|
Correspondence from Aleister Crowley to Elmer Gertz
11 Manor Place. Paddington. W.2.
28 February 1938
Dear Elmer Gertz.
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.
I have been ill for about a week and hence have to deal with your letters of the 8th, 9th and 14th at a blow. I quite agree with your basic theory that fortune is now pure gambling. Goethe said "The time cometh" and come it has. Moral—have a shot.
I do think the Horst-Macfadden idea is a good one. Bill Seabrooke [William Seabrook] got a lot of money out of them for a ridiculous series of false goods. He got the authentic stuff from me and robbed me of 1500 dollars which was to be my share. Very like him. However I am perfectly sure you could get something in the lecture line by merely using the word Rosicrucian and talking about authentic sources and so on.
By the way I had a charming letter from Menken [H.L. Mencken] by the same mail as your first. I have told him that you know all about the Lewis [H. Spencer Lewis] business. I think that you might find him agreeable to put up the necessary funds on some basis or other. On second thought I enclose a copy of my letter to him.
I quite agree that Clymer [R. Swinburne Clymer] is a smaller man then Lewis but that is merely a question of manoevering.
I never discussed Plymouth Brethren with Frank Harris. I don't remember that he had anything to do with them But I could have sworn to the contrary.
Yours of Feb 9. I don't think it is any good my communicating personally with any of the agents or publishers in America, but I will try to see John Farquhqrson, although I have a feeling that I approached him once before on some other matter and found him as useless as I have always found agents.
If the Plummer you mention is the fellow who called himself Socros in America, I knew him but I don't think Harris would have allowed him within 80 miles. I do think you might do something with an agent who would put over the deal. There would be some terrific kudos apart from any cash. Any really ambitious person would jump at it.
Now about this reputation business. I wonder that you should take any notice of such rot as most of it is. I have not noticed many palls in any gatherings such as I frequently attend but, of course, it is quite right about people writing letters and sending mysterious telephone calls and so on, and they seem to have an uncanny way of finding out if anyone gets in tough with me. I have been going into this with two good friends of mine, Lady Harris [Frieda Harris], wife of the Chief Liberal Whip, and Gerald Yorke, a disciple for many years, grand nephew of the great Lord Roseberry, a man with his pulls on Society. They rather agree that what I have done is to outrage everybody, as they call it. That is to say I have not spared contemptuous criticism in every direction and there is also the manner such as appeared in that 'patronage' story that I wrote to you. Fuller [J.F.C. Fuller] is my disciple (I taught him to write English)
Yours of the 14th February. Stephensen's [P.R. Stephensen] theory seems to me very poor except in so far as he tries to explain the sudden outburst which was begun by Bottommley and before the war it had been the blackmailing episodes of the Rites of Eleusis. Then the blackmailer James Douglas took it up in the Sunday Express, in connection with Betty May, a female about equivalent to him.
There has been a lot of bad luck, for instance my experiment with the mythical undertaken at a time when they were very praiseworthy indeed. Because a lot of fools went crazy in the War and started a new focus of scandal about drugs, people bring that up. The Kaiser himself used to come to some of the experiments, but it is not much good my saying that, is it? Again people blame me for attracting publicity with a special reference to Sicily, but I did not. There was the death of Raoul Loveday and the breaking loose accordingly of his widow [Betty May] who returned to her sty, that ever brought Sicily into the papers at all. Viereck [George Viereck] can tell you all about the War activities. Our blasted Secret Service went and told him the whole story. He told me cheerfully about it when he lunched with me 18 months ago in Great Ormonde Street.
I think your story about Frank [Harris] and the publisher is incomplete. About Schwartz, it is absurd to say that publishers have found me impossible. I have not had any publishers except Collins, who simply got cold feet when James Douglas started his blackmailing attack. The Mandrake Press would have made a fortune. Before the Book went to the printer, they had 273 subscriptions at 12 guineas each. Instead of going on and producing the Book, they allowed the money to be stolen by a person called Thynne [Major Robert Thynne]. He simply went off with the whole of the available capital and the firm went into liquidation. I am glad you agree with what Schwartz said about the trip to America.
About the size of the reading public, this statement is really unfair. None of my books has ever been properly pushed. Most of them have been issued in editions of less than 1000 and no effort made whatever to sell them. I quite agree that it all wants a certain fertilisation and that can be done by means of this trip to America, which can be made spectacular if and when required. If you can manage to enchant an agent, do.
I must break off now. Harper called "It is time, it is time". I do not think it is the same Harper as the publisher.
Love is the law, love under will.
Your sincerely.
|