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Correspondence from Aleister Crowley to Louis Umfreville Wilkinson
10 Hanover Square W.1.
30 Mar 1942
Dear Louis
Me annoyed too! If you had wired or telephoned, I could have dashed up to lunch. It is rare for me to have an immovable feast in these Banqueting Halls.
Health: how nice of you to worry. The base of it all is Emphysema: i.e. (though I expect you know) a lot of lung is permanently filled with air. Also, ribs are very firm, so that I get little or no lateral expansion. This is of course as incurable as the loss of a leg. Bronchial irritation, or nervous stress, usually brings on dyspnoea, even spasmodic asthma. To breathe then becomes terrific physical exercise; the quarter mile is a fool to it. Repeated attacks (in the past) battered my heart badly, so that I might have died on the spot from any attack. The heart is hypertrophied too; it’s all a legacy from the high mountains.
That seems to me enough medical lecture; yet let me add that I devised a treatment (a year or more ago) which prevents the trouble ever getting a start.
I can’t find a printer to touch ‘Landed Gentry’ (Will you try in your bailiwick? Thanks.) They are scared, especially since Herbert Himmler got a guilty conscience. Your novel interests me immensely. Tell me more. How “horrible”? Have you brought me into it? I’m collecting odd poems written all over the world at all sorts of dates. Title OLLA (from Catullus. “Ipsa olera olla legit”. This epigram is said to be particularly foul. Why? Can you extract the Quintessence? please.) It is to show that a poet’s job is to express lyrically everyman’s point of view.
R.S.V.P. P.D.Q. Love.
Yours
Aleister
P.S. Just vetted heart (though size of soccer ball as ever) well-compensated like a workman who gets £5000 for a sprained ankle. No fear of failure, like a Black Market Magnate with 2 D sewed into his pants.
“Mentula moechatur. Moechatur mentulla? Certe. Hoc est quod dicunt: ipsa olera olla legit”.
I find this hard to understand. Will you translate it, so as to polish the barb. A.C.
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