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Correspondence from Aleister Crowley to Joseph Doughty
[Undated]
Your note filled me with great joy. Thou are not far from the Kingdom of God.
Sorry my notes arrived too late but they may prove useful for subsequent editions of the [Guide]. I shall be delighted if you would send me a copy of the Guide, and if, as I assume you have furnished it with photographs and sketches I may be able to elucidate some of the necessary problems. My impression about the West Face is that the descriptions are vague primarily because it is vague. Once one leaves obvious landmarks like gullies, slabs, and pinnacles the English language breaks down badly. I should mush like to have the description of Mallory's climb. Was he perhaps like myself led into it by losing himself on the face and if so is not this a strong presumption of an Oread with excessive taste in young men but a peculiar sense of humour. (Kelly's 3 climbs decidedly puzzled me. Of course there is the old and I presume eternal problem as to what a route is. I also find it very misleading to use words like "harder". I should have said that the North climb was not hard at all save for the single bad spot. It all depends so much on a man's physical characteristics.
E. G. Eckenstein [Oscar Eckenstein], provided he could get 3 fingers on something that could be described as a ledge by a man far advanced in hashish would be smoking his pipe on the aforesaid ledge a few seconds later and none of us could tell how he had done it; whereas I, totally incapable of the mildest gymnastic feats, used to be able to get up all sorts of places that Eckenstein could not attempt. Now I have never seen Mallory but I would bet quite a little that he resembles me physically very much more than he does Eckenstein. This sort of deduction as opposed to the particular incident which may be totally wrong of course) should be extremely valuable in elucidating obscure historical points. The fact is that my theory about the Oread is not wholly a joke. There does seem to be an essentially mystery about mountains. The most obvious laws about psychology cease to apply. I could give you dozens of glaring cases. The most notorious concerns the radical upset of most people's minds not only when they are on mountains but merely in their neighbourhood. Again and again I have listened to arguments between Eckenstein, an advanced mathematician and a man of science, in which his opponent proved quite incapable of appreciating the simplest syllogisms. When the fact was pointed out he would become bewildered and baffled, and as often as not develop an hysterical anger. You must of course have seen quite a number of similar facts, and I should like to know if you have any theories about it. Pathological lying or accusations of it occur in the most irrational way. There are altogether too many examples of perfectly competent men describing in great detail a climb on A. without the slightest suspicion that they were on B. all the time. I don't believe for a moment that deliberate dishonesty has anything to do with it in a great many cases. Let me give you one literally staggering incident. The Rock of Cefalu is visible both from the Abbey [Abbey of Thelema] and from the town, passing from one to the other one sees the crags in great detail. There is no possibility in ordinary sense of an hallucination or mistake. Yet I with all my experience after pacing that road almost daily for years, wandering among the crags, photographing them, sketching them, taking observations with field glasses and so on, did not discover till the beginning of last year that a certain pinnacle visible from the abbey, and conspicuous as such was not identical with one of its neighbors. "Why wasn't point A visible from point B?" as it should have been. It was not until I set out definitely to make investigations ad hoc on the spot that the truth appeared. Yet that truth once seen is so plain that I should certainly have thrown my youngest and most favourable disciple from the crags if he failed to remark it at once.
Forgive me for bleating at this length. But I have a real hope that these remarks of mine may be of use to you in your particular investigation. Obviously the Cefalu case is an extreme one, all possible conditions being in my favour. What chance then for error in the description of a comparatively untrained man almost a stranger to the spot in misty weather and so on.
"Threatened holds live long", I didn't expect the hold to go, but merely to be smoothed beyond bootnails. Will you swear that nobody has helped it out from time to time with an axe. Incidentally permit me to recommend your leaving your alpenstock at home in case you want to repeat or improve my climbs on Beachy Head.
Please remember that I am now well into my second childhood and that few richer pleasures remain to me than that of receiving notes about those angel-faces which I have loved so long since and lost awhile—such as those with which you have not favoured me.
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