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THE CONFESSIONS OF ALEISTER CROWLEY
VOLUME III
Chapter 1
This chapter is the climax of this book. Its contents are so extraordinary, they demand such breadth and depth of preliminary explanation that I am in despair. It is so serious to me that my responsibility overwhelms me. My entire previous life was but a preparation for this event, and my entire subsequent life has been not merely determined by it, but wrapped up in it.
I have made several attempts to write the history of these few weeks, notable that section of "The Temple of Solomon the King" which appears in The Equinox, Vol. I, No. VII, and in Chapter 7 of the Introduction to Part 4 of Book IV [The Equinox of the Gods]. I cannot with literary propriety incorporate either of these documents in the body of this book, but they are presented in an appendix, together with the text of the Book of the Law. The commentary on this book is already of great length; and that section of it which deals with the philosophical, historical, physical and mathematical proofs of the justice of the claim of The Book of the Law to revolutionise human thought and action, still requires to be put into its final form.
I propose therefore to preserve the narrative style of this biography and keep in view less the specialist in science, mathematics, philosophy, religion, history, anthropology, and so on, then the man of the world of general education and average intelligence. I will do my utmost, however, to set forth clearly the premises necessary to present the importance of the Event and to make it intelligible. Most of the past nine years of my life have been preoccupied, each year more fully than the last, with the problem of proving to humanity in general the propositions involved. It is a tremendous task to discover a universally acceptable basis for such a structure. To make the elements of my thesis as clear and distinct as possible, I shall endeavour to insulate them in sections.
1. BRIEF SYNOPSIS OF MY NARRATIVE. (See appendices for full details.)
Ouarda [Rose Kelly] and I left Helwan for Cairo. (Date unascertained, probably on March 11th or 13th). We had taken an apartment (address unascertained) on Wednesday, March 16th. One day, having nothing special to do, I made the "Preliminary Invocation" referred to above. I had no more serious purpose than to show her the slyphs, as I might have taken her to the theatre. She could not (or refused to) see them, but instead got into a strange state of mind. I had never seen her anything at all like it before. She kept on repeating dreamily, yet intensely, "They are waiting for you." I was annoyed at her conduct.
March 17th. I don't remember whether I repeated my attempt to show her the slyphs, but probably I did. It is in my character to persist. She again got into the same state, and repeated her remarks, adding: that "it is all about the child" and "All Osiris". I think I must have been annoyed by her contumacy. Perhaps for this reason I invoked Thoth, the God of Wisdom, presumably by the invocation printed in Liber Israfel, Sections V to XIV (Equinox I—VII, pp. 23-26), which I knew by heart. I may also have been subconsciously wondering whether there was not something in her remarks, and wanted to be enlightened. The record says: "Thoth, invoked with great success, indwells us." But this strikes me as to some extent "written up" in a spirit of complacency, if not arrogance. I remember nothing of any result.
March 18th. Possibly I repeated the invocation. The record says: "Revealed that the waiter was Horus, whom I had offended and ought to invoke." "Waiter" sounds like a sneer. I thought it was sheer impudence to Ouarda to offer independent remarks. I wanted her to see the slyphs.
I must have been impressed by one point. How did Ouarda know that I had offended Horus? I had never thought of myself as having done so. Yet it was true in a sense. The troubles of Mathers were due to his excessive devotion to Mars, who represents one side of the personality of Horus, and no doubt, I was inclined to err in the opposite direction, to neglect and dislike Mars as the personification of unintelligent violence.
But was her bull's-eye a fluke? Her mention of Horus gave me a chance to cross-examine her. "How do you know that it is Horus who is telling you all this? Identify him." (Ouarda knew less Egyptology than ninety-nine Cairene tourists out of one hundred.) Her answers were overwhelming. The odds against her being right were one in many millions.
I allowed her to go on. She instructed me how to Invoke Horus. These instructions were, from my point of view, pure rubbish. I suggested amending them. She emphatically refused to allow a single detail to be altered. She promised success (whatever that might mean) on Saturday or Sunday. If I had any aspiration left at all it was to attain Samadhi (which I had not yet ever done). She promised that I should do so. I agreed to carry out her instruction, avowedly in order to show her that nothing could happen if you broke all the rules.
March 19th. I wrote out the Ritual and did the invocation with little success. I was put off, not only by my scepticism and the absurdity of the Ritual, but by having to do it in robes at an open window on a street at noon. She allowed me to make the second attempt at midnight.
March 20th. The invocation was a startling success. I was told that "The Equinox of the Gods had come"; that is, that a new Epoch had begun. I was to formulate a link between the solar-spiritual force and mankind.
Various consideration showed me that the Secret Chiefs of the Third Order (that is, of the A∴A∴ whose First and Second Orders were known as G.D. [Golden Dawn] and R.R. et A.C. respectively) had sent a messenger to confer upon me the position with Mathers [MacGregor Mathers] had forfeited.
I made it a condition that I should attain Samadhi; that is, that I should receive a degree of illumination, in default of which it would be presumptuous to put myself forward.
March 21st-22nd-23rd. There seems to have been a reaction after the success of the 20th. The phenomena faded out. I tried to clear up my position by the old methods, and did a long Tarot divination which proved perfectly futile.
March 23rd to April 7th. I made enquiries about the Stele, and had the inscriptions translated into French by the assistant curator at Boulak. I made poetic paraphrases of them. Ouarda now told me to enter the room where all this work had been done exactly at noon on April 8th, 9th, and 10th, and write down what I heard, rising exactly at one o'clock. This I did. In these three hours were written the three chapters of the Book of the Law.
The above statement is as succinct as I can make it. It gives the main facts and traces the curve of my psycho-logical reactions. By April 8th I had been convinced of the reality of the communication and obeyed my wife's arbitrary instructions with a certain confidence. I retained my sceptical attitude none the less. I reserved the right of inquiry.
2. THE CLAIM OF THE BOOK OF THE LAW IN RESPECT OF RELIGION.
The importance of religion to humanity is paramount. The reason is that all men perceive more or less the "First Noble Truth"—that everything is sorrow; and religion claims to console them by an authoritative denial of this truth, either by transcendental transmutation of the situation itself or by promising compensations in other states of existence. This claim implies the possibility of knowledge derived from sources other than the unaided investigation of Nature, through the senses and intellect. It postulates, therefore, the existence of one or more praeter-human intelligences, able and willing to communicate, through the medium of certain chosen men, to mankind a truth or truths which could not otherwise be known. Religion is justified in demanding faith, since the evidence of the senses and the mind cannot confirm its statements. The evidence from prophecy and miracle is valid only in so far as it goes to the credit of the man through whom the communication is made. It establishes that he is in possession of knowledge and power different, not only in degree but in kind, from those enjoyed by the rest of mankind. It suggests that he may be reliable also in matters which are, by their nature, insusceptible of verification. Of course, the argument is fallacious. At the best it is an enthymeme; it lacks the premise of the integrity and infallibility of the prophet-thaumaturgist.
The history of mankind teems with religious teachers. These may be divided into three classes:
(1) Such men as Moses and Mohammed state simply that they have received a direct communication from God. They postulate a creator and his personal interference with the course of Nature. They buttress their authority by divers methods, chiefly threats and promises guaranteed by thaumaturgy; they resent the criticism of reason.
(2) Such men as Blake and Boehme claimed to have entered into direct communication with discarnate intelligence which may be conceived as personal, creative, omnipotent, unique, identical with themselves, or otherwise. Each such claim implies its own theory of the Universe. It does not necessarily envisage a message from a superior being, in the crude sense of the phrase. Its authority depends on "the interior certainty" of the seer. Such teachers do not resent Reason: they rather welcome it as confirming their claim within the limits of its sphere of action. They admit freely that the truth which they announce is by nature on a plane which transcends the intellectual faculties, and even that it cannot be clearly expressed in words.
(3) Such teachers as Lao-Tze, The Buddha, and the highest Gnana-Yogis announce indeed that they have attained to superior wisdom, understanding, knowledge and power, but make no pretence of imposing their views on mankind. They remain essentially sceptics. They base their precepts on their own experience; saying, in effect, that they have found that the performance of certain acts and the abstention from others, create conditions favourable to the attainment of the state which has emancipated them. The wiser they are, the less dogmatic; the more allowances they make for the personal equation and the more they insist on the sceptical attitude. Such men may indeed formulate their transcendental conception of the Cosmos more or less clearly; they may explain evil as illusion, etc. etc.; but the heart of their theory is that the problem of sorrow has been wrongly stated, owing to the superficial or incomplete data presented by normal human experience, and that is it possible for men, by virtue of some special training (from Asana to Ceremonial Magick), to develop in themselves a faculty superior to reason and immune from intellectual criticism, by the exercise of which the original problem of suffering is satisfactorily solved.
The Book of the Law claims to comply with the conditions necessary to satisfy all three types of enquirer.
Firstly, it claims to be a document not only verbally, but literally inspired. Change not as much as the style of a letter; for behold! thou, O prophet, shalt not behold all these mysteries hidden therein.
The stops as thou wilt; the letters? Change them not in style or value! This book shall be translated into all tongues: but always with the original in the writing of the Beast; for in the chance shape of the letters and their position to one another: in these are mysteries that No Beast shall divine. Let him not seek to try: but one cometh after him, whence I say not, who shall discover the Key of it all.
The author claims to be a messenger of the Lord of the Universe, a term which will be defined in Section V, and therefore to speak with absolute authority.
Secondly, it claims to be the statement of Transcendental Truth, and to have overcome the difficulty of expressing such Truth in human language by what really amounts to the invention of a new method of communicating thought, not merely a new language, but a new TYPE of language; a literal and numerical cipher involving the Greek and Hebrew Qabalahs, the higher mathematics, etc. It also claims to be the utterance of an illuminated mind co-extensive with the ultimate ideas of which the Universe is composed. Yet this is done in such a way as to be compatible with the more or less anthropomorphic personifications of these ideas implied in the previous paragraph.
Thirdly, it claims to offer a method by which men may arrive independently at the direct consciousness of the truth of the contents of the Book; enter into communication directly on their own initiative and responsibility with the type of intelligence which informs it, and solve all their personal religious problems. See CCXX, III, 63, 67; and I, 58.
Generally the Book of the Law claims to answer all possible religious problems. One is struck by the fact that so many of them are stated and settled separately in so short a space. It is cumbersome to quote. The multiplicity of the matter is overwhelming. I may even say that I am in a chronic state of despair because of the utter inadequacy of my mind to attain a comprehensive understanding of the contents of this short book. Eighteen years of study have demonstrated this with pungent precision.
To return to the general question of religion. The fundamental problem has never been explicitly stated. We know that all religions, without exception, have broken down at the first test. The claim of religion is to complete, and (incidentally) to reverse, the conclusions of reason by means of a direct communication from some Intelligence superior in kind to that of any incarnate human being. I ask Mohammed, "How am I to know that the Qu'ran is not your own compilation?"
It is impertinent to answer that the Qu'ran is so sublime, so musical, so true, so full of prophecies which time has fulfilled and confirmed by so many miraculous events that Mohammed could not have written it himself. The question has become even more devastating in the last few years, owing to the discoveries of modern psychology, especially that of Freud. One could feel fairly sure that a Hottentot did not write Lycidas or Newton's Principia. It was safe to say that the Hottentot could not have possessed the knowledge contained in those books. Had therefore a Hottentot produced them, we should have been justified in saying that he must have obtained them from some external source. But today we might maintain that he had written them by the aid of telepathy, subconscious memory, or what not. Rigid proof demands that the contents of the book should be such that the scribe could not have obtained them, either from his conscious or unconscious mind.
The author of the Book of the Law foresaw and provided against all such difficulties, by inserting in the text discoveries which I did not merely not make for years afterwards, but did not even possess the machinery for making. Some, in fact, depend upon events which I had no part in bringing about.
It may be said that nevertheless there may have been some one some-where in the world who possessed the necessary qualities. This again is rebutted by the fact that some of the allusions are to facts known to me alone of men. We are forced to conclude that the author of the Book of the Law is an Intelligence both alien and superior to myself, yet acquainted with my inmost secrets; and, most important point of all, that this Intelligence is discarnate.
The existence of true religion presupposes that of some discarnate Intelligence, whether we call him God or anything else. And this is exactly what no religion had ever proved scientifically. And this is exactly what the Book of the Law does prove by internal evidence, altogether independent of any statement of mine. This proof is evidently the most important step in science that could possibly be made: for it opens up an entirely new avenue to knowledge. The immense superiority of this particular Intelligence Aiwass, to any other which mankind has yet been in conscious communication is shown not merely by the character of the Book itself, but by the fact of His comprehending perfectly the nature of the proof necessary to demonstrate the fact of his own existence and the conditions of that existence. And, further, having provided the proof required.
3. THE CLAIM OF THE BOOK OF THE LAW TO OPEN UP COMMUNICATIONS WITH DISCARNATE INTELLIGENCE.
In the above section I have shown that the failure of previous religions is due, not so much to hostile criticism, but to their positive defect. They have not made good their claims. It has been shown above that the Book of the Law does demonstrate the prime position of religion in the only possible way. The only possible argument, on the other side, is that the communication cannot have been made by a discarnate Intelligence, because there are none such. It is true that in the past noon such have been known. That indeed constitutes the supreme importance of the Book of the Law. But there is no a priori reason for doubting the existence of such beings. We have long been acquainted with many discarnate forces. Especially in the last few years Science has been chiefly occupied with the reactions not merely of things which cannot be directly perceived by sense, but of forces which do not possess Being at all in the old sense of the word.
Yet the average man of science still denies the existence of the elementals of the Rosicrucian, the angels of the Qabalist, the nats, pisachas, and devas of Southern Asia, and the jinn of Islam, with the same bland misophosy as in Victorian days. It has apparently not occurred to him that his position in doubting the existence of consciousness except in connection with certain types of anatomical structure, is really identical with that of the narrowest geocentric and anthropocentric Evangelicals. It is comic to limit consciousness. Our forefathers proved that though the Antipodes might be inhabited, the men could not possess souls; and we now argue that because nobody would go to Mercury for winter sports, their equivalents must be absent from the planet. The arguments against the existence of spiritual Intelligences stink of false analogy; on the top of being attempts to prove an universal negative and a priori fallacies full of ignoratio elenchi—non distributio medii—non sequitor, and sometimes sheer Hobson Jobson.
Our actions may be unintelligible to plants; they might plausibly argue that we were unconscious. It might be that there is nothing to prove that the cells of the planet or solar system do not subserve a consciousness very much as the cells of our bodies subserve ours. It must be noted, moreover, that our consciousness does not really belong to ourselves as such. Consciousness is a phenomenon which we connect with certain transitory states of certain transitory aggregations of cells. There is absolutely no reason for supposing that some types of consciousness may not be characteristic of any and every combination. Our real reason for attributing consciousness to our fellow-men is that the similarity of our structure enables us to communicate by means of language, and as soon as we invent a language in which we can talk to anything soever, we begin to find evidence of consciousness. Professor Farr has discovered in plants a quite definite psychology as opposed to mere mechanical reaction to stimulus, and one may safely say that science in general is advancing in this direction. The dualistic Christian theology has been in fact the worst opponent of Pantheism, despite its claims to assert the existence of spirit.
I frankly accept the most materialistic conception of Victorian science. I yell with unholy glee that consciousness is a function of the brain. I merely add that nature is continuous, and that it is therefore absurd to suppose that any special group of phenomena and no other should exhibit unique qualities. Science has already shown that all matter, not only radium, uranium, and a few other rare metals, are radio-active, but that all matter is so to some extent. I merely add that all matter is to some extent conscious; and so that there may be, all over the universe, individuals of many orders—only the shallowest salvationists would sneer "why don't we see them?" The Unknown—from "Australia before it was discovered" (as the child's riddle ways), to bacilli, Hertz rays and electrons—had the impudence to exist without our formal recognition.
I hope that the above remarks have destroyed the a priori denials of the possibility of the existence of discarnate intelligences. Nay, more, I trust that I have established a strong probability that they are everywhere. The way is therefore clear for me to come forward and assert positively that I have opened up communication with one such Intelligence; or, rather, that I have been selected by Him to receive the first message from a new order of beings.
4. THE CLAIM OF THE BOOK OF THE LAW TO SOLVE THE PROBLEMS OF PHILOSOPHY.
The man who has got a little beyond "Everything is sorrow," in the common sense of the phrase, has to extend it to include his disgust at the futility and fatuity of the Universe.
Many solutions have been proposed; in a sense they are all right and all wrong. Their difference depends on the point of view from which the problem is approached or on the emphasis laid upon one factor and another.
The Book of the Law settles the dispute by laying a finger on the weak point. "Also Reason is a lie; for there is a factor infinite and unknown; and all their words are skewwise." The Universe cannot be explained by reason; its nature is irrational. This and some other propositions in the book have enabled us to reconcile the antimonies of philosophy.
Take an example: The conflict between free will and necessity. Philosophy has shown that free will is an illusion, and we feel humiliated by recognising ourselves to be automata. The Book of the Law has restored our independence and self-respect, by showing that: though this is so, the necessity which governs it has been laid down by ourselves for our own convenience; mush as one agrees to be bound by the rules of the game of Chess in order to enjoy playing it.
Another humiliation consisted in the utter insignificance of man in the Universe. The Book of the Law, while admitting this, shows that it is equally true that "Every man and every woman is a star," that we are each of us, in fact, what we instinctively feel ourselves to be, the centre of a limitless sphere. Since the writing of the Book of the Law, physics and mathematics have developed in such a way as to justify its position. There is, for example, no longer any absurdity in the theory of a rational or Euclidian order. The Book of the Law has, therefore, justified both our transcendental self-consciousness and reconciled it with the fact of our finite relations with other people and things.
5. THE HISTORICAL CONCEPTION ON WHICH THE BOOK OF THE LAW IS BASED.
I have already indicated the philosophical scope of the Book of the Law. But just as it reconciles an impersonal and infinite interpretation of the cosmos with an Ego-centric, and practical view-point, as it makes "infinite space" speak in the language of a goddess, and deals with the details of eating and drinking—
"Be goodly therefore: dress ye all in fine apparel; eat rich foods and drink sweet wines and wines that foam! Also, take your fill and will of love as ye will, when, where, and with whom ye will! But always unto me."
"I am the Snake that giveth Knowledge and Delight and bright glory, and stir the hearts of men with drunkenness. To worship me take wine and strange drugs whereof I will tell my prophet, and by drunk thereof! They shall not harm ye at all. It is a lie, this folly against itself. The exposure of innocence is a lie. Be strong, man! lust, enjoy all things of sense and rapture: fear not that any God shall deny thee for this." etc. no less than with the emancipation of mankind from all limitations whatever.
"Now, therefore, I am known to ye by my name Nuit, and to him by a secret name which I will give him when at last he knoweth me. Since I am infinite space, and the infinite stars thereof do ye also thus. Bind nothing! Let there be no difference made among you between any one thing and any other thing; for thereby there cometh hurt."
So also does it reconcile cosmological conceptions which transcend time and space with a conventional historical point of view. In the first place it announces unconditional truth, but in the second is careful to state that the "magical formula" (or system of principles) on which the practical part of the Book is based, is not an absolute truth but one relative to the terrestrial time of the revelation. (It is a strong point in favour of the Book that it makes no pretence to settle the practical problems of humanity once and for all. It contents itself with indicating a stage in evolution.)
Religious history has two main stages. In the first, men did not know that the intervention of the male was necessary in reproduction. Maut, the vulture, was worshipped as a symbol of the Mother of the Universe, because that bird was supposed to be fertilised by air. (Mary, fertilised by the Holy Spirit—Spiritus, breathing, Hebrew Ruach, breath, air, mind—is another form of the legend.) Man was supposed to be the child of the mother Earth. We have a period of gracious primitive Paganism. It corresponds to the "once born" in the classification of William James. Presently the medicine-man, who combined priest and physician, discovered the secret of sex, and this was transmitted in certain mysteries of initiation. The priest was thus able to perform miracles on barren women. This was the chief source of his wealth and power. (Note that the priest, to be effective, must be necessarily a heretic; his influence depends on his knowledge that the popular cult is nonsense.)
The mystery of sex became popularised. The cult of Isis gave way to that of the Dying God. This was connected with the apparent death of the sun daily, and yearly. Legends of hanging, crucifixion, stabbing, etc., formed the popular "mysteries" and the power of the priests lay in the fact that they possessed the initiated interpretation of the fables which the vulgar took for facts. But when it was discovered that "except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone; but if it die it bringeth forth much fruit," depended for its truth on an heretical definition of death, and that the sun did not die, either at sunset or in autumn, the analogy with "the resurrection of the body" broke down. The power of the priests had depended on the argument "As by our Magick we restore to you the dead corn, the dead vine, the dead sun, so can we restore your dead husband or brother; we can arrange for you to meet him again in a glorified body in a world free from sorrow."
I have written as if a priest-craft was wholly selfish and dishonest. But the Book of the Law, while not denying the facts, reconciles them with the opposite view that the priest is wise and benevolent, instructing ignorance little by little. The Book presumes a conscious "providential" direction of the course of Spiritual evolution. It presumes the existence of a body of Initiates pledged to watch over the welfare of mankind, and to communicate its own wisdom little by little in the measure of man's capacity to receive it. The Initiate is well aware that his instruction will be misinterpreted by malice, dishonesty, and stupidity; and not being omnipotent, he has to acquiesce in the perversion of his precepts. It is part of the game. Liber I Vel Magi tells the Magus (here defined as the Initiate charged with the duty of communicating a new truth to mankind) of what he may expect.
There are minor magical teachers, and in recorded history we have scarcely had a dozen Magi in the technical sense of the word. They may be recognised by the fact that their message may be formulated as a single word, which word must be such that it overturns all existing beliefs and codes. We may take as instances the Word of Buddah—Anatta—(absence of an atman or soul), which laid its axe to the root of Hindu cosmology, theology, and psychology, and incidentally knocked away the foundation of the caste system; and, indeed, of all accepted morality. Mohammed, again, with the single word Allah, did the same thing with the Polytheism, patently Pagan or camouflaged as Christian, of his period.
Similarly, Aiwass, uttering the Word Thelema (with all its implications) destroys completely the formula of the Dying God. Thelema implies not merely a new religion, but a new cosmology, a new philosophy, a new ethics. It co-ordinates the disconnected discoveries of science, from physics to psychology, into a coherent and consistent system. Its scope is so vast that it is impossible even to hint at the universality of its application. But the whole of my Work, from the moment of Its utterance, illustrates some phase of Its potentiality, and the story of my life itself from this time on is no more that a record of my reactions to It.
To recapitulate the historical basis of the Book of the Law, let me say that evolution (within human memory) shows three great steps: (1) the worship of the Mother, continually breeding by her own virtue; (2) the worship of the Son, reproducing himself by virtue of voluntary death and resurrection; (3) the worship of the Crowned and Conquering Child (the Aeon announced by Aiwass and implied in his Word, Thelema).
Egyptian theology foresaw this progress of humanity, and symbolised it in the triad of Isis, Osiris, Horus. The Neophyte ceremony of the G∴D∴ [Golden Dawn] prepared me for the new Aeon; for, at the Equinox, the officer who represented Horus in the West, took the throne of Osiris in the East.
The Book of the Law is careful to indicate the nature of the formula implied by the assertion that the presiding officer of the temple (the earth) is Horus, the Crowned and Conquering Child. And again, Egyptology and psychology help us to understand what is implied, and what effect to expect, in the world of thought and action.
Horus avenged his father Osiris. We now know that the sun (indeed, every element of nature) does not suffer Death. We know that change (of which death is one case) is the first condition of life and consciousness. When we say that the sun has set, we know that what has really happened is that we have gone into the shadow of the gross planet on which we crawl. We know that (given the sense competent to perceive it) light is everywhere except where such gross body momentarily obstructs it. Nature is a manifestation of continuous and inexhaustible energy, and every apparent death of energy is simply a case of momentary interruption, like the darkness produced by the "interference" of two rays of light. The true symbol of the God-head, by which we mean creative energy, is therefore neither the mother nor the man, but the child.
The child is not merely a symbol of growth, but of complete moral independence and innocence. We may then expect the New Aeon to release mankind from its pretence of altruism, its obsession of fear, and its consciousness of sin. It will possess no consciousness of the purpose of its own existence. It will not be possible to persuade it that it should submit to incomprehensible standards; it will suffer from spasms of transitory passion; it will be absurdly sensitive to pain and suffer from meaningless terror; it will be utterly conscienceless, cruel, helpless, affectionate, and ambitious, without knowing why; it will be incapable of reason, yet at the same time intuitively aware of Truth. I might go on indefinitely to enumerate the stigmata of child psychology, but the reader can do it equally for himself, and every idea that comes to him as characteristic of children will strike him as applicable to the events of history since 1904, from the Great War to Prohibition. And if he possess any capacity for understanding the language of symbolism, he will be staggered by the adequacy of accuracy of the summary of the spirit of the New Aeon given in the Book of the Law.
I may now point out that the reign of the Crowned and Conquering Child is limited in time by the Book of the Law itself. We learn, III-34, that Horus will be in his turn succeeded by Thmaist, the Double-Wanded one, She who shall bring the Candidate to full initiation, and though we know little of Her peculiar characteristics, we know at least that Her name is Justice.
THE COSMOGRAPHY OF THE BOOK OF THE LAW
It is useless to represent the Universe as "Something", and enquire into its origin, for that origin can only be a something else equally inexplicable. We must therefore represent it as Nothing. But when we ask ourselves what we mean by Nothing, we see that absolute Nothing must be a Nothing of no kind, in no way, nowhere. This is logically equivalent to something of some kind, in some way, somewhere; which is in fact the Universe as we see it. The equation confirms us in calling the Universe Nothing. But it may be asked whether we have taken any real philosophical step by doing so. I think yes; for we have made it absurd to enquire how the Universe arose. We have learnt that Nothing cannot exist. So much I set forth in my B. The Book of the Law does not contradict those conclusions; but it goes much further, establishing a complete cosmogony, which combines the most abstruse metaphysical and mathematical ideas with a personification of them suited to appeal to simple minds.
This cosmogony is, in effect, equivalent to a generalisation of the facts of science. We have first Nuit and Hadit representing positive and negative electrons, the female and male principles of the Yi King. In other words, Matter and Motion. Hadit is the centre of an unlimited sphere, and therefore any point in it equally. Every manifestation is due to the combination of Nuit and Hadit. Each particular case of Hadit, so to speak, fulfilling itself in the various possibilities which Nuit represents. Now, Hadit is the core of every star. "Every man and every woman is a star." Therefore each of us is an accretion of manifestations aggregated about an identical centre; identical, that is, in essential nature. Each star differs from any other by position, so that new permutations constantly form. This system has the advantage of representing the facts very adequately. It is difficult to grasp it at first by purely intellectual methods, and it is difficult to explain it to people in general in purely intellectual terms, for the conception involves transfinite geometry. Since the Book was written, however, the implicit mathematical conceptions which were at that time beyond the scope of official mathematics have been formulated by Cantor and his school. It seems to me a striking testimony to Aiwass that He should have enunciated a system which involved mathematics which were at the time still unintelligible to any one living, but which were to become within the next few years the Master-key of the new Treasure-Houses.
From the anthropocentric standpoint, the cosmogony of the Book of the Law again reconciles the opposing philosophical schools of idealism and realism; and represents the facts of Nature. For there is an objective universe composed of the sum of the infinite spheres surrounding the infinite number of centres; yet equally, each man's universe is his own creation, being the consequences of the interplay of the various aspects of the kind of unity he is with the various possibilities open to him. Each man's universe is therefore an unique selection of possibilities.
There is only one objection to this scheme. It does not explain heterogeneity. In a boundless sphere, the centres are homogeneous. If we had a limited sphere, it would be obvious that the geometrical relations of every point in a radius with every other point in the sphere would be different. The objection itself supplies the solution. Any man's idea of the universe is imperfect—limited. He therefore imagines that what he calls the universe is different from that of any one else. But as a man grows in knowledge, he increases the stock of ideas which he has in common with other men of similar development, and he tends to regard those ideas which cut him off from his fellow-men as unimportant. There is a very clear cut distinction between any bull-terrier and your Pekinese; between the Jehovah of the savage Jew and the Amoun Ra of the civilised Egyptian. But the modern scientific man or philosopher does not worry about dogs and deities, and his conception of the universe, based on the co-ordination of countless observations, is practically identical with that of any other man of similar enlightenment. The attempt to make distinction between two modern theories always tends to break down. Ernst Haeckel was a bigoted materialist, yet he was forced to a monistic theory which, on the one hand, was converticle into terms of mysticism by defining his terms and those of his opponents more carefully, and even his Monism proved to be dualistic because he was compelled to ascribe to his Monad a tendency to express itself as a dyad. The author of the Book of the Law says all this from outside, and has provided a complete reconciliation and explanation of everything. By the study of the Book, I have been able to answer all my own philosophical questions: the more satisfactorily, that every new discovery in mathematics, chemistry, and physics tends to bring scientific thought into harmony with this revelation.
THE ETHICS OF THE BOOK OF THE LAW
Every cosmography implies some sort of ethical theory. In the present instance, the harmony which has been brought into philosophy between the personal standpoint and the impersonal is echoed faultlessly. Man is conceived as at the same time, "One, individual, and eternal," actually coterminous with the Universe and potentially conscious of the facts, yet also conditioned, limited, and responsible. We are only concerned at present with this latter conception, and here the Book of the Law becomes revolutionary.
This is because in time and space the Aeon of Osiris has been succeeded by that of Horus. The magical formula of the Aeon being no longer that of the Dying God but that of the Crowned and Conquering Child, mankind is to govern itself accordingly. A "righteous" act may be defined as one which fulfils the existing magical formula. The motives which were valid in the Aeon of Osiris are sheer superstition today. What were those motives, and on what basis did they rest? The old conception was that man was born to die; that eternal life had to be gained by a magical act, exactly as the sun had to be brought to life every morning by the priest.
There is no need to develop the ethics of Thelema in detail, for everything springs with absolute logic from the singular principle "Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law." "There is no law beyond Do what thou wilt." "Thou has no right but to do thy will." This formula itself springs ineluctably from the conception of the individual outlined in the preceding section. "The word of Sin is restriction." "It is a lie, this folly against self." The theory is that every man and every woman has each definite attributes whose tendency, considered in due relation to environment, indicate a proper course of action in each case. To pursue this course of action is to do one's True Will. "Do that and no other shall say nay." The physical parallel still holds. In a galaxy each star has its own magnitude, characteristics, and direction, and the celestial harmony is best maintained by its attending to its own business. Nothing could be more subversive of that harmony than if a number of stars set up in a uniform standard of conduct, insisted on every one aiming at the same goal, going at the same pace, and so on. Even a single star, by refusing to do its own Will, by restricting itself in any way, would immediately produce disorder.
Let us illustrate by a single example how the ideas of the Book of the Law, utterly subversive as they are of our accepted morality, justify themselves immediately to common sense. Take the case of self-sacrifice, which we are accustomed to consider as the high-water of social and ethical nobility. We must distinguish two cases.
In the first the man subordinates his own interest to those of the community; like Winkelried he sheathes an armful of Australian spears in his heart, so that his comrades may break through "the dark impenetrable wood." In this case, he was a soldier. It was his True Will to risk his life for his country, and his action was like that of the cells of our bodies, which submit to metabolism so that the community may flourish. Winkelried's action was supremely selfish, and entirely in accordance with the ethics of Thelema.
In the second case, we have a sentimental idea of self-sacrifice, the kind which is most esteemed by the vulgar, and is the essence of popular Christianity. It is the sacrifice of the strong to the weak. This is wholly against the principles of evolution. Any nation which does this systematically on a sufficiently large scale simply destroys itself. The sacrifice is in vain; the weak are not even saved. Consider the action of Zanoni in going to the scaffold in order to save his silly wife. The gesture was magnificent; it was evidence of his own supreme courage and moral strength; but if every one acted on that principle the race would deteriorate and disappear.
There is here a conflict between private and public morality. The soldier who rushes through the barrage to pick up a hopelessly mutilated comrade is a hero, doubtless; but he is only a patriot indirectly, because his spirit is on the whole a good example. But modern humanitarianism runs deliberately counter to Nature's determination to eliminate the unfit. Huxley has argued the position at great length in Evolution and Ethics, and he shows that our efforts to upset the balance of Nature are necessarily futile in the long run, and therefore waste [a] of strength. We should not protect the weak and the vicious from the results of their inferiority. By doing so, we perpetuate the elements of dissolution in our own social body. We should rather aid Nature by subjecting every newcomer to the most rigorous tests of his fitness to deal with his environment. The human race grew in stature and intelligence as long as the individual prowess achieved security, so that the strongest and cleverest people were able to reproduce their kind in the best conditions. But when security became general through the operation of altruism the most degenerate of the people were often the offspring of the strongest. There was no necessity for them to emulate the virtues of their grandfathers in order to maintain the positions which they had inherited. The altruism of the ancestor himself, in safeguarding his stock from adversity, became the ruin of his race. The whole of human history shows that the kindest thing one can do to any one is not to interfere with him
The Book of the Law regards pity as despicable. The reason is partly indicated in the above paragraph. But further, to pity another man is to insult him. He also is a star, "one, individual, and eternal." The Book does not condemn fighting—"If he be a King, thou canst not hurt him." The strong man discovers his brother in a scrap, as Andrew Undershaft says:
[Lacuna]
There are many ethical injunctions of a revolutionary character in the Book, but they are all particular cases of the general precept to realise one's own absolute God-head and to act with the nobility which springs from that knowledge. Practically all vice springs from failure to do this. For example: Falsehood is invariably the child of fear in one form or another.
With regard to what are commonly considered offences against morality, the undesirable results often observed are due to the same error. Strong and successful men always express themselves fully, and when they are sufficiently strong no harm comes of it to themselves or to others. When it does, it is practically always due to the artificial situation brought about by people who, having no business of their own, meddle in that of other people. One may mention the cases of Sir Charles Dilke and Charles Stuart Parnell. It didn't matter a straw to anybody outside the negligibly small circle of their acquaintances what these men did in their private lives, but England lost her greatest foreign minister, and Ireland her greatest leader, because it was discovered that they were doing exactly the same as practically everyone else in their class.
With regard again to personal jealousy and ill-regulated passion. Is it too much to say that nine-tenths of the social misery not due to poverty arises from these hallucinations? The Book of the Law sweeps them out of existence. There shall be no property in human flesh. Nobody has a right to say what anyone else shall or shall not do with his or her body. Establish this principle of absolute respect for others, and the whole nightmare of sex is dispelled. Blackmail and prostitution automatically lose their raison d'tree. The corrupting influence of hypocrisy breaks like a rotten reed. The sweating of "female labour cheapened by prostitution" (as Bernard Shaw says) becomes impossible.
I have written at considerable length in recent years on the ethical, as well as on the cosmographical problems solved by the Law of Thelema. I need not go into them more deeply in this place. But the subsequent events of my life will furnish constant illustration of how every time I violated the Law, as I sometimes did with what I was ass enough to call the noblest motives, I got myself into a mess—and failed to benefit those on whose behalf I had chosen to make a fool of myself.
STANZA XLVIII
It is part of my character to rest on my oars at the very moment when a spurt would take me past the post. I begin to be recognised as the one poet in England: "Good," I say to myself, "I needn't bother about that any more." I acquire most of the World's records as a mountaineer—that lets me out. Nunc est bibendum, nunc pede libero pulsanda tellus. I reach eminence in Magick; it is the signal for me to drop it; in Mysticism, and I lose my interest. Now, charged by the Secret Chiefs of the Third Order with a mission of such importance that the last event in the world's history of even approaching it was Mohammed's, I could get cold feet, carry out my instructions as perfunctorily as possible, and even try to find excuses for postponing such work as I could not actually avoid.
I made a certain number of studies of the Book of the Law; for even then I was bound to admit that Aiwass had shown a knowledge of the Qabalah immeasurably superior to my own. I had the manuscript typed. I issued a circular letter to a number of my friends, something in the nature of a proclamation of the New Aeon, but I took no trouble to follow it up. I took a certain number of wide-reaching plans for assuming responsibility, but they remained in the stage of reverie. I dropped the whole business, to all intents and purposes. I completely abandoned my diary. I even neglected a really first-rate opportunity for bringing the Book of the Law into public notice, for Mrs. Besant [Annie Besant] was on the ship by which Ouarda and I returned to Europe, and I covered a great deal with her about sacred subjects. In Paris, I wrote a formal letter to Mathers [MacGregor Mathers] informing him that the Secret Chiefs had appointed me visible head of the Order, and declared a new Magical Formula. I did not expect or receive an answer. I declared war on Mathers accordingly, but it was a brutum fulmen.
