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As Related by Guy Deghy and Keith Waterhouse
from
CAFÉ ROYAL: Ninety Years of Bohemia Hutchinson, 1956 (pages 177-186)
— The wife of "The Rich Man from the West" to Aleister Crowley
There were times when Aleister Crowley was really very funny—deliberately funny. He could solemnly dedicate a set of drinking songs to Lady Astor. He could without turning a hair anticipate history and, in 1915, proclaim the Irish Republic, never having set foot in Ireland himself. And when accused in print of sacrificing children in the course of his admitted orgiastic rites, he could chide the writer in a dignified manner for overlooking the important detail that the children had always to be beautiful and of noble lineage.
At other times he was unconsciously funny, as when he was intent on demonstrating the validity of his claim to possess a magic cloak which rendered him invisible. What could have been more natural than that half-spoken sentences froze on lips, glasses stopped in mid-air, and even the waiters stood thunderstruck, as a tall figure in star-spangled conical hat and mystically-inscribed flowing cloak walked slowly in through the swing doors of the Café Royal, marched solemnly through the rows of tables to the exit, and out into the Nirvana of Glasshouse Street? Nothing, it is said, would convince Crowley that everyone had seen him. "Why didn't anybody speak to me then?"—was his unanswerable rejoinder.
There were borderline cases in which it was very difficult to tell if the originator of 'Crowleyanity' (the new creed that was to supplant outmoded Christianity) had his tongue in his cheek or was just being a figure of evil fun, as when the old necromancer advertised his Amrita—a thirteen-week course for sexual rejuvenation at the rate of twenty-five guineas per week; or his aphrodisiac pills and ointments, allegedly made from fragments of his own body and coyly branded: "Elixir of Life".
And there were occasion when Aleister Crowley was not funny at all. In the course of a long career—his operations started at the turn of the century and he died as recently as 1947—charges of drug peddling, fraud, high treason, unspeakable cruelty to animals, and of many other crimes could easily have been laid at his door, yet the Beast (as he was fond of calling himself) was never convicted, nor even prosecuted for any of them. At the time when the Sunday Express and John Bull were shouting from the rooftops the register of his misdeeds, Crowley was calmly swilling brandy by the tumblerful in the Café Royal dressed in the full panoply of a Scottish chieftain, one of his favourite masquerades.
At Cambridge, his aversion to games and predilection for poetry kept him somewhat aloof from his fellow students. Towards the close of the century he came to London, to establish himself as a poet. The private fortune of £30,000 (some say it was nearer £40,000) to which he had succeeded had given him the means of having his poems printed at his own expense. If Aleister Crowley had been content with that tremendous advantage over practically every young writer of his time, there is little doubt that eventually by the sheer magic of his poetry he would have taken his rightful place among the ,minor poets' of his period. But Crowley wanted more than that. He burst upon London in the guise of 'Count Vladimir Svareff', in which name he took a flat in Chancery Lane, and fitted up a Magical Temple. He adored 'dressing up' in every sense of the word; the childish games of charades, and self-substitution carried to absurd extremes, remained with him to the end. The borrowed plumage was usually either sumptuous or ostentatiously grey; 'Le Comte de Fénix', or 'Frater Perdurabo'. Sometimes he was 'the Earl of Middlesex', or 'Count von Zonaref'; sometimes 'Prince Chioa Khan'; sometimes 'Sir Alastor de Kerval'; plain 'Alastair MacGregor' was rather the exception. He bought an estate in Scotland and assumed the title of 'Laird of Boleskine'. The costumes he wore matched the self-conferred titles and names, though at times, especially in later years—in spite of frizzy black wig and make-up—he looked like a stockbroker, and was considered a prodigious bore by practically everyone in the Café Royal.
Like another diabolist (albeit the 'Catholic' variety), Enoch Soames, Crowley was irresistibly attracted by the smoke-and-celebrity-laden atmosphere of the Café. Besides, he chased women of any age, race, hue, or even degree of attraction, with unflagging interest. The Café Royal round the turn of the century offered a comfortable dignified, and comparatively inexpensive solution to this problem. But he cast envious glances at the coteries straggling round the tables—the painters, the poets, even the pimps and the confidence tricksters. He could fit in with none of them. (In future years, as it happened, he was to fit in with each category in turn.)
