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Correspondence from Fernando Pessoa to The Mandrake Press
Apartado 147, Lisbon
2nd. October, 1930.
Mandrake Press Unlimited, 41, Museum Street, London, W.C.1.
Dear Sirs:
I am much obliged for your letter of the 18th. September, which I have read with the greatest interest. I defer, however, to another occasion the detailed reply or explanation in respect of the several points raised in it.
By this post I am sending you copies of my English Poems, I-II, English Poems, III, of 35 Sonnetts and of an earlier version of Antinous, which is I in English Poems. The two poems, to which a third, yet unprinted and, indeed, unfinished, was to be added to from the "triad" I mentioned, are Antinous (the second version) and Epithalamium.
At the present moment, the four booklets are sent to you as a mere curiosity.
You can understand that the extremely complex problem which has arisen around Mr. Crowley's real or presumed suicide—a problem in which every issue is confused and which the Criminal Investigation Police, who took it up at once, has been unable to solve one way or another until now—has necessarily taken up a good deal of my time, both material and mental. This will explain, by the bye, that this letter should be delayed beyond what might have been expected.
I was intending to write you at the end of last week, but the news of the discovery of Mr. Crowley's letter and cigarette case at the place on the coast called "The Mouth of Hell" was made public on the 27th., in the chief Portuguese morning daily, Diário de notícias. To-day is the first day I have so far free as to write you this letter, though my original intention was to write at due length.
In all this, I find I am assuming that the matter is known to you, though I really do not know whether it has cropped up in the English papers. As I am informed that the Press Agencies have cabled it abroad, I presume it has.
Should you want any information I can give on this matter, I shall be, not indeed pleased, but most willing to send it up to you. I shall, at any rate, send you on the 4th. That day's issue of Notícias Ilustrado, the foremost Portuguese illustrated paper, which will have the complete report on the matter.
Yours very truly,
Fernando Pessoa
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