The fact of the matter was that I resented the Book of the Law with my whole soul. For one thing, it knocked my Buddhism completely on the head.
"9. Remember all ye that existence is pure joy; that all the sorrows are but shadows; they pass and are done; but there is that which remains."
10. O prophet! thou hast ill will to learn this writing.
11. I see thee hate the hand and the pen; but I am stronger.
12. Because of me in Thee which thou knewest not."
I was bitterly opposed to the principles of the Book, on almost every point of morality. The third Chapter seemed to me gratuitously atrocious. My soul, infinitely sad at the Universal Sorrow, was passionately eager to raise humanity. And lo! the Magical Formula denounced pity as damnable, acclaimed war as admirable, and in almost every other way was utterly repugnant to my ideas. (I did not understand the fundamental principles of the Initiation of Mankind; and (in any case) I did not realise that Aiwas was not necessarily responsible for the character of His message any more than the newspaper for reporting an earthquake.
The Secret Chiefs had informed me that a New Aeon implied the breaking up of the civilisation existing at the time; obviously to change the Magical Formula of the planet is to change all moral sanctions, and the result is bound to be what appears on the surface to be disaster. The Cult of the Dying God introduced by Dionysus destroyed the Roman virtue and smashed the Roman culture. (Possibly the introduction of the worship of Osiris in an earlier epoch was primarily responsible for the decay of Egyptian civilisation.) The nature of Horus being "Force and Fire", His Aeon would be marked by the collapse of humanitarianism. The first act of His reign would naturally be to plunge the world into the catastrophe of a huge and ruthless war.
The Secret Chiefs told me that this was imminent, and that they had chosen me as their representative on account of my comprehensive knowledge of The Mysteries, my correct understanding of their real import, and my literary ability. The chief duty which they laid upon me was to publish the Secret Wisdom of the Ages in such a form that after the wreck of civilisation the scholars of subsequent generations would be able to restore the traditions. I was to issue a compendium of the methods of which man may attain to the God-head. They released me from my obligation of secrecy.
The responsibility of this, apart from anything else, was sufficient to stagger me. I had been taught to dread the result of publishing the least part of the Secret Knowledge: in unworthy hands the most appalling mischief was only too likely to ensue. I had been almost absurdly scrupulous with regard to the secrets entrusted to me; indeed, my experience had already shown me what shocking messes had been made by apparently trivial indiscretions on the part of others. I was not even proud that the choice of the Secret Chiefs had fallen on me; I was too well aware of my incapacity and indolence.
The task of reducing the Magical and Mystical methods of every time and clime to a coherent and intelligible form frightened me. On the other hand, I was reluctant to attempt so ambitious a work; on the other, acutely anxious lest I should prove unworthy of my office. I have always been utterly contemptuous of the criticism of people whom I do not respect. I frankly despise Keats for having been upset by the review of Endymion; but the correlative of this is over-sensitiveness about people whom I regard as authorities. The least word of admonition of Eckenstein [Oscar Eckenstein] about climbing would throw me into agonies of self-reproach. When Allan [Allan Bennett] reproved me for some error in Yoga, I was overwhelmed with shame.
My position was therefore very difficult. I was bound to the Secret Chiefs by the most solemn of obligations. I never dreamt of trying to minimise my responsibility to them, yet They had cut across the whole trend of my aspiration. The magical part of me was, in a manner of speaking, stunned.
My wife and I passed a short time in Paris and renewed old ties. One incident stands out in my memory as peculiarly amusing. We asked Arnold Bennett to lunch at Paillard's. He was completely overpowered by the deference of the maitre d'hotel who knew me very well, and his embarrassment at being introduced to such splendours was childishly charming. He was, of course, enormously pleased and very kindly offered to give me an introduction to H. G. Wells. As Arnold Bennett has gratified the public with a highly spiced description of me in Paris Nights, I hope he will take it as a compliment if I imitate his frankness in the matter of personalities. His accent and dialect made his English delightfully difficult. As we were leaving the restaurant, he told me that there was one thing about Wells that I mustn't mind: he spoke English with an accent.
Alas! I lack the literary skill to construct composite portraits. My own poor effort is the most crude photography. Also, I beg him to excuse my personalities. He is too great a man at heart to resent jests at the expense of his perishable vehicle; he is himself a Star bright-blazing, the more glorious for the thickness of the terrestrial vapours which it has had to pierce.
We wandered back to Boleskine, after arranging with a doctor named Percival Bott to come up to stay with us and undertake the accouchment. I asked my Aunt Annie [Anne Crowley] to preside over the household, and an old friend of Geralds's [Gerald Kelly] and mine, Ivor Back, at this time a surgeon at St. George's, to make up the house-party. Ivor Back is one of the most amusing companions possible, to those who can stand him. He knows a good deal about literature, and had published in The Hospital magazine some of the poems in which I had celebrated various diseases. I dedicated my In Residence, a collection of my undergraduate verses, to him, and he collaborated with me to a certain extent in the composition of various masterpieces of the lighter kind. He and Gerald are also responsible for numerous improvements in the preface to Alice, an Adultery. He also edited the first three volumes of my Collected Works, supplying learned notes to divers obscure passages.
My activities as a publisher were at this time remarkable. I had issued The God-Eater and The Star and the Garter through Charles Watts & Co. of The Rationalist Press Association, but there was still no such demand for my books as to indicate that I had touched the great heart of the British public. I decided that it would save trouble to publish them myself. I decided to call myself The Society for the Propagation of Religious Truth, and issued The Argonauts, The Sword of Song, Goetia, Why Jesus Wept, Oracles, Orpheus, Gargoyles, and The Collected Works. I had simply no idea of business. Besides this, I was in no need of money; my responsibility to the Gods was to write as I was inspired; my responsibility to mankind was to publish what I wrote. But it ended there. As long as what I wrote was technically accessible to the public through the British Museum, and such places, my hands were clean.
And yet I took a course implying a diametrically opposite state of mind. I printed a large edition of The Star and the Garter, and issued it at a shilling, with the idea of reaching the people who might have been unable to buy my more expensive books. I printed a leaflet and circularised the educated classes. (I have no copy available.) The meat of the circular was the offer of £100 for the best essay on my work. The business idea was to induce people to buy my Collected Works in order to have material for the essay. This offer led ultimately to far-reaching results; in fact, it determined the course of my life for a number of years. The winner of the prize became an intimate friend and colleague. His scholarship, acumen, enthusiasm, and indefatigability proved most important factors in the execution of the orders of the Secret Chiefs.
Meanwhile, we had a glorious time at Boleskine. What with the salmon and the venison and my cellar, billiards and billiard-fives and rock scrambling, the good company and the perfect summer, life passed like an ecstatic dream. In summer in the Highlands, time seems to forgive. At midnight one can sit and read in the open air even in the absence of the moon. Night is "one faint eternal eventide of gems."
One of our adventures is worthy of record. It is one of the most startling incidents that I have even known in all my experience of climbing. Beyond the Italian garden I had constructed a large trout pond, with Canadian canoe and sacred spring complete. From the further bank, a short slope leads to a precipitous cliff which affords an admirable variety of rock problems. Having taught Bott and Back the elements of the sport, we decided to attempt a more serious climb. Across the Loch, beyond Glen Moriston, is a well-marked gully, through which pours a torrent from Meall Fovournie. Eckenstein and I had marked this down; but during his visits it had always been a frantic waterfall. The long spell of dry weather mad e me think there was a chance to climb it, so I rowed over with Bott and Back, and started on the lowest pitch. This is a broad precipice of water-worn rock, perhaps 100 to 150 feet high. A good deal of water was coming over, but there seemed a possible way up. Starting outside the true left of the stream, I hoped to work my way up the bare slabs to the left till I was actually in the torrent; for its broken character indicated good hold (for both hand and foot) which I trusted would prove sufficient to enable me to pull myself up, despite the weight of the water. At the best the climb was very exposed, and I ought not really to have attempted it in any but first-class company.
There was no alternative to my proposed route. Where the water had not washed the rock clean, the pitch was a dripping precipice of greasy, mossy slabs, set at a frightful angle, with practically no hand-hold or foot-hold at all. Such cracks as existed gave obvious evidence of disintegration, so that any apparent hold must certainly be rotten. I would not have attempted it with Eckenstein, and I would have refused to follow him had he wished to attempt it himself!
I led up the pitch with Bott as second man and Back as third. I reached the most critical part of the climb. My holds were the merest friction-holds—I could not have supported a rabbit. I half expected to come off; and I knew that Bott (though reasonable safe himself, or I should not have gone on) could do nothing to save me if I fell. Back, in a perfectly safe position far below (we had a long rope) saw how insecure I was. He completely lost his nerve. He began to utter incoherent cries and to untie himself from the rope. The act was, of course, outrageous, but he was not responsible. He took no notice of my orders to keep quiet and not be a damphool. I could not even come down with any safety, Bott being naturally upset by Back's hysteria, so I called to Ivor to stay where he was and we would come round for him.
In the circumstances, my best course was to finish the climb as quickly as I could, and I went on at my best pace. In the roar of the falling water which swamped me, I could, of course, see and hear nothing. I dragged myself up the water-fall by sheer force; I had to trust for hand-and-foot-hold to my previous observations, for I had to keep my eyes shut against the rush of the torrent. I hauled myself through the gap on the brink and wedged myself against the rocks which confined it, head first. I found myself in a sort of cauldron where I could stand with my head and shoulders above water. I had climbed the pitch. I called to Bott to come on, and pulled him up the slabs on the rope. It had been a terrific climb; one of the most difficult and dangerous I had ever done.
My anxiety had been increased by seeing that Back, having untied himself, had not sat down quietly as ordered, but started to scramble towards the utterly unclimable and dangerously deceptive slabs of dripping moss. Bott and I extricated ourselves from the cauldron without further difficulty. And then I began to wonder whether the nymph of the water-fall had not played me a trick! I was certainly suffering from some kind of hallucination. Had my anxiety about Back created a phantasm? For there, on the slopes above us was an apparition in his shape, gesticulating, muttering, and shouting by turns. But it was Back in the flesh! He had done the impossible thing: he had climbed the unclimable cliff! So incredible was the feat that I was at pains to go round and look at the place again from below. My judgment had not deceived me—there was no sort of way up—yet the torn moss and a few fresh broken bits of rotten rock proved his passage. To this day I regard the facts as the least credible of any that have ever come my way.
When Rose and I first arrived at Boleskine, we had made a sort of sporadic effort to carry out some of the injunctions of Aiwass. We had arranged before leaving Egypt for the "abstruction" of the Stélé of Revealing (III-11). I did not understand the word or the context, and contented myself with having a replica made by one of the artists attached to the museum. We now proceeded to prepare the "perfume" and the "cakes" according to the prescription given in Chapter III, vv. 23-29.
We had resumed Magical work, in a desultory way, on finding that Mathers was attacking us. He succeeded in killing most of the dogs. (At this time I kept a pack of bloodhounds, and went man-hunting over the moors.) The servants, too, were constantly being made ill, one in one way, and one in another. We therefore employed the appropriate talismans from The Book of the Sacred Magic against his evoking Beelzebub and his forty-nine servitors. Rose had suddenly acquired the power of clairvoyance. Her description of these servitors is printed in the Bagh-i-Muattar, pp. 39, 40. (I may mention: Nimorup, a stunted dwarf with large head and ears. His lips are greeny bronze and slobbery. Holastri, an enormous pink bug.) As to this perfume of the Book of the Law, "let it be laid before me, and kept thick with perfumes of your orison; it shall become full of beetles as it were and creeping things sacred unto me." One day, to my amazement, having gone into the bathroom to bathe, I discovered a beetle. As I have said, I take no interest in natural history and know nothing of it. But this beetle attracted my attention at once. I had never seen anything like it before. It was about an inch and a half long, and had a single horn nearly as long as itself. The horn ended in a small sphere suggestive of an eye. From that moment, for about a fortnight, there was an absolute plague of these beetles. They were not merely in the house, they were on the rocks, in the gardens, by the sacred spring, everywhere! But I never saw one outside the estate. I sent a specimen to London, but the experts were unable to identify the species.
Here was a tangible piece of Magick. It ought to have convinced me that the Book of the Law meant business. Instead, it left me absolutely cold. I experienced a certain proud glee, much as I had in the King's Chamber of the Great Pyramid, but there it stopped. I took the necessary measures to protect Rose against the murderous attack of Mathers, and went on playing billiards. The attack was, however, prolonged an deadly. We were putting central heating into the house, and attempted to construct a small golf course on the estate. (Idiot! why not a tennis court on the Ennerdale Row of the Pillar?)
Ivor and I were playing billiards one morning after breakfast, when we heard screams and oaths from the direction of the kitchen. I snatched up a salmon gaff as the readiest weapon, and we hurried out. One of the workmen had become suddenly maniacal and attacked my wife, who was making her usual inspection of the offices. It was the work of a moment to gaff the offender and thrust him into the coal cellar, and send for the police. As they were a long time in coming, the animal made several attempts out of the chute, but our vigilance succeeded in baffling him, and he was duly handed into custody. But nothing followed!
It is one of the peculiarities of Scotch Law that there is no private prosecution unless the police choose to take up any given case, you can all be murdered without possibility of redress. As the police in the Highlands are largely recruited from the assassin clan—there is no other—one can well understand why the gentry maintain, to a great extent, the ancient custom of surrounding themselves with armed retainers.
As soon as Beezlebub got on the job, the magical assaults ceased; and, deprived of the stimulus to perform Magick, my interest faded once more. We spent our time in sport and society, tempered by pregnancy, as if there were no hereafter. I used my official titles and position without emphasis, very much as a peer takes advantage of his social privileges without ever giving thought to the House of Lords as a political institution.
On July 28th my wife gave birth to a girl, called Nuit Ma Ahathoor Hectate Sappho Jezebel Lilith. Nuit was given in homage to our Lady of the Stars; Ma, goddess of Justice, because the sign of Libra was rising; Ahathoor, goddess of Love and Beauty because Venus rules Libra; I'm not sure about the name Hecate; but it may have been as a compliment to the infernal gods; a poet could hardly do less than commemorate the only lady who ever wrote poetry, Sappho; Jezebel still held her place as my favourite character in Scripture; and Lilith, of course, hold undisputed possession of my affections in the realm of demons.
Duncombe-Jewell remarked later on that she had died of acute nomenclature. Cad. In my ears rang that terrible cry of MacDuff: "He has no children!"
Everything had gone as well as possible, and we were the happiest house-party in the Highlands. There was only one problem, that of keeping my wife amused during her convalescence. She was normally an intensely active, joyous being, but she had absolutely no resources. She could not play even the simplest game of cards, and of my whole library of 3,000 books and more there were only some half dozen that she cared to read. Hall Caine was too deep for her. It was up to me to produce an example of the only kind of literature she understood.
Now the objection to this form of art is its monotony; its preoccupation with detailed incident precludes a plot, and the range of its characters is deplorably limited. The men are nearly always priests or peers; the women countesses, school-mistresses or milliners. These books possess the merit of frankness of the most engaging kind; but they frequently strain one's credulity. The heroes of medieval romance are not so inhumanly disproportionate to the facts of life; that the author should claim the title of realist only adds to one's disgust. They arouse every instinct of my Puritanism with almost insane intensity. I suppose I was really furious at the facts that the wife whom I loved so passionately and honoured so profoundly should be intellectually circumscribed in this way.
My only remedy was a reductio ad absurdum. I resolved to write a novel myself—one of this kind, but it should be very much better and bigger. And dame the expense. No priest nor monk should be my hero. I would have an archbishop. He should not be as super-human as six men; he should do better that six hundred. My models had annoyed me by the pathetic paucity of their vocabulary. Having the excellent dictionary of John S. Farmer and W. E. Henley, I was able to avoid repeating myself. Moreover, I took the liberty of inventing many new words and phrases to add further variety. So for every detail; I would show up the imbecile ineptitude of this type of literature by exaggerating its faults at every point.
I pounded off a chapter a day of this novel on my typewriter, and read it to my wife, Gerald, Ivor, and the rest of the house-party, except my Aunt, who shared the psychology of my wife, only on the other side of the fence. Rose could not see in the least what I meant; like Col. Gormley, anything whatever that turned her mind towards the subject of love, produced a direct excitement and was pleasing. The effect was the same on my Aunt, except that she had schooled herself to pretend that it was unpleasing.
This phenomena is one of the most extraordinary in psychology. I have explained it already by means of the Buddhist Skandhas. As long as sensation has power to obsess the mind, any stimulus which excites emotion does not merely distort perception but prevents it. Dreyfus could not get his case examined because his crime was too shocking to be discussed. (Anatole France makes fun of the psychological ineptitude of the vulgar.)
When in France the pudibund fury of the bourgeoisie is rampant. Part of the public horror of sexual irregularity so-called, is due to the fact that everyone knows himself essentially guilty. "Me thinks the lady doth protest too much." If men would face the facts of life, including their own constitutions as they are, practically all abuses and perversions would disappear. They are for the most part morbid phantasms of putrefaction, aggravated by the attempt at suppression. The wound of Amfortas will not heal because it has never been properly opened and rendered aseptic. The modern surgeon might well say with the Mason, "Let us apply these tools to our morals." And, indeed, these morals to—but hush!
Madame Bovary was assumed to be a provincial Phyrne. The story of her adultery was condemned as "immoral", as tending to excite illicit passion. Its critics had been simply unable to read the book. Flaubert was in reality grinding his heel into the woman's foolish face; he was showing that her conduct was not romantic and voluptuous, but sordid, stupid, bestial, and anaphodisiac. What could be more Puritanical than Ghosts? It is the most frightful indictment of immorality that has ever been penned. Yet to the Anglo-Saxon it is "immoral". They don't understand a word, but it makes them think of their own beastliness; with the result that they discuss it furtively, licking their lips, and cry in the market-place that it is an offense to their purity.
I have never been able to comply with these foully perverse conventions. I face anything frankly, and the phantom fades. I do not permit any author to play on my passions. I read a book with my soul, and only those books appeal to me whose authors speak sincerely and sanely such truth as has been given them. I utterly loath the author who practises on popular psychology. The sentimentalism of Charles Dickens, the eroticism of D. H. Lawrence, the pornographic religiosity of Mrs. Humphrey Ward, [footnote: I have never read a word of her. But somehow I don't like the idea.] seem to me to be appeals to the appetites of the unintelligent. They prostitute their scrap of Art as quacks do when they try to persuade people that a pain in the back always means Bright's Disease; or that every trifling symptom, from headache to ingrowing toe-nails, is the result of secret vice.
The plain truth of the matter is that love stories are only fit for the solace of people in the insanity of puberty. No healthy human being can really care whether So-and-So does or does not succeed in satisfying his physiological uneasiness by the aid of some particular person, or not. The Woman in White and The Moonstone illustrates the situation with singular clearness. Despite the astounding power of Wilkie Collins to draw characters, he cannot make the heroine interesting. Laura Fairlie is little better than an imbecile, even when not actually suffering from dementia.
The artist's subconscious mind plays this sort of thing on him as a joke. He gets so disgusted with himself that he avenges himself on the dummy which offends him. In these two novels, the heroes are represented as exceptionally fine fellows in every way, but for all their heroic deeds they seem wishy-washy, sordid dummies; for the simple reason that they have no object in life but to attain sexual possession of so many pounds of flesh.
Nor does the interest of these books really depend on love. Great artists always find more serious themes. Sex is a means of intoxication; it is therefore proper to celebrate it in lyrics. But when one is sober, as one is when reading a novel, i.e. studying life, one doesn't want sex thrust down one's throat. One doesn't mind white wine in the sauce of the fish, and the man who is upset by its presence is a neurotic. As for a man who wants his cook to make his sauce so that he can get drunk on it—I simply don't want to meet him. But that is what the Anglo-Saxon public does, and that is why I don't want to meet it.
Shakespeare has few stories of which the interest depends on love; when it does the love always implies ruin, as to Romeo, Anthony, and Othello. His only love stories with a happy ending, bar absolutely mechanical denouements, are where he is secretly gratifying his secret perversity, as in Twelfth Night and As You Like It. Our greatest novelists have complied with convention by inserting a love interest ready made; Tom Jones, Roderick Random, and so on; but the interest is hardly even secondary. All our greatest masterpieces treat love in its proper relation to life. Jonathan Wild, Moll Flanders, Robinson Crusoe, Tristram Shandy, Gulliver's Travels, The Tale of the Tub, The Pilgrim's Progress, The Pickwick Papers, Vanity Fair, Armadale, The Shaving of Shagpat, The Way of All Flesh, The Cabell Epic: what have these to do with love?
In France it is the same. It can be done once. Aucassin and Nicolette. But afterwards! Think of a nice young girl introduced into La Peau de Chagrin, a Cousine Bette, Le Cousin Pons, Le Pere Goriot, Eugenie Grandet, Le Colonel Chabert. There is not one story in all Balzac where love is the saving or even the main motive. Dumas—think of D'Artagnan in love with a nice young lady and living happy ever after! (The love interest in A Gentleman of France and Under the Red Robe explains why Stanley Weyman's imitations of Dumas are so deplorably vulgar.) What happens to the Vocimte de Bragelonne (with all the virtues) when he falls in love? Russia supplies the extreme case, for in that country love has always been understood as a definitely diabolic pitfall.
It is true that there is a modern school, founded by Emily Bronte, from Thomas Hardy to D. H. Lawrence, whose plots turn on the sexual relation of the characters, but wherever such books are healthy the theme is that the exaggeration of the importance of such relations leads to disasters.
The fact is that artists generally have begun to perceive the First Noble Truth: the fatuity of all life and effort. They try to make the hero interesting by setting him to chase a career instead of a chignon. But a moment's thought makes it clear that a Cabinet Minister is as futile as a cuckold, and the result is that the type of modern representations of life is Dostoewski. A novel may be defined as a clinical observation of one or more types of insanity. There is, of course, only one way out of this. The artist must regain his faith in the utility of human activity, of human endeavour; that is, he must accept the formula of the Law of Thelema. The slightest action will then once more become significant; they either will or will not subserve the True Will. Moreover, the field of Art will become boundless, for all purposes will be equi-pollent. Unconsciously, this has been discovered by accident. We have found that Fabre's novels of Insect Life are much more interesting than those dealing with the fate of empires.
I never thought this out consciously till now, though Bernard Shaw has given us some idea of the true state of the case. He has done it unconvincingly, chiefly because he does not himself understand sex from the inside. Yet I understood it, for when I came to write a novel myself, The Diary of a Drug Fiend, it was immediately obvious that the interest had to depend on relations independent of space and time. The "attainment" of the book was necessarily the discovery by the hero and heroine of their True Wills, the final causes of their apparently abject existence.
To return to my jeu d'esprit and the psychology involved, I have for my solicitor one of the most acute observers in the world. He said to me the other day: "You seem never to be able to do anything as anyone else would," I retorted: "No, nor by halves," which was smart—but hardly a rebuttal. The fact is, I consider everything sub-specie universali, subspecie octercitatis. It comes natural to me to write an article on the Parish Council election in Little Piddlington for the eyes of the philosophers of two hundred centuries hence. I cannot bring myself to believe that anything which is going on at the present time has any real existence. It is a meaningless letter in a word, and its value depends on the rest of the letters. A and o are in themselves mere variations of breathing, yet one helps to make hag, the other hog; one cot, the other cat. Unless I know the consonants I cannot tell whether I need an a or an o.
Now this perception is obvious to everybody, yet everybody acts as if he knew exactly what would be the result of writing a instead of o, assuming that he is free to choose which he will do, which he isn't. But I bring this principle into my life; it governs me in every action outside my regular reflexes. I am really aware that I do not know whether it would be to my advantage to be hanged. I have only attained to a standard of conduct by referring all judgment to my will, and until I knew what my True Will was, I was utterly out at sea.
To apply these ideas to the issue which we are discussing. I knew that a poet is incapable of recognising his best work, but I knew also that though good technique does not mean good work, bad technique does mean bad work. So I used to experiment with new forms by choosing a ridiculous or obscene subject, lest I should be tempted to publish a poem whose technique showed inexperience.
Ivor and I, with some assistance from Gerald, collected such of these manuscripts as had not been destroyed, and with "The Nameless Novel", we composed a volume [Snowdrops from a Curate's Garden] to carry on the literary form of White Stains and Alice; that is, we invented a perpetrator for the atrocities.
I do not know what mischievous whim induced me to have the book printed, but I was absolutely innocent of any desire to rival the exploit of Alfred de Musset and George Sand, the "Femmes" and "Hombres" of Verlaine, or the jeu d'esprit of Mark Twain of which Sir Walter Raleigh is the hero. I did not even hope to get the British Government to give me a pension of £400 a year, as it did to John Gleland. Still less did I intend to class myself with the anonymous purveyors of garbage to the English nobility and gentry and the "Tired Business-man" of the United States.
I have always preserved a fanatical scorn and loathing for any vulgarism of the one sacrament of the body. I have always preserved a profound reverence for the Mysteries. I am opposed equally to the voluptuary and the Puritan. Love is to me the direct means of annihilating the consciousness of one's animal nature; and my optimism, my passionate belief in the god-head of my fellow-men, prevents me from realising with the higher part of my mind, however I may be convinced intellectually, that any other point of view is possible. The Satires of Juvenal, Martial, and Rabelais I understood, and I supposed that my book would disenchant the type of Englishman who goes to Paris because it is naughty, with his degrading delusions. I am aware that this point of view may seem so perverse as to appear insane or disingenuous but I am absolutely sincere, and I have thought everything out with the utmost acumen of which I am capable.
This literary diversion, and the regular sports of the Highlands, kept us happy; but, as the summer faded, we broke up. I did not want Rose and the baby to have to endure a Highland winter, and towards the end of October went off to St. Moritz to make arrangements for them to come out. Rose, however, decided to take a holiday from nursing, and left the child with her parents under the charge of the nurse, who was of course a very highly trained woman. She joined me at St. Moritz in November. I had always been enthusiastic about winter sports of every kind with the exception of ski-laufing, which I appreciate as a means of covering necessary distances, but not otherwise. I like swooping down the slopes, and an occasional jump is rather good fun. But to go up hill again! No, thank you!
The Crests Run was a great joy, and the Sports Committee paid me the great compliment of asking my advice about its construction. But it seemed to me ideally perfect. The only suggestions which I had to make were connected with safety; and, in fact, several men have been killed since through the precautions proposed by me not having been taken. I cannot blame anyone; my ideas were perhaps hardly practicable. Something should doubtless have been done about the level crossing, where a man going at 60 miles an hour or so came off second best when he hit a cart. But that is a rare chance. The constant danger is that an unskilful rider thrown over the walls of Battledore or Shuttlecock may strike the same place as a previous mis-adventurer. In this case, he will land, not on soft snow but on an irregular mass of regulated ice. He is sure to cut himself and may easily get killed. The walls of the run should be built sufficiently high and steep to make it impossible for a toboggan to leave the trough, in which case he would have to be very clever to come to much harm, provided he is properly clothed and hangs on to his seat. The difficulty is that men are so keen for the season to open that the run is often built when there is not nearly enough snow.
The frost began to break, and we went back to England. I propose to mention an incident, despite its strictly medical character, as a warning to the world of the utter idiocy of women as a class, and the criminal idiocy of trained nurses in particular. They are the most dangerous animals in the community. They are so proud of their disconnected scraps of medical knowledge that they are always trying to usurp the position of the physician. In the present instance my wife came within an ace of death on a false alarm which two words from a qualified practitioner would have dispelled.
Since the birth of the baby, she had not settled down into the normal course of her physiological life. She jumped to the conclusion that she was pregnant again, though her symptoms, of course, implied nothing of the sort. Instead of seeing a doctor she went hysterically to the nurse who proceeded to dose her with ergot. As no abortion took place she redoubled her efforts. I had been away on business for two or three days, and returned to find her in a perfectly frightened condition. I forced a confession, and dragged her to the station (we were staying with her family near Bournemouth) and got her to the Savoy before midnight. Bott and Back, summoned by telegram, were waiting for us. They were frankly delighted, never having seen such a bad case of Ergot poisoning in their lives.
I really don't know why I didn't prosecute that filthy nurse. Even if her diagnosis had been correct, I consider criminal abortion in any circumstances soever as one of the foulest methods of murder. Apart from anything else, it nearly always ruins the health of the woman, when it fails to kill her.
The vigour of my views on this point strengthens my general attitude on the question of sexual freedom. I believe that very few women, left to themselves, would be so vile as to commit this sin against the Holy Ghost; to thwart the deepest instincts of nature at the risk of health and life, to say nothing of imprisonment. Yet criminal abortion is one of the commonest of crimes, and one most generally condoned by what I must paradoxically call secret public opinion. And the reason is that our social system makes it shameful and punishable by poverty for a woman to do what evolution has spent ages in constructing her to do, save under conditions with which the vast majority of women cannot possibly comply. The remedy lies entirely with public opinion. Let motherhood be recognised as honourable in itself, and even the pressure of poverty would not prevent any but a few degenerate women, with perverse appetites for pleasure, from fulfilling their function. In the case of such it would indeed be better that they and their children perish.
There is yet a further point. My marriage taught me many lessons, and this not the least: when women are not devoted to children—a few rare individuals are capable of other interests—they take a morbid pleasure in conspiring against a husband, especially if he be a father. They take advantage of his pre-occupation with his work in the world, to conceive and execute every kind of criminally cunning abomination. The belief in witchcraft was not all superstition; its psychological roots were sound. Women who are thwarted in their natural instincts turn inevitably to all kinds of malignant mischief, from slander to domestic destruction.
A man is certainly safer in so-called savage countries than in so-called civilised ones. The price of civilisation is ignoble vice, and the result is always the destruction of what has been built up. Civilisation always disappears. When we talk of human progress we can only avoid being nonsensical by looking at the history of the planet in very distant perspective. I believe the real cause of the period-crashes is that the human brain, as a whole, does not evolve sufficiently fast to keep pace with the problems created by the development of its parts. To-day there is no statesman capable of so much as stating any one of the fifty problems with which he ought to be dealing, and if there were a man with sufficient ability to settle even one of them, we have no means of finding him. In fact, it is hardly possible to believe that any such man could exist. Suppose he had the knowledge required, it is almost certain that he would be practically incompetent, his studies would have unfitted him for action, and it is quite certain that he would be disinclined to raise a finger to perpetuate a system of inherent iniquity. The nature of our problem is such that their existence proves that we have been developing on hopelessly wrong lines.
I am afraid my adventures have lost me the citizenship of the world. Alastor is my name, the Spirit of Solitude, the Wanderer in the Waste. I am only at home in the Klysian Fields, conversing with the mighty men of old. I dislike London, not because it is busy and noisy and dirty and dark and sordid, and so on, but because it is so pettily provincial. I live in a city beyond time and space; how much more beyond the ticking centuries and the itching inches of London! I have accustomed myself so long to look at the Universe as a whole that its parts have become imperceptible. When I am reminded of them, it is like being reminded of one's eye by getting a fly in it. That is what I mean when I say that London gives me a pain. I was very glad to be back in Boleskine. I had no particular plans; I had really settled down. If I had a tendency at all, it was to play little practical jokes. They were the outcome of my happiness. I put up a signboard in a field cross the road, "This way to the Kooloomooloomavlock (dos not bite)," in the hope that the wayfarer might amuse me by going to look for it. As a matter of fact, this animal created the greatest terror in the neighbourhood, the more so that it remained invisible. After my departure in 1905 the hotel keeper of Foyers determined to abate the nuisance and took his gun and tried to stalk it. He was observed from the hill by my ghillie and piper, Hugh Gillies, the best servant I ever had in Europe, advancing by short rushes, and in every way comporting himself as the military necessities of the situation required. "She may no bite," quoth Gillies, "but a'm thinking she pu's legs."
My activities as a publisher were in themselves a sort of practical joke. It amused me to bewilder and shock people. I took nothing seriously except my Occult life at any time, and that was at present more or less in abeyance. I wrote one or two poems at this time, notable Rosa Inferni, before Rose joined me in St. Moritz, and somehow or other I had written the fourth book of Orpheus, part of which is inspired by my experience in Egypt. I published it at once. It had never satisfied me; the form was theoretically impossible. On the other hand, the lyrics and some of the dramatic dialogue are as good as anything in my work. I felt that one part of my life was drawing to a close. I made a clean sweep of my literary dustbin. I had its contents all carted away and dumped on the public. I felt myself to be on the brink of a new birth, and in Gargoyles will be found the first-fruits of that new life. (Owing to my movements, it took a long time to get the Collected Works published, and Gargoyles is included in Volume III, though practically all the other poems in the three volumes antedate April, 1904). Gargoyles strikes an entirely new note. I have kept my opinions and my technique intact, but somehow my point of view has become strangely distinct. When Frank Harris lay sick in New York City in 1916, he asked me to send him my Winged Beetle. Here is the letter he wrote me:
What he says of The Winged Beetle applies in a lesser degree to Gargoyles. It would hardly have been possible to point to any earlier poems as being in the same class.
But at this particular time I was much too happy to create. Creation is the effect of physiological dissatisfaction. That is why it comes as a relief. The creation of the Universe, love, sea-sickness, are all of the same order of phenomena. I was at this time like the Eternal, lapped in calm bliss and enjoying his own perfection. But to such states there always arrives a period when discomfort arises from the accumulation of the secretions produced by the metabolism of one's elements. Presently one becomes conscious of the need to sneeze or what not, and in course of time one has to sneeze. If one has a sufficiently good opinion of oneself, one attributes one's act of expelling superfluous matter (and thus creating an external universe) to the agency of the devil, and one exclaims, God bless me! If this simple fact were understood, we should have no more trouble about the origin of the Universe or the sex question.
It is a very curious thing, by the way, that the average man accepts quite calmly the heresies of the average thinker with perfect equanimity. Bernard Shaw's attacks on religion and morality are taken as a matter of course. But when people like Ibsen, Nietzsche, and myself, say the same things, we are held up to popular execration. I believe that Bernard Shaw himself is the only man capable of explaining why it is.
There was no snake in my Eden; the impulse which drove me out took the positive form of Opportunity. From time to time, various friends had visited us: Gerald Kelly and his mother, Eckenstein, and so on, and a quite insignificant creature named Lieutenant-Colonel Gormley, who was destined to play a curious part in my life. He was a medical soldier, and had spent countless years in India, Burmah, and South Africa without acquiring a single fact of interest. He was incapable of appreciating so much as a funny story, even an improper one if there were any touch of wit in it, But if anyone introduced an obscene word into the conversation on any pretext soever, he would rock with laughter and continue to titter for an indefinite period.
He was the first masochist I had ever met; in fact, I have only met one other, and it is not for me to decide which was the filthier fool. Gormley claimed to have been flagellated by over two thousand women. I rather suspect him of vain-gloriousness: it seems a very large number. He was in love with my wife, chiefly because she treated him with such disgust and contempt. He had proposed to her several times a week, even before her first marriage, and he saw no reason why he should abandon this habit merely on account of Major Skerrett [Major Frederick Thomas Skerrett] and myself. I don't know why I tolerated him; I don't know why anyone tolerated him. Perhaps it was the subconscious feeling that one cannot be unkind to anything so pitiable.
On April 27th, the good Tartarin [Dr. Jules Jacot Guillarmod], who had published a book (in the Swiss language) on our expedition to Chogo Ri, illustrated with many admirable photographs but not distinguished by literary quality or accuracy (in many respects), and had lectured in Paris and other capitals on Chogo Ri, dropped in. I was heartily glad to see him. He was the same cheerful ass as ever, but he had got a bit of a swelled head, and was extremely annoyed with me for not leading him instantly to stalk the sinister stag, to grapple with the grievous grouse, and to set my ferrets on the fearful pheasant. He could not understand the game laws. Well, I'm a poet; I determined to create sport since it did not exist. More, it should be unique.
I opened the campaign as follows. Tartarin knew the origin of the wild buffalo of Burmah. When the British destroyed the villages, their cattle escaped the bayonet and starvation by taking to the jungle, where they became practically a new species. After the '45 the British had pursued the same policy of extermination—I mean pacification—in the Highlands, and I thought it plausible to invent a wild sheep on the analogy of the wild buffalo. And more, the beast should be already famous. I described its rarity, its shyness, its ferocity, etc. etc.—"You have doubtless heard of it," I ended: "It is called the haggis." My '52 Johannesburg completed the part of the "come-on". Tartarin dreamt all night of scaling a lonely and precipitous pinnacle and dragging a lordly haggis from his lair. For my part, like Judas in the famous story of the Sepher Toldoth Jeschu, I did not dream at all: I did better!
Two mornings later, Hugh Gillies, with disordered dress and wild eyes, came rushing into the billiard room after breakfast. He exploded breathlessly, "There's a haggis on the hill, my lord!"
