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Correspondence from to Gerald Yorke to Louis Wilkinson
31 March 1949
Dear Louis,
As I think you know I am collecting as complete an archive as possible of A.C.'s MSS, typescripts and letters, sending to Germer [Karl Germer] a copy of anything not amongst A.C.'s papers. I enclose a typescript I have made of those of A.C.'s letters to you which John Symonds has on loan. Would you care to censor anything you do not want preserved, and on your returning it, I will amend the carbon copy accordingly. Have I your permission to send this carbon to Germer now, or would you rather I waited until after your death? I will of course not show my copy to anyone during your life-time. If on the other hand you do not like me having a copy of these letters, I will send you the carbon in my possession for you to destroy with the enclosed top copy. I do not want to act behind your back.
I do think however that these letters should be preserved in both my and Germer's archives—in mine because they show A.C. at his best, displaying a side to his character which does not come out so clearly in his letters to his disciples or would-be disciples, of which I have several hundred; in Germer's because he has your later letters to A.C. which are of much less interest if A.C.'s side of the correspondence is missing. I have already sent Germer a typescript of A.C.'s letters to myself.
I had not realised that you wrote an Essay on the Commentary on The Book of the Law. Would you consider sending it to me for me to copy and duplicate, sending one to Germer and keeping the other? I have the original MS of A.C.'s Comment called D on The Book of the Law, written in 1923. He had lost the original and kept no copy, so you have probably never seen it. It is quite short. I bought it last year.
When John has finished I shall have here in the original or in typescript copy nearly a complete set of A.C.'s diaries since 1921, and a smattering of earlier material. Let me know if you would like to borrow them. They will be available about August.
I have written Germer about these diaries, as he appears unhappy. I wrote him many months back that I was sending him anything he had not got and retaining copies of anything I had not got among A.C.'s papers, and he agreed. He does not seem to have realised that this included diaries, though at the time I was sending him copies of diaries not amongst A.C.'s papers.
Many years ago, when I first got in touch with A.C., I took an oath to preserve his material for posterity. I am not certain that Germer's circle of followers will survive, particularly in view of the Smith [Wilfred Talbot Smith]—Parsons [Jack Parsons] trouble. Hence I want at least one copy of the archive over here. Also there is danger of the diaries being seized and retained by the U.S.A. customs as containing indecent and blasphemous material, as happened to 12 crates sent from Cefalu to England in 1924. This accounts for the destruction and I fear permanent loss of much diary material before 1921.
I hope you will let me keep copies of your letters, and will forgive me for writing at such length. Perhaps I ought to have put you in the picture sooner.
Yours,
Gerald.
[handwritten:] P.S. I have not copied the mass of correspondence amongst A.C.'s papers.
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