Possibly Crowley was more than a little hurt that the other poets did not welcome him with open arms, but it was rather difficult to be a lion in the Café Royal; sooner or later somebody would exclaim, "What a large pussycat!" and start petting you.
He embraced magic with tremendous gusto. It was a total avocation—"Evil, be thou my good!" The parallel with Macbeth inevitably forces itself upon the mind. Here was a man of action and endurance, a man capable of climbing Himalayan mountains and trekking in the scorching desert; but also a man eaten up by ambition; impatient, envious of any praise or reward that may have gone to the next (if lesser) man; and, withal, a poet. Like Macbeth, Crowley turned to the "secret, black and midnight hags" when things did not go well for him. But there the parallel ends; Macbeth's fate marches steadily on towards a tragic fulfilment, whereas the Beast dodges his way by fits and starts, through burlesque and melodrama, towards a somewhat tepid ending. If Macbeth is by Shakespeare, Crowley might be by Massinger or, at best, Webster.
He began to associate almost exclusively with experimenters in the occult: some of them genuine research workers, whose speculation had some scientific basis; some cranks, who persistently offered their souls to the Devil—"to have at least somebody on their side", as someone said—but the overwhelming majority were unscrupulous charlatans proffering their own brands of mumbo-jumbo as the master-key to health and wealth. Crowley listened to all, and picked up a little bit of each cult and rite.
He eventually launched his own cult of Thelema—a hotch-potch of all the established and defunct religions, cults, rites, and mythologies, couched in a wealth of Greek, Latin, Hebrew, Sanskrit, German, Chinese and Arabic doggerel. It was wont to change almost from day to day according to the convenience of its chief prophet and messiah. Its aims, it can be safely said on the existing evidence, were simple: to ensure the physical comfort and sexual contentment of Aleister Crowley.
"Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law. Love is the law, love under will."
At times Crowley could not help writing good poetry. But he had merely taken care of the sound—the sense lacked substance to fend for itself.
On balance this little motto paid handsome dividends to its creator: for years to come people of high and low degree, men of intelligence and morons, cultured women and feeble-minded old ladies paid, paid, paid to maintain the temples and 'Abbeys' that the Magus of the Café Royal was to build for his own delectation.
Why so many people should have given Crowley the benefit of their purses, and submitted to the revolting rites and sacrifices the 'The Purple Priest' had ordained for them remains an enigma. Discounting the morons, the ado-masochistic perverts, and some well-intentioned but misguided people, the chief attraction for most was probably the Beast's permanently well-stocked cupboard. He encouraged in his disciples the taking of all kinds of drugs (but mainly heroin and the slightly milder anhalonium [Anhalonium Lewinii]) and drugs played a part in some of his rituals. Once a disciple had become a drug addict, he was more likely to remain a loyal adherent and inmate of the Abbey, where his increasing need for stimulants was readily and reliably met.
The world at large, and the Café Royal in particular, caught their first glimpse of Crowley's practices through Betty May. Her marriage to a young student, Raoul Loveday, and his subsequent death in Crowley's Abbey of Thelema in Sicily, eventually became the substance of a sensational case which in 1934 filled a great deal of space in the Press on its sordid way through the High Court and the Court of Appeal. It was set down for hearing as Crowley v. Constable & Co. and Others—the 'others' being Nina Hamnett and the printers of her book Laughing Torso.
In it she had described—in quite friendly fashion—several meetings with Crowley, making one passing reference to rumours that Crowley "was supposed to practise Black Magic" at his Abbey in Sicily.
The story of the Black Magic Case (as it came to be called) really begins at the Café Royal where, twenty years or so before it came into the High Court, Betty May was introduced to Crowley in his Highland finery. If he frightened her it was not surprising: about that time he was exhibiting devil-worship in the Fulham Road, mostly to silly old ladies, at exorbitant admission fees.
After their first meeting, Crowley passed out of Betty May's ken. War had broken out, and he sailed on the Lusitania to try his luck in the United States. Betty in the meantime was fully enjoying her adventurous life in and around the Café Royal. In 1922 she met Raoul Loveday, who was to become her third husband.