We dropped our cues and dashed to the gun-case. Trusting to my skill, I contented myself with the .577 double express, and gave Tartarin the principal weapon of my battery, a 10-bore Paradox, with steel-core bullets. It is a reliable weapon—it will bring an elephant up short with the mere shock, even if he is not hit in a vital part. With such an arm, my friend could advance fearlessly against the most formidable haggis in the Highlands.
Not a moment was to be lost. Gillies, followed by the doctor, myself and my wife, tiptoed, crouching low, out of the front door and stalked the fearsome beast across the Italian garden.
The icy rain chilled us to the bone before we reached the edge of the artificial trout lake. I insisted on wading through this—up to the neck, guns held high—on the ground that we should thus throw the haggis off our scent!
We emerged dripping and proceeded to climb the hill on all fours. Every time anyone breathed, we all stopped and lay low for several minutes. It was a chilly performance, but it was worth it! Tartarin soon reached the point where every bent twig looked to him like one of the horns of our haggis. I crawled and dripped and choked back my laughter. The idiocy of the whole adventure was intensified by the physical discomfort and the impossibility of relieving one's feelings. That interminable crawl! The rain never let up for a single second; and the wind came in gusts wilder and more hitter with every yard of ascent. I explained to Tartarin that if it should shift a few degrees, the haggis would infallibly get our scent and be off. I implored him to camouflage his posteriors, which arose in front for my balaclava, heaving like the hump of a dying camel. The resulting wiggles would have driven Isadora Duncan to despair; the poor man was indeed acutely conscious that, anatomically, he had not been constructed with the main idea of escaping notice.
However, after an hour and a half, we reached the top of the hill, 300 feet above the house, without hearing that hideous scream-whistle of alarm by which (so I had been careful to explain) the haggis announces that he has detected the presence of an alien enemy.
Breathlessly, we crawled towards the hollow space of grassy and heathery knolls that lay behind the huge rock buttress that towers above the garden and the lake, that space whose richness had tempted our distinguished visitor to approach so near to human habitations.
The mist drove wildly and fiercely across the hillside towards us. It magnified every object to an enormous size, the more impressively that the background was wholly blotted out. Suddenly Gillies rolled stealthily over to the right, his finger pointed tremulously to where, amid the unfurling wreaths of greyness, stood—
Tartarin brought forward the 10-bore with infinite precision. The haggis loomed gargantuan in the mist; it was barely 50 yards away. Even I had somehow half hypnotized myself into a sort of perverse excitement. I could have sworn the brute was the size of a bear.
Guillarmod pressed both triggers. He had made no mistake. Both bullets struck and expanded; he had blown completely away the entire rear section of Farmer McNab's prize ram.
We rushed forward, cheering frantically. Gillies had to be first in at the death; the supply of oats with which he had induced our latest purchase to feed in that spot all the morning without moving, might, if observed, have detracted from the uncanny glory of that romantic scene.
But next day at dinner, when we ate that haggis, the general hilarity passed unchallenged. The atmosphere had become wholly Homeric; there was no reason why the wildest glee should seem out of place.
Tartarin sent the ram's head to be stuffed and mounted; a suitable inscription was to be engraved upon a plate of massive gold. For had not the gallant Swiss vindicated their race once more? Would not the Gazette de Lausanne literally foam at the mouth with the recital of so doughty an exploit?
And so the contented Tartarin developed his plans for renewing the attack upon the Himalayas. Eckenstein had been approached, but for one reason or another had refused. I should have preferred it vastly if he had accepted; but I was a keen as ever to capture the only world's record which he and I did not, severally or jointly, hold; that of having reached a higher point on mountains than any other climbers. (This record was held either by Graham on Kabru—a doubtful case—or by Matthias Zurbriggen, the guide whom Eckenstein had trained to mountaincraft, on Aconcagua.)
Mindful, however, of Tartarin's misadventure in 1902, I made the strictest conditions before agreeing to join the new expedition. A document was drawn up and signed by which I should be acknowledged leader of the party. I was to be obeyed implicitly in all matters relating to the actual conduct of the expedition on the mountain. It was a deliberate breach of this agreement which caused directly its failure and the disaster which disgraced it.
There was no time to spare, if we were to attack Kanchenjunga this summer. It was arranged that the Doctor was to get together the necessary provisions and equipment at once in Europe, while I went direct to Darjeeling to make arrangements with the government about transport and such communications as the heliograph, by which means we intended to signal our progress to observers on Signal Hill, above the station, to collect some of our old Kashmir shikaris if possible, to learn a little Nepali, and perhaps to enlist the assistance of enterprising individuals on the spot.
I left for London on May 6th and made such preparations with regard to my personal equipment as seemed desirable, and on May 12th left England for the East by the P & O S.S. Marmora. Eckenstein maintained constantly that the adventure was foolhardy; that, for his own part, he would never consent to go on a mountain again with Jacot Guillarmod; and that, in one way or another, his vanity, inexperience, fatuity and folly were certain to land us in disaster. I liked Tartarin so well, personally, that I unconsciously minimized his imbecility; and I was still much too young to realize how much mischief may be done indirectly be the mere presence of such a man, despite every precaution that prudence can suggest and all the supervision that caution can recommend. So I went into it—and realize only of late how lucky I was to come out of it all!
It was part of my policy with regard to physical training to make the whole journey by sea. I fed up and lounged about and told stories till the twenty-third, when I arrived in Cairo. The city is abandoned by tourists by this time of the year on account of some superstition about the climate; but to me Cairo at the end of May was more pleasant that I had ever known it. I joined the P & O on the 31st. It was certainly hot in the Red Sea, but I remember with intense pleasure of wonder a single incident. Most of the passengers, including myself, slept on deck. I was awakened one morning before dawn by a dazzling ray of blue, as if a searchlight had been suddenly turned on me. The planet Jupiter had risen. Curiously enough an exactly parallel incident had taken place when I passed through the Red Sea from Chogo Ri, but on that occasion it was a crimson glare and the planet was Mars.
"Blue Mushtari strove with red Mirrikh which should be the master of the night,"
as I wrote a few months later. The sensation was unfeignedly one of alarm which melted to wonder and rapture. Many years later I was indeed frightened for more than a moment of surprise by a quite normal celestial phenomenon. I was walking through unfrequented parts of Spain with a disciple. We were on a lonely road and night had fallen heavy and black. Suddenly a wedge of flaming scarlet stabbed my eyes. It increased rapidly in size and (perhaps therefore) seemed to be approaching us with frightful velocity. I remember to this hour my startled halt and the fierce gaze I fixed upon the enemy. I remember steeling myself to meet annihilation. But it was merely the full moon, rising through a gap in the mountains.
I reached Bombay on June 9th. It was my first experience of the low country of India in the hot season. I did not find it unbearable and I would go back and live a month for the sake of just one mango. The mango is a very strangely sensitive fruit. The perfect flavour is the private property of a very limited district, as in the case of champagne. The mangoes of Bengal are as inferior to those of Bombay as second-rate brands of “boy” to the best vintages of Rheims. Those of Ceylon are like Asti Spumante.
I left Bombay the same day at half-past eleven. My first act was to go into the bathroom with which the best Indian trains are furnished and turn on the shower. Owing to the confined space, I was unable to beat the world's record for combined high and long jump! The carriage had been standing on a siding in the sun that the tank was full of scalding water. The worst of the journey was the smuts from the engine. I reached Calcutta at four o'clock in the morning of the eleventh and had breakfast and dinner with my old friend Thornton. The next day I left for Darjeeling.
It is certainly one of the most impressive experiences that a railway can afford. One begins by jogging dully across the acrid plains of Bengal and then at Sara Ghat one finds oneself suddenly on the bank of the Ganges. I had seen the river before, higher up, and it is not particularly exciting, but here it flowed gigantically across a vast desolation. The time was sunset, the turbid water glowed with angry reds and oranges. There was an evil coppery sheen upon its waveless turmoil. Its breadth possessed a horror of its own; it was like a river of hell. Far away it reached to the right and left. There was nothing to break the horizon. I gave the desolate effect of ocean, but the boundlessness of the open sea suggests liberty. This river had told of barrenness and bitter bondage. The salt breezes of Neptune invigorate the body, and the soul exalts. The windless Ganges stank of putrefaction. It was not even the stench of rotting vegetation. It seemed as if it were the earth itself which was decaying. A more fantastic and more frightful sight I have never seen. We crossed this tartarean river in a steamer and the actual breadth may be estimated from the fact that dinner is served on board. It was a bad dinner, too; it completed the hellishness of the scene.
One lands. The eternal funeral march of the train is resumed. The heat of the night is stifling. The waning moon—when laggard she looms up above the rim of the planet—is almost as impotent as the stars to pierce the sultry haze of dust which chokes one. The coolest place on one's pillow is where one's head has cooled it. One tosses in blind torment. There is no question of seeking relief; one has an instinct that nothing will do any good. Perhaps one drops off to sleep for a few moments, and those, however few they be, are filled with aeons of delirious and demoniac dreams of suffocation dipped in despair.
Then suddenly comes dawn. The slow train stutters and stops. One is still an insect on the infernal plain, but there is a touch of coolness in the air which is not wholly the chill of death. The sticky sweat on one's body begins to evaporate and one's spirit to revive. There is a call to Chota Hazri. One steps out of the carriage.
Good God!
Not many miles away across the level to the east rise thickly wooded slopes, a confused tangle both of hills (as it seems) and of trees, and behind them again, still higher heights of misty purple and green. And then—
Good God!
Is it a mirage? Is it a phantom of hope created by courage from the chaos of nightmare? For there, above the highest hills, at an angle for which even one's experience of Chogo Ri has not prepared me, there stands the mass of Kangchenjunga, faint rose, faint blue, clear white, in the dawn.
On reaching the foot of the hills, one transfers to a toy railway, which climbs the six thousand odd feet to Darjeeling by means of complicated curves and even loops. One ascends rapidly; the view constantly changes; one begins to appreciate the geology of the country as a whole. In the foreground the tropical vegetation is superbly thick and rich. One is so relieved by the change to cool shade and a suggestion of moisture that it comes as a shock to remember that this is the Terai, one of the most deadly fever districts in the world. By lunchtime the character of the vegetation is already markedly altered. The heavy tangle of the low country begins to give place to mountain sprightliness, but also the view tends to disappear altogether. One enters the region of almost eternal mist. The day is warm; and yet one is chilled to the bone. One is glad to come out on to an exposed ridge at Ghum and find the train begins to go down hill. It was the sign of the nearness of Darjeeling.
I got off the train. With unfeigned satisfaction, I observed immediately that the current legends about the amazing powers of the coolies were true. The principal item of my baggage was a full-sized wardrobe trunk, but its contents were not mostly air, as usual with the American variety of this device. It contained comparatively few clothes; boots, axes, rifles, revolvers, scientific instruments and books made up the tale. I do not know how much it weighed, because the baggage clerk at Calcutta had asked me to bribe him with a rupee to declare it below the free allowance; but I should have been very sorry to have to do more than set it up on end unaided. A young girl coolie took it on her back, as I might have done a rucksack, and carried it at a good steady pace up the steep narrow paths to the Woodlands Hotel. I no longer disbelieved the story that a woman had once carried a full-sized upright piano all the way to Darjeeling from Siliguri on the plains.
Darjeeling is a standing or rather steaming example of official ineptitude. Sir Joseph Hooker, one of the few men of brains who have explored these parts, made an extended survey of the district and recommended Chumbi as a hill station. “Oh well,” they say, “Darjeeling is forty miles nearer than Chumbi. It will do rather better.” So Darjeeling it was. The difference happens to be that Chumbi has a rainfall of some 40 inches a year; Darjeeling some 200 odd. The town is perched on so steep a ridge that there is practically no level road anywhere and one gets from one house to another by staircases as steep as ladders. The whole town stinks of mildew. One's room is covered with mildew afresh every morning.
India being the last hope of the unmarriageable shabby-genteel, Darjeeling is lousy with young ladies whose only idea of getting a husband is to practise a piano. In such a climate it is of course impossible to keep a piano in tune for five minutes, even if one could get it into that condition. The food itself is as mildewed as the maidens. The hotels extort outrageous rates which they attempt to justify by describing the alleged meals in bad French. To be reminded of Paillard is adding insult to injury, for what the dishes are made of I never did discover. Almost the whole time I was there I was suffering from sore throat, arthritis, every plague that pertains to chronic soddenness. Do I like Darjeeling? I do not!
On the other hand, I hound the heaven-born and the army as full of cordiality and comradeship as ever. As luck would have it, a new Worshipful Master was to be installed at the Lodge of Freemasons, so I went to the Jadugar-Khana and received a most brotherly welcome to the ceremony and banquet. There I met Sir Andrew Fraser, the Lieutenant-Governor, the Commissioner, the Deputy-Commissioner, the Maharaja of Kuch Behar and all sorts of delightful people. Everyone was only too willing to help in every way.
I wanted to start for the mountain as early in the season as possible. We had reliable information as to what the weather on the higher peaks was likely to be. We had no Zoji La to cross, no forty marches to the foot of the peak but twelve or fifteen at the outside. If we found it continuously bad, one could retreat into the valley and recuperate almost as one can in the Alps, for Tsetam is only about 12,000 feet.
I had reconnoitered Kangchenjunga from England, thanks to the admirable photographs of every side of the mountain taken by Signor Vittorio Sella, who accompanied some man named Freshfield in a sort of old-world tour around the mountain. I had also a map by Professor Garwood, the only trouble with which was that, not having been up the Yalung glacier himself, he had had to fill in the details from what he himself calls the unintelligible hieroglyphics of a native surveyor, who had not been there either. It did not matter; but I was very much puzzled by the appearance of a peak where no peak should have been, according to the map.
The bandobast for this expedition was very different to that necessary for Chogo Ri, if one takes Darjeeling as the analogy to Srinagar; for there are no villages and supplies of men and food to be had anywhere on the way. I had to send on 8,000 pounds of food for the coolies to a depot as near the Yalung glacier as possible. The government transport officer, Major White, very kindly undertook to oversee this part of the transport and I left it entirely in his hands. Unfortunately, things did not go as well as could be desired. The coolies in this part of India compare very unfavourably with the Baltis and the Kashmiris. They are Thibetan Buddhists with an elaborate priestcraft and system of atonement which persuaded early Jesuit travellers that Satan had perpetrated—in advance!—a blasphemous parody on Christianity; for they found only trivial, formal distinctions between the religions of Lhassa and Rome. They are therefore accessible to emotion and acquire a sentimental devotion to people for whom they take a fancy. But they have no notion of self-respect, no loyalty, no honesty and no courage. Many of Major White's men deserted, either dumping their loads anywhere on the way or stealing them; and there was no means of controlling their actions. I prepared to expect trouble and was very glad that I had sent to Kashmir for three of our best men of 1902—Salama, Subhana and Ramzana.
My throat gave me such trouble that I decided to go to Calcutta for a few days—from July 13th to 20th. I had in any case to purchase a number of additional stores, as Guillarmod had “economised”. The Bandobast went on in charge of the manager of the Drum Druid Hotel, to which I had moved shortly after my arrival. He was an Italian named Righi. He offered to join the expedition as transport officer and I, relying on his knowledge of the language and the natives, thought it best to accept him, though his character was mean and suspicious and his sense of inferiority to white men manifested itself as a mixture of servility and insolence to them and of swaggering and bullying to the natives. These traits did not seem so important in Darjeeling, but I must blame myself for not foreseeing that his pin brain would entirely give way as soon as he got out of the world of waiters.
I was quite happy about the mountain. On July 9th, only twenty-six days after my arrival in Darjeeling, the rain stopped for a few minutes and I was able to get a good view of the mountain through my glasses. It entirely confirmed my theoretical conclusions; the highest peak was almost certainly easy to reach from the col to the west of it, and there could be no doubt that it was an easy walk up to that col by a couloir of sorts which I called Jacob's Rake (a “portmanteau” of Jacob's ladder and Lord's rake). The word couloir does not quite describe it; the word “rake” does, but I can't define rake. Anyone who wants to know what I mean must go to Cumberland. The foot of this rake is in a broad snow basin and the only possible question was whether that snow basin was reachable from the Yalung glacier. I have told already of my ability to describe accurately parts of a mountain which I cannot see. I judged the snow basin accessible. My clairvoyance turned out to be exactly correct.
But more promising even that the feasibility of the route was the appearance of the mountain. Despite the perpetual bad weather at Darjeeling, which made me feel absolutely hopeless, there was no new snow at all on the mountain. Only 45 miles away, it had been continuous fine weather. I went down to Calcutta with a light heart. I had had good news too from Tartarin. He had persuaded a Swiss army officer, Alexis Pache, to join us. The other man of the party was named Reymond, who had had a fair amount of guideless experience on the Alps.
On the fifteenth I had a telegram from the doctor that he had been shipwrecked in the Red Sea. I might have known it! The three Swiss arrived on July 31st. I had got everything into such a forward state of preparation that we were able to start on August 8th. There was nothing to be done but to pack the baggage which the doctor had brought out, in the units which I had got ready for him. The doctor seemed to be suffering from ill-health from various trifling causes. He seemed a shade irritable and fussy. I suspect the cause was partly physical. His sense of his own importance was hurting him. Reymond I liked well enough; a quiet if rather dour man, who seemed to have a steady mind and common sense. But Pache won my heat from the moment I met him — a simple, unaffected, unassuming gentleman. He was perfectly aware of his own inexperience on mountains, and therefore in a state to acquire information by the use of his eyes rather than of his ears.
Everything went off without a hitch, except the affair of the depot. We learnt on August 6th that the coolies had dumped the food at Chabanjong, scarce 18 miles north-west of Darjeeling, instead of at Jongri, 30 miles due north. This fact, among others, led to my deciding to approach Kangchenjunga by way of the ridge which leads from Ghum practically directly to the head of a side valley through which a tributary of the Yalung Chu descends from the Kang La.
Our party consisted of five Europeans, three Kashmiris, the Sirdar of the coolies, six personal servants and seventy-nine regular coolies. We left Darjeeling at 10.16 a.m. on Tuesday, August 8th. The expedition had begun.
STANZA XLIX THE KANCHENJUNGA EXPEDITION.
One can certainly reach the neighbourhood of Khangchenjunga with delightful comfort. Though the mountain is only 45 miles from Darjeeling, as the Crow flies, the way is round about. The stages from Ghum are Jorpakri 8½, Tongly 18½, Sandakphu 33, Falut 45, Chabanjong 51. Up to this point there is an excellent riding path, while the first four stages have well-furnished dak baghlas.
Unpleasant features of the journey are two: one, the rain, and the other the leeches. I thought I knew a bit about rain—I didn't. At Akyab one puts one's head under water in the hope of getting out of the wet; at Darjeeling one's head is under water all the time. But on that ghastly ridge, I met a quality and quantity of bad weather that I had never dreamt of in my wildest nightmares. What follows sounds exaggeration. On getting into a dak baghla and standing stripped in front of a roaring fire, one expects to get dry. But no! the dampness seems to be metaphysical rather than physical. The mere removal of the manifestations of the elements of water do not leave one dry. But one used to obtain a sort of approximation to dryness by dint of fires; and of course we were provided with waterproofs specially constructed for that abominable climate. One morning I timed myself; after taking every precaution, it was eight and one-half minutes from the door of the baghla before I was dripping wet. When I say “dripping wet”, I mean that the water was coursing freely inside my clothes. In most parts of the world rain falls, but on that accursed ridge it rises. It is blown up in sheets from the valley. It splashes on the rocks so as to give the effect of waterfalls upside down.
On the 13th, 14th and 15th, there were short spells of respite; otherwise, from the 8th to the 20th it never slackened and outside the dak baghlas I was not dry, even partially, for a single second.
The leeches of the district are a most peculiar tribe. For some reason, they can only live within a very well-defined belt. Thus, I never saw a leech at Darjeeling, while at Lebong, some five hundred feet lower, they are a pest. The Terai is the haunt of some of the most tenacious of animals, but the leech has cleared them out completely. A single leech will kill a pony. It works its way up into the nostril and the pony simply bleeds to death. Hence the Anglo-Indian proverb. “A jok's a jok [Hindustani for leech] but a jok up your nose is no joke.”
I witnessed a remarkable sight on the road to Chabanjong, which was here a paka rasta (that is, a road made by engineers as opposed to kacha rasta, a track made by habit or at most by very primitive methods) wide enough for carts to pass. I had squatted near the middle of the road as being the least damp and leech-infested spot available and got a pipe going by keeping the bowl under my waterproof. I lazily watched a leech wriggling up a blade of tall grass about fifteen inches high and smiled superiorly at its fatuity—though when I come to think of it, my own expedition was morally parallel; but the leech was not such a fool as I thought. Arrived at the top, it began to set the stalk swinging to and fro; after a few seconds it suddenly let go and flew clean across the road. The intelligence and ingenuity of the creature struck me as astonishing. (Legless animals are practically helpless on open ground. One can walk up to a king cobra on a smooth road and set one's heel on its head, as prophesied in Genesis, without much danger of being struck, and though it sees you coming, it is quite unable to escape. But give the same snake a little grass to flagellate and the eye can hardly follow its motion. It goes like a snipe.)
Coming back over the same ridge, I was on an open hillside running fast. It was raining downwards instead of upwards for once, and that quite slightly. I heard a little noise, as if something had fallen on my hat, and took no notice. A few moments later I found that my hand was wet with blood, running fast, and looking down I saw a leech on the back of it. How it managed to fall from the sky I don't know. I have seen leeches up to seven inches long; and there seems hardly any limit to the amount of blood they can assimilate. I heard of a gorged leech weighing nearly two pounds and I believe it without effort.
Another strange sight in these parts is the sheep. Tartarin, still proud of his haggis, invented wonderful theories to explain the fact that they are muzzled. However, they are not mountons enragés; the muzzle is to prevent them from poisoning themselves with wild aconite.
The scenery along the while of his ridge is extraordinarily grand, so far as the mist permits one to see anything. Some of the Himalayan trees are superb. But the prevailing vegetable is the rhododendron, a plant which has little in common with its English cousin. It grows to a height of 15 feet or more and the stems are often as thick as a man's thigh. It grows in unbroken forests and the worst Mexican chaparral I ever saw was not worse to have to cut one's way through.
At Chabanjong the road stops and I sent back my horse. Thence a shepherd's track leads along the ridge. On the whole it was very good walking.
We had already found trouble with our own coolies. To begin with, the police had caught me up at Jorpakri and arrested one of them for some petty offence—he joined us for more reasons than one. Six of the men deserted in the early part of the march. It was a small percentage and they had evidently never had any intention of earning their advances. Later, when I had to go on ahead, five men deserted Pache, whom I had to leave in charge. They were probably scared by superstitious fears. Pache could not talk to them and did not know how to encourage them.
After leaving Chabanjong it was impossible to tell exactly where one was on the ridge. The paraos have names, but I could never discover that they applied to anything; it was all rain and rhododendra. There is a place called Nego Cave which I hoped was a cave where I could shelter from the rain for a few hours, but nobody seemed to know here it was and I never found out. I had actually to rest a day in this abominable place, as the official permit for our party to enter Nepal had not arrived; but it did so during the day and one the 18th came a very long march of something like 8 hours of actual going. During the latter part of the march the path dips suddenly and one descends some 3,000 feet into a valley.
Well do I remember this camp Gamotang! Apart from the flora and fauna, the last two days might have been spent on the Welsh mountains, but the descent to Gamotang was like stepping into fairyland. There are certain places—Sonamarg in Kashmir is one of them—which possess the quality of soft brilliance quite unearthly. There is really nothing to distinguish them from a hundred other spots in the neighbourhood, yet they stand out; as a genius does from a hundred other men in evening dress. I find these phenomena quite as real as any others and I feel impelled to seek an explanation.
Assuming the existence of inhabitants imperceptible by our grosser senses, the problem presents no difficulty. One of a row of similar houses is often quite different from its neighbours, perhaps on account of the loving care and pride of its chatelaine. When I see an analogous phenomenon in scenery, I cannot blame myself if a similar explanation comes to my mind.
The weather was already noticeably better than at Darjeeling. It did not begin to rain till eight or ten in the morning every day.
The partial failure of the bandobast kept us a day at Gamotang. There was in any case no great hurry. I was glad of every opportunity to acquire the affection of the men. I was careful not to overwork them. I gave a prize to the first three men to come into camp every day and those who had come in first three times had their pay permanently raised. I made friends with them, too, by sitting with them round the camp fire and exchanging songs and stories. On the other hand, I made it clear that I would tolerate no nonsense. They responded for the most part very well. I never had any trouble in all my wanderings with natives, servants, dogs and women. The secret is that I am really unconscious of superiority and treat all alike with absolute respect and affection; at the same time I maintain the practical relations between myself and others very strictly indeed.
It is the fable of the belly and the members. It is absurd for one speck of protoplasm to insist on its social superiority to another speck, but equally absurd for one cell to want to do the work of another. There is another point, admirably stated by Wilkie Colins. Count Fosco says that the way to manage women is “never to accept a provocation from a woman's hands. It holds with animals, it holds with children and it holds with women, who are nothing but children grown up. Quiet resolution is the one quality the animals, the children and the women all fail in. If they can once shake this superior quality in their master, they get the better of HIM. If they can never succeed in disturbing it, he gets the better of THEM.”
I make it an absolute rule to be imperturbable, to impress people with the idea that it is impossible to avoid doing what I want done. I never try to arouse enthusiasm. I never bribe, I never threaten, but I identify my purpose with destiny and I administer reward and punishment unsparingly and impersonally.
The coolies began to be very fond of me, not only because of my good comradeship an my cheerful calm and confidence, but because they were subconsciously relieved by my conduct from their personal demons of fear, jealousy, desire and the like. They became unconsciously aware that they were parts of a machine. As long as they did their duty, there was absolutely nothing to worry about. Most people suffer all their lives from subconscious irritation; due to what the Hindus call Akamkara, the ego-making faculty. The idea of self is a continual torment and though I was still far from having got rid of this idea completely. I was pretty free of it in practice in matters where my responsibility was extensive. I had begun to understand how to work “without lust of result”.
Unfortunately, Tartarin and Righi were undoing my web as fast as I wove it. Righi was a low-class Italian, who ran his hotel by hectoring the men under him. Finding himself for the first time in his life in a position of real responsibility, and without the background of an external authority to which he could appeal to enforce his orders, he was utterly at sea. On one occasion he actually threatened a disobedient coolie with his kukri and revolver, and the man, knowing he would not dare to use them, laughed in his face. The natives despised him as a weak man, which is the worst thing that can befall anyone that has anything to do with them.
Tartarin too, though cheerful and genial, had forgotten the lesson of 1902. He was fussy and helpless. On one occasion he actually tried to bribe a man with boots and claws to do his ordinary duty. As long as I was with the main body, these things didn't matter. Nobody dared to disobey the Bara Sahib. A moment's hesitation in complying with any order of mine and they saw a look in my eyes which removed the inhibition. They knew that I would not scold or wheedle, but had a strong suspicion that I might strike a man dead without warning; at the same time they knew that I would never give an unreasonable order and that my active sympathy with the slightest discomfort of anyone of them was as quick as my insight to detect and deal with malingering or any other attempt to pull my leg.
From Gamotang one has to climb to the Chumbab La—about four hours' march. Then one skirts the slopes of the Kang La and descends to the branch valley of the Yalung Chu. I found a great block of quartz there and one-half hours beyond the pass and pitched camp. The doctor arrived late—8.30. He had had some trouble with the coolies, but they were safely camped some short distance above.
The next day was fearfully wet. There is another little pass to cross, and hour beyond the quartz block; two and a half hours more took me down the valley to a camp near Tseram, which is a group of huts on the main stream a couple of miles below the snout of the Yalung glacier. I avoided camping in Teseram itself, on the general principle of having nothing to do with natives. The Dewan of Nepal was sending an officer to superintend our journey. I should perhaps have mentioned before that England has a special treaty with Nepal, one of its terms to the effect that no foreigners are to enter the Dewan's dominions. He knew that the most harmless European is the herald of disaster to any independent country. Where the white man sets his foot, the grass of freedom and the flower of good faith are trampled into the mire of vice and commercialism.
But in the present instance our route touched only this one tiny outlying hamlet of Tseram and permission had been obtained without difficulty for us to pass. At the same time, the Dewan was going to have a man on the spot to see that we did not maltreat and corrupt the natives as we have done in every other part of the globe in which our impulses of greed and tyranny have seen a possibility of satisfaction.
I saw no reason for waiting for the arrival of the Dewan's “guide” and, leaving a man with a message for him, continued the advance. I took only a very small party and left Pache in command. He was to wait until the arrival of the main body of the coolies, while I went on the glacier to reconnoitre. I wanted to establish the main camp as high as possible, but of course I did not know whether I might not have to retrace my steps. The glacier stream might prove uncrossable. I would make sure that the whole party could reach the glacier without difficulty.
I left the camp at 6.0 a.m. on the 21st. I was now in really mountainous country. The valley was gorgeously wild, it glowed with rich bright grass and masses of marvellous flowers. There was an admirable track. The day was fine and I had views of both Little and Big Kabru (21,970 and 24,015 feet respectively) but Kangchenjunga itself was hidden in clouds. I have rarely enjoyed a mountain walk so thoroughly and my heart was uplifted by the excellence of our prospects.
It sang within me. I was already at 14,000 or 15,000 feet, less than a fortnight out from the base, in perfect physical condition, not an ounce of my reserve of strength yet called upon; a perfectly clear course to the peak in front of me, the mountain scarce five miles away, the weather looking better all the time, and none of the extremes of temperature which had been so frightful on Chogo Ri. No sign that wind was likely to give any trouble. In short, not one dark spot upon the horizon.
Camp II, though no place for a golf course, as the game is at present played, possesses the great advantage of being a perfect Pisgah. The summit of Kangchenjunga is only two miles away and I am able to see almost the whole of the debatable ground which my reconnaissance from above Darjeeling had denied me. I climbed to a short distance above the camp; the last doubt disappeared. The level glacier stretched less than a mile away. Thence rose a ridge covered by steep glacier except at its eastern edge, where there was a patch of bare rock with scarcely any interruption from ice. This rock was cut away on its right by a terrific precipice, sheer to the lower glacier, but there was no reason why anyone should fall off. The rocks were of the character—easy slabs—of those of the Eiger above the Little Scheideck, the precipice being on the right hand instead of on the left. The slabs ended in a level space of snow jutting beyond the glacier above, and therefore safe from any possible avalanche. The place would make an admirable camp.
Thence, one could work a way to the west; and, avoiding a patch of seracs, ascend steep slopes of ice (covered at present by snow) which led directly to the great snow basin which lies, as one may say, in the embrace of Kangchenjunga. These slopes were the critical point of the passage. I intended to fix a long knotted rope at the top, if necessary, to serve as hand-hold for the coolies, it being now certain that we could establish our main camp at the foot of Jacob's Rake. Certain, that is, bar the interference of absolute perversity.
The following day showed me that such perversity was only too likely to put a spoke in the wheel. The arrangement was that I was to find my way to Camp III, which I had already been able to choose through my glasses. I left Tartarin and Reymond in charge of the bulk of the coolies, having pointed out to them the best way across the glacier. It was more or less intricate going compared with Piccadilly, but it was certainly less trouble than an average march on the Baltoro. My object in going ahead was merely to make sure that Camp III was as favourable as it looked from a distance. It was. There was a broad level plateau of loose stones marked by a big boulder, which I called Pioneer Boulder, for a variety of reasons, all referring ironically to “Pioneer Peak”. This plateau was perhaps 700 to 1,000 feet above the glacier.
I must here remark that I cannot pretend to any accuracy about either heights or distances. Tartarin was in charge of the surveying and I do not know whether he took proper observations at all. All I can say is that Professor Garwood's map is seriously wrong in many important points. I could do little more than make shots at my position by dead reckoning. I settled down quite comfortably at Camp III and sent a man down to find the main body and tell them it was all right, and they were to come up. Most unfortunately, it was misty. I could not see what had happened. And if I had been able to, I might almost have doubted my eyes. The coolies were coming, oh ho! oh ho! in a long circular route round the head of the glacier, for no reason at all. The weather cleared towards evening and there they were, within shouting distance, within three-quarters of an hour's easy going for the slowest men, up excellent slopes on firm rocky ground.
To my further amazement, I saw the doctor preparing to pitch camp. It was inexplicable imbecility. Shouts produced no effect, and there was nothing for it but for me to go down. He had chosen a bivouac on bare ice, where there was hardly sufficient level ground to pitch the tents, but it was too late to pack up again, so I had to make the best of it. I asked him the reason for his extraordinary conduct. He replied that there was a rumour that I had broken my leg on a moraine. This was as antecedently unlikely as anything could possibly be; and anyhow he could see perfectly well with his own eyes that I had done nothing of the sort; and thirdly, if I had done it, all the more reason for coming to my assistance. I began to think there was something seriously wrong with the man.
On the top of this, there was bad news from the rear guard. Righi sent up bitterly quarrelsome messages. His antics had made all sorts of trouble with the coolies, who were at one time in open revolt. Pache managed to get them into good humour again. He was a gentleman; he understood the oriental mind instinctively. He was, in fact, making extremely good. As soon as he saw that Righi was half insane with the fear that comes to people of his class in the absence of a chattering herd of his fellows, and in the presence of the grandeur of nature, he assumed moral charge of him. The difficulties with the rearguard disappeared immediately. Unfortunately, I did not understand at the time what was happening, or I should have gone down and sent Righi back to his kitchen. Pache himself did not realise his own importance and took it upon himself to come up. The moment his back was turned, Righi simply became insane.
Everyone had passed a most uncomfortable night at the absurd bivouac. I decided to go no further than Camp III the next day. Tartarin was absolutely astonished that the men which whom he had been having such trouble behaved quite simply and naturally as soon as I was on the spot. He claimed that they had positively refused to go further, but they picked up their loads and strolled cheerfully up the slopes without so much as a word of admonition. Not understanding the secret of my power, though he had seen it exercised so often by Eckenstein and myself, he imagined that I must be terrorizing the men by threats and beatings. In point of fact, I never struck a man during the entire expedition, save on the one occasion to be described presently.
Camp III was extremely pleasant. It afforded magnificent views in every direction and one had one's choice of sun or shade. I spent the day in taking advantage of the amenities of the situation. I took pains to fix up an excellent shelter for the men by means of large tarpaulins, and saw to their comfort in every way. We had even the advantage of song, for the camp was a haunt of small birds. Its height cannot have been far short of 18,000 feet.
It was urgent that the march to Camp IV should be started at the earliest glimmer of light, for though the route lay almost entirely over rock, there were a few short snow passages which would become dangerous after sunrise, and the hanging glacier on our left might conceivably discharge some of its superfluous snow across one or two points of the route. I explained these points carefully to the men, who were for the most part quite intelligent enough to understand. Moreover, they were already aware of the general principles, a number of them having already travelled, if not on glaciers, at least on winter snow. They were eager to start; but Tartarin deliberately hindered them. I had awakened at 3 o'clock and got them off by 6. It had not been a cold night, none of the men showed any signs of suffering or made any complaint, but the doctor said that they ought to be allowed to warm themselves thoroughly in the sun before starting. He suggested that the march should begin at about 11 o'clock. These were the words of sheer insanity. Even on Chogo Ri, where the nights were really cold, no such nonsense had ever been suggested.
I led at once on to the glacier. There was no difficulty of any sort; the snow being in excellent condition, it merely required a little scraping and stamping. But at the point where it becomes necessary to take the rocks on the right so as not to be under a small patch of séracs, the slope is in the direction the tremendous precipice previously described. It was there that I gave the exhibition of glissading. But I do not think the men would have been afraid at all if the excited shouts and gesticulations of Reymond and the doctor had not demoralised them. These celebrated climbers were themselves actually afraid for their own skins. And this, if you please, on a slope down which I could glissade head first! Having got the men across, we proceeded up the rocky slopes. I must confess that here I had misjudged the difficulty.
I had expected to find quite easy walking, but there were a few passages where it amounted to scrambling from the point of view of a loaded man. I decided to arrange for a fixed rope as a measure of safety, it being my plan to send the picked coolies up and down regularly to bring up supplies as they were needed. In the meantime, the men behaved magnificently, laughing and joking and giving each other a helping hand whenever required. I posted the Kashmiris and the other personal servants at the mauvais pas, but there was no hint of any real danger.
