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Correspondence from P.R. Stephensen to Aleister Crowley
[3 May 1930]
It's not a year since you first walked into my office and I signed up to publish your work, simply as a gesture of faith, and without any hanky-panky whatever. I asked you then for two years carte-blanche and took my magical oath (my own brand!) to see the thing through. I have never deviated since then, and I shall not deviate. Much has been done, and by me don't forget, to rehabilitate you completely. You are infinitely better strategically now than when you were expelled from France last year! I have had to go through the ordeal of seeing my business brought to edge of smash through your impact upon my deplorable ex-partner [Edward Goldston], I have neglected my own literary work in order to give time and thought to the problem pf "putting you across." (I suppose you know I stopped writing my novel, which was one-third finished, to compile The Legend [The Legend of Aleister Crowley], at a time when the Mandrake Press was on the point of collapse) . . . I even loaned you money at a time when I had none . . . I kept you fully informed of the progress of things, and strained every nerve to bring them to their present promising aspect. (You will recall that I turned down a good job at the Evening News so as to concentrate on the main work.) . . . It is your move. But this is a consultation game, and you should have at the opposition, not at your collaborators.
I want absolute carte blanche for Mandrake Press Ltd. to go ahead publishing, as and how I think fit, in consultation with Thynne [Major Robert Thynne] & Yorke [Gerald Yorke]. I want you to regard Mandrake Press Ltd. solely as your publishers, and not to prejudice the purely commercial side of that purely publishing concern with any of your fits and starts, Thelemite politics, earthquakes, and the other distracting phenomena of art and nature, such as pin pricks, dogmatism, human chess, brawls, faux pas, bravado and braggadocio, pure bluff, brainwaves, and dementia precox, which tend to accompany your too personal intrusion into the world of practical affairs.
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