About twelve years Betty's junior, Raoul Loveday was a stocky, soccer-playing, rag-minded undergraduate of St. John's College, with hardly more claim to distinction than a first in history and the doubtful honour of having fixed an inverted chamber-pot on the pinnacle of the Martyrs' Memorial. But he had a flair for poetry; and, by his active interest in the occult, surrounded himself with the repulsive0attractive aura of a Man of Mystery.
They were married at Oxford and came back to live in London. Inevitably, Raoul's interests and inclinations led to a meeting with Crowley, whom he had admired from afar. His first visit to the magician lasted two days. Betty waited for him in their room in Beak Street. His ghostly white face finally appeared one night at the window: he had climbed up the drainpipe to third-level floor, and nearly frightened her out of her wits. She hauled him in. He was drugged.
Betty, who had gone through a phase of drug-taking and been cured of it, did everything in her power to keep her husband away from the Beast, whose liberality with these dangerous substances was notorious. But Raoul began to spend more time with his magical mentor than with his wife, and nothing—not even her appearance at Crowley's temple in Holland Park, supported by Epstein and his wife—would induce him to leave the Beast.
When Crowley eventually left to found the Abbey of Thelema at Cefalu, Loveday followed and, at the pressing invitation of the Beast, took Betty with him. There was nothing more sinister about this invitation than that the Beast was short-staffed.
The Abbey of Thelema—officially described as Collegium ad Spiritum Sanctum—was in reality nothing more elaborate than a one-storeyed Sicilian farmhouse, oval in shape, and built in defiance of modern sanitation and comfort. The household consisted of the First Concubine, whose courtesy titles included 'The Scarlet Woman' and 'The Whore of the Stars'; and a Second Concubine, a Provencal ex-governess called Ninette Shumway, whose less decorative courtesy title was 'Shummy', They combined with their primary offices the Beast's secretarial work, which must have been considerable, for he kept in close touch with confrères all over the world. There were two or three children in the Abbey, ill-mannered but apparently well cared for, whose diet included as much wine and brandy as they liked. The food was simple and monotonous, but the cellars left nothing to be desired. The Prince of Darkness was a connoisseur.
Even before the Lovedays arrived at the Abbey, Betty had made up her mind that she would not comply with the routine of hocus-pocus. Crowley, on the other hand, made up his mind to break her will.("Do what thou wilt" applied to him alone.) He succeeded by threatening to sacrifice her on the 'altar' of his temple. She had seen a similar sacrifice of a cat, and had no desire to suffer martyrdom for Crowleyanity. It says much for her pluck and endurance that she stayed with her husband who had thrown himself wholeheartedly into the life of magical contemplation, study, and drug-taking
The evening service in the temple—the Pentagram—was an elaborate affair, during which Crowley lashed himself into a frenzy with his chanting, and broke into an enchaînement of ecstatic dances. There were other services, such as the Invocation to Pan (Fridays only); but Sacrifices were presumably irregular and dependent on the availability of the necessary livestock. The goat on the premises was kept strictly for secular purposes, since it provided milk for the household.
Towards the end of 1922 Loveday began to show signs of weakness and lassitude. That Crowley was genuinely anxious about keeping his best friend and chief disciple alive is beyond all doubt. He was reasonable enough to cut out his fads and fancies and to call in a qualified physician when things began to take on a serious aspect. He even had the decency to send a telegram to Loveday's parents. Nothing was hushed up at the Abbey in Cefalu, and no blame could attach to the Purple Priest for his acolyte's death. Two undergraduates from Oxford arrived to investigate the circumstances; they returned satisfied that there had been no foul play. Nobody made much of the fact that Loveday had been taking sizeable portions of hashish during the months at Cefalu, and that this might have contributed to the deterioration of his constitution.
On Sunday, the 25th of February 1923, the Café Royal seemed unusually crowded and excited—and at every table there was at least one copy of that morning's Sunday Express.
That paper, which had already in the foregoing November printed a somewhat outspoken article about Crowley, now featured an interview with Betty May—the first in a sensational series. Most of the protagonists of her story being well-known to the Café Royalites, the startling disclosures were devoured and debated. The buzz increased. In March John Bull joined in and, before the month of May was out, had shot six full-scale broadsides into "The Man We'd Like to Hang!"