Camp IV is at the top of this rocky slope on a level ridge, level enough, but not as broad as I could have wished. There was, however, a certain amount of natural shelter afforded by rocks and I was able to construct a fairly comfortable place for the night. There was a better camp three hours higher; but the weather, after a fine morning, had begun to look bad, and the snow was in bad condition. The men, too, though perfectly happy, were most of them very tired, and some of them knocked over by what they supposed to be mountain sickness—symptoms of exhaustion, headache, pains in the abdomen, dizziness and so forth. I knew what the trouble was and went round to the sufferers and dropped a little atropine into their eyes. Half an hour later they were all perfectly restored. The alarming symptoms were all due to the glare.
I sent down to Pache to come up to Camp III as better in every way than Camp II. I asked Tartarin and Reymond if they had any messages to send. They were too exhausted to reply to their names. I was utterly bewildered. The previous day had been a bare hour, and the march to Camp IV perfectly easy and by no means long or trying for men without loads. I myself, though I had borne the burden and heat of the day more than anyone, was as fresh as paint and as fit as a fiddle. I had never felt better in my life. I was in perfect condition in every respect. I spent the afternoon nursing the invalids.
Tartarin recovered by the next morning sufficiently to curse. I could not imagine what his grievance was an cannot imagine it now. The most charitable explanation of his conduct that I can give is that he was mentally upset, partly no doubt due to psychical distress, but also by some form of heat stroke. I have always been satanically happy in the hottest sunshine, but the slopes of Kangchenjunga on a fine day at noon were near my limit. Both the doctor and Reymond were unquestionably very ill. It was impossible to think of going on to the next camp that day. We rested accordingly. Late in the day, to my surprise, Pache arrived with a number of coolies. I had asked him to send up the Sirdar and one other man. I wanted to give Nanga personal instructions about the management of his men. It had been no part of my plan for any of the others to come beyond Camp III. I wanted to make Camp III the base until we found a good place on the snow basis above. The arrival of Pache and his men overcrowded Camp IV.
The root of the trouble, apart from any ill-feeling, was that none of my companions (except Pache) understood that I expected them to keep their word. I had arranged a plan, taking into consideration all sorts of circumstances, the importance of which they did not understand and others of which they did not even know, and they did not realise that to deviate from my instructions in any way might be disastrous. Their disobedience having resulted in things going wrong, they proceeded to blame me. Righi had refused point blank to send Nanga on my express command; he had failed to send up any supplies, so that we were absolutely out of petroleum and short of food, both for ourselves and for our men.
Pache reported that some of the men had deserted. It was never cleared up why they should have done so. But one of them, in disobedience to orders, had gone off by himself—I never discovered exactly where—and had fallen and been killed. This man, it was said, was carrying Pache's sleeping valise. This at least was certain, that the valise was missing.
An accident being alleged, I sent down the doctor on the following morning to make an inquiry into the matter, and also to send up the supplies of food and fuel which we needed urgently. Pache told me that Righi was deliberately withholding food from us. His conduct was murderously criminal, if only because we might have been prevented by bad weather from descending in the last resort.
That afternoon Reymond and I made a little excursion up the slopes. We found that the snow was not as bad as might have been expected, and the gradients were so easy and the glacier so free from ice-fall that there would be no danger for a prudently conducted party, even when the snow was soft.
On this slope of Kangchenjunga one occasionally meets a condition of snow which I have never seen elsewhere. Rain or sleet blows against the face of the mountain and is frozen as it touches. The result is to produce a kind of network of ice; a frozen drop serves as a nucleus from which radiate fine filaments of ice in every direction. It is like a spider's web in three dimensions. A cubic foot of this network would thus be almost entirely composed of air; the ice in it, if compact, would hardly be bigger than a tennis ball, perhaps much less. With the advance of the evening, the rain turns to snow; and in the morning it may be that the network is covered to a depth of several inches. The temperature possibly rises a few degrees, and the surface becomes wet. It then freezes again and forms a hard crust. Approaching a slope of this kind, it seems perfectly good névé. One strikes it with one's axe and the entire structure disintegrates. In front of one is a hole as big as a cottage and as the solid slope disappears, one hears the tinkle of falling ice. It is a most astonishing and disconcerting phenomenon.
During the while time that I was on the mountain, I experienced no high wind and no unpleasant cold. But the heat of the day was certainly very severe. My skin had gradually become inured to the sun. I had not been burnt painfully in ten years. I simply browned quietly and pleasantly. But on Kangchenjunga it got me—not badly enough to cause sores, but enough to make the skin somewhat painful and brittle. Here was another reason for starting early in the day and reaching camp, if possible, by noon at the latest.
On the 19th, having dispatched Tartarin to the rear, Reymond, Pache and myself went on with our small party. The doctor was, of course, to make sure of sending up supplies and Pache's valise. We reached Camp V in about three hours. It was situated on a little snowy hump below a small peak on the ridge. We intended to make our way to the path between this peak and the main spur. The slopes were rather steep in one or two places, but quite without danger, as they eased off a short distance below (about 250 feet) to a practically level part of the glacier. I should, in fact, have preferred to go straight up them instead of making the detour by the rocks on the edge of the big precipice, had it not been that a small patch of sérac overhung them.
No valise arrived for Pache that night, and no petrol or rations. We were accordingly obliged to rest the next day. I had given Pache my eiderdown sleeping-bag and one of my blankets. He was thus quite comfortable physically; but he was, of course, anxious about his effects. All his spare boots, clothes etc. were in the missing bag, and all his private papers.
During the day a few provisions arrived, but no rations for the men, and no petrol. I sent back one of the men with urgent orders and several others to assist in carrying up supplies. (Also because we could not feed them where we were.) I wrote a second letter to Tartarin the same day; a man arrived at last with the petrol. In this letter which was signed by Pache as well as myself, the blame for the failure of the bandobast was given entirely to Righi.
There was no difficulty whatever in carrying out these perfectly simple, normal instructions.
Camp V is at the height of 20,000 to 21,000 feet and certainly not more than 2,000 to 3,000 feet above Camp III. We had taken the first ascent very easily, but the route was now in fine condition, having been transformed into a regular snow track with immense steps made solid by repeated regelation. It might be called two hours' easy going. The doctor had recovered his health and his good humour, and we had none of us a moment's doubt that he would put the fear of God into Righi and carry out the above instructions promptly and efficiently.
On Thursday, August 31st, I started up the slopes with six men and a perfectly light heart. The problem was, of course, how to get the coolies up with the minimum of trouble. I sent Salama ahead with an axe to make big steps, and put my gang of four men with axes and shovels on a rope. Their job was to clear away all loose snow and to enlarge the steps made by Salama so that the way up the mountain should be literally a staircase of the easiest kind. Their leader was a man named Gali. I remained close to him throughout so that if by any chance he fell I could catch him.
I would not rope myself, so as to be able to go to the rescue instantly in case Salama got tired or came to a passage too difficult for him. We advanced very rapidly. We were certainly over 21,000 and possibly over 22,000 feet. There were no symptoms of the slightest deficiency of physical energy on the part of anyone. I have never seen a man ply an ice-axe faster than Salama did that day. I was, of course, very carefully on the lookout for the slightest tendency on the part of the snow to slip.
We had reached a shallow couloir. Reymond and Salama had got some distance ahead of the coolies. Some of the chips of ice dislodged by their step-cutting were sliding down in our direction and they began to carry some of the surface snow with them. I was warned by the gentle purring hiss, rather like a tea kettle beginning to sing, which tells one that loose snow is beginning to move. Gali saw the little avalanche, coming towards him, was frightened and fell out of his steps. I caught him, put him back and hastily anchored the rope to a wedged axe. But the man had completely host his nerve, and by the operation of that instinct which make a drowning man throw up his hands, began to do the one thing that could possibly have brought him to harm—to untie himself from the rope. I ordered him to desist, but he was quite hysterical, uttered senseless cries and took no notice. There was only one thing to do to save him from the consequences of his suicidal actions, and that was to make him more afraid of me than he was of the mountain; so I reached out and caught him a whack with my axe. It pulled him together immediately and prevented his panic communicating itself to the other men. Things then went on all right.
Some of the slopes were really very bad; deep soft snow on ice. One short patch was at an angle of 50 degrees. It was a question of fixing a rope or finding a new route to the left, which I did not want to do as I was in doubt about the glacier above. There were some séracs which might or might not be stable. We went down to Camp V without further adventure, but the morale of the men had been shaken by the incident of the toy avalanche. Their imaginations got out of hand. They began to talk nonsense about the demons of Kangchenjunga and magnified the toy avalanche and Gali's slip and wallop to the wildest fantasies. During the night some of them slipped away and went down to Camp III.
On September 1st we renewed the assault. Reymond, Pache and Salama went up the sloes on the rope and got over the bad patch. They were so much encouraged by their success that they went on out of sight and hearing, contrary to my instructions. I needed them to help the three coolies with loads over the bad part. They preferred to leave the whole responsibility to me, but I could not bring three heavily loaded men up such slopes without assistance, and there was nothing to do but await their return. In the meantime, I saw to my surprise that a large party had arrived at Camp V. When I dot down I found that Tartarin's hysteria and Righi's malignant stupidity had created yet another muddle.
They had arrived at the camp, bringing with them some seventeen or twenty coolies, and they had not brought any of the things of which we stood in such need. Their behaviour was utterly unintelligible. The doctor did not seem to know what he was saying; his remarks were merely confusedly irritated. He did not seem to be able to answer any of my questions or give any explanation of what had happened in the past. His one idea was to hold a durbar and have himself elected leader in my place. There was no provision in our agreement for any such folly. He pointed out that it was merely a scrap of paper. When the others arrived, an excited argument began. There was no suggestion that I had acted improperly in any way. From first to last it was merely the feeling of foreigners against being bossed by an Englishman. The same thing had happened with Pfannl on Chogo Ri.
On the present occasion, however, the Englishman was in a minority of one. Fortunately, I had never heard that a fact of that sort makes any difference to an Englishman. I did my best to reason with them and quiet them, like the naughty children they were. Reymond had nothing to complain of, and took no part in the discussion. Pache saw how the land lay, and was actively friendly.
Indeed, I had much more to worry me than the nonsense of Tartarin and Righi. They had brought up all these men without any provision for food or shelter and it was now late in the day. The snow was in an absolutely unsafe condition and though I had chosen the route so as to minimize the danger, it was absolutely criminal to send men down. But the mutineers were utterly insensible to the voice of reason. I told the coolies that since they could not stay at Camp V, the best thing they could do was to shelter under the rocks at Camp IV, and they went off and did so. I warned the mutineers that they would certainly be killed if they tried to go down that night; it was perhaps more or less all right for coolies, but for THEM—I knew only too well the extent of Tartarin's ingenuity in producing accidents out of the most apparently unpromising material. They stormed all the more. I ought to have broken the doctor's leg with an axe, but I was too young to take such a responsibility. It would have been hard to prove afterwards that I had saved him by so doing.
To my horror, I found that Pache wanted to go down with them. The blackguards had not even had the decency to bring up his valise. I implored him to wait till the morning. I told him he could have the whole of my sleeping-kit. But nothing would move him. I explained the situation, but I suppose he could not believe that I was telling the literal truth when I said that Guillarmod was at the best of times a dangerous imbecile on mountains, and that now he had developed into a dangerous maniac. I shook hands with him with a breaking heart, for I had got very fond of the man, and my last words were, “Don't go; I shall never see you again. You'll be a dead man in ten minutes.” I had miscalculated once more; a quarter of an hour later he was still alive.
Less than half an hour later, Reymond and I heard frantic cries. No words could be distinguished, but the voices were those of Tartarin and Righi. Reymond proposed going to the rescue at once, but it was now nearly dark and there was nobody to send, owing to Righi's having stripped us of men. There was, furthermore, no indication as to why they were yelling. They had been yelling all day. Reymond had not yet taken his boots off. He said he would go and see if he could see what was the matter, and call me if my assistance were required. He went off and did not return or call. So I went to sleep and rose the next morning at earliest dawn and went to investigate.
The task was easy. About fifteen minutes below Camp V the track had been carried away over a width of 20 feet (seven short paces). The angle of the slope was roughly 20y degrees (limits of error 25 degrees and 12 degrees). The avalanche had stopped 250 feet below, and at this point it was from 40 to 60 feet in width; that is to say, it was an absolutely trivial avalanche. A single man could have ridden it head first without the slightest risk of hurting himself. The width of the avalanche (and other signs) showed that the six men on a 120-foot rope had been walking on each other's heels, the rope being festooned so as to be worse than useless. A man struggling in loose show avalanche has a fair chance of getting to the top, but if every time he does so he is jerked away by the rope, it will be the greatest piece of luck if he is not killed. Tartarin, who should have been the last man on a descent in order to watch the others, to see that the rope was kept stretched, and to check any slip at the outset, was leading.
Here is Righi's account of the accident.
It is noteworthy that some seventeen coolies without ropes, axes, boots, claws and Tartarin, had crossed the fatal spot quite safely.
I found these men perfectly happy. They had taken my advice and passed the night under the rocks by Camp IV. I slowly descended, they following at a short distance. Presently I came to a place where the snow had slipped off the glacier ice for some distance. The angle was decidedly steep, and though I was able to cross it easily enough in my claws, it would not do for the coolies; so I called to them to go higher up over the glacier. But they were afraid to do this. They said they wanted to follow me, which they did, after enlarging my steps with an axe. At the time, I had no doubt that this place was the scene of the accident, if there had been one, of which I was not sure. Anyhow, I could not see how even Tartarin could have come to grief on so easy and safe a slope as the other. But on arrival at Camp III I was able to understand what had happened. Thanks to my habits of accuracy, I had taken careful measurements.
Pache and three of my best coolies had been killed. Tartarin was badly bruised, and thought his spine was damaged. The accident had brought him completely to his senses. He realised that I had been right all along, and was appalled by the prospects of returning to Switzerland and meeting Pache's mother.
Righi, on the other hand, showed only the more what an ill-conditioned cur he was. He had not been hurt at all badly, but his ribs were slightly bruised; he claimed that he had “rupture of the heart”, and spent his time moaning and bellowing. That his sufferings were mostly pure funk was evident from the fact that he forgot all about them directly he was engaged in conversation.
I ought to have been much angrier than I was, for the conduct of the mutineers amounted to manslaughter. By breaking their agreement, they had assumed full responsibility. It was impossible for me to continue with the expedition. My authority had been set at naught, and I would not risk any man's life. Eckenstein had made it the first point of mountaineering that the proper measures invariably reduced the risk of accident to nothing. They wanted me to go on. Righi himself said that the coolies believed the demon of Kangchenjunga was propitiated with the sacrifice of the five men—one for each peak—and would go on in future without fear. He had a little image given him by a Tibetan lama. This had saved his life. He never took any important step without consulting it, and it had now told him that we could climb the mountain without difficulty. Like Queen Victoria on a celebrated occasion I was not amused.
As a matter of fact, the coolies had been very much demoralized by the accident. Small blame to them! I told Righi, as transport officer, to bring down my belongings from Camp V. He parleyed with them, gave it up as hopeless, and turned it over to me. I told the Sirdar to send up men at once to help Salama and Bahadur Singh, who were still at Camp V. He made no difficulty and sent up, not two men, but twelve. They brought everything. I made the necessary arrangements about digging out the corpses and building them a commemorative cairn, which was done. The next day, September 3rd, I left, and reached Darjeeling on Friday.
Here I was faced by an extraordinary circumstance, illustrating the fact that when men lose their heads on mountains they lose them very completely. The money of the expedition was banked against the signature of either myself or Guillarmod. He had written to the manager to ask him to refuse to honour my signature! The bank though he must be out of his mind, and advised me to draw the whole amount so as to be sure that it would be used to pay the coolies the sums due to them. This I did. On the 20th the others arrived. I had all the amounts in proper order. I immediately paid the men what was due, with a reasonable amount of backshish. In view of Tartarin's extraordinary behaviour about money, I was on my guard. He was anxious not to come to a settlement. I, on the other hand, had no further business in Darjeeling, and I naturally asked him to sign a release, which he did.
He became very friendly and asked me to lend him or give him money. My account of the accident having been fairly frank, there was some question of a public controversy.
I wrote accounts of the expedition for the Pioneer of India and The Daily Mail of London. The latter garbled my articles, and I republished them later in Vanity Fair. I used these articles to attack the English Alpine Club. Every incident served for the occasion of some gibe, sarcasm, insult or irony. I had no personal motive, of course, I wished to hold up to ridicule and contempt the set of old women who were knocking the sport on the head by intriguing against any climbers who were not simply polite people pulled up peaks by peasants and proud of it at that. The Alpine Club has done its best to ignore Himalayan Expeditions, as it did to burke every ascent by guideless climbers in the Alps.
The lessons of the Kangchenjunga Expedition were not learnt; so we hear in 1922 the old idiocy that coolies should not start till it is quite warm. The Everest Party repeated the fatal fatuity of the doctor, by putting seven men on one rope, and that without knowing the use of the rope, so that one fall of one man must inevitably drag down the others. When I heard the composition of the Everest Party and its plans, I prepared an article to warn them they were violating every principle of common sense, and could only meet with further failure and disaster. I foretold exactly what would happen, except that I heartily hoped that the Englishmen would be killed and their coolies escape by some miracle.
It was not to be. They made the mistakes against which I had warned them, they had precisely the same kind of accident as in 1905 that resulted from the mutinous violation of my orders; but, just as the Doctor and Righi had escaped with their worthless lives, to go about the world with the manslaughter of their comrades on their consciences, so also it happened in 1922.
But the London Press refused to publish my article. One editor told me that it was a shame to “crab” the Expedition, and that my warnings would give pain to the relations of the party! No, better wait until the accident had happened, and then it would be interesting to point out why it had happened! Of course that is the Journalistic point of view. Disasters should not be prevented. Heaven forbid! We should rather encourage battle, murder and sudden death. Our business is to make the splash. This psychology is one of my reasons for holding the press in horror. I do not believe in restrictions on business enterprise, but it really ought to be made impossible that it should be to anyone's interest to bring about a European War.
On the 23rd Guillarmod came to see me and asked me to say no more in the public Press, as far as he was concerned. On the 24th we discussed the whole matter. He admitted that he had been in the wrong, and excused himself (on the ground of ill-health and nervousness) for his behaviour. I thought I knew him; that he was simply a fool but incapable of malice or treachery. On the 25th he and Righi made a violent attack on me in the columns of a newspaper, but—“out of their own mouths!” Their admissions proved my case. In particular, they blamed the coolies, so I had to write to the paper, “I would most especially call attention to the repeated complaints against the coolies as evidence of incapacity to manage them, and emphasize my own testimony to their steadiness, capacity and good will.”
Guillarmod's overtures had been intended merely to give them time to strike. “Cet animal est trés m‚cant: quand on l'attaque il se défend.” I hit back and cut Guillarmod publicly on the 26th. On the 27th I received the following amazing letter.
I took it at once to a lawyer who warned him that by the Indian Penal Code he was rendering himself liable to a long term in prison. I realised that the man was simply insane with remorse and did not press the charge. On the contrary despite the agreement of the 20th, I agreed to pay him a small sum for certain items which had been overlooked. I went down to Calcutta on the 28th, and a week later accepted an invitation from the Maharaja of Moharbhanj to shoot big game in his province.
I was very sad at heart about the death of my friends, but with regard to the mountain I was in excellent spirits. I had demonstrated beyond doubt the existence of an easy way up. I was sure of being able to establish a main camp within striking distance of the summit, and I had familiarised myself with all the vagaries of the weather and the snow. Cut short as the expedition had been, at its first leap, the actual attainment had not been insignificant. We had reached a height of approximately 23,000 feet, and found life at that altitude as enjoyable and work as easy as anywhere else. I had written a detailed proposal to Eckenstein, suggesting that we should tackle the mountain in 1906—but no foreigners!
STANZA L
I had been so concentrated on Kangchenjunga that the other facts of my life had not glittered perceptibly. They had kept up with me, but I hardly knew it. They were now to shine, the bushel of Kangchenjunga having been rudely removed.
My instinct against The Book of the Law had apparently had its way. It was as if the events of eighteen months before had never taken place. I was going on with Magick on the old lines, without any particular ambition, but quietly exercising the powers already obtained. For instance, I had established regular communications with Soror F. [Elaine Simpson]. We had long interviews, visiting each other alternately. I was a little better than she was, but her body was quite material enough to impress all the senses.
It occurs to me that I ought to give further details. Our astral bodies, as we had got them, were replicas of our physical bodies, save that they were slightly larger. Hers, for example, was just over six feet high instead of 5 feet 7. The body was self-luminous and partially transparent, so that I could see the background behind her, much as through a muslin curtain. The substance of the body appeared homogeneous. It was usually clothed and crowned. The materials were of the same quality of matter as the body, but could be distinguished from flesh by such optical devices as colour and reflections. We moved according to the laws of the astral plane; that is, without making the normal physical actions, though we were able to use our limbs in the ordinary way. We communicated, sometimes by audible speech, sometimes by direct transmission of thought such as occurs every day in ordinary life, when one knows what a friend is going to say before he says it.
One very curious phenomenon must be recorded. In the early days we had arranged special hours for our interviews by calculating the difference of time due to longitude. We now summoned each other by means of the astral bell. But on comparison of our records we discovered an astounding fact. Although we agreed about the character of the interview, the subject of conversation etc., we found that the time did not necessarily correspond. That is: suppose I went to see her at midnight on Friday (India), she did not see me at 4 a.m. on Saturday (England) but at some other time which might be later or earlier. I could easily imagine a delay in my appearance, but it seemed to me nonsense that I should have arrived before I started! At that time I understood little of the nature of time.
My lyric gift had begun to sit up and take notice a little after the shock of the realization of all its aspirations. I had begun to write again. Some of my poems (for instance, "Prayer" and "Via Vitas") at this period were definitely rationalistic; and I wrote a certain amount of prose on the same basis, but I was already aware that the rationalist position was wooden and shallow. The members of the Rationalist Press Association were no less narrow-minded sectarians than the Evangelicals. They had the same suburban point of view, the same prudish exclusiveness; they were shocked by any fact which did not immediately fit into their framework, and angrily denied its existence.
I was shifting slowly back to Buddhism; though even more impatient than before of Buddhists, their parochial morality and their emphasis on the evils of existence. But I wrote a few lyrics about Love and nature which are still among my best. I may mention “The Song”.
Dance a measure Of the tiniest whirls! Shake out your treasure Of cinnamon curls! Tremble with pleasure O wonder of girls!
Rest is bliss, And bliss is rest, Give me a kiss If you love me best! Hold me like this With my hand on your breast!
There was also “Said”, inspired by my week in Cairo: “Patchouli”, a shot of rhapsody upon African and Asiatic themes; “The Jilt”, a piece of sadistic exultation over my wife's cruelty to Howell, who we heard was stricken to the heart by the thunderbolt of her marriage. Then there was “The Eyes of Pharaoh”, a terrific presentation of the mystery of Egypt, and “Banzai”, a poem in praise of Japan, then at war with Russia. There was a new note in my work: that of humour. “The Beauty and the Bikkhu” is a versification of a Buddhist legend. The original is unconsciously funny, and I brought this out, while preserving the sublimity of the story. Again “Immortality” develops an idea in the Gorgias of Plato that after death one goes on doing very much what one did before. The style is at once passionate, pictorial, and terrifying and witty.
Another new string to my lyre; I had been reproaching myself for my ignorance of the Sufi doctrines, and intended to cross Persia on my way back to England. For this purpose I began to study the language with a Munshi. I began to imitate the poets of Iran. “Ali and Hassan” is a paraphrase from Alf Laylah Wa Laylah. “Al Malik” is a ghazal; that is, a series of couplets with a monorime. The first two lines and each successive even line rime with each other. In Darjeeling (on my return) I had had a brief but intense liaison with a Nepali girl, Tenbuft. I celebrated this passion in a rondel “Tarshitering”.
NEPALI LOVE-SONG
O kissable Tarshitering! The wild bird calls its mate—and I? Come to my tent this night of May, and cuddle close and crown me king! Drink, drink our fill of love at last—a little while and we shall die, O kissable Tarshitering!
Droop the long lashes; close the eyes with eyelids like beetle's wing! Light the slow smile, ephemeral as ever a painted butterfly, Certain to close into a kiss, certain to fasten on me and sting!
Nay? Are you coy? Then I will catch your hips and hold you wild and shy Until your very struggles set your velvet buttocks all a-swing, Until their music lulls you to unfathomable ecstasy, O kissable Tarshitering!
I must explain that oriental modesty does not allow the self-respecting poet to introduce the name of a woman, just as in Shakespeare's time it was considered scandalous for a woman to appear on the stage. I respected this convention and replaced the name of Tenguft by a male name, which I thought euphonious and suitable to my scheme of time and scansion.
Moharbhanj was an ideal place for meditation. I had absolute leisure, I was at the top of my form physically and every other way, and I could not start anything serious until my wife and child arrived, which they did not do until October 29th. I was in a wild district with no one to talk to; it afforded the maximum opportunity for taking stock of my life, finding out what the past meant and taking aim for the future.
The Durga Puja was in course. I was able to appreciate the enthusiasm of the aboriginal Hindu much better than I could have done in Calcutta, where the corrosion of civilisation has eaten into primitive practice.
Moharbhanj, though only thirteen hours from Calcutta, is as far from it morally as it is from London. The people were unspoilt. For the first time I liked Hindus. The Maharajah was away for the day. He had sent his Minister of Public Works to meet me and entertain me until his return. This gentleman, whose name was Martin, had taken a high degree at Oxford, and had studied science and engineering very thoroughly. No one could have suspected that he had a Bengali grandmother. But in the first twenty-four hours I had discovered the truth of the aphorism “Blood will tell”. For all his European education, he believed in the most primitive superstitions, from ghosts and witches to mysterious medicines compounded of gold and other reputedly mystical ingredients.
The next day the Maharajah returned. I found him an extremely interesting and delightful companion. One could hardly expect less from the direct descendant of a peacock. I am sorry to say that he did not take his ancestry seriously. He had exchanged his illusions for another set, far less fascinating, far less inspiring and equally absurd. He believed in Herbert Spencer and John Stuart Mill. One of his stories is extremely instructive. If it were graven upon the eye-corners, it would be a warning to such as would be warned! There are no principles of politics, economics and the rest; it is all balderdash. More, it is a damnable heresy and a dangerous delusion to apply the theories of the Thames valley to the practice of the Coromandel coast.
Moharbhanj is a province on the sea-board of Orissa. In my wanderings I came to a range of hills of unparalleled wonder. It was between ten and twenty miles in length, and some 3,000 feet high. The marvel of it is that it is composed very largely of pure iron pyrites, whose bare outcrop forms huge rounded bosses. I first saw these hills at sunset, and they glowed with crimson splendour too vivid to be merely mineral. It was like blood on a bull's shoulder in the sunlight. The Maharajah knew the commercial value of his mountains, but he had no coal; to exploit his treasure he needed a light railway from the mountains to the sea.
When he came to the throne he nobly determined to confer the benefits of liberal principles upon his people. Now he was not only the Maharajah of Moharbhanj, but its Zemindar or landlord. He wished to create a peasantry of prosperous and independent freeholders. He understood that it would be fatal to make them a present of the land; so he made a law by which any man who cultivated his land continuously for fifteen years would at the end of that time become its owner. But he reckoned without the Marwaris. This is a wandering tribe or caste of money-lenders. As is generally known, the greatest pride of the Hindu is to make his daughter's wedding as splendiferous as possible. For this purpose he will get himself into debt for generations ahead as recklessly as the most progressive nation will do for their own pet phantom of glory.
So as soon as the new law was proclaimed, the Marwaris descended upon Moharbhanj like locusts, and advanced sums beyond the wildest imaginations of the peasants, to them. The marriages were magnificent; so were the mortgages. At the end of fifteen years the land belonged not to the cultivator but to the alien usurer. The Maharajah could not even see that he had ruined himself and his subjects. He told me with honest pride, “I have conferred great benefit upon my people.” Yet he was in a comical state of distress because the Marwaris refused to grant him the concession to build the light railway so that he could melt up his mountains! In the meanwhile the people were poorer than before, though the administration of his revenues by the British had increased his personal income from three to eighteen lakhs of rupees in less than twenty years.
He told me one enthralling story about his Raj. A great deal of it is unexplored and impenetrable jungle. In the clearing are villages inhabited by very primitive folk of a different race to the bulk of the population. I saw a good deal of these people. They go in many cases naked. At the most, they wear a rudimentary loin cloth. They have a language of their own which possesses a few affinities with other dialects. It possesses less than 300 words, some 250 of which are classed as obscene. The men are armed with bows and arrows, or occasionally spears, some of which show great skill of metallurgy and workmanship as well as a knowledge of certain branches of mechanics, and a marked sense of beauty.
The women are free from the ordinary Hindu inhibitions, and their breasts are the most beautiful that I have ever seen, not excepting those of the women of Tehuantepec. They are small and well proportioned. Even when the women are mothers, they do not lose their form. The whole breast stands firm and points upwards. To the eye of the artist, the female breast of the European is a hideous deformity. Even in the case of the most beautiful women, it breaks the line of the body, and it makes one think of a cow. But these women bear their breasts in triumph. One thinks of the phallophorus in a pagan procession.
Men and women alike are admirably proportioned, muscular and active. Their habit of carrying loads on the head—a coolie carries 3 pounds, which, considering the heat of the plains, is equivalent to the 50 pounds of the hillman—gives them perfect balance and makes them light on their feet. The skin is of that superb velvety black with is really rich deep purple. Primitive as these people are, they are as capable of aesthetics and the popes and princes of the Renaissance. They love with rapacious intensity, adorned with all the arts of Aphrodite.
These folk are considered “wild men of the woods” by the sophisticated Hindus of the town. Yet there is a third proportional.
In the jungle live people known as Jewans, whom I hesitate to describe as a tribe, because nothing is known of their habits. Even their appearance has not been satisfactorily described. It is said by some that no white man has ever seen one, though others say that one or two have done so. Even the folk of the villages on the confines of the jungle have no knowledge of them, yet they carry on with them a regular traffic.
Certain places outside the village are marked out, usually by white stones, and here they deposit rice and other products of cultivation at nightfall. In the morning these goods are found to have been replaced by various products of the jungle. It is said that this commerce has never been degraded by dishonesty. Attempts have been made to catch the Jewans in the act of making the exchange, but they have always proved too wary.
The Maharajah did not shoot, but appointed a forest officer named d'Elbroux to introduce me to the bears and tigers. The only animal that I was not allowed to shoot was the elephant. One has to be a viceroy or a travelling royalty to indulge in that sport. D'Elbroux, in his youth, had come to grips with a bear. He had been very badly mauled, and many of his features had been replaced by metal plates. He told me that he had lain in the jungle wounded for more than two days before help arrived.
My only noteworthy shooting adventure was this. D'Elbroux had prepared a machan. There were some 700 beaters. The first animal that broke was a bear, whom I settled with a shot from the 10-bore. The second barrel jarred off and the surprise knocked me on my back. The bullet struck a tree as thick as a telegraph pole, and cut it in two, so that it fell across the machan and very nearly crushed one of the men.
My best memory of Moharbhanj is not of tigers and such small fowl, but of elephants, which I was not allowed to shoot. I have always felt that my life has numerous points of contact with Alice in Wonderland, and I now come to the incident, “The Elephants did tease so!”
I went out one night to a bhul, or salt lick, in a tree overlooking which a machan had been built for me. A particularly fine tiger was reputed to visit the place every night. I took up my vigil immediately after dinner. A three-quarter moon was due to rise about half-past eight. We kept extremely quiet, of course. I dislike shooting from a machan, exactly as I dislike coarse fishing. One cannot do anything to help things along. On the contrary, one has to avoid the slightest action.
The waiting sounds as if it might be good practice for meditation. I found it quite the opposite, for the object of one's vigil is itself a distraction, and if one concentrated on the sport, it would of course disappear, as had already happened to my nose and my navel. Soon after dark I began to hear the noises of the jungle, from the rustling of leaves and grasses as small animals moved cautiously about their business to the distant roaring of the tiger. Once or twice a shadowy shape made the darkness that brooded over the salt lick deeper, but there was no sense in risking a shot till moonrise. I could hardly see my own hands, much less the sights of my rifle.
When the moon rose at last, the few animals that had arrived vanished with equal stealth. There was a great silence in the jungle and the roars of the tigers (there were several all round the compass) became less frequent and less near.
All of a sudden I became aware of a tremendous disturbance. It was not exactly a noise—I'm inclined to think that it may have been a smell. I cannot say definitely more than this, that I had the impression that something enormous was going on.
I had been lying flat in the machan, listening. I raised my head cautiously. The silvern glades were now mysteriously peopled with gigantic shapes. It was a herd of elephants! I counted twenty-four of them. My shikari whispered that there would be no shooting that night; no other animals would venture into the neighbourhood of the master of the jungle. I realized, moreover, that my position was one of extreme danger. The machan was high from the ground; but had the elephants winded me and taken alarm, my tree would have been snapped like a twig. But I had no time to think of danger; I was thrilled with exaltation. I sat up and spent the night watching the elephants as they went about their business. It was the most fascinating vision that had ever been vouchsafed to me on the material plane.
I did not grudge the loss of my night's sport. I was not really very keen about the shooting. I was in a very curious frame of mind. I loved to wake at dawn on my camp bed and meditate and read Kant, Berkeley and Firdausi. Persian fascinated me more than any other language had ever done and I revelled in the ideas of the Sufis. Their esoteric symbolism delighted me beyond measure. I took it into my head to go one better than my previous performance in the way of inventing poets and their productions.
I spent most of my time writing ghazals, purporting to be by a certain Abdullah al Haji (Haji, with a soft “h”, satirist, as opposed to Haji with a hard “h”, pilgrim) of Shiraz. I caused him to flourish about 1600 A.D., but gave to the collection of his ghazals the title Bagh-i-Muattar (The Scented Garden), which implies the date 1906, the value of the Arabic letters of the title adding up to the equivalent of that year of the Hegira. I also invented an Anglo-Indian Major to find, translate and annotate the manuscript, an editor to complete the work of that gallant soldier (killed in South Africa), and a Christian clergyman to discuss the matter of the poem from the peculiar point of view of high Anglicanism.
The ghazals themselves are rendered sometimes in the supposed original monorime, sometimes in prose, and the annotations contain a great deal of the more esoteric information about the East, which I had picked up from time to time. It is especially to be noted that, although I have packed every kind of Magical and Mystical lore into the volume, there is nowhere any reference to the Book of the Law. I was setting my whole strength against the Secret Chiefs. I was trying to forget the whole business.
The book itself is a complete treatise on Mysticism, expressed in the symbolism prescribed by Persian piety. It describes the relations of God and man, explains how the latter falls from his essential innocence by allowing himself to be deceived by the illusion of matter. His religion cease to be real and become formal; he falls into sin and suffers the penalty thereof. God prepares the pathway of regeneration and brings him through shame and sorrow to repentance, thus preparing the mystical union which restores man to his original privileges, free will, immortality, the perception of Truth and so on.
I put the last ounce of myself into this book. My previous efforts in the same direction would have deceived nobody, but the Bagh-i-Muatar, despite my inability to produce the Persian original—my excuse was that it was rare and held most sacred and most secret, but was being copied for me—persuaded even experienced scholars that it was genuine. It was issued by Probsthain & Co., by private subscription, in 1910. I have heard of a copy changing hands at fifty guineas.
This spurt of genius is an eloquent portrait of my mind at this time. I was absolutely convinced of the supreme importance of devoting my life to attaining Samadhi, conscious communion with the Immanent Soul of the Universe. I believed in mysticism. I understood perfectly the essence of its method and the import of its attainment, but I felt compelled to express myself in a satirical and (it might appear to some) almost scandalous form. I testified to the tremendous Truth by piling fiction upon fiction. I did not know it. I did not suspect it, but the Bagh-i-Muattar is a symptom of supreme significance. I was on the brink of a totally new development.
On Sunday, October 22nd, I had an astral interview with Soror F. which brought my up with a shock. She was accompanied by a golden hawk, in whom I later recognized one of the Secret Chiefs of the A∴A∴. The conversation turned on the subject of the Great Work. It was defined as the creation of a new universe. The interview left me spiritually prostrate. I had been perfectly happy with my programme, doing a little work there and a little work there; Magick on Monday and Teaching on Tuesday, so to speak; advising any applicant that approached me; editing and publishing any documents that fell into my hands.
But the Secret Chiefs were determined not to allow me to fool myself. When they picked me out to do their work they meant me to get busy and do it, and were going to see that I did. They did not insist on my taking up the work of the New Aeon. They knew their business too well. They knew that I should not be ready until I had undergone the proper preparation. They were content therefore with stirring me up to tackle the problem of my relations with the Universe as seriously as the Buddha had done twenty-five centuries before.
