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Correspondence from Gerald Yorke to Charles Stansfeld Jones
29 June 1948
Dear Jones,
Many thanks for typescript of your article in The Occult Press Review. Oddly enough, Germer [Karl Germer] wrote me the other day to say that he was sending me a copy of the review with your article in it. When I get this, would you like your typescript back.
The Virakam [Mary d'Este-Sturges] diary typescript has just come. It is to me disappointing as it is incomplete. It ends 10.47 p.m. Dec 19. Could you look up the original notebook, which you have, and let me know if the notebook ends at the same time as the typescript. If it continues beyond the typescript, could I have the missing section? You see it is the latter part of this working which is the most interesting, i.e. the part where they actually discover the villa, Virakam recognising it from one of her vision, and then the actual working which led to the writing of Book 4 [Part I & Part II]. The typescript you sent stops before this, which is a thousand pities. All the same, many thanks for sending it.
I cannot see how morally you can justify yourself in not allowing us to copy the black note books which A.C. handed to you in Detroit. He himself wanted those note books from you in 1925/26 to help him write his Confessions [The Confessions of Aleister Crowley]. At that time you denied having them, as you said all such things which you had were in storage, and when it was found that they were not in storage, it was concluded that they had been lost. It now become apparent that you had them all the time, but had forgotten the fact. A.C. left them with you temporarily for safe keeping, he did not give them to you. He asked you for them, and you replied that all his things were in storage, and when these were not found in storage, you wrote that they must have been mislaid by the storage people, as you had not got them. It is now clear you had them all the time.
Your attitude is to me both inexplicable and sickening. In your letter of May 9 you say that most of the items "are crossed through in pencil showing that transcripts had been made." Unfortunately these transcripts have not survived. The fact that they had been copied means that they were not confidential. Cannot you therefore compromise by sending for me to copy those items which have been crossed through in pencil?
I still cannot believe that you really intend to prevent us from seeing the Diary of a Magus, and The Hermit of Oesopus Island.
It looks as if with great regret I shall soon be referring you to AL II 33, and III 59—not that it will do any good, but as a matter of principle.
Yours,
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