Mary Butts Diary Entry

Friday, 8 July 1921

[illegible] with Cecil [Cecil Maitland]. Reading done. Criticism. Attainment.

C.M. and I went out and sat on the hill under the rock and I reproached him for want of will. It came out to this (without any quarrel because I had held my tongue and digested it.)

We moved with most exquisite facility to a common end. What I would give to have that back. He said “I was dependent on you while I accepted your formula, and because they were not natural to me. I began to quarrel with you. Now I’ve gone back to my formula of despair, and I love you again.’ But the antithesis made my cry.

I’ve read Liber Aleph, half the commentary on the Book of the Law, and begun to learn the Hebrew letters and their numerical correspondences. This with plenty of general reading and my own writing—Also Ninette's [Ninette Shumway] diary. What a mercy I married J.R. [John Rodker] and learned not to take up an attitude moral or aesthetic about things. I’m a prig (‘Lord, I thank thee, I say to myself!’) but I don’t cut rough—that is I automatically don’t get shocked. It was done in the stupidest possible way, but I don’t take up much attitude, or find that my feeling towards people is altered by the things they do.

Two years ago, I should have wanted to strangle A.C. for his treatment of that girl. Now I can worm in to what actually happened, and see the point of intersection his wisdom, his selfishness, and his idiocy. See that it is all infinitely important, and ultimately ‘not there’ at all.

I feel very simple. This detachment is a great thing for me.

Ninette’s diary has qualities—description of the rocks—abandonment (Note, equal tranquility in Lea [Leah Hirsig] who made not the least protest at our reading it) That girl has power. She also looks significantly at Cecil. Now he would be desperately hurt if he knew that, on the whole, I should not mind if he slept with her—Is that because I want to be rid of him? . . . No. I’d like him to be moving easily—He moves easily to his despair, stiffly to that despair’s opposite. The first, with all the horrors means more freedom for me, while the second seems to mean a dependence on me that is untried attainment. It means a stiff yoke, with illumination now, and very readily dislike. There was a time when we moved with the most exquisite facility to a common end. What I would give to have that back.

He [illegible] me—‘Aleister’s your Guru, he tells you about the important things.’ ‘You go on being mine.’ Also because of my detachment I don’t mind about his formula being one of despair, especially when, being allowed that he loves me a little. All this is in illumination of universal principles, and tolerance therefore.

General principles are in illustrations of it, and is tolerable therefore.

[291]