I rode into Moharbhanj hardly aware of my surroundings. I was criticizing myself with ruthless severity. I do not remember whether The Book of the Law so much as crossed my mind. If so, I must have put it angrily aside. All I did know was that I should not have a moment's peace again until I had solved the great problem and I had no idea how to tackle it. I began to set my ideas in order.
Returned again to Calcutta. One day I went over to Kalighat and sacrificed a goat to a goddess. That night I was sitting alone reading. She appeared to me and inspired me to write a poem to her. I quote a few of the best stanzas:
KALI
1 There is an idol in my house By whom the sandal always steams. Alone, I make a black carouse With her to dominate my dreams. With skulls and knives she keeps control (O Mother Kali!) of my soul.
2 She is crowned with emeralds like leaves, And rubies flame from either eye; A rose upon her bosom heaves, Turquois and Lapis Lazuli. She hath a kirtle like a maid— Amethyst, amber, pearl, and jade!
3 Her face is fashioned like a moon; Her breasts are tongues of pointed jet; Her belly of opal fairly hewn; And round about her neck is set The holy rosary, skull by skull, Polished and grim and beautiful!
5 Her ruby-studded brow is calm; Her eyes shine like some sleepy flood; Her breast is oliban and balm; Her tongue lolls out, a-dripping blood; She swings my body to and fro; She breaks me on the wheel of woe!
11 This then I seek, O woman-form! O god embowelled in curves of bronze! The shuddering of a sudden storm To mix me with thy minions The lost, who wait through endless night, And wait in vain, to see the light.
14 Not by a faint and fairy tale We shadow forth the immortal way By symbols exquisitely pale Avail to lure the secret grey Of his endeavour who proceeds By doing to abolish deeds.
15 Not by the pipings of a bird In skies of blue in fields of gold, But by a fierce and loathly word The abomination must be told The holy word must twist its spell From hemp of madness, grown in hell.
19 There is no light, nor any motion, There is no mass, nor any sound. Still, in the lampless heart of ocean Fasten me down, and hold me drowned Within thy womb, within thy thought, Where there is nought—where there is nought.
This poem is important as foreshadowing my final solution of the problem of evil and sorrow, the interpretation of illusion by the initiate and its transmutation into truth.
I saw as usual a good deal of Thornton [Edward Thornton]. One morning, driving down the Maidan in his tum-tum, I said, “I cannot formulate a plan of action of any kind because there is no true continuity in phenomena.” He turned on me quite simply, and said, “Quite so, but there is equally no continuity in yourself.” That, of course, was no news to me. It was Hume's answer to Berkeley, for one thing. It was the essence of Sakkaya-Ditthi, for another. The ground was cut away from under my feet. At the moment, my consciousness failed to pick up the full purport of this proposition, for I found myself suddenly forced into action by a set of circumstances of which I had no control, and which bore no relation to any past purpose of my life. But I believe they were arranged for me by the Secret Chiefs.
My wife was due to arrive with the baby on the 29th, and the natural thing would have been to see a little of Calcutta society, especially as I was naturally a bit of a lion, and then stroll across Asia somewhere, at our leisure. The Secret Chiefs arranged for me to be in a situation where I was at their mercy. They meant to initiate me whether I liked it or not. And this is how they went to work.
I set forth after dinner, one fate-fraught night, to try to get unguided to a street of infamy called “Culinga Bazar” from the corner of the Maidan. It was a worthy feat to attempt; for I had been to the Bazar only once before, in 1901; and then I had been driven to it in the dark from afar distant part of Calcutta. The night was extremely dark; the streets were lighted only by the flares and fireworks of the Native festival—the Durga-Puja—which was in course, and all semblance of honesty or decency quitted the houses before I had advanced three minutes into the bowels of Calcutta.
As I did so, my savage instincts surged to my brain. I “smelt” the direction almost at once; and as I got into this state, I became aware of impending trouble of some sort, as savages are. That “eerie feeling”, alone in a desperate section of a foreign city at night? Nine to one it is plain funk. But as I had already admitted, I am the biggest coward alive; and I have constantly forced myself to face my fear. So not I was not tingling with the pleasurable sense of confronting the Unknown; I had the definite sense of being trailed. The sensation angered me; I tried to ascribe it to imagination. I forgot it, and I went my way.
Presently, however, I turned aside for a moment from the dim street I was treading into an alley guarded by a black archway. I had no idea where it might lead; I simply wished to withdraw from the observation of my fellows for a few seconds, for reasons which are fully described and justified in Carpenter's Physiology.
I passed through the archway. It was as “dark as the pit”. (I don't know what pit may be meant.) The alley beyond was somewhat lighter; the sky loomed dull blue-grey above.
I noticed various doorways in the walls; also one at the end of the alley; I was in a cul-de-sac. And then I saw, faint glimpses in the gloom, the waving white of native robes. Men were approaching me and I was aware—though hardly by sight—that they moved in a semi-military order, in single file. There was nothing to alarm me in this; it is the habit of natives to march thus. And yet I was pungently aware that some evil was meant. As it happened, I was dressed in dark clothes and my face burnt deep brown. I effaced myself against the wall.
Three of the men passed me; then they turned. I was surrounded. Strong hands gripped my arms; greedy hands sought my pockets. I barked out sharp orders: they should have no doubt that I was a Sahib. For all answer I saw the pallid gleam of a knife.
I must really break off to say that I have always found the psychology of this incident enthralling. It stands out in my memory in alto-relievo.
I have never on any other occasion had so much time to think—I am afraid I express it badly. I mean that I was acutely conscious of a few well-marked thoughts, without the usual gradations, sub-thoughts, connections and so forth, that make it hard—in ordinary life—to discriminate between conscious and unconscious thought.
On this night I was as primitive as an ape. My thoughts stand out stark as stars on a background of utter blackness. I had become, as by an enchanter's spell, the primaeval caveman. Perhaps the long strain and horror of the Kangchenjunga tragedy had prepared me for this sudden outcropping of atavism.
However that might be, I remember nothing but these harsh clear thoughts, uninterfered with by the usual mental processes. I felt myself a “human leopard”; something in me warned me that—contrary to all common sense and evidence—I had lured these men. I was, so to say, a Q-ship! I remember the resistance of my civilised self to this insane idea; I was an English gentleman, attacked without provocation by a band of common robbers.
I had given the order that they should unhand me; they had disobeyed a Sahib; my life was in danger. This being the case, I was right to act in self-defence. I would press the trigger of the Webley on which my forefinger had rested since the first glimpse of white robes in the alley. I did so.
There was a slight click.
Now, my Webley holds five cartridges; I invariably keep the hammer down on an empty chamber. The chamber will only revolve freely when the gun is at half-cock. Therefore, thought I, “with omnipotence at my command and eternity at my disposal” I must have been fiddling unconsciously with the weapon, set it at half-cock and twiddled the chamber round until the hammer was down, not on the empty space, but on the cartridge next to it, so that the gun, in cocking itself under trigger-pressure, had dropped the hammer on the void. True; but then, to correct the error, it was only necessary to press the trigger a second time.
I have purposely described these thoughts in detail, to emphasize the fact that my mind was working in a more leisurely manner than I had ever known it to do. It is all the more amazing to reflect that my whole train of thought, except the final detail, what to do next, was totally inaccurate!
I pressed the trigger again. My arms were held firmly to my sides, but even so I was too economically minded to fire through my pocket; I managed to raise the muzzle above the edge.
A violent explosion followed.
I had fired without aim, in pitch blackness; I could not even see the white robes of the men who held me. In the lightning moment of the flash I saw only that Whitnesses were falling backwards away from me, as if I had upset a screen by accident.
The blackness which followed the flash was Cimmerian. My eyes are naturally very slow to accommodate themselves to change of illumination—I have never met any man equally helpless in case of sudden diminution of light.
I had no thought soever as to whether my shot might have hit anybody. There was not the faintest sound; but the alley seemed somehow empty.
I do not know whether I stepped over fallen bodies or not. (I was facing the archway when I fired.)
I thought: I will get out of this alley at once. Those people may be lying in ambush in the archway, especially as I do not know whether there are doors opening out of it or not.
I will keep my forefinger on the trigger and at the same time light a match to make sure of the archway.
When I get out into the open street, I will walk away very quickly and very quietly, and go straight to the Dharamtolla road and take a gharry, and drive to Edward Thornton and tell him what has happened.
I carried out this programme to the letter.
And now comes a curious circumstance. Me experiments in Mexico City in “making myself invisible” have been recorded with considerable detail; and it will be remembered that I was far from satisfied with the results. I had reached the “flickering” condition, but I had never succeeded in “putting myself out” completely.
But on this occasion—when my unconscious self seems to have had me in hand throughout—I made myself invisible right enough. The report of the pistol, the screams (for all I know!) of the wounded or frightened men, and the alarm given by the fugitives, had aroused the entire district. An European was a rare bird in that quarter at that time of night; and no native would be likely to have such a gun. No doubt, too, the whole assault had been watched from the beginning; and I must have been denounced descriptively. I remember clearly enough noting with a type of amusement which I must really admit to have something “devilish” in its composition, that the streets through which I passed were filled with wildly excited crowds, all looking for me. “But he, passing through the midst of them, went his way.” I am aware that this sounds like a fish story. But as a matter of fact people who lived with me for the last three years or so have noticed that I make myself invisible quite frequently, and that (apparently) when I am not aware that I am doing so.
There is a peculiar type of self-absorption which makes it impossible for people to be aware of one. In these recent cases, the observer who could see me quite plainly because in sympathy with me, could also see that the other people in the street—or wherever it was—could not see me at all. My theory is that the mental state in question distracts people's attention from one automatically, as a conjurer does deliberately. I can transfer this property of invisibility, however, even to inanimate objects. For instance, a police officer recently came to my house in search of a certain thing which he named. I admitted that I possessed it; I showed it to him; I insisted on his seeing, smelling, tasting and touching it; but he left the house and reported that he had been unable to find it. In this particular instance I knew what I was doing. I deliberately overwhelmed his mind with my earnestness in helping him and other objects of thought. I cut the connecting link between his senses and his mind.
But we digress. I enjoyed lazily the splendour of the drowsy night as I jogged along with lighted pipe—never tobacco tasted better—in the broken-down old gharry up to Thornton's.
I had good reason to be proud. I had been the butt of every bully at school, I had suffered the agonies of knowing myself a coward and a weakling. My whole life seemed at times to be one vast and slimy subterfuge to cozen Death.
Yet in the past month there had been a dozen outrages upon Europeans in Calcutta, some of them culminating in the most brutal murder. And I was the only Englishman who had come out on top. I had lost four rupees, eight annas, it is true; but I had won the victory, one against six.
Thornton was in bed when I arrived; but I had no hesitation in making his “bera” admit me. I told him my story and opened my revolver. Then only did I discover that my elaborate course of reasoning was entirely at fault! I had NOT monkeyed with the weapon and the hammer HAD been down on the empty chamber as was right. What had happened was that the first cartridge had failed to explode; for there was the dent in the cap; once again had Nature, simple and sufficient, mocked the pomposity of the human intelligence!
Now, concluded I, hadn't I better go to the police and have these ruffians rounded up?
Thornton was half asleep, but his mocking eye expressed a more than godlike pity for my idiocy.
“Go to bed,” he murmured in his dreams; “come round after Chota Hazri in the morning and I'll take you to the right man.”
My indignation subsided. I agreed. I withdrew. I slept. I bathed. I breakfasted. I went to Thornton.
Thornton took me to a Scottish solicitor named MacNair. I brought out my indignation, its hair nicely brushed, and parted exactly in the middle. MacNair remembered what his ancestors (who, at the time of the Flood, had a boat of their ain) thought about Caution. “Go to Garth,” was his considered opinion.
Garth was one of the most brilliant barristers in Calcutta. I brought out my indignation again, but its hair got slightly ruffled, and I am not sure but what there was a speck of dust on its collar. I protested violently that I wanted to go to the police.
“Well,” said Garth, “Curzon and Fraser are busy with the Partition of Bengal, for reasons of purely administrative convenience; and it is singularly unfortunate that the measure will break the political power of the Bengali into a lot of dirty little bits. Their hearts bleed for Bengal. So, if you should have happened to have hit somebody last night, they will be very indignant and bring you to trial. You will be instantly acquitted, but they will invent some scheme for having you tried again, and acquitted again, to show the sincerity of their love for the Bengali, whom they are out to smash.”
“Then you advise me,” I said innocently, “to say nothing?”
“Indeed no,” he said tempestuously, “as a sworn barrister, it is my duty to advise you to report the whole affair immediately to the police.”
I became more innocent that ever. “Well, I don't see how I can throw any light on the matter. (I was still ignorant of the effect, if any, of the shot.)
He bellowed with laughter. “You can throw a whole flood of light on it,” he shouted.
My Quaker ancestors knocked at the door of my dull mind, I suppose. “Would you do it yourself?” I asked meekly.
“Well,” he said more soberly, “you'd be acquitted of course. A man doesn't stroll out after dinner to murder strangers. But you'd be kept hanging about Calcutta indefinitely; and an unscrupulous man, I'm afraid, might be tempted to hold his tongue and clear out of British India p.d.q.”
My Quaker ancestors told me what to do. I said sternly, but sadly: “Then I suppose it is my duty to go to the police at once. Where is my gharry?” The great barrister wrong my hand in silent sympathy.
But it has been one of the guiding principles of my life never to go into a game unless there is a sporting chance. It is silly to be tried for murder if there is no possibility of conviction. All the bubbles are gone from the champagne.
So I waited two days more, still unaware whether my shot had told, and went to meet my wife and child at the wharf.
“How are you?” she exclaimed dramatically. My prosaic reply was, “You've got here just in time to see me hanged!”
Thornton gave a dinner party in our honour that night. My wife sat at his right hand. I saw that she was upset about something. I had had no opportunity to talk to Thornton alone before dinner. He kept on giving a curious gesture and then raising two fingers. My stupid mind could not imagine what he was driving at.
After dinner he took me and Rose aside for a moment. The unimaginable had happened. My single shot had gone clean through the abdomen of the man with the knife and lodged in the spine of the villain behind him. They had been taken to hospital and made a full confession of their crime.
So the next morning the Standard gave me my need of publicity. Column three of the main page gave the story of the attempted robbery. The man with the gun was thought to be a sailor from one of the ships in the harbour; the police offered a reward for his apprehension. Column five contained an interview with the hero of the expedition to Kangchenjunga.
“They will go round the ships,” said Thornton, “and they they'll have a shot at the hotels. Get out and get out quick!”
“Darling sweetheart lovey-dovey silly great big she-ass!” I whispered to my wife, “would you rather walk across Persia or across China?”
The wretched woman knew no geography. All she knew about Persia was rugs and Omar Khayyam; all she knew about China was opium smoking, porcelain and tea. She was fed up with Omar, who was at that time deplorably the rage in this wasp-witted country. “My ownest own,” she purred, “let's go through China!”
We hastily engaged an Ayah for the baby. This female was hideous, ill-mannered and untrustworthy; she claimed to be a Roman Catholic, so as to conceal the fact that her caste would have nothing to do with her; but she was the only Ayah available, so off we went. The one honest human being in the party was dear old Shikari, Salama Tantra. The loyal staunch old hound! He never flinched, he never failed; he had all the innocence of a child and all the wisdom of Pythagoras; the courage to face the Unknown—which Indians almost always fear to the limit—and the gentleness which goes with great strength of body and soul. Peace be to thee, old friend, where'er thou be; almost thy memory makes me wish the foolish wish for Halhalla, for the Happy Hunting-grounds, where men who have done great deeds renew their ancient friendships, and—let us hope—rather than gossip of old battles over tankards of metheglin, have fierce fresh light in their eyes to plan and to achieve things greater in that real world where Soul is hampered less by body than in this dim dull shadow-life of earth, where all the fruits turn ashen in the mouth, the gold becomes dry leaves, and nothing lives but that which holds it fief from the true Lord of Life, the nobility whose patent is true manly Virtue. Salama Tantra, peace to thee and thine—the peace that follows victory, the Victory of the Soul of Everyman!
The voyage to Rangoon was uneventful and delightful. The weather was perfect; for a wonder, the shores and spine of western Burma were on show. There was a fearful fascination in those deadly beauties. I cursed again the fate that had driven me back in 1902 from the sombre slopes of the Arakans. I had rather I had left my bones to Bleach upon those pestilential peaks.
Yet my mind—thanks be to the most high eternal Gods!—can never rest for more than an albatross's glide upon the slopes of the past. Today, writing my Memories, I feel as if I were playing a sort of practical joke upon myself. I am hot on the trail of the Future. I can imagine myself on my death-bed, spent utterly with lust to touch the next world, like a boy asking for his first kiss from a woman.
Beyond Burma lay mysterious China; I conjured up a cloud of amusing phantasies. Romance and adventure. I am incurable; though I have had all the good thinks of life, nearly all my life, though I no longer value them or enjoy them for themselves, I still enjoy the idea of them. I embrace hardship and privation with ecstatic delight; I want everything that the world holds; I would go to prison or to the scaffold for the sake of the experience. I have never grown out of the infantile belief that the universe was made for me to suck. I grow delirious to contemplate the delicious horrors that are certain to happen to me. This is the keynote of my life, the untrammelled delight in every possibility of existence, potential or actual. Fear had been eliminated from me by the fact that I look back with the keenest interest and pleasure to the events which at the time were torture unassuaged.
Imagine, then, how I gloried in the glow of the silken waters about the ship, in the fantastically immaterial outlines of the Arakan hills, in the gloom of the gracious frondage of the forests, in the curves of the cobra coast, in the sinister stories of wreck and piracy which haunt that desolate abyss through which we are steaming, where for nine months of the year one can scarce distinguish between sky and sea, so dark and damp is the air, so subtly steaming the swell of Ocean; while beyond, as in a hashish dream, arose the highlands of China, provinces all but unknown even to civilised Chinese themselves. There, primrose to purple, was the promise of undreamed-of tribes of men, strangely tattooed and dressed, with awful customs and mysterious rites, legends beyond imagination and yet brutally actual, folk with sublimity carven of simplicity and depravity woven of the most complex madness.
I went toward China, my veins bursting with some colossal bliss that I had never yet experienced. I boiled with love for the unknown, the more so that my brain was overcharged with grisly imaginings bred of Octave Mirbeau's “Jardin des Supplices,” combined with fervid actualities born of the feeling that I was (after all) treading, though reverently and afar off, in the footsteps of my boyhood's hero, Richard Francis Burton.
The approaches to Rangoon are of the most turbulent kind. The river is always the same violent angry dirty flood. It seems to be desperately annoyed with itself about something, possibly at having to pass through Rangoon, which is a wretchedly provincial and artificial town, saved from utter insignificance by one crowing glory, the Shwe Dagon Pagoda.
The Buddhists of Burma cannot be induced to do anything which might contribute to their welfare or that of their religion; but they are ridiculously lavish in building new dagobas or regilding old ones. Shortly before my arrival an immense sum of money had been collected to lay plate of pure gold on the Htee of the Shwe Dagon, and while this operation was in progress, a tigress indiscreetly walked into the city one night, climbed the scaffolding and was shot by an Englishman. The outrage to the community, which objects to the slaying, even by accident, of an insect, was causing serious political trouble. Their most holy shrine defiled by deliberate murder! There was also considerable friction between the petty English authorities and the Buddhist Ponggis of European extraction who were trying to settle in Rangoon, live the holy life and revive Buddhism as a missionary religion. European officials in a colony are necessarily nuisances to themselves; they consequently try to pass it on to somebody else, on the principle of school boy bullies — the prototype of the administration.
I personally met with the greatest courtesy and kindness from the authorities in Burma, but the country is not so settled socially as India, and the climate is so abominable that there is every excuse for irritability on the part of anyone unfortunate enough to have to live there. It is, however, a pity that the administration should look with such provincial suspicion upon people like Allan Bennett, that they should fancy political dangers when a European chooses to study native religion. This disfavour extended to their own officials whenever they happened to have sufficient intelligence to take a sympathetic interest in the people and their customs and beliefs. Fielding Hall, a judge, found himself quite unpopular in official circles on account of his excellent though somewhat sentimental book The Soul of a People.
The Englishman in all the colonies that I have visited, except in India, which is not a colony, is childishly jealous of his supposed superiority to the native. He has convinced himself that he represents a step ahead in evolution and he is fantastically afraid of “going fanti”: so he has his knife into anyone who has a good word to say for the people.
"Some minds improve by travel, others rather Resemble copper wire or brass, Which gets the narrower by going further."
The average attitude is that of the class which thinks itself "above" that of the working man. The sin against the Holy Ghost is the use of the word "bloody". The clerk too, clings to his frock coat and the observances of Sunday, as signs of his caste. The snob is always alert about the people just below him — in the absurd arbitrary social scale of England.
The genuine aristocrat neither knows nor cares about conventions, he thinks only about conveniences; he does precisely what he pleases without consulting anyone. So far as he is in contact with the middle classes, he is regarded as a dangerous revolutionary. Thus, a Prime Minister who depends on the nonconformist vote has to pretend not to play golf on Sunday, not to commit adultery, not to say damn. In any colony, dependency or province where the alien ruler feels his political position insecure, it seems to him treason to the caste to admit that the native possesses any natural virtue or merit of any kind.
Allan Bennett, by becoming a Buddhist monk, was a living witness that some Europeans thought Burmese beliefs better than their European equivalents; and the idea — so far as an idea may be ascribed to an official — was that native agitators might use this as an argument that British rule in Burma was unjustified. The whole ratiocination is an utter muddle; but men are not governed by reason, either individually or politically. There is, therefore, some excuse for the anxiety of the administration.
At the same time, the example of India should have been enough. British prestige in India rested on the real moral superiority of courage, truthfulness, justice and self-control. It has been destroyed by the attempt to replace this irrational lever of iron by the rotten laths of reason. We should never have shown our weakness to the Indian student who fills Bengal with the tale of his sexual conquest of white women, our servant girls who took these sons of pettifoggers for princes. We should never have sent out middle-class pets-of-examiners to govern the aristocratically-minded inhabitants of the tongue of Asia. Duxmia — I suspect some very wise bird — wrote in Vanity Fair (October 13th, 1907):
It is the plain truth. Our new intellectual Y.M.C.A. snobbery has sucked away our spinal marrow.
I left my family in the hotel and went to stay with Allan, who had been advanced from a simple Bikkhu to a Sayadaw in his Choung (Monastery) some two miles from the city. Thornton's remark about the discontinuity of the Ego had begun to take hold. I was anxious to confer with my old Guru as thoroughly as possible. His view at this time was that, no matter how earnestly and skillfully one practised, one could not obtain Samadhi, and a fortiori, Arahatship, unless one's Kamma (Karma) was, so to speak, ripe. His theory was that one must comply with the Dhamma in all respects to give oneself a chance, but to do so was no guarantee of success. That depended on coincidence. His analogy was this:
Suppose you are a point of a wheel and wish to touch a certain stone on the road, it is obviously necessary to take up your position on the rim of the wheel, but even so you may be at the top of the wheel just at the moment when the wagon passes over the stone.
I said: “How does this doctrine differ from that of Shri Parananda, who said that Samadhi depended on 'the grace of the Lord Shiva?”
He smiled grimly and said that Shri Parananda's doctrine was not Buddhism!
In any case, I resented those views. I clung passionately to my belief that a man's progress depended upon personal prowess. No doubt this is philosophically absurd, but I still maintain that it is practical good sense.
The conversation, nevertheless, turned to considerations of what my Kamma had in store for me. “This might be discovered,” he said, “by acquiring the Magical Memory.”
This is equivalent to Sammasati, Right Recollection, the seventh step on the Noble Eightfold Path.
I must explain what this means.
The Buddhist theory of Metempsychosis does not involve, like the corresponding Hindu idea, the survival of the individual. There is in fact no Ego to survive. When a Buddhist says that he remembers the events of his boyhood, he does not imply that he is the boy in question. He is not; nor is he the man, elephant, bat, hare or what-not of “his” previous incarnation. The wave that breaks on the shore is not composed of the same particles of water as the “same” wave (as we call it) a minute earlier. Incarnations are successive phenomena causally connected but not identical. It would have been incorrect for the Buddha to say “I was that holy hare.” He should express the facts as follows: There is a consciousness of a tendency to perceive that holy hare and this man Gautama Buddha, as collections of impressions in which the one partially determines the other. This connection tends to produce the illusion of an Ego whose experiences include the phenomena associated, then with the hare, now with the Gautama.
This position is perfectly rational, and implies no transcendental theory of any sort; just as a geologist might deduce from the fossils in a cliff that it was at one time not there, but that the bed of the ocean was there. So the Buddhist Adept may discover that the set of appearances which constitute the illusion which an ignorant man would call "himself", was due to the operation of the forces set in motion by another set of appearances which he might call, for convenience though unjustifiably, his previous incarnations.
There are two main methods of acquiring the Magical Memory as defined above. One is to train the normal memory to work backwards instead of forward, so that any past action is presented to the mind after the manner of a cinematograph film set running in the reverse direction. (I never succeeded fully in acquiring the technique of this method.) The other is to deduce from present circumstances those which gave rise to them.
Just so, one may deduce from the examination of a position on a chessboard what line of pay brought it about. One could not be absolutely sure; the pieces might have been set up by a madman; but granted that the position is intelligible, the laws of probability make it as certain as anything can be that it arose in a certain way. Now in considering one's life one has more material for investigation than a single position; one has a series of successive positions. Intelligent inquiry ought to be able to deduce not only the unknown past, but the unknown future. We have no hesitation in reconstructing the boyhood of Swinburne — presuming the absence of direct information – from his works. His poetry proclaims that he studied classics sympathetically and profoundly, that he was influenced by Pantheistic, anti-clerical and republican friends, and so on.
Astronomers, again, observing an infinitesimally short section of the course of a planet or star, confidentally pronounce on its position in the past and the future, and even in some cases calculate its complete orbit. In other words, they are able to determine its relations with other celestial bodies. There is therefore nothing a priori absurd in trying to discover one's own nature, history and prospects, at least within very wide limits, from careful consideration of one's known characteristics and environment. “Explore the river of the soul,” says Zoroaster, “whence and in what order thou hast come.” I saw that if I was to be intelligible to myself, I must do so, and this resolution resulted in the critical events which made the months of November, December, January and February the most important period of my life so far as my personal attitude to myself and the universe was concerned.
His life as a Bikkhu had not been too good for my Guru. The abstinence from food after sunset is bad for the health, but Allan found that after three weeks he got into the habit. But he was likely to be haunted by the ghost of his dead appetite. He had, moreover, got into a very shocking state physically from lack of proper hygiene and perhaps also of proper medical attention, as well as from his determination to carry out the strict rules of the Order. He had acquired a number of tropical complaints.
I felt that my poetry had been undergoing a transition and I was not sure of my feet. Allen told me that he thought the most magical line in English was Coleridge's
“And ice, mast high, went floating by.”
The comparison is not with mountains or cathedrals, though they are taller than masts. The imminence of the ice is expressed by the phrase chosen and the reader is put upon the deck of a ship. He becomes, maugre his teeth, one of the companions of the Ancient Mariner.
This conversation led to my endeavouring to put a certain vividness of phraseology into my poetry. “The Eyes of Pharaoh” was my first attempt to give vivid and immediate images. I chose my similes so as to strengthen the main theme. Later in the month, at Mandalay, I wrote approximately half of “Sir Palmede the Saracen.” The idea of this book was to give an account of the Mystic Path in a series of episodes, and each episode was to constitute a definite arrangement of colour and form. Thus, Section I shows the blue and yellow of sea and sand, a knight in silver armour riding along their junction to a point where an albatross circles round a mutilated corpse.
I chose my hero from the Arthurian cycle. Sir Palamede and his pursuit of the Questing Beast has always fascinated my imagination; but I made him suffer the most ridiculous misadventures like Don Quixote. I hoped to make these more ridiculous and more pointed by making him the mirror of chivalry. I thought it would be much funnier to unhorse Sir Lancelot than Sir Kay. To-day I am not so sure! However, I started out very cheerfully on the poem, and came to a sudden stop. It occurred to me that I didn't know the whole of the Mystic Path which I had set out to describe. I broke off short, and did not take up the poem again till long after my return to England. It was published in September, 1910, as a supplement to No. IV of the Equinox.
One further subject remained for discussion. I had it in my mind to put spiritual research on a scientific basis. The first step was to get mankind to agree on a language. Allan maintained that a perfectly adequate terminology existed already in the Abhidhamma, the metaphysical section of the Buddhist Canon. I could not deny the excellence of his intention, but from the point of view of the average Western student, the terms are so jawbreaking as to be heartbreaking. I said: We already possess a universal language which does not depend on grammar. The fundamentals of mathematics are the basis of the Holy Qabbala. It is natural and proper to represent the Cosmos, or any part of it, or any operation of it, or the operation of any part of it, by the symbols of pure mathematics.
Against this, he urged that the Qabalah had been appropriated to sectarian purposes, that its purity had been lost, its sense perverted, and that its sub-symbols were apparently arbitrary. This was undeniable, but I proposed to myself to bring the Qabalah to its theoretical purity — no small job, incidentally! — to correlate its symbols with modern conceptions of the Universe, and in every way to fit it as an instrument of thought. I have spent many years on this task and, as when Satan was wounded,
"Forthwith on all sides to his aid was run By angels many and strong."
Henri Poincaré, Bertrand Russell, Einstein, Eddington, and others were themselves at work to replace the emiricism of Victorian Science by an intelligible, coherent interpretation of the Universe by means of mathematical ideas. I have no doubt whatever that the ultimate structure of Science will be purely abstract, though it may not be called Qabalistic. Yet, I do not doubt that my life and my work will presently take hold of the public imagination, and that my terminology will be accepted as the most convenient, convenience being the measure of truth as Poincaré has shown. (La Science et L' Hypothese," Chapter III, et al.)
On November 15th we started up the Irrawaddy by the steamship Java and reached Mandalay on the 21st. I spent my days and nights leaning over the rail, watching the wavelets of the great river and the flying-fish. I became insane. There was I, lean, stern, brown and immobile; and there was a set of disconnected phenomena, each with a sufficient reason in itself, and the whole of them uniting to produce another phenomenon; but there was no connection between one set of reasons and the other. Each wavelet was caused by certain physical conditions and the effect of the total was to slow down the revolution of the earth. But neither the so-called transitory, nor the so-called permanent, phenomenon was ultimately intelligible. Further, what I called I was simply a machine which recorded the impact of various phenomena.
I wrote, “About now I may count my speculative Criticism of the Reason as not only proved and understood, but Realised.” And the following day: “the misery of this is simply sickening; — I can write no more.” The influence of the river journey itself had something to say to this. It is a vast implacable flood. The tangled forests on the banks seem like a symbol of disorder, desolation and disease. Religion itself becomes offensively monotonous. On every point of vantage are pagodas and pagodas and pagodas — stupid stalagmites of stagnant piety.
There is only one dagoba with any pretence to beauty. The eccentricity is explained thus. Even the atrophied ambition of architects had become sick of perpetual plagiarism. The contractor went to the queen and asked how he should build it. She extruded one of her breasts and said, “Take that for a model.” He did so, and the result is a refreshing relief from the routine of the regular dagoba.
But the prevailing impression is one of putrefaction. Moored to the steamer were flats piled with fish. The sun rotted them to the point when they became fit for food. The stench was incomparable; it somehow fitted with the state of my soul. At Mandalay I exhibited this state by this entry in my diary, “Saw palace and 450,001,293,847 pagodas.” The criticism is unjust: I had not counted them. There is, however, one good pagoda in the city, the Arrakan, and there is one really beautiful Buddha Rupa. It is said that this statue is the only one which is a portrait of Gautama from life. This may or may not be; at least it is free from the sickening conventionality of the regular smirking stupidity. The real glory of Mandalay consists of the tables of the law. There are 10,000 slabs engraved with the canon, each under a canopy to protect it from the weather. I thought I had done rather well in the matter of book production, but I had to admit I was sitting with Jack high against a Royal Flush.
Mandalay is ghastly most of the year. It is practically under water all the summer. At least 50 per cent. of the European residents are on the sick list and a goodly proportion of these die outright. There is little to choose between the Irrawaddy basin and the worst parts of West Africa.
Yet the dwellers thereof talked as if they were in a health resort whenever the Salwin valley was mentioned by some intrepid spirit. This was encouraging, as my main objective involved crossing the Salwin. The map had fascinated me. The Salwien, the Mi Kong and the Yang Tze Kiang run parallel for a considerable distance, and they are so near together that it only took me three days between the first two of these rivers; yet the first reaches the sea at Mul Mein, in the Gulf of Martaban, the second below Bangkok in the Gulf of Siam, with the whole of the Malay Peninsula between them, while the third turns suddenly from south to north of east and reaches the Yellow Sea thousands of miles away. The “divides” of watersheds between these three rivers during their dramatic parallelism must evidently be mountains of the most interesting type. I wanted to visit a corner of the earth which appealed thus vividly to my imagination.
Incidentally, there were practical difficulties. I had at this time no notion that everybody was a perfect idiot. I could not understand the parochial psychology of the average Englishman. Even Litton, the British Consul at Teng Yueh, wrote, “I will say frankly that I had no idea that Mrs. Crowley or a child would be with you, and that while there is really no reason why they should not go to Yunnanfu, along the main road, they will, I fear, suffer a good deal of discomfort and inconvenience on the road from the inquisitiveness and impertinence of the Chinamen: which will try your temper. I would also recommend you to dress the amah in Chinese style, and if Mrs. Crowley would not object to a Chinese lady's upper garment or jacket, she would attract much less attention and be less subject to annoyance.”
I did not in the least understand that the average Englishman actually resents being asked to sleep in a bedroom which has not been furnished in the Tottenham Court Road, and has not hot and cold water laid on. I did not understand that his fears invariably cause him to interpret the natural curiosity of villagers who have never seen Europeans in their lives, as insolence and hostility. I did not understand that he regarded it incumbent on him to instruct the population who have been highly civilized for thousands of years in the rudiments of politeness and morality, to say nothing of religion. I knew, as I know that two and two make four, that it is only necessary to behave like a gentleman in order to calm the apprehensions of the aborigines and to appeal to the fundamental fact that all men are brothers. By this I do not mean anything stupid, sodden and sentimental; I mean that all men equally require food, clothing and shelter, in the first place; and in the second, security from aggression in respect of life and property.
Litton himself understood and appreciated the Chinese character perfectly. Though he was only the Consul of the most remote town of the most remote province of the most remote empire on earth, he ruled that whole province by the sheer strength of the superiority conferred by sympathy, integrity and moral courage. But his experience had not led him to expect that any other Englishman's character could coincide with his own at all these critical points.
The irritability and insularity of the Englishman, with his snobbishness, pomposity and cant, had established a prejudice on the part of the authorities against allowing Englishmen to visit the interior of China. My countrymen could be relied upon to make mischief out of the most unpromising materials. Therefore, while the government of France encouraged its citizens to explore the province, Whitehall made it as difficult as possible for Britons. I got my permission only after senseless delay and encompassed by ridiculous restrictions.
On November 23rd I went on board the Irrawaddy for Bhamo, but for one cause or another she did not leave Mandalay till the 29th. There are two defiles to be passed. The river is constructed by outcrops of rock so as to form rapids so dangerous as to be navigable only with extreme caution. I reached Bhamo on December 1st.
The Irrawaddy is the scene of one of the most exciting commercial gambles of the world. At the head of the waters are mines of jade, and huge blocks of the crude mineral are shipped on rafts to merchants lower down. These blocks are bought by auction. It may almost be said that the purchaser relies on his clairvoyance, for there is no scientific means of determining what will happen when the block is split. The purchaser proceeds to split it and takes his loss or profit accordingly. The process is then repeated as the jade goes down the river. By the time it reaches Rangoon, it has been cut up into small sections an its ultimate value is approximately determined. During its transit fortunes have been made or lost.
Though the upper river passes through hilly country, it still signals its sinister message of decay and death. A dramatic incident had stamped the fact on my memory. On the steamer was an old man, a distinguished official who had intended to retire from the service and take his pension a month or two before. He had been personally requested by the Lieutenant Governor to postpone his return to England that he might facilitate the arrangements for the visit of the Prince of Wales. The conversation of Europeans in these parts of the earth is inexpressibly morbid; they seem obsessed by the ever present probability of death. The official tried to conceal his panic by loudly asserting a medical theory of his own, that plague, cholera, dysentery and typhoid (the four princes of the blood royal in the palace of King Death) were merely varieties of malarial fever. I said scornfully, “Next time you get cholera, I hope they'll give you quinine.” The joke came three days later, when he died of cholera. I do not know whether they gave him quinine or not.
