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Correspondence from Aleister Crowley to Gerald Yorke
55 Avenue de Suffren, Paris, VII
November 28th, 1928.
Care Frater:
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.
Your letter of the 26th enclosing Miss Eaton's [Cora EatonI am returning herewith. It appears that we may have to wait indefinitely for this $3000.00 from New York, but I am still of the opinion that arrangements can be made in the other direction. An interview has been arranged for Friday morning.
Your feeling about Miss Eaton is perfectly sound. At the same time I don't think there is any reason to make fancy pictures of her in the workhouse. Her brother (as I understand) has nobody but her to leave his money to. And he has a lot of it; in fact all that remains of his fortune after having been operated for cancer a month or two ago.
Thanks for the Skeat.
I want incense by the truckload, but I already have enough oil for at least a year. Oil is wanted but rarely—a drop to consecrate a given object—whereas incense can be burnt at the rate of something like a quarter of a pound per day if one is getting materializations. This in fact is just about what we are getting! The phenomena that have taken place in this apartment, since the High Priestess of Voodoo [Maria de Miramar] displaced the woman from Samaria [Kasimira Bass] would be quite interesting to the Physical Research Society, if any of them are not in a coma.
The pudding may be regarded as a business investment. I am going to arrange a luncheon party for the lady of the well to discuss the aforesaid pudding. I think her husband will be back by that time, so that any considerations of propriety will be met in a manner exquisitely satisfactory to our finer feelings.
Yours of the 27th. I have arranged with the tailor not to present the cheque until your £90 comes through. He was not in a hurry. He was very decent about it in every way. The trouble was that he actually needs the money by the end of the month. He has arranged to call at the bank on Thursday afternoon at 3:55. If there is any doubt about the check returning from London by that time, you might ask your bank to telephone or telegraph to the Bankers Trust that your check is good.
I must say that I find the Bankers Trust very unaccomodating about matters of this sort. They have had checks and transfer from you for quite large amounts for months continuously, but they won't make the slightest elasticity. I suppose, however, a rule is a rule.
About the £10 a week allowance, you have to realize that it is also £5 for secretarial expenses, and we shall have to arrange for that amount to be transferred.
We are, just at present in doubt as to whether to go into a studio. We can get a real big place, where all the pictures could be stored, for about half the price of this apartment, but it would involve a certain capital expenditure with regard to furniture. I am now going into the question of what the minimum cost of furnishing a studio, as I contemplate, would be. I will let you know the details in a day or two. I am at present forming a careful plan.
I should very much like to see the letter in which I gave you the name Stalleybrass. If I did so, I am indeed a messenger of unknown gods. I admit that the name is connected in my mind with something or other; possibly some novel of Dickens or some such person, but I absolutely fail to place it.
I am extremely glad that the head of Kegan Paul is a Jew. There may be some chance of getting some sense out of him. The man should be fed with all the newspaper cuttings about me being a cannibal. It is just the sort of thing that would strike him as a chance for the exhibition of his talents.
There is only one policy from a business point of view. And that is to treat me as Jesus Christ—the much wronged man, the Saviour of the World in disguise. Telegraph the Pope if you don't believe me. "Quantum nobis prodest haec fabula Christi".
I have written to Aumont [Gerard Aumont] to postpone his visit, if he is able, till the time of your arrival. If he cannot, he will come Saturday; and I will make the best arrangements that I can with him. A contract demanding personal service is always quite absurd. The man can always allege illness, or having bought a yoke of oxen, etc., for failing to fulfill his contract. What we have got to get is a line on he work actually accomplished, by having it actually in our possession, and having the right to sell it for our own benefit in case of his failure to comply with our terms. It would be no use claiming a repayment of the loan when the man could not pay anyhow, and the money if we got it would not be of the slightest use. What we want is the man's services, past, present and future, and we have got to bend our whole endevour to getting that. He seems in the right frame of mind now and everything is going to be all right.
Please convey my regrets to the Bureau of International Affairs that I cannot be present on Friday night, but I am so prostrated by the King's illness that I am quite unable to come over.
Incidentally, I think the Daily Mail might have expressed it differently on Tuesday in saying that everyone hoped that his Majesty would spend the winter in a warmer climate than that of England!
I will expect you, then, on the morning of Friday, December 7th.. .
I thank you for arranging for the transfer of the further £30. It was a great pity that I had to pay the tailor in full, but there was no obvious alternative. I shall charge the 7,600 francs to the £200 which I get under the terms of the loan for my clothes. But of course the loan still owes me the balance which I have already paid for other things. I am now fixed up, insofar as clothes are concerned, for quite a long time, unless I go to Mount Illiman, which would be an entirely different and separate proposition.
Your astral visions in Carry, though not very evidential, ought to have encouraged you about the technique, but I object very strongly to your accepting the whole system en bloc on account of success in early practices. I might be wooing you with honest trifles to betray you in deepest consequences. Please accept nothing until you have proved it up to the hilt.
You will find very full information about bills, all properly stamped and receipted. The difficulty is not in that direction; it is the apportioning of the expenditures which is the difficulty. The difficulties are, in themselves, unimportant. They refer to quite trifling sums; but this is the sort of problem that occurs. I paid one bill for one thousand francs odd for some haberdashery in cash instead of by cheque. Now, I don't know quite where the money came from to pay it; whether I draw a special cheque to get the cash to pay it or what. These are the things that are turning Regardie's [Israel Regardie] hair sky-blue. There is no question of any money being squandered or improperly spent. We live lives of virtue so sparkling that the Eiffel Tower finds it difficult to compete with us.
About Hunt [Carl de Vidal Hunt]. The question is how to get him to work at all. He has simply not been doing anything. He waits for other people to do something, and then he wants to take the credit and the cash. That is why he has not a bob in the world, or any credit left. On receipt of £20 per month, which was to relieve him from all worry about his daily expenses, he ought to have got busy and spent, anyhow, six hours a day in pushing our business, introducing me to people, and trying to sell the Memoirs [The Confessions of Aleister Crowley], the films and everything else. As far as I can make out he has made no attempt to sell the Memoirs to an American newspaper. I particularly did not want him to know that the £200 had come in. My argument was that, unless he went out and did something definite before the end of the month, he would not get his £20 on the first of December. I am fully convinced that this is the only argument likely to have any weight with him, ridding him of the possible conviction that we are a pack of bloody fools with more money than brains.
You say that Earp [Tommy Earp] has not answered your letter. On this statement you have wasted quite a large quantity of paper, ink, and my time. Why anyone should expect Earp to answer a letter I can't imagine. I told you the proper way to get anything out of Earp, and as far as I know it is the only way that has even one chance in a million for success. But that way is fairly sure of success if you steer him judiciously to exactly the right degree of intoxication.
Love is the law, love under will.
Yours fraternally,
666.
P.S. All's well that ends well—as the girl said when she saw the chancre on the man's penis.
Gerald Yorke, Esq., 9, Mansfield Street, London, W. 1.
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