Mary Alice Rogers (neé Beaton)

Born: Unknown.

Died: Unknown.

Crowley first met Mary Alice Rogers of Salt Lake City at his hotel on 9 May 1901. Of Scottish descent, she was ten years older than Crowley and married to a lawyer. She had come to Honolulu with her thirteen-year-old son, Blaine, to escape hay fever. The boy was bright and intelligent, yet, to Crowley's astonishment knew no language other than English and was equally unskilled in math, history, and geography. He thought it criminal that school provided no grist for such a bright child's mill. Mary was one of the sweetest, most beautiful women Crowley had ever known. From the beginning, he calculated an affair and breakup with her to inspire his poetic muse; this premeditation is evident in his diaries where, early on, he begins referring to her as "Alice", the pseudonym to which Crowley would ultimately address a series of love poems collectively titled Alice; an Adultery.

Crowley convinced her to accompany him to Japan. With boy in tow, they sailed on the American Maru. On the thirteenth day of their acquaintance, they kissed for the first time, his diary noting that he "told her I loved her; kissed and was kissed." Still, the relationship advanced at a slower pace than Crowley preferred.

They wrestled with guilt—"The silly 'Thus far and no farther',"—but appetite overcame chastity, and the affair commenced. Even as it did, Crowley confided in his journal, "don't care much what happens really. Love is good, but so is freedom." Mary was equally conflicted about her infidelity. Some nights she locked her cabin door and refused to see Crowley; on others, she accommodated him. Before the month was over, their relationship ended. Thus he was free to chase after magic and art in Shanghai while she rejoined her home and husband in Utah.

The fifty days between their meeting and parting inspired Crowley to commemorate their relationship in a series of fifty sonnets, one for each of those days.