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Correspondence from Carl de Vidal Hunt to Gerald Yorke
130 Boulevard Brune, Paris
Mr. Gerald Yorke 9 Mansfield Street London W 1
December 16, 1928
My dear Yorke,
This is a very painful situation. You will remember that at your club in London you advised me to retire from active work in behalf of A. Crowley's literary ambitions the moment I found such activity on my part to be compromising or in any way injurious. You yourself said you would not be able to carry on if the man did anything to compromise your name and family. At the same time it was agreed between you and me that I should report to you, the trustee of the Crowley rehabilitation fund, anything in the actions of Crowley tending to show him unworthy of your solicitude.
You also will remember our conversation at my Paris club on December 9th when I said to you that I would suspend my work, vain though it had been in the face of what I until then considered to be a series of unjust attacks upon a literary man on the ground of his notoriously immoral life and alleged bleeding of gullible women in England and America. I wished to suspend my work, I said, until I had a serious proposition to offer you, adding that any such proposition could only be based on Crowley's doing or writing anything acceptable for publicity purposes. You were quite agreed with me on all these points and I as a publicity man and journalist still hoped that Crowley would lend himself to decent publicity.
Nothing has come of it except a timely awakening on my part. Because a lady of social standing to whom I unfortunately had introduced him refused to receive him at her chateau, Crowley insulted her in the most ordinary discharged-flunky fashion and tried to intimidate me with threats of the police for some two or three books of his I had in my possession. I apologized to the lady who is an old and dear friend of mine and got a good scolding for having "put her in contact with such an individual". I admit that both in the case of this lady and in that of Mrs. F. I hoped that perhaps one or the other would take a financial interest in Crowley's literary rehabilitation and give me, as a publicity man, something to work on. In neither case is there the least prospect of money for your fund. Please make a note of this. For Crowley is at last showing himself in his true colours.
To safeguard my friends, I am sorry to say I will have to place the whole matter before the French Ministry of the Interior and the Sureté Générale who will communicate with Scotland Yard, the editors of JOHN BULL and SUNDAY EXPRESS, and all persons in England and America who have at any time been connected with him. The matter of my own hand in the spectacular rescue of Madame Kasimira Bass from Crowley's fist at 55 Avenue de Suffren, Paris, as corroborated by Lawyer Church, together with the experiences in Tunis of Gerard Aumont, Sergeant in the 10th Company, 3d Battalion, 28th Regiment de Tirailleurs Tunisiens, Caserne Serin, Lyon, and all the present circumstances of Crowley's activities as well as his whole record as published in English and American newspapers will be submitted for investigation by the Sureté Générale, Special Department for foreign undesirables. Any defamatory letters against me or any defamatory actions on the part of Crowley against me will be followed by immediate criminal action.
I am writing you this, my dear Yorke, because you should know. In London you looked happy and carefree. Here, after the fire hocus-pocus in Crowley's flat with the Creole "priestess" [Maria de Miramar] and his unsuspecting secretary [Israel Regardie], of which you told me, you seemed strangely nervous and oppressed. Can't you pull out of this thing? Is there anything I can do to help you.
With all the best wishes,
Carl de Vidal Hunt.
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