Clifford Bax Diary Entry

Wednesday, 9 June 1937

There was also a wild rumour that Signor Caroli [Aleister Crowley] had killed a young Englishman who had joined his Abbey. Years later Meum Stewart and Leslie Blanche, that brilliant artist, told me that their education was far from finished until they met the Worst Man in the World: so, naturally, I invited him and them to dinner, at the Royal Automobile Club. At the last moment, as it were, Lady Harris [Frieda Harris] joined us. In order to excite Crowley, I introduce Mrs Blanche as 'la Comtesse de Roussy de Sales', but he was not deceived, and out of that meeting came the fine collaboration in The Tarot Cards, of Crowley and Lady Harris. It was on this occasion that Meum Stewart, in her direct manner, asked the magician about the death of the luckless young man. Crowley, quite unabashed, told us that the man had run into a spiked railing at Oxford or Cambridge, after a happy evening, and had so severely injured himself that, as Crowley said, 'I could not save him, and indeed when he came to my Abbey I had a mountain of trouble with the Sicilian police about his death'.

[From Some I Knew Well, Clifford Bax, Phoenix House Limited, London, 1951, pp. 53-54.]