As Related by Raymond Greene

from

MOMENTS OF BEING: THE RANDOM RECOLLECTIONS OF RAYMOND GREENE

William Heinemann, Ltd., 1974

(pages 18-27)

In 1922 I had never heard of Aleister Crowley. In November of that year John Bull, a much-read weekly edited by the infamous Horatio Bottomley, began a highly coloured 'exposure' of this 'foul and blasphemous propagandist'. Reading it again I can re-experience the laughter and excitement the articles aroused in me. I had already begun to look on Black Magic as a subject of hilarious psychological interest.

Crowley had, said John Bull, published many books 'distinguished for their wild, erotic, blasphemous and disgusting imagery'. Some of them I read; they would seem to the modern mind deranged and immature. He was said, with some justice, to be the promoter of a mission to attract weak-minded people of both sexes to the teaching of mediaeval alchemists and magicians, with the additional attractions of barbaric and licentious orgies conducted amidst clouds of incense in a darkened room. I was a little stopped in my laughter by the discovery that General J. F. C. Fuller, the greatest military strategist of his day, was not only an admirer of Crowley but had also written a book about him called The Star in the West. But my sense of the ridiculous overcame even this discovery. According to John Bull, Crowley had spent the first Great War conducting violent pro-German propaganda in the U.S.A. Later, in my delighted tongue-in-cheek investigations, I found evidence that he has been throughout a very successful agent provocateur whose communications to the British secret service had been of some value in disclosing many anti-British 'cells' that were promptly destroyed when America entered the war.

Another discovery worried me as a keen young climber. Crowley had been a very expert mountaineer who had climbed with some of the most distinguished alpinists of that time and had organized a Himalayan expedition, from which, it must be admitted, he had emerged with little credit.

The Sunday Express took up the he and cry. Its investigations showed, to its own satisfaction, that he had organized societies for pagan orgies; had engaged in pro-German propaganda during the war; had published obscene attacks on the King; had renounced his British nationality; had supported the Irish rebels and had proclaimed himself 'King of Ireland' (an accusation that didn't make the Sunday Express laugh!); had stolen money from a woman (a woman!); and was now the head of an 'abbey in Sicily' where obscene material and sexual rites were the order of the day.

Up to this time I regarded Crowley as a psychologically interesting and altogether laughable 'case'. But in February 1923 I was suddenly forced to straighten my face. Walking into the lodge of Pembroke College, I was faced by a copy of Sunday Express that announced 'More Sinister Revelations of Aleister Crowley. Varsity Lad's Death. Dreadful Ordeal of a Young Wife.' My friend, Raoul Loveday,  had died mysteriously at the Collegium ad Spiritum Sanctum at Cefalu in Sicily. Raoul according to the Sunday Express, had married 'a beautiful girl prominent in London artistic circles' who had arrived home in a state of collapse, 'unable to give more than a hint of the horrors from which she had escaped'. The Sunday Express had no difficulty in expanding this 'hint' into many columns in this and future issues. Although 'the facts are too unutterably filthy to be detailed in a newspaper, for they have to do with sexual orgies that touch the lowest depths of depravity', and although 'the beautiful young wife' had been unable to give more than a hint of what went on, the paper did indeed give enough detail to raise its sales in Oxford to considerable levels.

Raoul Loveday had been a small, fair man whose interests were divided between football, at which he was very good, and the construction of remarkably bad poetry. In his later Oxford days he had suddenly developed a passionate interest in black magic. He was suspected of taking drugs but I think he fostered the rumour. If he used them it was probably only occasionally and out of curiosity; certainly I never saw him in a drugged state. His extra curricular activities made serious work impossible, and he narrowly escaped being sent down from St. John's. Shortly afterwards he electrified and infuriated the Senior Common Room by getting a first class in history. I was not one of his most intimate friends, but not even these knew anything of his origins. He was vaguely supposed to be the son of a retired naval officer who had become a King's Messenger. It was not till he was dead that I found that his father was in fact a retired naval officer, but a petty officer, and that the 'King' for whom he ran messages was my uncle, Sir Graham Greene, who had been Secretary of the Admiralty. My uncle described him as a 'very decent dependable fellow'. It was only after Raoul's death that I learned that he had gone to Sicily to be 'secretary' to Crowley, having in the meantime married Betty May, an artist's model, known in two artistic circles anyway, the Fitzroy Tavern in Windmill Street and the Harlequin Club in Soho, neither then very salubrious haunts.

Afterwards I met her. She was in bed at the Golden Cross Hotel in Oxford, holding court to Raoul's friends, and to any others who might be useful in her journalistic campaign. She was, I guessed, in the early thirties and very attractive in a rare Mongolian way. One could understand why Jacob Epstein had used her as a model. She showed no signs of shock and her description of the Abbey at Cefalu was singularly detailed and devoid of hints. On arrival they had had a long dreary climb up a muddy mountainous path until the Abbey loomed up suddenly before them, the white walls gleaming eerily in the faint moonlight, one mysterious flickering light shining from a small window. There they were force to take part in terrible rites and orgies until Raoul became mysteriously ill, according to her because of drugs administered against his will. When he died she wandered all night in the lonely hills (a rather unnecessary activity, five minutes' walk from a reasonably good hotel) and finally escaped by the skin of her teeth and the intervention of the British Consul.

