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Correspondence from Aleister Crowley to Louis Umfreville Wilkinson
140 Piccadilly W.1.
21st October [1942].
Dear Louis
Do What Thou Wilt is the Whole of the Law.
As you may deduce, Oxford was off. At the last moment bethought me. I was in my lawyer’s office, making my will; they kept me hanging about, nearly froze, thought life in a heatless hotel too much like one of the 18 Buddhist cold hells, cancelled all my plans, got back to my secret electric fire.
To-day: matinee at Phoenix “Importance of Being Ernest”. Well done, John and Algy. Lady B. overdone vocally; rest of cast, not worth priority cable to New Zealand, but none of them bad. Result, resolved to write to you brutally, ruthlessly, in the power of castiron conviction, to this effect:
“Tutto tempo è perduto Che vel amor non se spende.”
For ‘amor’ read ‘dramatizing Mrs. A’. Of course you have thought about this, and possibly thought the difficulty of the ‘Unities’ insuperable. I don’t see why: e.g. they could pop up from a boat, dishevelled, when the Lad keeps the date, on the deck of the first conversations. Act 2 can all go into the posh studio and Act 3 needn’t be a liner at all. (I’ve lent my copy like a fool, or I’d go into it all properly). Anyhow you can be as elastic as you like: “Importance” depends heavily on its farce, and most of the fun is rather obvious. Your dialogue is infinitely subtler; I suppose this is a serious snag. Analysing [Oscar] Wilde this afternoon, I was surprised at the paucity and crudity. The motives are purely ‘Suirrey Side’, and some of the fun is hardly more than slapstick. Then the repetitions: e.g. the cucumber sandwiches, and the muffins, the two diaries and the girls’ reactions, the need for both men to be Ernest—and one of them is still unchristened at the Curtain, the absurdity of Priam and Chausuble marrying, merely for symmetry, the duplication of the Burberry and brother idea, it won’t bear inspection. Then it is incredible that both Priam and the baby should have disappeared successfully, All these things hit one in the eye when one sees it on the stage, especially when (as to-day) it was a shade heavily emphasized. (Excuse my Zs: they are a symptom of impending acute delirious melancholia with delusions of grandeur) I shan’t write any more: I wish you were here, and the book. Meanwhile I charge thee in the name of the Most High, Ancor, Amacor, Amides, Theodonicus, Anicor, to get busy.
Yours, feeling a bit faint (Comfort me with chestnuts and meringue, a melon, and some grapes—for such is my frugal supper).
Love is the Law, Love under Will.
Aleister
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