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Correspondence from Aleister Crowley to Grady McMurtry
The Ridge Hastings
Feb 21. [1945]
Dear Louis,
93. You nearly dropped the pilot this time. I got bronchitis and pleurisy, with a close threat of pneumonia; it would probably have been the end if it had happened. But it didn't, I am still confined to bed.
Worse, I dropped my fountain pen once too often, bent the nib beyond my skill to put it to right.
Your £5 came yesterday: Thanks. Your plans for Regina [Regina Kahl] helping Smith [Wilfred Talbot Smith] is fine; but, to my mind one fact may mitigate against its successful execution. That is that she is dead.
I am very sorry; she was great in her way, but over-energized. Her soul shook her body to pieces.
I was not surprised; I knew from the first that her illness was mortal.
Can you get, perchance, a complete set of these new stamps? It would please two worthy children very much.
Tell me, is there anything I can send you?
Excuse this; my temp. is still 100°.
93 93/93.
Best of all to you!
Yours,
Aleister
P.S. re 132 [Wilfred Talbot Smith].
Why start Magick at all if it is a foregone conclusion that miracles can never happen?
Not one B or S out there—and now even you!—dared to expect or even to hope that 132's work would succeed.
So powerful a formula—So pitiful an issue. Any man with a spark of personality would have come out "decisively self-confident independent powerful" as I cabled Jack [Jack Parsons]. Instead, he comes on all-fours, grasping for crutches.
What depresses me is not his failure, but your feeling that failure was inevitable.
666.
Lieut. Grady L. McMurtry O-1574983 1814th Ord S&M Co (Avn) A.P.O. 149 U.S. Army
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