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Correspondence from Aleister Crowley to Mr. Dacres
10 April [1935]
Dear Mr. Dacres.
Do you wonder why I despair? You start in the very friendliest and most sympathetic spirit, to seek the origins of these fantastic rumours. Ah, we have it—that divorce in camera—that explains everything. So sorry, but the divorce was the regular put up job with evidence manufactured in the most orthodox way by E.S.P. Haynes as usual. Nothing in camera about it. The cause was the refusal of my wife [Rose Kelly] to sign herself into a home for hereditary dipsomania for two years—her doctor's ultimatum. There was no quarrel; we were photographed together a few day's after the divorce, and only parted when she had to be put into an asylum. My sole object was that I refused to be responsible for her killing herself—it was a very bad case indeed.
I do not think I am secretive; but I cannot tell a story until I am furnished with some notion as to what it is all about. Why should I volunteer the statement that I am (or am not) suffering from Herpes Zoster until someone asks me the question?
I am not and have never been a heavy drinker. I have been drunk only once in my life, by accident; I was so concentrated upon arguing with my translator (in Sidi Bou Said) that I did not realize that the liquid with which I moistened my throat, that broiling day after lunch, was '78 brandy. I passed out, slept for two hours, and woke entirely fit and fresh.
I think that concludes Mrs. Brooksmith's [Pearl Brooksmith] indictment. If you will verify every assumption, you will soon realize the entire baselessness of the whole edifice of malice.
Yours sincerely.
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