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Correspondence from Aleister Crowley to Gerald Yorke
Ivy Cottage, Knockout, Kent
November 29th, 1929.
Care Frater:
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.
About your note. It is not any good saying £73 unless you tell me at the same time what that has to be deducted from. Is it from £105, £145, or £200? In any case I don't recognize the figures.
In these circumstances, all I can do is to give you an idea of what must be paid immediately. Down at Knockout, we need about £30 to clear things to, say, the end of next week. I must pay Poole for the suits before I can get my overcoat, which I am beginning to need. I must pay Roberson a tenner on account, so as to have some new canvasses. There are £7 or £8 on the filing cabinet and pictures; and £20 to Piper. We must then think about getting money to carry on.
It is simply impossible for me to pretend to try to work if my attention is always to be called away by financial considerations. I share your grief about your position, and drop an additional tear about my own. But the remedy is very much in your own hands. I do think you ought to concentrate on this problem to the exclusion of everything else at the moment.
I think you might take next week-end in town at least, if necessary. To my mind Tattersall is the most important man. I want you to make sure of clinching the Beaverbrook [Lord Beaverbrook] business on Wednesday night, and then putting yourself at his disposal for any hour of any day or night to interview the Empire-builder. I emphasize this, because the cash that will come in from Beaverbrook's support will not be a loan, but actual earnings.
I am writing to Guy Knowles to ask him to dine with us Thursday night, and I am writing to Germer [Karl Germer] to ask if he will put in $10,000 provided Knowles and another do the same. I am also writing to the third man at Oxford to ask if he will be in town any evening next week. I must, of course, know him a good deal better before I approach him directly; or, rather, turn him over to you for approach.
Your £35 seems to have arrived at the bank too late. However, that will not happen again. You quite convinced me as to the question of post-dated cheques as soon as you approached me on the psychological side.
I heard from Germer this morning that the money had arrived, and would be available for you to-day or Saturday.
Will you please see that I have it in the bank on Monday? You might then come down here on Monday night; we could go up together on Tuesday morning, and I could put everything straight.
Nick [Lieutenant Colonel John Carter] has asked me to lunch one day next week. I suggested Wednesday. I shall want to stay in town and lunch with you Thursday so that we can discuss the result of your talk with Tattersall.
I believe a week of really concentrated effort on your part would put our whole work on a permanent footing. In the meanwhile, we have got to carry on somehow without all these alarums and excursions. Last week's adventures would have been quite amusing to me in days of yore. But in my old age, I am taking things more seriously—perhaps too seriously. The worry is hitting my physically, and I am also very much upset about you and Germer. It is imperative that you should be repaid as soon as possible, and any catastrophe would jeopardize success. We have now gone so far and walked so quick, in the words of Lewis Carroll, that to fail now would be an almost irreparable blow—bar miracles.
Love is the law, love under will.
Yours fraternally
666.
P.S. I. I enclose you a letter from Martha Küntzel.
We will try the drink and the truffles on Monday evening, and you can arrange with your chemist.
P.S. II. I am also enclosing a letter from the Lecram Press. I cannot answer his query about page 230 as you have the only other set of proofs.
p. 359—Let the English characters stand.
p. 361—ditto.
p. 382—Can you send him a copy of the "Signs of the Grades" from Equinox Vol. I, No. 2, for reproduction? It is very clumsy to have to describe these signs. People always get them wrong.
p. 329—The word seems to be spelt correctly, though it looks bad.
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