Crowley had not left Cefalu in a blaze of glory, notwithstanding the tenderness that the local peasantry had developed for him. These late kinsmen of Cagliostro were fascinated by the picturesque ceremonies he performed at Raoul Loveday's funeral. He had given them Sicilian acting in the grandest manner. But in this, unfortunately for him, he came up against a rising star—Benito Mussolini—who disliked competition and who, as soon as the matter was reported to him, decreed that no foreign mysticism would be tolerated in the new Italy. Crowley appealed and sought a personal interview with the Duce. It seems a pity that Mussolini refused: it would have been a momentous meeting.
Hounded out of his Abbey, he finally ended up in France, only to be expelled again directly the French authorities discovered this troublesome alien in their midst. But before his final exit from France, he brought off an almost unparalleled feat: he borrowed five hundred francs from Frank Harris!
When Aleister Crowley re-entered the Café Royal he was greeted with complete silence. All eyes were fixed on him and nobody spoke until the Beast had taken his seat. Only when he called for brandy, and not for freshly killed babies' blood, did the Café resume its normal hubbub.
In April 1934, when the Black Magic case came before the King's Bench, Crowley was fifty-nine years old. The constant intake of drugs had left its mark on his constitution; it is said that his daily dose of heroin eventually rose to eleven grains—an enormous quantity. The public ostracism which he had invited by his constant boasting of wickedness had become an obsession. It was a paranoiac fighting back who brought this case. He foresaw utter humiliation and destruction for his 'enemies'; nor was he entirely unmindful of the financial possibilities.
The defendants pleaded justification. As is customary in such cases, Crowley's counsel, Mr. Eddy (now Q.C.), sought to establish the high moral standard of his client. No-one would come forward to testify to this effect.
The first two days of the hearing were fairly uneventful. Mr. Justice Swift heard the plaintiff's emphatic differentiation between "Black Magic" and "White Magic" with understandable surprise, and the special jury must have felt a little out of its element during the Jacobean arguing. Crowley was severely cross-questioned by Mr. Hilbery, Q.C. (now Mr. Justice Hilbery), but flatly denied all the allegations. On the third day, one of the counsel blandly invited him to make himself invisible and prove that he was not an imposter. Crowley declined with dignity.
Then Betty May was called into the witness-box. The defendants' plea of justification depended largely on her story as she had described it in her book Tiger Woman, though without referring to Crowley by name. On the jury's acceptance or refusal of her testimony now depended their decision whether the statements in Nina Hamnett's book were justified or libellous.
Under Mr. Eddy's relentless cross-examination, Betty May conceded that Tiger Woman was not entirely her own work, and that some passages of the book contained completely fictitious events. They had been put in to make the book "more exciting".
Fantastic though it may seem, for a short spell the matter was in doubt. Then, a fatal mistake on Crowley's part sealed the fate of the case and brought it to an abrupt conclusion.
In an attempt to discredit the witness, he produced some letters addressed to "Bumbletoff". Yes, said Betty, it was one of her nicknames and the letters were addressed to her—in fact, she had noticed their disappearance and thought they might have been lost or stolen.
Mr. Justice Swift, ruling that the letters were in unlawful possession, ordered them to be retained in the custody of the court. And by then the special jury had had enough. They listened to counsel's opening speech on behalf of Nina Hamnett, and then asked the judge if they could stop the case. He directed them to hear Mr. Eddy first on behalf of Mr. Crowley. They did, and were still of the same mind.
Contrary to some accounts, the judge had been scrupulously fair to Crowley during the whole proceedings, and the remarks with which he seasoned his judgment were wholeheartedly endorsed by Lord Justices Greer, Slesser, and Roche, when, after a hearing lasting three days, they finally and decisively dismissed Crowley's appeal.
The last phase of the Beast's story was enacted partly in London, and partly in the highly respectable environment of seaside resorts. Middle-aged ladies of some means were still applying for the post of Whore of the Stars whenever it fell vacant. They looked after him while he was thinking up some fantastic new embroidery on the constant motifs of sex and money.
By that time Crowley had realized that Crowleyanity was not, after all, to supplant Christianity in the foreseeable future, and that the Cult of the Will was definitely not gaining the expected public support. But, as it seemed a pity to him to waste such a good name, he tried to sell a parlour game called "Thelema". It did not catch on. Other things, like the 'rejuvenation course' did quite well for a time, whenever some elderly lady or gentleman could be found who thought it less drastic the Professor Voronoff's monkey-glands.
