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Correspondence from Aleister Crowley to Louis Umfreville Wilkinson
1 May 1946
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law.
I got your letter yesterday and am very pleased with what you say about the Ivory Gate. It must be dedicated to you, as it is a gross and unseemly plagiarism of "The Devil in Crystal". I feel exactly the same myself. The throwback is that it obviously demands a sleeping-partner—to wit, videlicet, i.e., namely, The Gate of Horn, and the standard to live up to gives me a pain in the old place. However I have got one passage already written by which I am prepared to stand or fall; it is only six lines, but they really are about as good as anything I have ever done.
Your analogy about Joad [C.E.M. Joad] is totally false; it would only apply if you had spent the last 20 years of your life violently opposing the Book of the Law. I quite understand what you say about the Essay; but after all the average novel runs to about 100,000 words, and it is very difficult to produce a volume which looks important at first glance unless you can feel justified in seeking a good price for it.
I think you will find, when you have got a little further on with the compilation of the book that 80,000 would be a good compromise. I do not want you to be in a hurry about the Essay; it is going to take a full year before we can bring it out in any case. Suppose I succeed in getting Olla out on June 23rd and Liber Aleph by Christmas (which I should think rather doubtful) it seems improbable that we can get out a book of this importance before the Autumn Equinox. It will require a great deal of consideration and revision. I would really like you to put aside the Essay and forget about it for, say a fortnight, and go through it again a day or two before you come down here. I feel sure that you will find that by giving it a rest in this way a whole lot will appear to which you are blind for the moment. It is always the case with my own work. You see, it happens so often that a tiny point overlooked may assume a giant form after a week or two's withdrawal of the mind from the subject.
By the way, I wonder by what authority you read the minds of what you ingeniously call "the stranger-reader". (What dreadful initial to remember—A.E.W. Mason!) Well, he is a very good and popular writer, and he begins a detective story—a detective story mind you—in the first paragraph—"Browsing with Browning in Brittany he alliterated wittily", and so far I have been fortunate enough not to meet James Lee's wife. Won't 99 readers out of 100 suspect that it was after all who did the old boy in, or if not get unjustly accused of doing so, and won't they expect the speaker to meet her later on in the book? So much for obscurity. (Miss Kingston says she can make no sense of the paragraph; but that, at least she would expect to hear more of 'James Lee's wife' later in the book.) But all that was a sort of digression' anyway, let me emphasize—do not hurry.
I am sorry that Clifford Bax was so discouraging. Holland of Sir Isaac Pitman recommended me to go back to Simpkin Marshall, & I have written to him accordingly. If you happen to know Evan Pugh you might be good enough to have a chat with him about it. If not, at least have a chat with the two or three men that you mentioned when you were here. The one point is to get it shown to the trade and libraries. I could understand if the publisher were understanding the risk of the book he would want to have a year, but with a book already in the press, and no risk, why should he? I think it will save me a good deal of trouble if I can get somebody's imprint on it. I am in fact more than a little distracted. It is really health and eyes that tie me by the leg. People think that I am foolish to have given up Jermyn Street, but Miss Manning said that she absolutely refused to carry on with the service, and of course the rooms without service were no good to me at all.
The one bad mistake in "Forth Beast" is the damp sheets episode. It ought to have been made absolutely clear that the woman had driven Dexter entirely out of his mind. There is not one chance in a thousand of as much as a cold in the head, or one in a hundred thousand of anything more serious. I want to talk this matter over with you when you arrive, because there is a serious mischief here, and it's very deep-seated, and accounts for a great deal. In the meanwhile I shall bid you an affectionate farewell.
Love is the law, love under will.
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