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Correspondence from Aleister Crowley to Karl Germer
Ivy Cottage, Knockholt, Kent.
Feb. 15th, 1930.
Care Frater:
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.
I will deal with your diary in due course of time. At present I am appallingly busy. The whole week has been filled with auditors, chartered accounts, and so on. The work has been prolonged and difficult because Goldston [Edward Goldston] has falsified everything. But we think that the new company can be registered between now and Wednesday, and then I hope that things will be a little easier. For the past fortnight they have been in very bad condition indeed. I don't know how we have pulled through. It has been particularly bad for the Woman [Maria de Miramar] and the Serpent [Israel Regardie] from a physical point of view. I suppose that I have had more than my share of the worry.
I must now give you a full account of the question of Yorke [Gerald Yorke]. We had dinner together on Tuesday night. I should have written you before, but I had not anyone to take the letter, and I want to get things very accurate and full.
The crisis had been precipitated at a previous dinner about a week earlier when I had brought Yorke to meet Major Thynne [Major Robert Thynne], one of the capitalists who is putting up money for the New Mandrake [Mandrake Press]. Major Thynne did not turn till later, and during the dinner Yorke suddenly volunteered that he had given a man named Tattersall £100. I refrained from asking any questions, but he felt the need to explain. He said that he had touched capital, and that there was a family row about it. I let the subject drop and took it up again last Tuesday.
By the way, after the previous dinner when Major Thynne came in, Yorke was in a state of almost hysterical excitement and in utter defiance of ordinary decency monopolized the whole of the conversation and said the most fantastically stupid things as the top of his voice. Thynne was thoroughly disgusted. Yorke was in fact talking as if he wanted to put Thynne off from going on with the business.
Well, last Tuesday, I tackled the subject rather abruptly, and cross examined the poor bleeder quite mercilessly, when I thought of the disgusting way in which he has behaved to you. He had repeatedly said that he possessed no capital whatever, that he was in debt in every direction, that his credit at the bank was gone, and so on. He told this to me; he told it to you; he even told it to people like Goldston.
He took the grilling very badly. It was really terrible to watch his mouth twitching as I forced him from one lie to another. He was really in very great agony. But I think I got the truth at least.
You remember that his original statement was that his income was derived from two sources: one, his fees as a director, the other an allowance of £400 or £500 from his father. Well, it turns out that this allowance was not an allowance at all, that his father had handed over £5,000 of shares in the business. He was in full legal control of this money, so that when he wanted the £500 to give to Tattersall, he could do it without difficulty. His excuse for giving money to Tattersall at all was childish.
He then explained that although the capital was legally his, his father regarded it as a sort of trust money, and had made a row threatening to alter his will, disinheriting him as heir, partially, in favour of his younger brother. I asked the most timid of the brethren about this, and he said "Why didn't he tell the old man to stick his will up his arse." I do not know what the most courageous of the brethren would have said.
Anyway, here we see how his original moral weakness in knuckling under to his parents has led him to the breech of his oath, to a display of the most contemptible moral cowardice, and to a systemized campaign of deception. I think it particularly disgusting that he should have persuaded you to hand out money, you being a poor man and he a rich one, when he could perfectly well have done it himself. I think that your course is to demand that Yorke should immediately repay you the whole of the loan, and if he does not do so, write to his father explaining the whole of the circumstances.
I am extremely sorry for Yorke, because I like him very much, and I consider that he has the very greatest abilities for the Great Work. But all these go to waste unless we can make a man of him, and I think that to force him into a fight to the finish with his family is perhaps the kindest thing one can do to him
Well, so much for Lord Raspberry!
If things go well this week, I may possibly come over to Berlin to see Birven [Henri Birven] and the others, and to arrange about the pictures. I will let you know in good time.
Love is the law, love under will.
Yours fraternally,
P.S. About Handel's letter, I have no authority about price of the books, and I do not think it would be reduced. But arrangements could be made for easy payments.
666.
666 / anl [Israel Regardie]
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