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Correspondence from Aleister Crowley to Montgomery Evans
10 Hanover Square W.1.
April 28 [1942]
Dear Monty
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.
Rejoiced was my heart at the arrival of your letter of March 1. You ask who is to blame: I answer YOU. A Henry James American strayed from last century, swanking about Yurrup under the protection of the British Navy, and telling us all in no uncertain tones where we [illegible]. You have compassed the globe in hops from brass nail, perching elsewhere only to patronize a superanimated novelist, a restaurateur or two, and a literary linen draper! You have never been anybody, or done anything, or even been on the way to anywhere.
When these things are done in the green tree—for you are the best type of American—what shall be done in the [illegible]?
Forgive me if I draw so harsh a sketch of what appears; but it is the almost universal impression: charming good fellows, shrewd and witty, but a little inclined to be prigs, and in no case (outside Business!) to be taken seriously. True, you have corrupted us; Baldwin's pipe and Winter's cigars and all that stuff are imported from you, though perhaps you got it yourselves from Gladstone's collar. You have utterly destroyed our Press; we have not one decent paper left, though you produce them in abundance! I blame you, too, for the wrecking of our political system; your Elephant-donkey monster has been copied here, still there is hardly left a single man with ideas of his own, or what one used to call a 'character'. When I was (happy years!) among you, I met 'characters' by the dozen. John Quinn, Edwin Markham, Alexander Harvey, Justus Sheffield, William Marion Reedy, H.L. Mencken,—[illegible] scores! I've forgotten half the names, but I remember the men. And the women, too, by truck-loads. All crude, coarse, ignorant, brash, grotesque, say anything you like to cheapen them—but everyone inevitably himself (or herself), and assured, and proud of it. Are you still like that? I hope so, for here everyone is more and more forced to a pattern. Shaw? Antediluvian, and I think driven to be contented to fend off the flotsam.
Forgive this deemed most unpleasant letter, and in particular the frontal attack on you! You know how really fond I am of you, so let it go at that! Do help my friends about the broadcast plan for July 4. Karl Germer 1007 Lexington Ave. knows all about it: I cabled him to dig you up. The matter concerns my Hymn for July 4: see enclosed copy, one of 100 on h.m.p. Other contributions to library if and when I can join you.
Love is the law, love under will.
Yours ever
Aleister
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