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Correspondence from Aleister Crowley to Louis Umfreville Wilkinson
Louis Wilkinson Grove Heart Ripley Surrey
17th April, 1946
Dear Louis
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.
Yours of April 10th. I am sorry to say that I have got my new glasses and they are quite inadequate. I gather though that you want me to send you £3. 8. 7: I will get a money order for that amount and enclose it with this. P.S. Went to H on purpose, then forgot all about it! Will send it to-morrow.
I have found it practically impossible to read newspaper print, bar head-lines, and "Forth, Beast!" is a great strain, so much so that I have only got as far as about a third of the way through the chapter on Wives. However, I can tell you something about the previous part of the book. (By the way, one of my stabs got you where you were inaccurate. What have old Roman coins and a carved amethyst—probably Renaissance—got to do with the Tarot)?
I find your discussion on book production most enthralling; but you know it is rather hard having four people to deal with instead of one; I feel that any jury would convict you for having "committed biography," as the soldier said. Part of the effect is to give a certain unreality—mostly to Dexter of course. Sometimes it is puzzling. You say that you never liked Josepha, but I thought Dexter married her: he must have liked her just a little bit before he got to the point of proposing.
As to your chapter on Health, I growl fiercely about your morbidity on the subject of bread. I agree that English white bread is mostly as bad as can be, but French or Viennese rolls are the only things of that kind worth eating. Many Scottish productions too; and Jewish Rye. Why should I deprive myself of a definite pleasure on these valetudinarian grounds? What does the poet say:—
The Chinese like to eat Good rice with plenty pork With chopsticks, just as neat As we with knife and fork. And they have wisdom (lost to us) Because they do not make a fuss About the vitamins And calories, and what Foods are accounted sins, And which, if any, not. They eat exactly what they please. I wish I had been born Chinese.
Then let me warn you about minor matters. It is very dangerous to stand on your head as the Mohammedans always do. It is almost certain to produce that which racked Browning's grammarian.
As to the chapter on Wives itself, it has led me to the clear confirmation of a discovery which I had long suspected. I am a complete woman with regard to my friend's wives; I am jealous. Their mistresses, all right; What I dislike is the feeling that my friends by marrying have surrendered an essential portion of their personality. Before I met you my best friend was probably Fuller [J.F.C. Fuller]. He had not been married more than a year before the whole thing was broken up. When I came back from the States I found Eckenstein [Oscar Eckenstein] had married, and I never saw him again.
I do not think there is any possible question of any morbid attraction; I think I feel that the man is no longer worthy to be my friend, that he is not a complete man.
Was Josepha that red-headed woman? I met you on Coney Island. But you always kept those wives in the background; I do not think they really did vampirize you too seriously. Was the second one the girl I met when you had rooms overlooking Regent's Park? I am afraid I have got them all muddled up. Is not Alison the second? But that one is tall and dark and her name begins with 'M'.
I tell you—(I won't use the word 'frankly' because that is the most malignant word in the English language)—but I tell you straight you cannot get people interested in other people's wives. Even where the man is not a friend, I feel that he is no longer complete in himself. The accounts therefore of these women tend to bore me, and I have a strong feeling that they are equally bound to bore other people. Is this a personal idiosyncrasy, dependent on my own attitude to women? Somehow I don't think so.
Anyhow Josepha puzzles me, because the first 5 minutes that I met her I realized that she was raving mad, and that you failed to see it baffled me. Don't you remember that she got a complex immediately about me, and started to put her foot down and all the rest of it, so it was perfectly clear to her at any rate that I saw through her.
I cannot write more—time is about up. I hope there is nothing in your letter of importance that I have missed, but I find that in the present state of my eyes I cannot understand a letter properly; it is too much effort to refer back. The result is that I am probably talking absolutely away from the point, missing out what is important and concentrating on my deep-rooted passion about the proper relations between men and women. I think that you escaped my condemnation because you always treated your wives as mistresses; the idea of the ball and chain gets my goat buddy.
I break off here. I hope the optician will be able to do something so that I can see a little better between now and Wednesday, in which case I will go through your letter again, and probably tear this letter up.
Yours ever,
Aleister
P.S. Dr. Bohn (the "large lady") got so offensive that Silvia asked me to down her, Dr. B., used to come to me for the D.T. [Daily Times]. for the Crossword. One day she wasn't there, so I left it in the bar with a message. When I saw her, I told her so, adding in my most paternal-pedagogics: "I wouldn't have you neglect anything that might improve your mind."
She has gone!
A.C.
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