In 1937, when Crowley had decided that it was time for him to celebrate his sixtieth birthday (in which he was unquestionably right, considering that he was already sixty-two), he was anticipating a happy combination of pleasure with business. A foreign lady of uncertain, but obviously advanced years had shown some interest in purchasing from Crowley a small pot of his Celebrated Magical Sex-Appeal Ointment for the (as he said) ridiculously small sum of £2,000. She was to be the guest of honour at his birthday party in the Café Royal.
A large private room was booked; printed invitations were issued, commanding each man to bring a lady friend; the succession of courses was debated with the banqueting manager and chef; and instructions were given for the progress of drinks: Montrachet—Richebourg—Veuve Clicquot—Napoleon brandy.
On the night of the party, about two dozen guests assembled at a neighbouring tavern for a preliminary drink, after which Crowley and his First Concubine of the moment shepherded them over to the Café Royal. The meal, ordered with all the mastery of an accomplished connoisseur, and prepared and served with equal skill, was hugely enjoyed.
But the party, on the whole, was a disappointment to the host. Crowley was just not making any headway with the foreign lady. From time to time, as he sat beside her, it seemed to him that the pot of Celebrated Magical Sex-Appeal Ointment was as good as sold. But every time the lady changed the subject. Had he lost the magic touch? Deftly he would steer the conversation back to the restorative of fading charms. The lady listened enraptured—and shied off again.
Crowley was defeated. The dinner was over. The bill was asked for, and as arranged, put down before the Whore of the Stars who of course was to foot it.
During the ensuing negotiations, and especially when the head-waiter firmly declined the lady's cheque, the Beast considerably looked the other way. Finally the maître d'hôtel chose the lesser of two evils and reluctantly accepted a cheque—but only to the exact amount of the bill. This created a new dilemma for the poor lady who was looking after the financial end of the sprawling monster of mischief. She had no money for tips. Waiter hovered around the table, changing ashtrays, clearing glasses, removing with their flapping napkins crumbs invisible to the human eye, while the head-waiter pointedly asked if everything had been all right for Madame. Yes, it had been, and Madame would see him in a moment. . . .
And Madame began a sorry journey around the table, stopping at each male guest in turn and whispering into his ear. One by one the men rose and, trying to look as casual as possible, extracted from their pockets notes which, crumpled into polite little pellets, they thrust into the hand of their hostess. Meantime, Crowley was still admiring the scenery. Her round completed, the First Concubine handed the collection to the head-waiter. It was a generous tip, and peace was restored.
To complete the happy ending, one of the guests, Charles R. Cammell (who had contributed ten shillings and felt rather guilty about his share of "that noble dinner") adds that a week later he chanced to run into the Beast and the lady again at the Café Royal, "which proved the solidity of the lady's banking account—and perhaps explained Crowley's attachment".
Soon afterwards, Crowley threw another birthday party at the Café Royal—and this one marked his final exit from that gay haunt of his youth.
Once again a private dining-room had been booked, an even more sumptuous menu bespoken, and the usual sequence of wines and cognac preceded by vodka—not out of liquor glasses but à la Russe. . . .
All his oldest and best friends were there, Each one of them had once been under the spell, if not of his bogus magic, then of his genial personality. Each one had either been stripped of a certain amount of cash or embarrassed in some other way; yet each had somehow forgiven him for it all. The duped, the wronged, and the embarrassed drank his health from the bottom of their hearts.
The meal was approaching its end. Soon the sideplates and the crumbs would be whisked away, half-drained champagne glasses would be unobtrusively removed to make way for the demi-tasses and the ballons. Solicitous waiters with brandy and cigars would begin their rounds, and a mellow well-being would spread its warm wings over pleasing memories.
The host gazed benevolently into his glass, warming it to exact body temperature between his small well-made hands. He looked up and he smiled as he saw his friends about him; his glance wandered from face to face, affectionately.
He drained his ballon. Then he rose, excused himself, and left the room.
He walked down the stairs and up to the cloakroom. He put on his hat and coat, and gave the man half-a-crown. He walked out into Regent Street, hailed a taxi, and drove away.
The mellow well-being of his guests received a rude shock when the manager broke the news that their host had left without the formality of paying the bill. The Café Royal had to face up to a loss of over a hundred pounds. For all we know, there may still be a standing order to the staff "Plus de mages!" |