Bhamo is a delightful outpost. One is outside the malarial stewing of the jungle. But I got to hate it, as I wanted to proceed to China, and was held up for seventeen days by the non-arrival of my passport. The delay was partly deliberate. The deputy commissioner was absent; and his assistant was an Eurasian, who took the greatest delight in annoying the white man. I ultimately got leave to proceed over his head, and having done so rubbed it in with the following letter:
I am not a snob or a puritan, but Eurasians do get on my nerves. I do not believe that their universally admitted baseness is due to a mixture of blood or the presumable peculiarity of their parents; but that they are forced into vileness by the attitude of both their white and coloured neighbours. A similar case is presented by the Jew, who really does only too often possess the bad qualities for which he is disliked; but they are not proper to his race. No people can show finer specimens of humanity. The Hebrew poets and prophets are sublime. The Jewish soldier is courageous, the Jewish rich man generous. The race possesses imagination, romance, loyalty, probity and humanity in an exceptional degree.
But the Jew has been persecuted so relentlessly that his survival has depended on the development of his worst qualities; avarice, servility, falseness, cunning and the rest. Even the highest-class Eurasians such as Ananda Coomaraswamy suffer acutely from the shame of being considered outcast. The irrationality and injustice of their neighbours heightens the feeling and it breeds the very abominations which the snobbish inhumanity of their fellow-men expects of them.
With the departure from Bhamo may be said to begin a new phase of my career. Up to this point, I have been able to interweave the strands of my three lives; the lives of the soul, the mind and the body; or, more accurately, in the language of the Qabbala, the Neschamah, the Ruach and the Nephesch. The Hebrew sages have made an admirably simple, significant and accurate classification.
The Neschamah is that aspiration which in most men is no more than a void and voiceless longing. It becomes articulate only when it compels the Ruach to interpret it. The Nephesch, or animal soul, is not the body itself; the body is excremental, of the Qliphoth or shells. The Nephesch is that coherent brute which animates it, from the reflexes to the highest forms of conscious activity. These again are only cognizable when they translate themselves to the Ruach.
The Ruach, lastly, is the machine of the mind converging on a central consciousness, which appears to be the Ego. The true Ego is, however, above Neschamah, whose occasional messages to the Ruach warn the human Ego of the existence of his superior. Such communications maybe welcomed or resented, encouraged or stifled. Initiation consists in identifying the human self with the divine, and the man who does not strain constantly to this end is simply a brute made wretched and ashamed by the fact of self-consciousness.
I find by experience that this theory represents the facts very closely. I thought it necessary to give at least the bare skeleton, because the next months of our story compel me. It is no longer possible to interweave my three lives. My ordinary career becomes a welter of strange adventures, some of the most uncanny kind; yet the spiritual life is all-important and absolutely simple. The one is linked to the other only by the fact that my adventures appear as if they were so many obstacles deliberately put in the way of my performing the Operation of the Sacred Magick of Abramelin the Mage. I shall deal first with the life of the senses.
STANZA LI THE WALK THROUGH CHINA
It is probably a rare incident for any young man to meet, in the flesh, the ideal of his boyhood's dreams. Such, however was my great good fortune. In the Consul at Teng Yueh, Mr. Litton, I found all that I had lost when Richard Burton died. He possessed the spirit of adventure in its noblest and most joyous form. He had the instinct for learning foreign languages and dealing with foreign people; and in one respect, his history had been similar. Some years before, he had been Consul in another part of China which was the heart of the Boxer Movement. Moving, as he did, among the Chinese in the most intimate way, he understood the feeling behind the agitation. He employed his genius in unravelling the conspiracy an succeeded in discovering the plans of the Boxers in detail. This information he communicated to the authorities in Pekin. It will be remembered that Burton did exactly the same thing in the matter of the Indian Mutiny; and to a certain extent, Sir William Butler had done this with regard to the Boers.
The result in each case was exactly the same. The indignant authorities banished Litton to the remote and unimportant post of Teng Yueh, at the very edge of the wildest province of China. But it is hard to keep a good man down. Litton's influence over the natives was so great that he was the real ruler of the province. He was just starting on tour to compose some native squabble near the frontier, some thirty miles from Teng Yueh; and we lunched together by the wayside. He had done miracles to smooth my path.
He had been originally alarmed by my taking my wife and child with me on such a journey. His letter amused me very much; it showed the class of English people with whom he was accustomed to deal. He expected us to scream if hot water and cold water was not laid on in every Chinese inn, and to take every Chinese coolie, farmer or merchant for a murderer with a special “down” on “foreign devils”. He thought the we would be very much upset by that natural curiosity of the natives at seeing a white woman, and interpret their naïve interest as intentional insult. When he found with what practical common sense I travelled, he realized immediately that there was going to be no trouble. During this lunch he gave me more genuinely valuable information about China that I had had in the whole previous course of my life. One of his sayings was this: whatever one hears, however extraordinary, is true in China somewhere or other!
He also told me the main psychological difference between the Chinese and Indian as regards practical dealing with them. The Chinese does not respect the white man as the Indian does — for his possession of high moral qualities. The very coolies despise their wealthiest merchants for their honesty, which, by the way, is unique in commerce. They respect any man who acts as their own mandarins act; with absolute lack of sympathy, justice or any other human feelings. They treat the traveller well in proportion as he is overbearing, haughty and avaricious.
I found, in fact, that it was necessary to throw the whole of my previous principles overboard. One cannot fraternize with the Chinese of the lower classes; one must treat them with absolute contempt and callousness. On the other hand the Chinese gentleman is the noblest and courtliest in the world. His general bearing is that of Athos in The Three Musketeers, at his best. One's relations with him should be those of absolute mutual respect; and here again, intimacy of any kind is impossible. Each man abides on pinnacles of isolation. A typical case is the relation of the Emperor to a man like Li Hung Chang. The Son of Heaven was so far above even the greatest of his subjects that he could make no difference between him and the commonest labourer. He wrote to him simply as Li.
Litton furnished me with careful notes of the stages of my journey to Yunnanfu, which I found extremely useful. I could not start from Teng Yueh until my passport arrived from the Consulate-General. With extreme kindness, Litton invited me to stay at the Consulate till it arrived. He himself hoped to be back in Teng Yueh within a week, so that I expected to see him again and learn more of his wisdom. We sat and talked for a couple of hours, each feeling instinctively that he had found a sympathetic spirit.
The march from Bhamo to Teng Yueh had been rather eventful. The first day was a pleasant ride of about nine miles to Mamouk where we dined at the officers' mess. We were still in the Burmese atmosphere and the minds of the people were preoccupied with European affairs and disease. There was no trace of the singular horror with which I was to come in contact beyond the frontier, a horror from which I found no one but Litton himself entirely free, until I got into the sphere of French influence. The next day we covered twenty-one miles and the third sixteen, where we camped for the first time in the open. The scenery had not been particularly striking; but there was a feeling of openness on leaving the Irrawaddi basin which we found extremely pleasant.
On the fourth day we crossed the Chinese frontier. At this point it is marked by a small stream in a ravine. There is no proper bridge; only an insecure-looking tree trunk. I had doubts about my pony and decided to walk across. I was of course riding last to prevent straggling, and by the time I had crossed the stream the rest of the party were out of sight around the corner of the path which rises sharply along the hillside, in order to cross the mountain. I had got a little stiff with riding and thought I would stretch my legs; so I walked with my horse up the slope for some distance. Deciding to remount, I swung my leg over the saddle; and, before I was seated, the brute put his hind hoof over the khud, which was here precipitous. We rolled over each other twice, a distance of thirty or forty feet.
We were neither of us in the least hurt; my feeling was one of plain astonishment. I look up at the cliff. It was well within my powers to climb, but there was no possibility of getting the pony up. I climbed up the path and carefully retied my turban, which had come off, before shouting for Salama to come back and extricate my horse. I felt it essential to show myself imperturbable. The men returned to find me quietly sitting and smoking. They had considerable difficulty in find a way round for the pony. The day's adventures were not yet over. Just before getting to camp I was kicked on the thigh by a mule. I shall explain later the extreme importance of this day in my career.
There was quite a series of small accidents during these days. Salama had started it by falling off his mule. Then came my turn. The day after, Rose and the baby fell while walking across a bridge, quite incomprehensibly. It was extraordinary luck that they did not come to serious grief. The day after, we spent the night in a Buddhist temple after a march in the pouring rain, during which the Ayah was both kicked and bitten by a mule. The day after that it was again my turn to be kicked. I have had a good deal of experience with mules in various parts of the world; but only in this short section did such things occur.
This day was again very wet. The road led over a pass 3,000 feet high. I say “road”, and of course this is the main highway from Burma to China, just as the road we had followed from Srinagar is the main highway from Kashmir to Turkistan. In neither case would it be considered good going by the average goat. The day we were to arrive in Teng Yueh, the Ayah gave us the slip. We had camped by a hot spring the night previous, in company with a caravan bound for Burma, and she decided to throw in her lot with his and go off to Burma. She had been such a bad servant and given so much trouble that I made no attempt to retrieve her.
We met with a warm welcome at the Consulate from Litton's Chinese wife, an exceedingly beautiful woman with perfect manners. They had five charming children. The prejudice against half-castes requires analysis. It is not the mixture of blood, as a rule, that makes the majority of them such degraded specimens of humanity, but the circumstances usually attending their birth. These circumstances, again, are due to the crass imbecility of public morality. When the child is a by-blow of a drunken Tommy and a bazaar woman there is no need of profound anthropological hypotheses to explain why it is not a Newton or a Chesterfield. There is no doubt, however, that some races make better combinations than others. The best class of Englishman and the best class of Chinese mingle admirably, provided (of course) that the children are brought up decently in an environment where they are not handicapped from the first by feeling themselves objects of dislike and contempt. Nothing is worse for children than to be humiliated; they should be brought up to realize that they are “kings and priests unto God.”
The foreign colony at Teng Yueh was small and dull. The head of the customs was Napier, the son of an old friend of my father's. He was a melancholy aristocrat who only kept himself from going insane in these monotonously uncongenial surroundings by a sort of Promethean courage. The other Britons have made no impression on my mind soever. There was a Norwegian missionary named Amundsen, even more colourless and doleful than brainless Scandinavians usually are. The doctor was a Bengali named Ram Lal Sircar, a burly nigger of the most loathsome type. I am not fond of Benaglis at the best and he as the worst specimen of his race I have ever seen. He was fat and oily, with small pig-like treacherous eyes. On the rare occasions when he was not eating, he was writing anti-British articles for the Bengal native Press.
There was, however, a guest at the Consulate with whom I struck up an immediate warm friendship. This was a botanist named George Forrest, who was recuperating from an adventure which I must narrate in some detail, as it includes one of the most striking ghost stories I ever heard. His Happy Hunting Ground had been the Mekong-Salwin divide. He had been north beyond the twenty-eighth parallel, in country practically untraversed by any whites, among mountains which rose to 19,000 feet. His headquarters was a Jesuit mission.
The district had been disturbed for some time; a comparatively important town was the centre of a small revolt against the Chinese government. An Army had been disatched to reduce it. The siege was typically Chinese. Having invested the town, the Imperial General made no attempt to take it by assault; he simply entered into negotiations with the garrison as to the price of the surrender. After interminable haggling, a sum was fixed. So much is intelligible, but at this point the baffling psychology of the Chinese comes into play. The inhabitants were put to the sword and the town sacked, exactly as if it had been taken as the result of murderous conflicts.
The general weakening of the Imperial authority led to the outbreak of raids on the part of the Buddhist Lamas who lived in remote serais perched upon the inaccessible crags of the mountains bordering Tibet. Bands of these monks swept down from their fastnesses to indulge in orgies of rapine, rape, murder and cannibalism. (The official descriptions of the various hells in the Buddhist canon are of course actual pictures of fact; the tortures of the damned are simply slight exaggerations of those actually inflicted by Buddhists on their enemies. In particular, it was the custom of these Lamas to devour the hearts and livers of their enemies in order to acquire their vitality and courage. As I have already explained, I do not regard this as superstitious; I think it is practical common sense.)
Forrest was at the Jesuit mission when word came from the north that the Lamas were on the war path. It was decided to flee and the entire mission hurried off. Its eldest member, Father Bernard, was a man over 80y. It was decided to separate for greater safety; but Forrest found it very hard to bring himself to leave the old man, for whom he had acquired extreme respect and affection. However, it was the only thing to do, and Forrest plunged off alone into an obscure side valley hoping to reach the comparative safety of the main road from Teng Yueh to Yunnanfu by means of a detour.
The nightfall of the second day showed him the camp fires of the Lamas on the hills to the South and he recognized that he was cut off. In the light of the fires he could see the gigantic silhouettes of their hounds. He suddenly realized that his European boots made it easy to track him, so he discarded them. During the day, the slightest movement might easily be observed, or the hounds might be on his track, so he spent it under a rock which overhung the river, up to his neck in the icy water. When night fell, he crawled out and tried to get some warmth into his body. (His food soon failed him. During this adventure he lived for eight days on nothing at all and for the twenty-one following on tsampa, Tibetan flour, which has the property of producing violent diarrhoea in the average European.)
Night came on utterly black and Forrest was suddenly aware of a luminous figure standing beside him. He recognized it immediately as that of Father Bernard. He thought to himself — “They have caught and killed him!” (This was subsequently verified. The old man met his end earlier on that day.) The phantom did not speak, but its right arm was outstretched as if to urge Forrest to seek refuge in that direction. Forrest laughed to himself, despite the atrocious circumstances, at the absurdity; the direction indicated was the one of all others which was most certainly fatal to take. After a few minutes the figure disappeared. Dawn broke and showed him the situation unchanged. He passed a second day in the water under the rock.
The second night the spectre reappeared. Again he pointed in the same direction and this time the gesture was imperious. Forrest's instinct of self-preservation had been practically worn out by hardship. “Oh well,” he said to himself, “a quick death is better than this,” and off he went in the direction designated. He had not gone far before he fell in with a countryman who offered to help him to escape, and led him, barefoot as he was, across a snow-covered pass over fifteen thousand feet high. The met no lamas and eventually reached the main road, where Forrest fell in with a caravan of merchants travelling to Teng Yueh, who treated him well and had him carried to the Consulate, where I found him, still weak from his adventure and still shaken in nerve. He told his story with the utmost modesty and equanimity; and I could not doubt that the apparition of Father Bernard was a fact. That it should have pointed out the one way of salvation in the most unlikely direction certainly indicated supernormal knowledge.
The atmosphere at Teng Yueh was intensely oppressive. The conversation invariably turned upon battle, murder and sudden death, embroidered with fantastic wealth of disease and torture. It was an absolute nightmare. I really take great credit to myself for having spent twenty-five days in this community without losing my nerve or becoming obsessed. Everyone seemed to be preoccupied with the idea that at any moment the Chinese might break out and put us all to the most cruel death.
I must admit that there was a quite unusual number of really terrifying incidents; even trifling occurrences seemed too apt to take on a sinister significance. For instance, two of Litton's horses died suddenly. I diagnosed anthrax and wanted to take the obvious measures; but there was nothing to be done. The servants at the Consulate had taken the carcasses to the market and spent the next three days in janging for them. To jang is to haggle; but the most inveterate haggler is a fixed price merchant in comparison. It was certainly the limit to think of the animals being sold for human food! One must be resolute to prevent one's mind from dwelling on such subjects; one must take one's precautions so far as possible without thinking about the threatened calamity.
Another disquieting incident was as follows. Teng Yueh was supposed to be in direct telegraphic communication with Pekin. One of the most absurdly characteristic arrangements was that the Observatory at Pekin telegraphed to us daily the correct time. Now at Yung Chang there was a relay and, as often as not, the telegraphists would be engaged in smoking opium for three or four days at a time. Consequently a whole bunch of telegrams would arrive late one evening telling us that it was noon at Pekin.
One was therefore not very sure of getting the news. And just about this time a message came though telling us of the riots in Shanghai and that seventeen people had been killed. We could not tell how serious this might he; whether it was a local outbreak or whether it was part of a general anti-foreign rising. I heard later the details. The European colony had been badly scared and fortified themselves in the Country Club; but the riot fizzled out. It was none the less alarming to get an isolated item of news of this kind. Thinking of it to-day, I wonder that it never occurred to me to go back to Burma. I did not feel either courageous about it or alarmed. There is in me a quality of almost imbecile stoicism. I simply cannot be bothered to worry about danger or hardship of any kind unless it is force on my immediate notice.
I cannot account for this peculiar imperturbability. It seems entirely at war with my extreme sensitiveness. And yet it may indeed be the Freudian protection against this; it may be that my instincts warn me that if I allow myself to think at all on certain subjects the pain will be unendurable. However that may be, there is no doubt that I possess a peculiar solidity; having decided to do anything, I go on my course no matter what new facts arise. I will not go a step out of my path of avoid the most obvious unpleasantness. And I have certainly never been able to make up my mind whether this quality is an advantage in the long run or no.
The final episode of my story at Teng Yueh might indeed have caused most men to change their plan. It is in many ways the most dramatic adventure of my life and has left an ineradicable impression on my mind. I despair of describing its intensity or the wildness of the setting. The oppressively electric atmosphere of the previous three weeks, the indescribable apprehension which hung over the colony, suddenly discharged itself in a thunderbolt.
At 8 p.m. on January 10th we were sitting at dinner in the Consulate when we heard confused cries and flying footsteps in the courtyard. The doors were suddenly flung open and a gigantic runner dripping with sweat came crashing into the room, sprawling his gaunt arms and legs in the extravagance of his gestures. For a moment we believed that an attack was imminent; but Forrest soon elicited a somewhat vague story to the effect that Litton was ill and required the services of a doctor. He was said to be camped at about two days' march away in the direction of Bhamo; but we resolved to cover the distance in the course of the night. Forrest being my senior, and knowing the language, was evidently marked as chief of the expedition. I put myself unreservedly at his orders.
The first thing was to get the horses, which was easy; the second to rout out the Bengali, which was an entirely different proposition. It was after 9 o'clock before he joined us at the outskirts of the town. The word forward was given, and Forrest and I galloped furiously into the darkness. We kept up a tremendous pace as far as the foot of the hills. It was a wild and windy night; torn clouds scudded fitfully across a misty moon. Some rain had fallen and the broad smooth stones of the road were as slippery as glass. It was impossible to ride on the slopes; the tatu stumbled at every step.
My mountain boots with their wrought iron nails proved equally awkward. I was forced to march, supporting myself with one hand on the pony's neck and urging him with my whip with the other. We pressed on eagerly through the night; and at last we came to the crest of the ridge and began to run down the other side of the path towards the hot springs. There was just sufficient light in the east to reveal the landscape by the time we got near the foot of the hill. Then I saw a litter slowly approaching. Forrest gave a shout and dashed enthusiastically forward; but I silently turned my horse, for I saw that the Consul's legs were tied.
The situation, apart from its tragic present, was full of anxiety for the future. How had Litton died? A glance at the body was not reassuring. There were symptoms which suggested poison and the least sinister alternative was some deadly infection. I wanted a medical opinion; but the doctor avoided the neighbourhood of the litter, saying that the examination could be made at Teng Yueh. I did not fully realize what was behind this and acquiesced. He hurried back much faster than he had come. For all I knew, he had it in his mind to make various preparations.
About 4 o'clock we reached a wretched hamlet where some coolies had kindled a fire in the street. The bearers of the litter, utterly fagged out, threw themselves down by the fire. There was some loose straw lying about and Forrest and I followed their example. We tried to learn the circumstances of Litton's death; but the men gave vague and apparently contradictory accounts of what had happened. It was awkward; some of them might have been in a conspiracy; and we had no means of telling its purport or extent. I snatched a few moments of that uneasy slumber which supervenes upon exhaustion and distress, and dulls while it does not rest the nerves.
We started again at about half-past six and reached Teng Yueh at about 10 o'clock. We had allowed the litter to precede us, thinking that the doctor would be in waiting, having made all arrangements, but we found that nothing of the sort had been done. The coolies had simply dumped the body in the outer courtyard of the Consulate. We had it taken into an empty room on the opposite side of that in which people were living and sent round for the doctor. He returned an evasive answer.
After several further messages, Forrest lost patience and asked me to go round and bring him back by force if necessary. It must not be supposed that Forrest was in any way hysterical. It was immediately urgent to ascertain the cause of Litton's death. The safety of the European community might depend on it. If he had died by violence, our one chance might be for troops to be rushed up for our protection; if by disease, to take quarantine measures.
I found the Bengali seated at his table before a plate of rice such as I have never seen in my life. There was certainly enough for six average people. I stayed a few moments to watch the process of deglutition. It was well worth seeing; and from the debris on the table, it was clear that this was merely a little light dessert. I did not lose my temper; but I must confess to being very angry. I asked him to come round, and he then began to try to get out of it altogether. I soon saw that he had made up his mind that the Consul had died of some dangerously infectious disease and was solely preoccupied with keeping himself out of danger.
Persuasion and reproach failing to reach him, I resorted to the use of my whalebone cutting-whip. He made no attempt to ward off the blows, still less to tackle me; he simply cowered and howled. I stopped at intervals to impress upon his mind that I intended to go on until he came with me to do his duty. He ultimately gave in and I drove him down the street to the Consulate. But once in the chamber of death, it was still impossible to get him to make a proper examination. He would not approach the body. Forrest and I cut off the clothes.
There were some curious wounds caused, in my judgment, by the attempts of some of the coolies to relieve the symptoms. They were none of them serious in themselves. The main visible symptom was large patches of extravasated blood. The doctor refused point-blank to make a post-mortem and said he would give his certificate that death was due to erysipelas. He then bolted. His next act was to remember that erysipelas was a notifiable infectious disease and that therefore his best course was to find my wife and child, and endeavour to communicate it if possible. Luckily she had sufficient sense to keep herself and the baby out of his way.
In this succession of incidents we see clearly the complete psychology of our Aryan brother. He will always act in some such way. Now that England has decided to forget the Black Hole at Calcutta and the Well at Cawnpore, it seems a pity to call attention to things of this sort. I am prepared to be called narrow-minded, bigoted, insular, and the rest of it, but it seems to me the limit of folly to try to ignore salient political facts. Mohammedans, Sikhs, and Ghurkas possess many qualities; but any race that submits to priestcrat, or respects itself so little as to admit the conceptions of sin and vicarious atonement, will always display the utmost cowardice and treachery. The only exceptions are found among people who keep their religion and manhood in water-tight compartments. In the Great War we saw that the brave men were essentially Pagans. Whenever an attempt was made to apply Christian principles to actualities, we obtained the campaign of hate on one hand and pacifism on the other.
Only one thing was needed to put the lid on. When Forrest and I had done what was necessary, we proceeded to disinfect ourselves before rejoining the rest. The missionary Amandsen rushed up to us in great excitement and called our attention to an illustrated newspaper which he had just received. “Look,” he cried, “there is the Norwegian Royal family.”
We buried Litton the following day.
The next business was to get off. My permission had arrived, but I was told that I must engage an interpreter. I should have been only too glad to have one; but I might as well have looked for a snowball in Hell. Eventually they dug up a person named Johnny White. He was the first Chinese with whom I had been in direct permanent connection; and I was highly amused to discover that his Chinese name had been Ah Sin. He had been brought up from infancy at the Wesleyan Mission at Mandalay. As a servant he had the defect that he was continually drunk on arraq and opium. As an interpreter, he had two defects, one, he spoke no Chinese; two, he spoke no English. It was with the utmost pain that I was able to communicate with him at all. I cross-examined him, of course very severely, as to his religion. It took a long time for him to grasp my meaning; but ultimately he reassured me as to his creed, which was this: “John Wesley all same God.” He was so besotted with drink and drugs that his human qualities, if he ever possessed any, were completely in abeyance. His name was soon corrupted into “Janwar” — which is Hindustani for “wild animal.”
In one way and another we overcame the difficulties about starting. No, hang it, since I am telling secrets, what happened was this. I decided to start, and throw the responsibility for stopping me on the other person. This is in fact the secret of doing pretty well everything in the world. As a rule, it is nobody's business to interfere; and (if it is) most people are afraid to interfere with those who have sufficient initiative. There is also Newton's First Law of Motion, as long as you don't forget his Third. As soon as the Tao Tai found that I was on the move, he decided to pretend that my wife (the official stumbling block to the journey) was not there at all, though he sent soldiers as my escort. I then stated officially that they had accompanied me safely to Yunnanfu, and sent them back. In this way everybody had a clear conscience and all the formalities were complied with, and no harm was done.
The world would be much better off if everybody acted on these principles. The real economic crux has nothing to do with markets and balance of trade and colonisation and the like. It consists in this: that the prosperity of every wealth-producing individual is sapped by the horde of officials that batten on him. He might even support these parasites, would they only consent to be harmless instead of feeling that they ought to justify their existence by interference.
I have never been able to suffer fools gladly. (Except Bernard Shaw) Here is a case of a very different kind, yet pregnant with the same essential imbecility. When I was being initiated into a certain Order, popular among convivial snobs, I was hood-winked and led about for some time in the dark, and finally conducted to what on subsequent investigation proved to be a sort of wooden box. I think they called it the Altar of the Most High. I was then solemnly asked what was the dearest wish of my heart. I replied courteously that I wanted nothing. The beery breath of a commercial traveller contaminated my ear to inform me that what I wanted was light. "But I don't," said I, "I'm perfectly happy. I'm enjoying every minute of it." My attitude seemed to dash their spirits unaccountably; and after a whispered consultation, they told me that I had to say I wanted light. "Well," I said: "this is supposed to be an extremely solemn ceremony, and you swear me to all sorts of things by the most formidable oaths under the most terrific and barbarous penalties, and then you decline to take my word about an absolutely simple matter of which I am obviously the sole judge. However, if you persist in turning your own mysteries into a meaningless farce, well and good — Light." (I expect the fact is that, like the children they are with their games of make-believe, and their trumpery regalia, they are afraid to be in the dark.) Few official formalities have much more in them than this.
Most travellers spread themselves on the details of the scenery. They seem to think it their duty to inflict purple passages on the long-suffering public. I have never been able to indulge in these debauches of prose; besides, which, my admirably selective memory refuses to record minutiae of this kind. It automatically extracts the spiritual quintessence from a journey, and records no details unless they are exceptions to the general principle. Gerald Kelly once told me — I don't know from whom he got the idea — that the work of any great poet might be summarised by a single word, the name of some object in Nature; as for example, Keats, the moon, Shelley, the sun, Swinburne, the sea, Crowley, the stars. Similarly, each of my expeditions has been the work of a great poet; the intimate flavour in each case is peculiar, but it is beyond description to identify or wit to name.
The impression which I received from China might perhaps be summed up in the words "wide spaces." The defiles of the Salwin and Mekong were to China as a ditch is to a meadow. One was perpetually coming out on to vast tracks of highland with a delightfully buoyant sense of emancipation. The secret of happiness was like a perfume in the dew straint. They acted naturally without extravagant lusts and fears. The only people that gave any trouble were my own, that is to say, those who were bound up with officialdom and the like.
The journey to Yunnanfu was unique in my life in one important respect. I became richer as I went along — by the simple process of spending my money! It was impossible to get a change of silver except at one or two points. I carried the bulk of my money in copper cash. (Everyone knows the coins with the square holes.) These furnished loads for two men. I must explain the financial status of this part of the world. Silver money had no denomination, but was valued by weight, and the “coinage” consisted of lumps of silver, whose purity was guaranteed by its shape. The bulkier kind was something like a houseboat, some three inches long and between one and two in the other dimensions. The other kind was not unlike a tortoise and its surface had a peculiar striation. Thus there were these lumps of silver identified as the products of the Imperial Mint.
Now, there was a varying relation (rate of exchange) between a certain weight of this silver and a string of cash. A string consisted nominally of a hundred cash; but these were what was called market cash. A certain number of cash counted as a hundred for all commercial purposes and this number varied with the district. Now, as it happened, this number was constantly decreased all the way to Yunnanfu, so that if I wished to buy something at Teng Yueh for a hundred cash I had to hand over a string containing eighty-nine coins, whereas a similar transaction at Talifu required only seventy odd, and near Yun Nan Sen forty-six if I remember right. I was consequently always having to take off coins from my original strings. The number of my strings therefore increased as I went along, although I was spending freely. In this way I became continually richer.
To conclude the financial question. This system broke up suddenly and completely on arrival at Yun Nan Sen. Here the French were trying to extend their influence from Tonkin in pursuance of which object they had flooded the city with agents who were trying to force the French dollar into circulation. Opposed to them were the two old systems; valuing sliver by weight, and the tael; and the Mexican dollar, which had hitherto been the universal currency on the coast. (The Mexican dollar was itself guaranteed by being stamped by the mark or initials of some responsible firm of merchants.) Pekin had just begun to coin a dollar of its own with the Imperial Dragon. This is one of the most beautiful coins I ever saw.
The result of the contention of the currencies was that in Yun Nan Sen one could buy things at an absurdly low price, provided that one would pay with the dollars which the merchant was being subsidised to accept. “When thieves fall out, honest men come by their own.” It is certainly amusing to watch them cutting their own throats in order to cut ours more efficiently later on. I only wish we could stop the second part of the process.
I feel inspired to divagate upon the question of moneys. I have often wondered why the capitalists who run the kept Press make such a point of telling the poor that the only thing worth having is the thing they are out to get themselves. It seems do obviously wiser to do what the Church and the nobility did in the old days; to preach that virtue is its own reward, that happiness resides in cottages rather than castles, that honour is not a matter of heraldry, and so on.
But on second thought I begin to suspect that the psychology cuts deeper than this. The rich know that nothing is so destructive to morale as the hopeless hunt for the oof-bird. They prefer to fight the poor with the weapons of which they are themselves past masters. What they are really afraid of is that a man may arrive who will demonstrate the real worthlessness of life. They are afraid of the great artist as the Church was afraid of the great man of science or the great magician. Pains are therefore taken to corrupt the artist if possible, and induce him to preach plausible piffle, or worse; if not, at least to make him innocuous by offering him comfort and consideration and making him think that its loss (consequent on misbehaviour) would be the most terrific tragedy conceivable.
St. Francis of Assissi is the most formidable sprectre in the modern baronial castle. The modern rich fear the man who, instead of building a rival temple, at which game they can always beat him, will knock their own edifice about their ears. That was at the root of the opposition to Bolshevism. The money kings were momentarily afraid that a great people might destroy the value of money by the simple process of replacing it by things like labour, artistic merit, and scientific genius which have real value.
It is important to consider the attitude of the Book of the Law to the economic problem which has the world by the throat at this moment. "Ye shall gather goods and store of women and spices; ye shall wear rich jewels; ye shall exceed the nations of earth in splendour and pride." Again "Be strong man! lust, enjoy all things of sense and rapture." Also "Ye shall see them at rule, at victorious armies, at all the joy." On the other hand, "We are not for the poor and the sad; the lords of the earth are our kinsfolk," "We have nothing with the outcast and the unfit; let them die in their misery."
These passages suggest, on the surface, a brutally outspoken attitude of materialistic arrogance and lack of sympathy; but the context modifies this by showing that material pleasure and prosperity must be based on spiritual sublimity. Again, the doctrine is that everyone is a king in his own way, and the solution of the economic problem lies in the discovery of his True Will by each man for himself. There is a great number of people whose natures are such that they find happiness only in serving others; and there is moreover, an infinite number of ways of being happy and successful. The present murderous confusion arises from the almost universal obsession that material wealth in its grossest form is the only thing worth striving for.
Now, while understanding the policy of the capitalist in persuading the poor to abandon health, happiness, and honour in the scrummage for shekels, we may go a step further, reflecting that the result of this policy has been the Great War, the revolution in Russia, and the economic ruin of Europe. The capitalist accepted gleefully the destruction of the military aristocracy and the religious hierarchy which left him top dog. He failed to understand that the bottom dog, who had been affectionately proud to hunt for his natural master, might go mad and bite an animal of its own species whose only business in life was to snatch the juiciest bones, to hoard those which he could not eat himself, and even to keep the very smallest and least meaty scraps from him on general principles.
We are on the brink of a catastrophe because the educated classes find it impossible to live; and this means that civilization will disappear in barbarism within the course of a generation or two at the outside, apart altogether from any question of invasion. Perhaps the best hope for the world would be to be overrun by the yellow races. I may remind the reader that I was chosen by the Masters not only to transmit Their Word, Thelema, but to salvage the wisdom of previous Aeons from the wreck which They foresaw.
The European traveller is wont to make merry at the absurdity of the Chinese measure of distance, the li. He is annoyed at being told that it is fifty li from A to B, but eighty li from B to A. Yet Einstein on the other hand, and common sense on the other, are with the Chinese. The li is a measure as much of time as of space. It is not wholly time; though, averaging things out, it may be taken as equivalent to fifteen or twenty minutes' walk, It is now obvious why it may be twice as "far" from B to A as from A to B. It should also be obvious that this gives much more practical information about a march than a stupid linear measurement. How childish it is, after all, to say that Chogo Ri is 250 miles from Srinagar! The Baltoro glacier is thirty miles long, while it is fifty from London to Brighton; but what one wants to know is that you can reach Brighton from London in an hour without personal exertion, while it is seven days' devilish hard going to ascend the Baltoro.
Even on the same journey distance is a poor criterion. Two consecutive marches of ten hours on the road to Yun Nan might be ten and thirty miles respectively in actual distance. The foreign devil is always holding up the Chinese to scorn; but my own experience is that the more I understand of his funny little ways the nearer he seems to my idea of absolute wisdom. One of the finest minds in the world today, that of Hon. Bertrand Russell, put it on record, after visiting China, "I came to teach, I stayed to learn."
We reached Yunchangfu on the fifth day from Teng Yueh. Our first march took us up the valley of the Shwee Li RIver, which we crossed on a floating bamboo bridge. The road from there to P'ing Ho winds uphill for about 5,000 feet. The road was nowhere really bad, but in some places so steep that riding was difficult. The third day took us to Lu Chiang Chiao, in the valley of the Salwin. The gorge is indescribably sublime. It is sentinelled by magnificent hills of splendid and seductive shapes. The air was mild yet fresh. No menace of chill, yet no taint of oppression. The road was not steep as on the other side of the watershed and the descent afforded a series of superb views. I noted in my diary on this day: "Reports generally filthy lies." The whole of my information (about China in general and that route in particular) was fundamentally false in idea and entirely incorrect in detail, except what I had from Litton, who not only never misled me, but interpreted and illuminated every fact on which he touched.
The Salwin has the reputation of being the most deadly river in the world. Its only rivals are in New Guinea and, at an earlier day, the Amazon, the Niger and the Congo. It is supposed to have a specially fatal form of malaria which kills most people outright, and from which on one ever wholly recovers. No doubt, some of the lower reaches are extremely pestilential; but in this section one might establish an ideal Sanatorium. The course of the Salwin had not at that time been completely explored. There is not only fever but massacre in that romantic ravine. Part of it is inhabited by the Lolos (they are not vaudeville artists but tribes) reported to be exceedingly primitive and addicted to head-hunting, kidney-chasing, phallus-fishing and testicle-trapping, so that their cooks are famous for stewed spleen, pancreas puddings and appendix on toast.
I met a number of these tribesmen; they reminded me very much of some of the wandering peoples of Central Asia and various folks of the low country of Mexico; and I was reminded of them in turn by many of the nomads of the Sahara. They were very different from the Chinese in costume, manner and appearance. In character, I found them charmingly childlike. Of course, it was easy enough to imagine that a tactless traveller might alarm them in all sorts of ways without intending to do so, and that they would react as naturally and innocently as any other creatures of the wild might do. But they were entirely free from the malignant envy, the panic born of prejudice and the perverse passions produced by hypocritically pretending to suppress natural instincts, which one associates with tradesmen in the West End of London and ministers of religion.
Litton's idea of a holiday had been to explore the upper reaches of this river. He had in fact wanted to reach that very spot which I had myself picked out for my objective, where the Salwin, Mekong and Yang-Tse-Kiang run parallel to within a space of forty miles, while at their mouths the distance between each is 2,000 miles instead of twenty. At each village Litton was received with the utmost courtesy and goodwill; but when he disclosed his intention of proceeding northwards, it created panic. They told him that to the north were no men but devils only; accursed races of the pit whose only methods of communicating ideas were envenomed arrows, pitfalls and the poisonous fluff of the bamboo which acts more subtly than ground glass.
