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Thursday, 4 May 1939
I had written a review of some Soho rapscallion's autobiography, Ironfoot Jack, I think, he was called, and ended it by saying: 'He reminds one of a more agreeable Aleister Crowley in a minor way of business.' Crowley wrote on his phallic-headed writing paper to protest: 'Perhaps in future before you pass animadversions on my character you will take the trouble to make my acquaintance.' I thought this was fair enough and telephoned him. He seemed pleased, and asked me to luncheon. 'I shall not be too hard on you Mr. Richardson.'
He was living in a furnished flat high up in a house on the borderland between Pimlico and Belgravia. He opened the door himself. He was wearing a suit of green plus-fours and an enormous tartan bow tie. It was an ensemble that suggested the music-hall stage rather than the golf course, but I made the appropriate comment. 'I used to be plus 4 at Hoylake', he said. It was typical of him to overdo it. If he had said his handicap was 4, I might have believed it, knowing that he had his sporting side, and I would have been impressed. But plus 4 at Hoylake was altogether too much.
Crowley was sixty-four. His once athletic physique had become blurred by fat. He was bald as a stone, and his huge expanse of naked hairless yellowish face was faintly suggestive of an enormous penis, which no is no doubt why the adjective 'obscene' has often been applied to it. His eyes protruded like gooseberries. The only comparable eyes seen were those of J. L. Garvin, the formidable editor of The Observer. It was difficult not to keep staring at them, though the hypnotic effect clashed with the tartan bow tie.
He poured me out a large glass of vodka and turned on the gas fire, one of those self-lighting ones. 'Magick', he said, as it popped into flame. 'Is not that magick, Mr. Richardson?' He pronounced 'magick' with the 'k' at the end. He made little jokes about magick all through lunch. I think he had taken my measure as a rationalist sceptic, not to be conned by mumbo-jumbo, but capable of being charmed by jocular eccentricity.
Luncheon was brought in after several more glasses of vodka by his housekeeper, a Scots Lady so indeterminate as to age, status, and nubility that she seemed like one of those anthropological reconstructions with 'conjectural parts in black.'
'Kathy, say Will with me', said Crowley. He began to recite his well-known slogan, 'Do What Thou Wilt Shall Be The Whole Of The Law. Love Is The Law, Love Under Will.' I joined in politely. 'Hurry up, Aleister,' said Kathy, 'the potatoes will be burnt.'
The first course was a lobster bisque. Pointing to the scarlet tip of a crustacean appendage sticking up out of the beige soup, Crowley said: 'Looks like a devil roasting in hell, does it not, Mr. Richardson?'
The diabolical bisque was followed by roast duck, then a deliquescent brie. We drank several litres of tolerable white chianti. Kathy brought coffee, Jamaica Blue Mountain, which Crowley made in a Cona with much muttering and incantation for my benefit, a bottle of Cyprus brandy that would take the shell off an egg, and strong black Mexican cigars.
I can't recall the conversation in any detail. Crowley spoke slowly with long pauses in between sentences, words, even syllables. I distinctly remember him saying that D. H. Lawrence knew nothing about women because he was homosexual and that Freud knew even less. Getting back to magick, he said it was his duty to protect the gullible, the oh so gullible public. from the depredations of rival occultists like Major Yeats Brown and Dr. Alexander Cannon. I wanted to clap. At some time or other I know I started on a diatribe about fear being the root of all evil.
It was five o'clock and we had drunk a great deal of brandy. Crowley for me was now just a benevolent old freak. I said how much I had enjoyed myself and I was sorry to have animadverted on his character. There was just one thing, said Crowley: could I, would I, do him a great personal favour and write him a little note of apology? He handed me a writing-block and his fountain pen, which was inscribed 'Baphomet' in gilt lettering. I found I was too drunk to write. 'Mr. Crowley', I said, 'your hospitality has overwhelmed me.'
In that case, said Crowley, since it had been such a happy encounter could we repeat it in a week's time? I said I should be delighted and made my way unsteadily down the stairs.
I had every intention of writing Crowley some sort of apology but a knowledgeable friend forewarned me. 'For heaven's sake,' he said, 'how can you be such a mug? If you write any apology for what you said in print, that's admitting liability. He'll take it to a solicitor and he'll bung in a writ. They won't get much, of course, probably settle out of court for a couple of hundred, but it won't do you any good with your paper. That's what the lunch was all about.'
From Fits and Starts by Maurice Richardson, Michael Joseph Limited, London, 1979. |