be happy. There can be no doubt of the fact that she is worrying herself to death in the present circumstances. Perhaps I need to read a few more works of Dostoievsky, [sic] but that is the way I feel.
It may strike you that this letter is developing into a mere defence of Kasimira, but that is not the case. I am simply recording a personal impression. I know she says all sorts of perfectly rotten things, but I believe these to be (as I explained) mere cries of pain. They are not associated with well-being, and secret satisfaction in having put one over on everybody, but with serious nervous and physical distress. Her happy moods are those in which she is charming and willing to help in every way.
However the doubt subsists and must be resolved once and for all. The whole situation must be investigated independently. Affidavits must be obtained from Mrs. Reynolds and others. Kasimira herself must be induced to give us access to all necessary documents. She feels or pretends to feel very much hurt that doubt should be cast upon her good faith; and this is only natural. At the same time, she apparently cannot see that the only person who has ever cast doubt on her honesty is herself.
(By the way she sends one arrow back to you this morning by reference to your famous letter at the time when Saturn was passing over your moon!) She does not see that it can only be to her own advantage to put her cards on the table. But as she won't, there is nothing for us but to look in her sleeves.
Hunt is writing you separately about this whole matter. He wants to arrange the whole business diplomatically, and I see no reason why we should not be allowed to do so. The real point of honor with me is to safeguard Miss Eaton's interests.
I would like to make one remark about the magical aspects. She began by getting some remarkable magical results, but every time something turned up to upset the apple-cart. I am inclined to put the whole trouble down to the original magical opposition to our work.
4. I hope you have not written the letters to Germer [Karl Germer] and the others. Your letter to me was evidently composed in a very excited and nervous frame of mind. Letters such as I imagine you would write would knock the whole castle about our ears.
Let me point out that you are taking a totally false point of view of the state of affairs. You write of 'Cape's refusal', and Cape [Jonathan Cape publishing firm] did not refuse anything that I proposed. I have maintained all along that the Memoirs, as written, are merely compilations of material for the production of a book. I think they should be printed ultimately in their present form, rather as one prints Hansard—as a state document for future reference. But you don't expect anyone to read Hansard unless their living depends on it. Cape said what I should have said in Cape's place, that the manuscript should be boiled down to a reasonable size. Of course in this process any libellous statements would be suppressed. The interest of the Memoirs does not depend in any important degree upon my opinion of other people. It is a record of my work and adventure. My disagreements have been very few, and don't involve any serious issues.
If you have mailed these devastating documents, I hope you will immediately telegraph the addresses, saying that you wrote these letters in complete misapprehension of the facts and to await further letters.[4]
Apart from that I don't understand why you should have written them at all, however gloomy you might have been feeling. You distinctly told me when we discussed the subject that any lender or potential lender had no right whatever to know anything of the actions of the directors, except at the annual general meeting or in the annual report. It seems to me the worst possible thing you could do to shake confidence; both in our interests and theirs. The way things are, unless Hunt is childishly optimistic, an extra $4,000.00 in the bank would immediately enable us to pull off the whole bag of tricks. The only reasonable possibility of paying back the loans is success; and we have got to secure that success by any and every fair means
Love is the law, love under will.
Yours fraternally,
666.
P.S. Please send me the letter from Turnbull & Spears. It appears to contain a gross libel, and I wish to consider whether to take action upon it.
666.
P.S. I enclose you a letter from Aumont [Gerard Aumont]. It seems that the French military system has, as I expected, exercised a salutary effect upon his mind. I think it best to take him in his favourable moment and have invited him to pass a few days with me here, if he can obtain the necessary leave. If he comes, I shall simply take him down to the lawyer and have a proper contract made out on his advice. Please return the letter for our files.
666.
Gerald Yorke, Esq. 9, Mansfield Street, London, W. 1.
1—[Note. I was objecting to A.C. calling himself Sir Aleister Crowley, and to wear the button of some continental order in his buttonhole. G.J. Yorke.] 2—[A.C. told me that the title and decoration had been given him by Don Carlos when he spent a vacation from Cambridge supporting Don Carlos. I always refused to write him as Sir Aleister, and when he left France he dropped the title and rosette for good. G.J. Yorke.] 3—[Note. A.C. used to call this the Boulometer. You judged your resistance to pain by the extent to which you could turn the screw. He had mislaid the instrument by the time I first met him. G.J. Yorke.] 4—[Needless to say I let them stand. G.J. Yorke.]
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