I thought this story extraordinarily typical of human thought in general. Everyone admits that we have reached the summit of Wisdom, scaled the loftiest pinnacles of Morality, put the crown of perfection upon the cranium of Progress, and everyone knows perfectly well how this remarkable result has been achieved. But at the first hint that anyone proposes to take a step farther on this road, he is universally set down as a lunatic of the most dangerous type. However, the most savage Lolos are content with that diagnosis, whereas the most enlightened English add that the pioneer is not only a lunatic but a pervert, degenerate, anarchist and the rest of it — whatever terms of abuse chance to be in fashion. The abolition of slavery, humane treatment of the insane, the restriction of the death penalty to serious offences, and of indiscriminate flogging, the admission of Jews, Catholics, Dissenters and women as citizens, the introduction of the use of chloroform and antiseptics, the application of steam to travel, and of mechanical principles to such arts as spinning and printing, the systematic study of nature, the extension of the term poetry to metres other than the heroic, the recognition of painting other than voluptuous coloured photographs as art, and of music other than classical melody as art — these and a thousand similar innovations have all been denounced as chimerical, blasphemous, obscene, seditious, anti-social and what not.
The form of abuse is entirely irrational, and depends on the period as entirely as does the cut of the skirt. We no longer hurl the word Atheist at people who suggest a simplification of the notation of logic, or accuse people of witchcraft for inventing movable type. We do not brand geologists as infidels, or anthropoligists as pornographers. In the short space of my life we have ceased to brand our political opponents as Radicals. We have passed from Bulgarian atrocities to Belgian atrocities, German atrocities, and Bolshevik atrocities. But we still fit everyone who has an eye on the future with a San Benito, painted with the particular devils we happen to dread, at the bidding of scaremongering newspapers, entirely irrespective of our actual reasons for disliking them. We have to find a bad name for the dog we want to hang; and in our hysterical spasms we never stop to inquire what the innovator really proposed or even whether his proposal has the remotest connection with the objects which our soliditude fancies to be in danger.
Humanity is, in fact, as Cabell observes in "Figures of Earth", the prey of meaningless but carniverous words. Gladstone, Chamberlain, Campbell-Bannerman, Lloyd George, John Burns, Ben Tillett, Bernard Shaw, Frank Harris, Lord Northcliffe, have all been branded as traitors, as Nihilists, Republicans, Socialists, Anarchists, Fenians, Bolshevists, Home-rulers, Sinn Feiners, I know not what else. A month or two passes; the Glory of Mathematics is in jail; the traitor who has escaped lynching at the hands of the enraged populace becomes Prime Minister; the pornographic playwright becomes Parish Councillor in St. Pancras; and the popular patriot is sent to penal servitude for seven years. And all the while public opinion was little more than drunken delirium.
Knowing all this, there are still people so remote from realities that they trouble their heads about their reputation. The wise man works and doesn't worry. If and when his time comes, he will get hard labour or the Order of Merit. It doesn't matter which. His work reaches the sea through channels whose direction is not determined by the demeanour of the population on their banks, but by the forces of nature. I observed the Salwin very carefully; but my minutest measurements failed to detect that it was in any way hampered by not having been discovered and mapped throughout its course, or even by the unpleasant things that were said about it by the people who were afraid of what it might do for them.
"Workers of the world, don't unite!"
May the I.W.W. forgive me for blaspheming their most sacred slogan! But it is only inferiors who acquire strength by "getting together", if Mr. Ian Hay will excuse me for B=blaspheming HIS most sacred slogan. Aesop has a fable about a lion and four bulls; and there is also a story in the Acts of the Apostles where Paul gets out of a mess by introducing a subject on which his accusers were at odds. "Divide et impera" is a good enough motto for anyone who is really bent on ruling, which is itself a pitiable weakness. The only person worth ruling is oneself, and Solomon observed that a man who did that is greater than he that takes a city. My poetry will become the elements of an ineffable Eucharist. My Magick will make mankind Master of the Universe from the most intimate electron to the most irresolvable nebula. My life will be the model of the holiest heroism emancipated from every fear of its own elements.
And all that will happen without my wasting a moment's thought on obtaining the recognition or respect of anyone. My force is like the force of gravitation, inscrutable, inexplicable, irresistible, and ineluctable. It would be ridiculous for me to offer any helping hand. One does not require an arrangement of ropes and pulleys, worked by electricity, to fall off a log.
We crossed the Salwin by means of a bridge ornamented with shrines and a delightful and romantically beautiful house for the toll-keeper. Caesar, when he crossed the Rubicon, had less aesthetic attractions and less expense. I did not envy him, and as for the bridge, it did not seem aware of its responsibilities, which is perhaps the best state of mind in which a bridge can be.
The road was in unexpectedly good condition from the Salwin to Pu Pa'o, a long stage rendered unpleasant towards the end by threatening rain, which carried out its fell designs in the course of the night. For the first time we experienced native curiosity in wholesale form. We had been recommended to avoid this by secretiveness. This strange wild beast, a white woman, was to be camouflaged in Chinese clothes and bundled out of sight as soon as possible.
I adopted exactly opposite tactics. I said to the people, “Come and see, enlarge your minds, increase your experience, take the fullest advantage of this opportunity.” They were so accustomed to conventional European cowardice that at first they were inclined to be unruly and even suspicious. Can it be a trap? But a few minutes convinced them of my absolute faith and friendliness, so that everyone became good-tempered and frank. Their instinct and good manners, which nearly all men outside civilization possess, soon told them what conduct was really annoying and offensive; and they abstained immediately.
Europeans too often make up their minds to resent certain actions which are really quite harmless and natural. They persuade themselves that everything which their grandmothers would not do in Sunday School must be resented with the utmost rigour. This attitude is the root of at least nine-tenths of the trouble about “foreign devils.” The only unpleasantness between local natives and alleged whites which came under my notice during this journey was when some travelling missionary, instead of attending to his own affairs, took it upon himself to insult (in wretchedly and comically illiterate Chinese) some villagers who happened to be carrying an idol in procession as part of the festivities of New Year's Day (January 25th). He might as well have spoiled a children's party on the ground that the fairy stories which amused them were not strictly true.
The action was morally indistinguishable from brawling in church. I may not believe in the liquefaction of the blood of St. Januarius, but I see no reason for inflicting my incredulity on the people of Naples. The villagers naturally resented the ill manners of this brainless boor and told him to shut up. He immediately began to scream that he was being martyred for Christ's sake. I told him that if I could have brought myself to touch him, I would have thrashed him within an inch of his life. He did not understand my attitude; but I don't suppose there is much in this funny world that he did understand.
On the 23rd we came to Yung Chang Fu. The road during this march was in excellent repair. It bordered on a lovely lake, which interested me extremely as having no obvious outlet unless through a curious rocky cave; but I could not be sure of this, no current of any sort being visible.
On arrival in the town I was greeted by the Tao Tai, who sent a deputation of brilliantly-clad and highly-dignified servants with presents. These of course I returned with the exception of one or two trifles which I retained in order to avoid discourtesy, and on my part bestowed goods of European manufacture.
The next act was an interview with the mandarin in his hall of state where we sat side by side, low down, leaving the place of honour for the Son of Heaven and his immediate satellites. Having exchanged polite generalities about philosophy and virtue (he seemed to think that I was no mean authority on the latter subject) we dealt lightly with more mundane topics and proceeded to extricate ourselves from each other's presence in accordance with the most elaborate etiquette. He concluded by inviting me to share with him the offal which had been rejected by the dogs and kites, and I expressed my humble rapture at being permitted to partake of the celestial banquet which his heavenly hospitality had prepared for the meanest and mouldiest of mankind.
The mandarin was one of the most beautiful men I have ever seen. I use the word beautiful in its strictly aesthetic sense. He was, I judge, between 35 and 40 years old; his features were astonishingly perfect and their expression full of noble intelligence and lofty benevolence, harmonised by a placidity due to a consciousness of his superiority so unbroken and unquestioned that it had been absorbed into subconsciousness. He was a miracle of art and that art perfectly concealed. His complexion had more than the smoothness of the most exquisite Southern European types; yet all this impeccability of excellence was not marred, as is too often the case with Greek sculpture, but lacking that touch of the bizarre which Goethe postulates as essential to supreme beauty. He possessed that peace which I believe is intended to inform images of the Buddha, but which nearly always appears as a mere lack of any positive passion. The mandarin of Yung Chang radiated royalty.
It was easy to read his history; that he had been exiled to so remote and barbarous a city bore witness to the heinousness of the offence which had incurred so severe a sentence. On subsequent inquiry I was told that he had been accused of “failing in respect towards the Imperial swans”. My informant did not say in what his error of ritual consisted. (Another rumour, so absurd as to be credible, is that he was not criminal at all but insane; that he had the delusion that he was a Fellow of St. John's College, whether Cambridge or Oxford, I did not learn; and from all accounts it makes little difference.) The superb epicureanism of his expression was equally indicative of his spiritual superiority to even such blasting disaster as the wrath of the emperor and his divine mother.
The banquet was worthy of the man. Beginning at high noon, it ended only when Kephra the Beetle passed through the pylon of midnight; and during these twelve hours, there was no intermission in the arrival of new dishes and entertainments. The opulence of Trimalchio was concealed beneath the refinement of Lucullus and the culture of Horace.
Of late years Chinese cooking has become popular, though not nearly as popular as it deserves to be, in New York, Paris and London. In New York it is the best food; in Amurrka, outside New York, it is the only food (bar sea-food) fit for human consumption save in the Indian Grill Room in Los Angeles, Chez Antoine in New Orleans, and one or two other remote oases in the wilderness of canned abominations. In London, the vulgarity of the idea of a square meal has destroyed Oriental delicacy; in Paris the refinement of French epicureanism combines with the charm of China.
But nowhere in Europe or America is the Chinese cook able to convey the essence of his excellence. One can no more understand a Chinese dish in Europe than one can enjoy an Egyptian cigarette. As to cross running water destroys the enchantment of witches, or to traverse black seas destroys the cast of the Brahmin, so the flavour of Chinese food is bounded by the Great Wall. I well understand why the exiled Mongol feels that they cannot rest in peace in any other than the sacred soil. The dishes too which one obtains at Beem Nom Low's or at the Taverne Pascal are not those esoteric — shall we say Eleusinian? — ecstasies which interpret the soul of the Wonderland of Flowers.
I may mention a condiment composed exclusively of rose petals from which, by a subtle process, all those elements which are capable of nourishing the human body have been abstracted. But for the most part I dare not even describe some of the dainties which make Yung Chang, to this day, a fragrant memory in my mind. To do so would be to draw a culinary parallel with Le Jardin des Supplices. Not that the book is the real China; it is rather a wish phantasm of China by the delirium of a degenerate.
Yung Chang is noted for its temples. In one of those is a superb delineation of some of the Buddhist hells, where the penalties for various vices are depicted with what is sometimes very startling realism. I was sorry not to have been able to stay longer in this perfumed paradise of beauty and pleasure, where every element of art and nature were harmoniously woven as if endeavouring to echo the melody of the personality of the Mandarin.
The next day took us over superbly swelling hills upon whose bosom slumbered a lake. Here once more I was mystified as to its outlet. At the end of a delicious day we slept in a temple. It was the first day of the year and everyone but the missionary was rejoicing. Crackers clustered on long poles of bamboo and gay ornaments of coloured paper were the principal offerings to the eye, while the ear was delighted with all kinds of instrumental and vocal music. Strange delicate cakes and comfits tempted the tongue, while faint perfumes stirred the nostrils. The breeze was sweet with burning sandalwood and subtle with the sweat of dainty dancers. Even the sense of touch vibrated with virile joy as one's nerves trembled beneath the beatitude of innocent people swarming on every side.
I have noted about this day's march, “Roads everywhere good.” “Good” is a relative term. The Chinese have a proverb that a road is good for ten years and bad for ten thousand; most of the particular road I estimated at not less than 8,000. I actually proposed to bring home one bit of it; if the weight had not been prohibitive, it would have been well worth while. This was a slab of granite about fifteen feet long, three broad and three thick, and holes had been bored completely through it by the hoofs of the pack animals, so that the mud was visible clean through the stone.
In this matter of roads there is again a key to the Chinese psychology. The Buddhists of Burma and Ceylon, when their consciences prick them or their piety overflows, "make merit" by building new dagbas, regilding old ones, or otherwise glorifying the founder of their cult. But some Chinese sage remarked that it was quite contrary to the teaching of the Buddha to indulge in vain observances, and that the money would be far better spent in works useful to men, such as roads, gateways, and bridges. I had been very much puzzled on several occasions by certain features of the landscape; for instance, roads in excellent preservation which led across a piece of wasteland for a couple of miles or so, and stopped quite suddenly. Then there were gateways of the most ornamental kind which had been set up with no reference whatever to anything else. And there were bridges which did not cross streams or gorges.
All these had been constructed in order to "make merit" on the principles above explained. It was sufficient that they should be theoretically useful; whether they were practically so did not matter a scrap. However, the psychology of religious people in general is so completely puzzling to me that I will not pretend that these Chinese attempts to propitiate the powers that be, are any less rational than those of Christians.
The day after New Year we crossed the Mekong. The river flows through a superb gorge with extremely steep banks. Inscriptions of all kinds were carved on the naked cliffs. I was aware of a very curious sensation in crossing both this river and the Salwin. I can only describe it by saying that I seemed to be aware of the genius loci. At night, the wild beauty of the scenery was further enhanced. A house in the adjacent fields, several acres in extent, caught fire. This warm glow in the midst of the cold vastness of the plateau and the stars was very weird; and the silhouettes of the excited peasants who were trying to keep the fire from spreading seemed to dance in front of the flickering flames gigantically. It was a sort of opium dream of hell.
Talking of opium, I purchased the necessary apparatus and began to learn to smoke. I have already described the fiasco with laudanum in Kandy, and somewhere in Burmah I had made an equally futile experiment with powered opium, taking thirty grains with no greater profit than making myself suddenly and painlessly sick. I found smoking the drug equally unavailing. I smoked twenty-five pipes in five hours with no result whatever. It now appears that I was not inhaling properly; but (for all that) I might have got something out of twenty-five pipes! The fact is that I have an idiosyncrasy with regard to this drug. I sometimes wonder whether I did not use up all my capacities in that respect in a previous incarnation; possibly I was Ko Hs’uen.
East of Mekong, the path becomes much less satisfactory, partly owing to the geological differences. The whole country between Sha Yang and Chu Tung is across a steep wide range. There are innumerable barrancas, with which Mexico had made me familiar. The atmosphere of China had by this time begun to soak into my soul. Chinese art explained itself as inspired by Chinese Nature. There is a vast, free, pale, delicate expanse of colour and form, whose lines are visibly determined by the very structure of the globe itself. There is an infinite harmony and ease in a journey such as I was making.
The physical geography is even more vast in its own way that that of the Himalayas; and the country seems somehow less definite, less specialized yet equally ineluctable! Small vivid patches of colour are associated rather with the works of man that those of Nature, and if I were to endeavour to give a name to the poetic quintessence of the province of Yun Nan I should content myself with one word — Space. The Sahara Desert itself and the sea do not exceed this district in this respect, for they obtain their effects by what I may call the brutal method of sheer magnitude. Here the country is as diversified as Cumberland or Switzerland; the effect of immensity, of almost formless immensity, is obtained by slightly increasing the scale of quite normal types of hill, forest, lake and river, so that man and his ant-heaps appear absurdly diminutive by means of delicate satire rather than drastic demonstration.
The character of the journey constantly changes. The steep and desolate range scarred by barrancas gave place in a single march to the loveliest wooded hills, yet the slight magnification of everything produced a sense of tedium. To enjoy China fully, one must allow one’s soul to expand to the scale of the scenery and this cannot be done by ardour, as it can among great glaciers. It must be a gently beatific and philosophical adaptation of oneself to one’s environment. During this month, my poetic genius was lulling itself by means of an ineffably beautiful rhythm and rime scheme. On this whole journey I composed only two poems, and for the first time in my life I did not write them down, so to speak, automatically; I made up the verses in my head and only took pen when they were complete. The second of the poems, “The King Ghost”, is most peculiar psychologically. It is as if I had been stripped to the skin of my infinite mentality. It refers to the country south of Yun Nan Fu where the North Wind, or rather North Draught, was the dominant demon of the desert.
These sensuous yet savage uplands conveyed a peculiar spiritual exaltation such as I have experienced nowhere else and I translated them into “The Opium Smoker”. In all these months I succeeded in completing only two sections; the other six were invented and written down later. All I had of them at that time were a few odd lines and phrases. I was only too well aware that my command of language was inadequate to either the theme or the rhythm. The rime-scheme demanded by the first fugue was too difficult for the second, and in the later fugues I had to depart even more widely from my original intention. I cannot describe this journey better than by quoting from this poem, though it has (on the surface) nothing to do with it.
THE OPIUM SMOKER (In Eight Fugues)
I Crown me with poppy-leaves: sere are the bays. Fling down the myrtle: the myrtle decays. Still be the strife of the strenuous days!
Still be thy stridency, Player Pandean! Soothe me the lute; but oh hush to the paean! Feed me on kisses of flowers Lethean!
Specks on the wheel are the nights and the days, Fast as they fall from me, lost in the haze, Sobered to softness of silvery grays.
Satan is fallen from the pale empyrean Down in the dusk with the dead Galilean:— Fill me the Cup of the poppy Circean!
II Hardly a glimmer to chasten the gloom. Hardly a murmur of Time at his loom. Nothing of sense but the poppy-perfume.
Boy, as you love me, I charge you to fold Pipe over pipe into gardens of gold Such as a god may be glad to behold.
Seated on high in the aeons of doom, Sucked as a seed into the infinite womb, Sealed is my soul in the sheath of its tomb.
Boy, as you love me, I charge you to mould Pipe after pipe, till the heavens are rolled Back and are lost as a tale that is told!
III (Last six lines) Now in the balance of infinite things Stirs not a feather; the universe swings Poised on the stealth of ineffable wings.
Surely the sable Osirian bird Sole in the aether shall utter the Word Now that its crying can never be heard!
IV (last six lines) Poison and poison and poison! I quiver, Drenched with the hate of the horrible river — O but the stars of it stagger and shiver!
Leave me in peace, O disaster of light! Leave me to solitude, leave me to night! Is there no moon to enkindle the height?
V (lines 7,8,9) Fade, O thou moon, in thy magical bark! Sink in the ocean thy silvery spark! Leave me, ah leave me alone in the dark!
VI (last three lines) I who am Being and Knowledge and Bliss Lack by so much of the utter abyss;— Bring me, O bring me, O bring me to this!
VII (Lines 1,2,3, and 10, 11 and 12) Nay! it is over; I may not attain. Why am I faint but because I am fain? Roll me the rapture of amber again!
Maybe the stridency purpled of Pan Leads at the last to the light of His plan. Maybe his work is the wealth of a man!
VIII (Lines 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9) Make me the man of the marvellous mission! Sharpen the sword of veridical vision! Cut me the knot of the mighty magician!
Here I devote me (record me the vow) Unto the terrible task of the Tao. Soul of the master, the writer be thou!
There is a certain sublime monotony in this spiritual state which had, by the way curious as it may sound, an almost entirely independent existence from the other spiritual state (concurrent though that was) which is to be described in a subsequent chapter. The incidents of the journey itself failed to rouse me from this "deciduous dream". I was not smoking opium. I had merely made a couple of futile experiments, yet I was experiencing to all intents and purposes very much what opium smokers do. It is the one quality of my genius to be able to appreciate directly the soul of the country or a people without consciously making the intellectual links.
It is perhaps part of my outfit to be unable to learn foreign languages. I can master the most complicated grammars in a few days, and my memory for words is almost unrivalled, so that theoretically I ought to be able to pick up a new language very quickly. But I cannot. Months of residence and the absence of English — and French-speaking people leave me almost as incapable as they found me. I resent instinctively intellectual communication with foreigners. It is as if I felt that it would rob me of the really intimate communication which exists by its own divine right. An understanding of this peculiarity is very necessary to the explanation of various paradoxes in my character.
My diary from Mekong to Ta Li Fu is very meagre. The most interesting entry is this: “Saw child saved from missionary (one eye lost) showing marks of gouging.” I do not remember at this distance of time what the incident was. It was nothing unusual. Medical missionaries in remote districts tend to become Sadistically insane from the boredom of their lives. Being brainless, they cannot endure it; and take advantage of their circumstances to vivisect the poor far more freely than is done in London hospitals.
Almost every day blesses the traveller with some delightful geographical surprise. I recall, for instance, plodding wearily up a pass of decidedly rugged character. It was natural to expect that the other side of the pass would be not very dissimilar. I reached the top — and was stupefied. Instead of looking down into a valley, I saw the ground stretching away from me perfectly level, a shallow oblong with a rim of grassy mounds. It was highly cultivated land, paddy fields, and plantations of white poppy ablaze in the sunlight with straight narrow channels of pure pale green and pale blue water marking off one meadow from another. Similar surprises constantly crop up. Their unexpectedness suggests the atmosphere of Alice in Wonderland, while their formal beauty reminds one of the character visions of the “alchemical plane.” A less accurate but perhaps more intelligible analogy is that of the curiously luminous, exquisite and irrational landscapes which were used as backgrounds by such painters as Mantegna, Memling and Leonardo da Vinci. There is something indescribable in these landscapes which somehow suggests the word symbolic. It is as if the painter knew that they were not and could not be there; and yet that spiritual truth demanded their presence. I believe this observation to be original, and important to the theory of art, particularly at this moment when the old conventions have gone by the board within half a century or less, and when the search for an explanation of the facts has led to such wild speculations and such erratic experiments. I wish to propose an entirely new theory.
In order to defend the Modern Schools from Whistler to Cezanne, a necessary task, we must not knavishly protest that the direct representation of nature is no longer the object of art. We must take the bull by the horns, and proclaim that it never was any part of the artist's business to record his physical vision, except as a species of excuse for his peculiar conduct. The great masters have never at any time worried their heads in the least about accuracy, even when they thought and said that they did so. The conscious ideas of all the artists I have known have been naive to the point of absurdity. Their ignorance has been colossal in exact proportion to their genius. The Old Masters were the same. They did not in the least object to having Abraham aiming at Isaac with a blunderbus, or the Nativity taking place with the belfray of Bruggs in the background, any more than they did to having twelve Italians at the Last Supper.
In literature it is the same — with the sea-coast of Bohemia, or Florence, nobles talking idiomatic English and living by English ideas. The truth is that any artist who attempts to reproduce nature has simply abdicated his kingship. That is the vast error of realism; and paradox will have it that the realists from Rembrandt to Balzac are after all the greatest, because their unconscious genius was all the while sublimely innocent of their absurd dogmas. But these dogmas drove them to devote themselves to minute observation of what they supposed to be objective nature; and the result was that they acquired a technique which enables them to express themselves more thoroughly and more intelligibly to the world than the idealists, whose vagueness and vanity strove to impress itself upon the world without a proper grasp of form.
All forms of artistic expression are like an alphabet. The letters L. I. O. N. are not in the least like a lion; but the more accurately they resemble the ideal form of the letters, the more easily will people understand what is meant when the word is written. All flourishes, all attempts to be “artistic”, are simply snags. Reverent and enthusiastic attention to nature pays; not because its ostensible object can ever be attained, but because the “love under will” which informs it is the measure of truth.
On February 1st we entered a magnificent gorge. The culminating ecstacy is the approach to Hsia Kwan by means of a natural rock bridge amid rock walls. It is as if one had come suddenly upon the “dark tower” of Childe Roland, a fortress built by titanic gnomes when the planet was a semi-liquid flux of lava.
The road to Ta Li Fu, the second greatest city of the province, and the most picturesquely situated and historically important, breaks off from the main road across China and runs sharply northward for eight miles across wild desolate moorlands. Every weak spot in the defences of the wilderness has been seized upon by the industry of the Chinese and turned into a glowing patch of cultivated soil. The approach to Ta Li itself inspires the stranger with a certain awe, for life is seen wrestling with death in a supreme spasm. The pullulating towers and temples of the town seem literally to quake amid the rotten and restless ruins with which they are interspersed. And thereby hangs a tale.
During eighteen years the province of Yun Nan had been the theatre of civil war. Ta Li was the greatest stronghold of the Mohammedans, their opponents being (more or less) Mahayana Buddhists. There was not really, I fancy, much to choose between them. The outward and visible sign of Islam in these parts is that the door of a Moslem is protected from malignant demons by a poster inscribed with sacred characters instead of a fierce-looking genius. Also he objects to pork. The cause of the war was in fact either that the Mohammedans raided the pork- butchers or that the Pork Trust wished to extend its market by force. (This, by the way, may throw some light on the problem of the Gadarene swine discussed by Huxley, as showing how local ill-feeling is likely to develop in such connections, while probably legends of demonology would be invented in the course of the argument.) I do not remember how many million men were said to have been killed in the course of these struggles, but something like two thirds of the whole area of Ta Li Fu (some estimates gave three-quarters) had been razed to the ground in the final storming of the stronghold.
Such wars are in all respects similar to those which have ravaged Europe since the beginning of history. There is always lofty pretence of piety, honour, and the rest of it; and there is always in the background the natural dabagery of men aroused by some occasion of sordid greed. There was very little real sentimentality in the Civil War of 1861-65, very little religion in the struggle between the Protestant and the Catholic, and very little respect for honour or humanity in the war of 1914-18, which used to be called the Great War until the one now imminent (1926) showed it in its proper light as a preliminary skirmish.
Dr. Clark, the medical missionary of Ta Li Fu, received us with great courtesy and hospitality. I found him a sincere and earnest man; more, even an enlightened man, so far as it is possible for a missionary to be so; but that is not very far. I found him totally ignorant both of Canonical Buddhism and of the local beliefs. I tried to point out to him that he could hardly hope to show the natives the errors of their way of thinking, unless he knew that that way was. But he declined to see the point. He was so cock-sure that his own sect of Christianity held truth in utter purity and entirety that he could not imagine that the Chinese had any way of thinking at all. He regarded their refusal to follow him as a mixture of sheer dullness and sheer wickedness.
I forget the figures with regard to the converts at Ta Li Fu. In Yunnanfu the staff of six missionaries claimed four converts in four years and I imagine that these four were Rice-Christians at that. The truth seems to be that there are two main types of non-Christian religion. The first may be described as philosophical. In this category I place the more intelligent classes of Buddhist, Hindu and Mohammedan. To convert these people it would obviously be necessary to show them that Christianity offers them a more satisfactory explanation of the Universe than their own; and not only have I never met a missionary who was capable of doing this, but not even one who admitted the desirability of it or attempting it.
The other type is the superstition to which belong the fetish-worshipping varieties of Buddhist and Hindu and pagan (Equatorial Africa and Polynesia) with their paraphernalia of miracles, sacrifices, priestcraft, penance, vicarious atonements and the like. It is up to the missionary to show that the Christian form of such things is superior to the local variety and the difficulty is usually insuperable. The native can produce much bigger and more improbable miracles, a much more terrifying demonology, a far more fascinating pantheon, with a more alluring (and, so to say, actual) ritual than even the papist. The native perhaps seems little reason why he should not accept Christianity, but certainly none at all why he should discard his own beliefs which seem to him more vivid and more veracious, better adapted and better attested than the new. It is in fact only among the very lowest class of superstitious savages that Christianity makes any headway. Where Christian and Moslem missions are in direct rivalry, Islam collects the higher and Christianity the lower sections of the society.
Disappointed about learning Chinese ideas at first hand in this remote region, I hoped at least to get available information about the effects of opium smoking. Dr. Clark informed me that these effects were appalling — the usual scaremonger story. He said it was the curse of the country and that his clinic was full of victims; “Hundreds and hundreds and hundreds,” he groaned, “physical and moral wrecks from the habit.” “I should like to see one,” I replied with the appropriate sigh and shudder. “Well, you have only to come down to my clinic any morning,” he returned: “there are hundreds and hundreds and hundreds.” He groaned again. Well, I went down to his clinic and he went on groaning that there were hundreds and hundreds and hundreds, and I went on sighing that I should like to see one.
During my whole journey, I never saw a man whom I could call definitely the worse for opium. My wife’s chair coolies were cases in point. They had smoked from twelve years old or thereabouts; and when I say smoked, I mean smoked. Every night on reaching the inn, Temple or camp, as the case may be, they cooked their rice and started to smoke directly they had eaten it, continuing till they went to sleep. In the morning again they smoked before starting. The chair (with Rose and the baby, and the books which I like to have handy to read at odd moments without unpacking my valise) weighed over 160 pounds.
Each man had therefore to carry forty pounds. Not much, but a load of this kind is very different to dead weight. Each man had to keep in step with the rest and shake the chair as little as possible; and this over rough hilly toads, often slippery with mud; perhaps against a head wind, in which case the furniture of the chair offered a large surface. One of these coolies, the heaviest the most inveterate smoker of the quartet, cannot have been less than sixty years old. I timed the men under the worst conditions; a road mostly uphill, driving sleet — half a gale — dead ahead, streaming slippery cobbles, and they did eight miles without a rest in two hours dead. If those men were “physical wrecks from abuse of opium”, I should like to see the animal in his undamaged state!
There are of course men who have injured their health by opium; and one can see such on the coast, where the affair is complicated with alcohol and European vices. But on the whole, the search for an opium fiend in China is on all fours with the search for the man with tobacco amblyopia in England. Consular reports and independent medical opinion are unanimous that opium-smoking does little or no harm to the Chinese. Dr. Thomas Stevenson, in his special article in Quain’s Dictionary of Medicine, sits on the fence as follows: “Great differences of opinion exist as to the pernicious or other effects of opium-smoking. Some would have us believe that the practice is pernicious, not to say deadly; but debasing it often is. The pictures drawn as to its effects are evidently coloured by the bias of the observer. On the other hand some would persuade us that the practice is harmless, not to say beneficial. Doubtless neither view is absolutely correct, and whilst opium-smoking is pernicious, the evils have been greatly exaggerated.” These remarks strike me on the whole as fair.
I have myself made extensive and elaborate studies of the effects of indulgence in stimulants and narcotics. (See my “The Psychology of Hashish,” “Cocaine,” “The Green Goddess,” The Diary of a Drug Fiend etc.) I have a vast quantity of unpublished data. I am convinced that personal idiosyncrasy counts for more in this matter than all the other factors put together. The philosophical phlegmatic temperament of the Chinese finds opium sympathetic. (Refer to the incident of the surgical operation at Skardu.) But the effect of opium on a vivacious, nervous, mean, cowardly Frenchman, on an Englishman with his congenital guilty conscience or on an American with his passion for pushing everything to extremes is very different; the drug is almost certain to produce disaster.
Similarly, hashish, which excites certain types of Arab, Indian, Malay or Mexican to indiscriminate murder, whose motive is often religious insanity, has no such effect on quietly disposed, refined and philosophical people, especially if they happen to possess the faculty of self-analysis. In brief, generalisation about such exceptionally subtle problems is a snare.
One point, however, I must admit to thinking and feeling somewhat strongly. Dr. Clark told me that the missionaries treated the opium habit with injections of morphia; and in other parts of China I learnt that they had taught the Chinese, with the same laudable intention, to sniff cocaine.
The British government has acted with incredible folly. The economic prosperity of India is largely bound up with the export of opium. Whilst I was in China a petition against “the accursed traffic” had been presented. It was signed by many of the most eminent and enlightened men in China, to say nothing of the sister-in-law (I think it was) of the emperor whom they had persuaded to declare herself a Christian so as to have a foot in the enemy’s camp. The fact was the most of the petitioners were themselves opium growers whose business was damaged by the competition of the Indian product. In the same way, of course, many of the missionaries were employed by the manufacturers of morphia and cocaine to introduce these drugs instead of the practically harmless and even beneficial YEN.
The whole question of stimulants and narcotics should be resolved by the application of the Law of Thelema. All artificial methods of forcing up the price of drugs and drink by making them difficult to obtain should be discountenanced. It should be better business to sell hosiery than heroin. People who cannot use these things without abusing them should be allowed to eliminate themselves from society. Narcotic drugs in particular have the special advantage that they tend to diminish sexual activity. On the other hand, it should not be worth anyone's while to persuade people to indulge. The commonsense of the average man may be trusted to keep him off cocaine as it now does off strychnine and prussic acid, though these are powerful stimulants which might be made the basis of vices if there were a profit of 5,000 per cent, in peddling them.
People shake their heads when I put forward these views, when indeed they do not regard me as a new Borgis. They assure me that my plan is unpractical. But mine is not a speculative scheme. I can point to the facts of the past. Before the War, any responsible person could buy cocaine by the bushel. Yet when I wanted to study the effects of the drug, I only found two people in London who had got themselves into trouble over it, although I had access to the likeliest circles. Again, France, Switzerland, and Italy prohibited absinthe in the course of the War Panic. It is still bought and sold openly in England, and we do not find the populace debauched and demented. (At least, not by it!)
One of the greatest mistakes of modern legislation is the tendency to refuse responsibility to the average citizen. We act as if we were all desperate criminals ready to run amuck at the first opportunity; and the result is that we do not prevent the criminal classes from carrying on exactly as before; in fact, we make things easier for them by treating the householder as if he were on ticket-of-leave. There was quite a comic case the other day when a man's wife had been held up by armed highwaymen. They could not be found; but the man happened to admit that he kept a revolver by his bedside in case of burglars, and was at once prosecuted and heavily fines. As in America, the best way to keep out of the clutches of the law is to break it and watch your step.
China has been the most civilized country in the world; from the time of Lao Tze and Confucius, the fringe of its culture has been torn by the claws of commerce, but it will survive the collapse of Europe. And in Yun Nan the contamination of the foreign devil had not gone very far; in fact, it had not yet reached the asymptote of its own curve. However, the clearing of the ground had long been complete. There are practically no wild animals in the province. I did not even see one of those famous pheasants which I was anxious to shoot. I had hitherto bagged nothing but occasional pigeons for the pot.
At Ta Li Fu, nevertheless, there is great sport to be had. From the great deserts to the north, across the mighty mountains, migrate many magnificent birds, especially cranes and geese. These reach a tremendous size. A goose is more than one man can comfortably carry. I went out from the city northwards, for these birds migrate at this time of the year from the terrible highlands of Central Asia to the warm valleys and plains of the low country. I used to lie behind an embankment which was perhaps at one time part of the fortifications of the city, and shoot them as they came over. It was very difficult sport. The birds flew very high and at a tremendous pace. Some idea may be gained from the fact that a grouse shot clean through the head would fall as much as a quarter of a mile from the embankment. These geese are admirable eating, but the flesh of the crane is very coarse and fishy.
Talking of shooting, I may as well sum up the subject by saying that the part of China through which I travelled offers very poor sport on the whole; there is usually the chance of a pigeon for the pot, but that is all one can get without taking a great deal of pains. I had heard so much of the gorgeous beauty of the Chinese pheasant and looked forward to bagging a few, but never so much as saw one during the whole march. As for quadrupeds, I never set eyes on as much as a rabbit or a marmot, let alone a deer. Foxes abound; but they did not come my way. Chinese civilization is so systematic that wild animals have been abolished on principle. That at least is the only explanation that suggests itself to me.
We had been told that we should find ample supplies of fresh food of all sorts everywhere. Nothing could have been farther from the truth. We could get no fresh milk, the Chinese considering it obscene to extract it; but strangely enough, in even the smallest villages, we were able to buy an excellent brand of evaporated cream which some enterprising drummer had managed to unload along the track. There was no mutton to be had; and it was only seldom that we managed to buy a goat or kid. Poultry and eggs were fairly plentiful in most places; rice of an inferior quality and the most suspicious-looking kind of pork were the staple food of the people. Flour was rarely available and of course there was no butter.
Selama was in great distress at the difference between the local rice and the Indian variety to which he was accustomed, while as a Moslem he abhorred pork. I too would not eat it, valuing the respect in which he held me, as a Sahib who partook not of the abominations of my race. Luckily, distrusting my informant, I had supplied myself with a considerable stock of canned provisions before starting, and I increased this at Teng Yueh, buying some of Litton’s stores from his widow. Even so, we were running very short before we reached Yunnanfu.
At this hour, seventeen years later, I recall almost more vividly than any other incident of the journey, an absurd little tragedy in this connection. We had some tins of coffee and milk, and we had come to the last portion of the last tin. We treasured it for days, looking forward to enjoying it on some great occasion as never an epicure looked forward to a bottle of rare wine. The moment came, we prepared the great drink with almost reverential care. And just as we were going to drink it, my wife shifted her position and spilled it. It would be hopeless to try to express the bitterness of our disappointment. Stay-at-home people can form no idea of the strength of the obsession which trifles impose. Conrad in “An Outpost of Progress” tells of a murder and suicide beginning in a quarrel between two close friends, traders up-river, over a few lumps of sugar.
During our short stay in Ta Li Fu, we saw the biggest pageant with which the Chinese welcome spring. I did not know enough Chinese to understand the details of the ceremony; and the missionaries regarded the while business as a blasphemous Pagan orgy from which all righteous people should avert their gaze. I could see clearly, however, that the central figure was an ox. He was evidently the hero of the occasion because he was going to help them out with their ploughing. It was a gay, spontaneous, harmless piece of merriment; to see idolatry in it is sheer morbid prejudice.
We left Ta Li on February 6th and got back to the main road. The following day was without interest, but on the 8th, the latter part of the march led through a delightful valley of the most surprising beauty. It was an altogether new type of scenery. China is full of these delicious revelations. It has always some new delicate splendour to show the traveller. The variety is infinite, not as Alpine peaks or Scottish lochs differ, merely in detail; in China, one is always discovering a totally strange fairyland. The spirit of a man is reborn with every such vision. It is not even possible to compare and contrast these beauties; each is entirely individual, lord of its own atmosphere; the points of similarity with other places such as geological formations, the flora, the villages and the people seem to possess infinitesimal importance.
On the 9th there was a novelty of another kind. The dignity of Johnny White as interpreter entitled him to ride on horseback; but naturally he had to be content with a somewhat sorry screw, while my own pony was a fairly decent animal. He thought the time ripe to make a definite attempt to force me to “lose face”; that is, to become an object of ridicule to the coolies. If he had succeeded, I need hardly point out, there would have been and end of all discipline, and we should probably have been robbed and murdered in short order. His idea was to start out ahead of us on my pony. I did not find out what had happened for some time.
When I did, I set out on foot at top speed after him. In two or three hours I came up with the culprit. As luck would have it, he was crossing a steep hillside; below the path were gigantic thorn bushes. I came up quietly and unperceived, put my left hand under his right foot and with one deft jerk flung him from the saddle into a thorn bush. It was quite impossible for him to extricate himself, the bush being very large and elastic, the thorns very long and persuasive. So I waited, peacefully smoking, until the coolies began to arrive, when I got up and gave him a whack with my whalebone whip as each man passed. When all had gone by, I mounted my pony and followed. Johnny White was rescued by a subsequent caravan and turned up during the halt for tiffin. It was not I who had “lost face” with the coolies! And I had no more trouble of any kind for the rest of the journey to Yunnanfu.
This march was very long and dull, its monotony relieved only by a fine view of lakes and hills. But the next six days were utterly uninteresting. Not till the 16th did the featureless plateau give way to the grand wooded gorges which caress Tatz’assa Tang. The village has no good inn, so we went on to a lovely glade which afforded a delightful and romantic place for a camp. I fell ill, I don’t know of what, for the next three days. Whatever scenery there may have been I was too sick to observe.
We reached Yunnanfu on the 20th. Mr. Wilkinson, the Consul General, wrote that he was very sorry not to be able to offer hospitality, but the Bengali blackguard of Teng Yueh had put in a complaint that I had assaulted him, so that his relations with me must be strictly official until the matter was settled. We found accommodation in the Dépendance of the French Hospital; an admirable place run by a Dr. Barbesieux and a Parisian head nurse, both of them really much too accomplished and delightful to be wasted on such a cesspool as this city. I called on Wilkinson and told him my side of the story of Litton’s death. Steps were taken to make it hot for the doctor; but as my assault was not denied, the Consul General had to regard it as a technical offence, which was duly purged by the payment of a small fine.
The approach to Yunnanfu is worthy of remark. The city is situated in the centre of a plain ringed round by hills. The suggestion is almost of a crater, like Mexico City. There is no adequate drainage for the rainfall. The town itself seems, from a distance, to be perched on a huge mound some fifty to a hundred feet in height. But on investigation one discovers that this mound is composed of the refuse of the city; the accumulation of centuries of indescribable dirt. It inclined one to accept the theory that bubonic plague first appeared here and spread hence throughout the world.
On the 23rd I paid the inevitable visit to the inevitable missionary. This specimen was more bigoted and less intelligent than any I had previously met. I had not thought this possible. Six missionaries in four years working in this populous city did one even claim more than four converts. They attributed their failure, of course, to the personal activity of the Devil. It never occurred to them that there might be something wrong with their methods. Roughly speaking, any man with energy and enthusiasm ought to be able to bring at least a dozen others round to his opinion in the course of a year, no matter how absurd that opinion might be. We see every day in politics, in business, in social life, large masses of people brought to embrace the most revolutionary ideas, sometimes within a few days. It is all a question of getting hold of them in the right way and working on their weak points.
The failure of the missionary proves to me that he has simply been unable to establish any common ground of argument. He refuses to learn what the Chinese really think about their spiritual concerns. He is thus in the position of one who should try to sell golf clubs to a cricketer, refusing to believe that any man should not want to play golf. The Chinese are intensely practical and simple; the complicated theories of the Christian, his baseless assertions about sin, hell, incarnation, atonement, and so on, are as meaningless to him as they would be to a horse. The Chinese does not believe that he has a soul at all in our sense of the word. Why should he worry about its welfare? He does not believe in God, since he cannot see the acts of any such being; though he is ready enough to ascribe petty misfortunes and accidents, which he does see, to the malice of elemental demons.
He sees no reason for believing in life after death; even when he is a Buddhist, post-mortem compensation for virtue and vice is distributed automatically by the law of cause and effect. He would regard the personal intervention of a deity as morally unjust, and in any case impossible, as subversive of the order of Nature. Surely the God who established that order (on the Christian theory) would not stultify himself by upsetting it. The Chinese idea of sin, again, is quite incompatible with ours; firstly (having no theology) he has no conception of a theological sin, of divine displeasure. He has the practical idea that sin is any act which causes harm to himself or to those to whom he feels morally bound; and he cannot imagine that the results of such acts can be dodged by a profession of faith, or that they require another world wherein they may be purified, If an act does not actually produce evil consequences in the sphere to which it belongs he cannot see wherein the sin consists.
The root of physiological attitude is that he demands tangible proof of every proposition. Christianity, to which the word Proof is the most obnoxious in the whole language, seems to him a fairy tale so fantastic that his own superstitions about "spirits" seem in comparison the most matter-of-fact common sense. He knows for a fact that various physical phenomena follow various magical practices. When they fail, it is easy to find an excuse; but such wholesale Magick as is implied by uprooting his whole intellectual and ethical principles with no possibility of ascertaining the result in this life, is an act of faith amounting to sheer insanity. If Christian missionaries were to study Chinese psychology and take advantage of every doubtful point to form a basis for a conception of the Universe such that his theories might reasonably be built on it in course of time, much great success might be expected.
There is, however, another serious obstacle. With few exceptions, the missionary seems to the people not only a fantastic dreamer whose dramatic violence in asserting his views stamps him as both unmannerly and mentally unstable, but as an idle and therefore dishonest person; and still more, one whose whole life is contrary to good sense, politeness, and propriety. He is always rebuking the Chinese for this custom or that; he never reflects that his own habits may offend the moral or social sense of the people among whom he lives.
I doubt whether genuine conversion, as understood by Evangelicals, is ever theoretically possible. Neglecting the rice-Christians, and those who are influenced by having been restored to health by medical missionaries, the only substantial progress is in more or less Europeanised towns. There, missionary schools may be thronged. The object is plain. The parents wish their children to acquire the commercial advantage which knowledge of European words and ways confer. But no device will ever overcome the initial difficulty, which is to make a Chinese conscious of an Ego which in actual fact he does not possess. (I have already given my reasons for believing the "Soul" of a Mongolian to be peripheral, not centralised.) His mind — as his philosophers plainly state — is like a bundle of sticks. His Ego is imaginary, invented for the convenience of describing the relations between disconnected impressions. If the impressions were dispersed, there would be nothing left. We, on the other hand, are intuitively aware of an Ego, perfect at every point; our impressions merely call our attention to a particular reaction. From the above considerations it ought to be evident to the dearest old ladies in Balham that to send missionaries to China is about as sensible as to found musical colleges for the deaf, or to drive away shadows by bombarding them with bricks.
I enjoyed my ten days in Yunnanfu immensely. I picked up quite a lot of genuine old prints at prices so low that I could hardly believe my ears. The city had never been ransacked by bric-a-brac hounds.
Having settled my little official affair with the Consul General, we were free to become excellent friends. He was a distinguished and delightful man, though I could well understand that Litton had been a thorn in his side. He wanted everything done elegantly and correctly, while Litton cared nothing for routine. He was always imposing his tameless personal genius on the province, with the result that he was always achieving unexpected successes when Wilkinson expected him to be filling up forms and docketing reports.
For various reasons, I decided to abandon my original design to descend the Yang-Tze; for one thing, the delays at Bhamo and Teng Yueh had robbed me of time. I was anxious to get to Europe in good time to prepare a new Expedition to Kangchenjunga for 1907. I had the mountain, so to speak, in my pocket. A part of average strength could make as certain of strolling to the top as if it were the Strand. I decided, therefore, to turn south and make for Tonkin.
On March 2nd, after breakfast and tiffin with the Consul General, who was unfortunately short of stores and could only spare us a couple of tins of butter, we started along the cobbled track, lively with cherry blossoms. The walking soon became very difficult; the paths were rough, wet and slippery. On the 4th we came to a pass in the mountains guarded southward by fine cliffs. At nightfall we reached a lake by whose side we camped. The weather for the first five days of this journey was bitterly cold. The wind, shifting from S.E. to S.W., literally took the skin off our faces, even mine, which I had thought inured to all the possible devilishness of nature.
Later, this wind dropped and was replaced by a much more deadly device; a steady draught from the north was infernally icy as when it started its career in the ghastly deserts of Siberia. It had the same quality as the north wind which we had on Chogo Ri; it took no notice whatever of poshtin (coats lined with sheepskin), sweaters, flannel shirts and vests. One felt as if one were absolutely naked. There was no shelter from it. One might crouch behind a wall or a house, but although that prevented the wind from blowing on one, it did not hinder the draught from drawing from one. The effect was just as bad; it simply exhausted one bodily and mentally; it sucked out all vitality and courage.
On the 6th we came out suddenly on the edge of a plateau with a descent of some 3,000 feet in front of us, through a fine gorge. But I was hardly in a mood to appreciate nature. For three days we had practically nothing to eat but soup and Worchester Sauce. When we asked for eggs, we created something not far short of a scandal. Even rice was scanty. The villages on this route are few, far apart and poverty-stricken.
Of one thing we had plenty — tea. I had heard marvellous stories of the so-called “Brick tea” that hails from these parts; and laid in a large stock of various brands to take back to England. The bricks are usually in the shape of a flat cone, somewhat hollow beneath. It reminds one of the straw hats of Japanese coolies. The diameter is from eight inches to one foot and the thicknesses from two to four inches. The flavour is excellent, very subtle and aromatic; but it possesses a property not usually associated with tea, the desirability of which depends on the physiological condition of the drinker, for it acts as a powerful laxative and a purgative when strongly infused and consumed in excess. When I reached home and could compare it with the finest caravan teas, its flavour seemed less admirable, yet it retained its distinction and was always worth its place in the caddy as a curiosity. For myself, too, it was a potent spell to evoke most vivid memories of this weirdly fascinating journey.
To return to the march to Mengtze. There is little to see that is impressive. My one memory is of a big pagoda perched on the crest of a mountain that looked as if it had been cleft in twain by a wizard. I was heartily glad on the 10th when Mengtze came into sight; a French outpost with all the civilization, culture and cooking that heart of man can wish. The Inspector of Customs, Mr. Brewitt Taylor, very kindly asked us to stay in his house, though at first sight he could hardly believe that I was an Englishman. The journey had reduced me to rags; I had had no chance of washing or trimming my beard; the skin of my face was torn by the wind. I must have looked simply frightful. (I still do.)
We only stayed three days in Mengtze in spite of the attractions of the little French colony. Everyone invited us everywhere, including a garden party where I played lawn tennis for the first time in ten years. I will play once more — when I return.
There is one ghastly tale to be told. The French intended to run a railway up to Yunnan to extend their sphere of influence. They had surveyed the route satisfactorily and proceeded to import 8,000 coolies. With unbelievable stupidity, they got them from Manchuria. Naturally enough, the men could not stand the climate, especially as no proper accommodations had been provided to house them. In six months only 500 were left.
On March 14th we left Mengtze for Manhao on the Red River —three days’ easy travelling. The very first night, an unpleasant incident took place. Wilkinson had made me promise on no account to strike any of the men, but to rely on him to punish any misconduct when they returned to Yunnanfu. It seemed as if they knew of this compact, and the Great God Wilkinson seemed very far off to them. I could feel instinctively that the respect, akin to godly fear, which I had previously inspired was less powerful as an inhibition.
We slept on the 14th at a serai, dirty and entirely comfortless. I paid the host more than liberally; but he was insolent and I had no means of abating the nuisance. This emboldened my own coolies to be mutinous; and in the course of a squabble with my wife (I being ahead out of sight) one of them struck the baby. I ground my teeth; but resolved to keep my temper and my promise to the Consul.
The 15th was a long march over muddy cobbles full of holes where my horse constantly slipped an stumbled. It blew great guns and poured cats all day. We reached a village with an alleged European hotel; the "Sino-France", a wattled hotel, unspeakably foul; the worst place I had yet struck in all Asia.
Manhao is a fine village situated on the banks of the Red River — a torrent which competes with the Salwin for pre-eminence in deadliness, both from disease and demons. The Chinese refuse to sleep even a single night in the valley; but I saw no cachectics in the village any more than I had seen victims of opium elsewhere.
The Red River at this point runs through a deep and narrow gorge. We found it stiflingly hot, after our long exposure to the icy winds of the plateau. I had hired a dug-out to take us down the rapids to Ho-K'ou, and her I saw my chance of getting even with the coolies. Having got everything aboard, I proceeded to pay the head man the exact sum due to him — less certain fines. Then the band played. They started to threaten the crew and prevented them from casting off the ropes. They incited the bystanders to take their part; and presently we had thirty or forty yelling maniacs preparing to stone us. I got out my .400 Cordite Express and told Salama to wade ashore and untie the ropes. But like all Kashmiris, thoughtlessly brave in the face of elemental dangers, he was an absolute coward when opposed to men. I told him that unless be obeyed at once I would begin by shooting him. He saw I meant it and did his duty; while I covered the crowd with my rifle. Not a stone was thrown; three minutes later the fierce current had swept us away from the rioters.
The real danger now began. This was the only part of the journey where we encountered any serious risk of disaster. The Red River, though broad and deep, has all the characteristics of the wildest mountain torrents. It falls in a succession of dangerous rapids, all the more perilous for the sudden sharp curves of the channel. At almost every corner we saw one or more wrecks, a far from reassuring spectacle. I was given to understand, however, that disaster rarely overtook boats going down stream. It is when they are being towed by insufficient power up the rapids that they get out of control and are dashed upon the rocks. For all that, we managed to hit two nasty snags in the course of the day; one of them ripped a hole in us amidships; but the men managed to stop the leak with tarpaulin nailed in place by short boards with extraordinary speed and efficiency. They were evidently well accustomed to similar jobs.
We reached Ho-K'ou on the 18th and struck a forlorn Englishman who gave us tiffin and dined with us. We all got gloriously drunk celebrating the success of a journey which in the opinion of all reasonable people was a crazy escapade, doomed from the first to disaster. Another bubble had burst! The awe-inspiring adventure had proved as safe as a bus ride from the Bank to Battersea.
I have had little occasion to mention my wife and child. It is a case of “happy the nation that has no history.” Rose had proved an ideally perfect companion. Since the nurse's elopement she had had no one to help her with the baby. There was also a good deal for her to do in camp. We often travelled over twelve hours a day in really trying conditions; we encountered more than a little hardship, what with fatigue, cold, lack of food and general discomfort; she never gave in, she never complained, she never failed to do more than her share of the work and she never made a mistake. She was in a class by herself as a comrade. Even Eckenstein was not so competent all round or so uniformly exultant.
We had been over four months away from civilization; and she had not only stood it but flourished exceedingly. When we started, she had been rather empty-headed and frivolous; while physically, though healthy, she could not be called an athlete. At the end she had acquired the kind of soul that is evoked by intimate contact with naked nature. Her figure was straight and supple, scorning corsets. Her limbs were lithe; her eyes bright and eager; her face aflame with the joy of perfect physical well-being and her heart exulting with the expectation of producing a new token of our tenderness before the end of the year.
In these four months I had been mildly indisposed with indigestion for two days. Rose had had one slight touch of fever, and baby a cold in the head which lasted three days, and some minor digestive trouble during our stay in Yunnanfu. Not many families living in the most hygienic conditions in England could show a cleaner bill of health. We had good reason for rejoicing and may be excused for feeling decidedly proud.
The next day we went on the Lackai, where there is a good hotel, and more mosquitoes than I had seen for many a month. We hurried on by train to Yen Bai, a filthy hole with no redeeming feature. The whole country and its people are monotonously reddish brown; skin, clothes, food, roofs — everything but the grass and the trees, which are all the same shade of dull green. The whole forms a curiously harmonious picture, very low in tone and undeniably depressing. The sky itself was uniformly leaden, though I suppose this was a question of the time of the year. There are few features in the scenery; a damp warmth broods upon the general dullness.
On the 20th we reached Hanoi, the capital, but only stayed for lunch. There is nothing particularly interesting about the town to people who have been uninterruptedly intoxicated for months upon the beauty and grandeur of one of the wildest and noblest countries of the earth. We took the afternoon train to Hai Phong, the seaport of Tonkin, and put up at the Hotel du Commerce. Hai Phong is much like any other Eastern port. There is the usual colonial atmosphere and the variety of races like so much jetsam flung upon the shores of the Island of Officialdom.
One deliciously colonial incident must be related. It gives the very atmosphere of Claude Farrère's Les Civilisés. A large corner building on the main street had been condemned and had to be blown up. The boss of the gang in charge went for instructions to the city engineer. He ran him to earth after prolonged search in a combination of drinking-hole and house of ill-fame. He was up to his neck in absinthe, which is not really a wholesome drink in that climate; but he was able to talk and readily agreed to calculate the charge of dynamite required for the house- breaking. He took a stub of pencil and worked it out on the marble slab of his table. Strange as it may seem, he shifted a decimal point two places to the right without adequate excuse — unless we accept absinthe as an apology. The boss went off with his figures and put in a charge just a hundred times too big. The whole block was completely wrecked; and they were still clearing the street when we arrived.
We were lucky to find a ship on the 22nd for Hong Kong, after which she was named. The boat was a dirty tramp tub; her skipper a drunken Italian who lived in flannel pyjamas which could not have seen a laundry for months and spent all his time in the smoke room, gambling and boozing. He came athwart my hawser once, refusing to listen to the complaint of Salama about the way he was treated in the fo'castle. I told him that I would throw him off his own ship unless he did what I said P.D.Q. He cringed and complied.
How this ship ever made a voyage is a mystery. The chief engineer, a worn-out melancholy Scot, was as puzzled as I. He said his engines were “as rotten as the captain's guts.” They moved like a one-legged man with St. Vitus' Dance and they sounded like tea trays being beaten, chains being rattled and fire-irons being thrown about, all at once.
We could not even get clear of our moorings without tearing away the port companion. Twenty-four hours later we stopped. The captain freely admitted that he had lost his reckoning, didn't know where he was, didn't know how to find out and didn't see why he should worry about it. He went back to his cards, leaving a junior officer to get entangled with the sextant and chronometer. Whether he obtained any results will never be known, for during the day we drifted in sight of Hoi How. By some weird coincidence, this was our first port of call. There being no harbour, we stood half a mile out to sea, rolling and bucking sickeningly while boats came from shore bringing our cargo; pigs in wicker crates which were stacked all over the ship three deep; and large baskets of poultry. It became quite impossible to move about the main deck at all, and even on the upper deck there was considerable crowding. The stench created by these animals, a number of which died on the voyage, was the limit.
In the afternoon there appeared a magnificent Fata Morgana stretching from west to south. There was a perfectly clear double image in the sky at an elevation of from 10° to 20° degrees. The lower image of the shipping was upright and then close above it was the image reversed.
The rough sea and the utter incompetence of everybody concerned combined to keep us over four days hanging about off the islands. We got away on the 27th and made our way through a choppy sea, in horribly cold damp weather, to Hong Kong.
We were now in the midst of comfort and could lay our plans for the future. We decided that Rose should return to England by way of India, so as to pick up the baggage we had left at Calcutta; while I was to go via New York in the hope of interesting people there in the proposed expedition to Kangchenjunga. I accordingly left for Shanghai by my old friend the Nippon Maru on April 3rd. The further interest of my journey is concerned principally with my Magical career which is described in another chapter. There are, however, one or two tales to be told.
Our most distinguished passenger was a venerable missionary returning to America after many years labouring in the Lord's Vineyard. He had just become celebrated, a riot having taken place in which his mission was destroyed. His wife and children, his native teachers and his converts were mostly murdered. He himself had, however, been preserved for the Lord's service by the direct interposition of the Almighty, who had warned him at the first rumour of trouble to leave his family and flock to their fate and flee to a convenient cavern where he could hide with only his head above water — he could duck it when strangers looked in — till order was restored. He was absolutely cock-a-whoop over this. It never occurred to him for a moment that his conduct was open to criticism, though for my part I could hardly believe my ears; that any man should tell such a story of himself and boast of it was beyond my experience.
In Shanghai I brought off a very remarkable test of the value of the Tarot in divination. The German Post-master, calling on my hostess, was very much upset by the loss of a packet containing 80,000 rubles in notes sent by a bank in Pekin to its head office in Shanghai. I offered to investigate the matter by the Tarot. I described accurately the two principal clerks who alone had access to the safe in which the Postmaster had himself put the parcel immediately on its arrival and whence it had disappeared less than an hour later. The Tarot told me that the senior clerk was a steady-going conscientious man, saving a fixed sum out of his salary, devoted to his work, free from vices, and in no financial embarrassment. His junior was a careless youth, mixed up with women, and known to be gambling heavily on the races. The Postmaster confirmed this estimate of their characters.
I inquired further and found that the junior clerk was responsible for the disappearance of the packet; which seemed reasonable enough. But then the cards went apparently crazy. They said that this clerk should not suffer for his act. The Postmaster admitted that it might indeed be difficult to bring the theft home to him; but so much the worse, since he himself would be held responsible for the loss. I inquired further and was met with another facer which completed the circle of impossibilities. They said that the Postmaster would not suffer in reputation. The situation became inexplicable. I was frankly annoyed that, after so accurate a beginning, the divination should have turned out so as to insult our reason. I could only apologize, shrug my shoulders and say, “Well, they insist that it is all right for you.”
A few days later, the mystery was cleared up. The return mail left for Pekin one half-hour after its arrival, and the junior clerk, in his haste, had accidentally slipped the parcel into the mail bag, so that it went safely to the bank in Pekin. The Tarot had vindicated itself in the most striking way. The junior clerk was responsible for the disappearance, yet he did not suffer in consequence, nor did the Postmaster.
I was in some doubt as the whether to go to America via Honolulu or by the northern Pacific route to Vancouver. I longed to see Oahu again, and yet I felt it a sort of duty to cover fresh ground. While I hesitated, fate decided. The last berth for San Francisco via the Sandwich Islands was sold over my head. Alas! — had I only known! A quarter of an hour's delay caused me to miss what might have been the most dramatic moment of my life. The ship I should have sailed by left Honolulu in due course and fetched up four days later outside the Golden Gate — to find San Francisco a raging flower of flame.
I sailed on April 21st by The Empress of India, took a flying glance at Japan and put out into the Pacific.
“A savage sea without a sail, Grey gulphs and green aglittering.”
We never sighted the slightest suggestion of life all the way to Vancouver, twelve days of chilly boredom, though there was a certain impressiveness in the very dreariness and desolation. There was a hint of the curious horror that emptiness always evokes, whether it is a space of starless night or a bleak and barren waste of land. The one exception is the Sahara Desert where, for some reason that I cannot name, the suggestion is not in the least a vacancy and barrenness, but rather of some subtle and secret spring of life.
Vancouver presents no interest to the casual visitor. It is severely Scotch. Its beauties lie in its surroundings.
I was very disappointed with the Rockies, of which I had heard such eloquent encomiums. They are singularly shapeless; and their proportions are unpleasing. There is too much colourless and brutal base; too little snowy shapely summit. As for the ghastly monotony of the wilderness beyond them, through Calgary and Winnipeg right on to Toronto — words fortunately fail. The manners of the people are crude and offensive. They seem to resent the existence of civilised men; and show it by gratuitous insolence, which they mistake for a mark of manly independence.
The whole country and its people are somehow cold and ill-favoured. The character of the mountains struck me as significant. Contrast them with the Alps where every peak is ringed by smug hamlets, hearty and hospitable, and every available approach is either a flowery meadow, a pasture pregnant with peaceful flocks and herds, or a centre of cultivation. In the Rockies, barren and treeless plains are suddenly blocked by ugly walls of rock. Nothing less inviting can be imagined. Contrast them again with the Himalayas. There we find no green Alps, no clustering cottages; but their stupendous sublimity takes the mind away from any expectation or desire of thoughts connected with humanity. The Rockies have no majesty; they do not elevate the mind to contemplation of Almighty God any more than they warm the heart by seeming sentinels to watch over the habitations of one's fellow-men.
Toronto as a city carries out the idea of Canada as a country. It is a calculated crime both against the aspirations o the soul and the affections of the heart. I had been fed vilely on the train. I thought I would treat myself to a really first-class dinner. But all I could get was high-tea — they had never heard the name of wine! Of all the loveless, lifeless lands that writhe beneath the wrath of God, commend me to Canada! (I understand that the eastern cities, having known French culture, are comparatively habitable. Not having been there I cannot say.)
I hustled on to Buffalo to see Niagara. Here I first struck the American newspaper reporter in full bloom, in his native haunts. Before I had been half an hour in my hotel I was tackled by a half a dozen enthusiastic scribes. I naturally supposed that they had somehow heard of my Himalayan or Chinese adventures, and talked accordingly. It gradually dawned on me that somehow I was failing to fill the bill; and I presently discovered that they had mistaken me for some English Lieutenant who was supposed to have crossed form Canada and from whom they wanted information about some local foolishness.
I took a pretty good look at Niagara. It is absurd to shriek at the desecration caused by building a few houses in the vicinity. It seemed to me that they helped rather than hindered one's appreciation. They supplied a standard of comparison. All that has been said of the Falls, is, as the sayers admit, ridiculously below the reality. In their way, they challenge comparison with the mountains of Asia themselves. They have the same air of being out of all proportion with the observer. They belong to a different scale; and they impress one with the same idea of utter indifference of nature. They fascinate, as all things vast beyond computation invariably do. I felt that if I lived with them for even a short time they would completely obsess me and possibly lure me to end my life with their eternity. I felt the same about the mountains of India, the expanse of China, the solitude of the Sahara. I feel as if the better part of me belonged to them, as if my dearest destiny would be to live and die with them.
I went on to New York on May 15th, and spent a rather hectic ten days sampling the restaurants and theatres. But as for interesting people in the Himalayas, I might as well have joined the China Inland Mission. Nobody in New York had even heard of them, unless as meaningless items in his hated geography lessons. No one could see any sport in mountaineering at all, or any scientific object to be obtained by reaching great heights. After the first days I could not even find a listener. The town had gone completely mad; first over Upton Sinclair's Jungle which had made canned food a drug on the market, though there was practically nothing else to eat; and secondly by the shooting of Stanford White, which let loose all the suppressed sexual hysteria of the whole population.
They would talk of nothing else. Everyone screamed in public and in private about satyrs and angel children, and vampires, and the Unwritten Law, and men higher up, and stamping out impurity. For the first time in my life I came into contact with mob madness. Modern morality and manners suppress all natural instincts, keep people ignorant of the facts of nature and make them fighting drunk on bogey tales. They consequently seize upon every incident of this kind to let off steam. Knowing nothing and fearing everything, they rant and rave and riot like so many maniacs. The subject does not matter. Any idea which gives them an excuse of getting excited will serve. They look for a victim to chivy and howl him down, hunt him down, and finally lynch him in a sheer storm of sexual frenzy which they honestly imagine to be moral indignation, patriotic passion or some equally avowable emotion. It may be an innocent negro, a Jew like Leo Frank, a harmless half-witted German; a Christ-like idealist of the type of Debs, an enthusiastic reformer like Emma Goldman, or even a doctor whose views displease the Medial Trust.
Any excuse will do — the sport is everything. They viturate the victim as a white slaver, Bolshevist, conscientious objector, or anything that happens to be the team abuse in fashion at the moment. Having thus lashed themselves into a blind fury, they proceed to persecution if the most ruthless and unfair kind, and are never satisfied until he has been punished in some outrageous way out of all proportion to his offense, even were he guilty. Murder and mutilation for alleged assault of a woman, twenty years in jail for being a Quaker, lynching for a Jew whom justice has spared, tarring and feathering for having a German name — all these sadistic satisfactions are necessary to assuage the storm of suppressed sexuality.
I sailed for England in the Campania on May 26th, arriving in Liverpool on June 2nd after a pleasant voyage, during the latter part of which I wrote most of Rosa Coeli, to find letters awaiting me to tell me of the tragedy of which I have given an account elsewhere.
From the moment of landing I struck a sequence of physical shocks. As I struggled to my feet after the blasting bolt of my bereavement, I found myself with an infected gland in the groin which required excision.
I got a gland Infected, and I went to Bilton Pollard. He spoke to me Like Edward Three Admonishing a Lollard.
"It's tuberels Or — who can tell? — Filaria, gonorrhoea, Or other tox- Ic Bug, ( as pox) Evasit, heu! Astraea.
Before the surgeon Dart, habergeon (As Job remarks) are stubble. I'll make you hale, — Or, if I fail, By God, I'll charge you double."*
These sentiments Is quite a gent's; I guess I'll go you, Bilton! And for your fee I'll give you "The Nativity" by Milton.
"For though Obstet- Rics are not yet Your special hobby, maybe, I'll telephone For you alone If I should have a baby.
"For as a surgeon Every scourge on The earth you've surely collared. Papai! Papai! Goodbye! Goodbye! God bless you, Bilton Pollard!"
* To compensate for the loss of reputation.
The first day I left the nursing home I got a chill in the right eye which obstructed a nasal duct and required a whole series of extremely painful operations which proved unsuccessful. In the course of these, I got neuralgia; this continued day and night for months, so violently that I felt myself going mad. After a bare months comparative health I acquired an ulcerated throat which knocked me out completely until the end of the year.
On the top of all this came the discovery that my wife was an hereditary dipsomaniac. When our baby was born it lay almost lifeless for more than three days and at three weeks old nearly died of bronchitis. I had the sense to send for oxygen before the doctor arrived and this precaution probably saved the child's life. I fought like a fiend against death. The doctor gave the strictest orders that not more than one person should be in the sick room at one time. My mother-in-law refused to obey. I thought I had suffered enough. It was her hypocrisy that had sought to justify her tippling by giving her children a share of the champagne and thus implanted in Rose the infernal impulse which had wrecked her life and love, and mine. I made no bones about it; I took the hag by the shoulders and ran her out of the flat, assisting her down the stairs with my boot lest she should misinterpret my meaning.
So Lola Zaza lives to-day. May her life prove worth the pains I took to preserve it.
During my illness at Bournemouth, I wrote down from memory the bulk of the Book 777, the table of correspondences showing equivalents of the religious ideas and symbols of various peoples. Of course this rough draft needed considerable revision and additions. It was in fact two years in the press. But it stands to-day as the standard book of reference on the subject. I must admit to be thoroughly dissatisfied with it. It is my eager wish to issue a revised edition with an adequate comment and a key to its practical use. I refuse to feel any satisfaction at knowing that, published at ten shillings, it is now quoted at £3. 15s. as a minimum. (Then why mention it! Oh, shut up.)
In October of this year I began Clouds without Water, fully described elsewhere. But apart from these two books and a very few old lyrics, the year was barren in respect of literature. I was too intensely concentrated on the performance of the Operation of the Sacred Magick of Abramelin the Mage; perhaps too deeply shaken by my experience of the Abyss; and certainly too much occupied with the actualities of life to have the leisure or even to feel the impulse to distil from life that quintessence, limpid truth, opalescent with lyrical light, which constitutes poetry. Not until sickness and sorrow had sobered my spirit did I once again find myself free to extract the elixir of ecstasy from experience and fulfil my faculties by expressing myself in rhythm, since they were no longer strained to the utmost, to move to the music of that actual life of crowded experience which is enjoyed by the explorer and all such men as are constantly wrestling with the Universe in the Arena of Adventure for no prize but the pleasure of proving their personal prowess, exercising their energies to the utmost, and knowing themselves in their contest with Nature to be equal and one with her by virtue of that intimacy of strife which is indistinguishable from the interpenetration of love.
I close this chapter with a sigh. For ten years my life had been a delirious dance to a maddening music with incarnate passion for my partner, and the boundless plain of the possible vibrating with the fervour of my feet. I had come through a thousand crises to the climax of my career. I had attained all my ambitions, proved myself at every point, dared every danger, enjoyed every ecstasy that earth has to offer; the rest of my life recedes from romance in that boyish idea of what romance should be. From this time, though much lay in store for me to accomplish, summit soaring beyond summit of spiritual success, giant ranged behind giant for me to challenge, I now learn to look upon life with enlightened eyes. I had sought and I had found. I must now seek them who seek that they might also find. I must aspire, act and achieve, not only for myself to perfect my personality, but for my fellow-men in whom alone I could possibly fulfil myself since I knew myself at last, not to be Aleister Crowley, an individual independent of the communion of cosmic consciousness, but merely one manifestation of the Universal Mind whose thought must be sterile unless sown broadcast to blossom and bear fruit in every acre of God's vineyard.
I close this chapter as if it were the portal of the vault wherein my individual life is buried, and there must always be a certain sacred sadness in bidding farewell to one who seemed so many years to be so intimate a friend as truly to be accepted as one's alter ego, only to prove at last a phantom, unsubstantial as the shadow of smoke. And he being lost for ever: Is it not lonely to be of the Universal Self and therefore know no alien selves by which to know oneself: How easy it is to work when one is conscious of the result; how hard, when all one does is spent in space; its effect not to be measured, rarely even to be known: Thus all the years that lay behind seem on the surface splendid with great designs and rich rewards. The future seems an intelligible text written in undecipherable characters. My personal adventures are no longer brilliant; My objects grow obscure, my path perplexed; I find myself no more in the history of Aleister Crowley. What happens to him is no more than what happens to any other man, monkey, mulberry, or mud heap. I am merely a ferment working to leaven the world.
The interest of this record will therefore be wholly objective, certainly to my consciousness, and I hope to that of every reader. There will appear a catastrophic change in the point of view. Aleister Crowley will still bob up his ugly head now and again, to be knocked down again as soon as he is detected. But the true man will only appear in the souls of those who surround him. The failure of A, the treachery of B, the madness of C, the death of D, the outburst of E's genius, the attainment of the magical power of F. G.'s perception of truth, and the emancipation of H's Will — in these shall we find, and by these may we judge, the life of Aleister Crowley. The misunderstanding of his message will tell us a part of the truth. The neglect of some, and the persecution of others, will tell us another. But we shall only reach to his reality by observing the development of those few men and women who have recognised him as an expression of their own inmost and holiest nature, and by sympathy, understanding, and intelligent effort incarnated the idea of him in their own persons so as to make him manifest as a sensible form of their own genius, modified in each case by the peculiar characteristics of their minds.
I am reminded of Browning's A Soul's Tragedy — Act First, being what was called the Poetry of Chiappino's Life; and Act Second, Its Prose. Does it seem as if I were in the same boat? Is my D'Artagnan youth with its dash and daring, its chivalrous challenges and its vivid victories to rank as my life's champagne, and my Richelieu age, with its patience and perseverance, its resolute resistance and its crownless conquest to pass for its cocoa? The droning dynamo is in reality livelier that the coruscating rocket, and the stubborn struggle more adventurous than spectacular ambition. I have found satiety without satisfaction in success, and rapture without regret in working without thought of result or reward. To-day I look back on those wonderful days of wandering and wondering with infinite fondness — they blossom with unspeakable beauty; they the slow secret ripening of their fruit — present sustenance and sweetness with surety of seed for increase and immortality in the future — is happier and holier still; I sigh not, seeing their petals fallen to earth, but swell the stern strains of my marching song more strongly than ever I did the glad gay trills of my madrigal at sunrise. E pur si muove: The music of the motion of the Universe is a symphony more sublime than the cock crowing which supposed the sun and the stars to be serville satellites of this egregarious earth.
With these words I close the career of the man, Aleister Crowley. Was it worth while? He got pretty well all he wanted, and found no fruit thereof: save in this way — that having expressed himself in all these many manners, he was able to understand the formula of the powder of projection which he was about to throw into the crucible where lay the molten metal of mankind whose baseness he designed to transmute into pure gold. The reader can well judge by now the character of Crowley. It remains for him to observe the effect of injecting that character into the veins of the fevered body of civilization.
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