Throughout 1923 the Sunday Express and John Bull continued their violent and certainly libellous attacks. The undergraduate world of Oxford was thrilled to the marrow. Peter Rodd, son of the British Ambassador in Rome, came with a friend, now a member of the House of Lords, to my rooms with the proposal that I should go to Cefalu, shoot Crowley and make my way across the mountains to the south coast of Sicily. Here he and his friend would meet me in a sailing boat and take me across the Mediterranean to the north coast of Africa, whence I could make my escape by way of Morocco, Gibraltar and Spain. Peter's friend would pay all expenses. My reply was disappointing; I had no proof that Crowley deserved death and felt that the evidence of Betty May was of doubtful validity; I had no wish to spend an indefinite time in an Italian gaol, or even die there; and my only reason for believing Peter was a competent navigator was that he had coxed the Balliol second 'togger'. He never really believed that I had turned down his scheme, and told several people that I was bent on following it. I have still a very pompous letter from Richard Hughes, another friend of Raoul's who has become a famous writer advising me against pushing my nose into what did not concern me, a letter that I remembered with a chuckle when I later met 'Dickon' in Sicily, also on the hunt for Crowley.

Though I was not willing to join any hare-brained scheme, I was full or curiosity, and when the Easter vacation of 1923 arrived I decided to go to Sicily.

The final decision was forced upon me by Crowley who, at this time, I had never met.

'Dear Sir,' he wrote. 'Do what thou wilt shall be the Whole of the Law. Forgive me if I suggest, from the little experience that I have in such matters, that when one is establishing a spy system it is rather important to prevent one's principal plan coming directly into the hands of the person whom you wanted . . . Love is the law, love under will. Yours truly, Aleister Crowley, Knight Guardian of the Sangraal.'

Claud Bosanquet, a young don of Christ Church and a climbing friend, decided to come with me to have a look at the mountains there. The loose tongue of Peter Rodd had not gone unheard. A friend who stayed on at the Park Hotel in Rome after our departure later told us that the police had mad enquired for us there. They were told we had gone to the Hotel de France at Palermo, and we later learned that inquiries were indeed made by the police there, again too late. They then lost the trail.

At Palermo an incident occurred that was later exaggerated by Louis Golding in his novel The Camberwell Beauty, in which young Webster, whom I can hardly recognize as myself, was kidnapped by the Mafia. In fact I was alone at a puppet show, and in the dark I began to realize that a group of rather sinister men was beginning gradually, as the earlier occupants left, to occupy the seats around me. I was beginning to feel a little nervous and to tell myself not to be so foolish, when a man behind me leant forward till his mouth was near my ear and whispered, in unaccented English, 'Get out quick!' . . . I did. Using the techniques of a rugger player, I reached the door. In the sunshine outside a group of policemen lazed and chatted. The pursuit ended and I strolled away. My further adventures in The Camberwell Beauty are wholly fictitious.

Nevertheless Bosanquet and I thought that it would be injudicious to wander through Sicily with more than a minimum of money. I handed him my spare cash and he deposited it with his own at the reception desk. Then we left for Cefalu.

Cefalu is forty miles from Palermo, a large village with a railway station, a hotel and a force of carabinieri. Our inquiries suggested that Crowley was quite well-liked and certainly not feared. The sinister 'abbey' of Betty May and the journalists was a small white bungalow, surrounded by olive trees about five minutes' walk above the village. As we approached we could hear the laughter of children. They were clean and healthy and did not seem to have been upset by having been, as John Bull had said, 'forced to witness nameless horrors'. They were called Hermes [Howard Shumway], Dionysus [Hansi] and Astarte Lulu Panthea. They were undoubtedly Crowley's children, but I was never sure which of his female disciples had mothered them. Crowley was absent. Knowing by his 'magical intuition' (supported as I found later by a sight of letters addressed to me at the poste restante) that I was on my way, he had delayed his necessary departure to Naples, but had finally been forced to go, accompanied by his 'secretary' Miss Helsig [sic] [Leah Hirsig], alias Countess Harcourt, alias Lea, alias the Scarlet Woman, alias the Virgin (sic) Guardian of the Sangraal, alias Alostrael, hereafter known as Alostrael. Alostrael we were told was not to go all the way to Naples, but would await his return at the Savoy Hotel in Palermo.

The living room was large and untidy but full of sunshine and smelling slightly of incense. On the stone floor were painted triangles and pentacles and interlacing circles, and on the walls were many very crude paintings by The Beast. In the bookshelf were books on magic, many by Crowley himself. On that occasion we were shown no more, but returned to Palermo.

We took rooms as the Savoy Hotel, where I had no difficulty in being introduced to Alostrael, a pretty, thin woman in the middle thirties, with a very excitable manner. Seeing her now, I would have guessed her to be under the influence of amphetamine, but this drug had not then been invented. Till a late hour she expounded with great enthusiasm the doctrines of The Beast.

Next day, John Pilley, 'Dickon' Hughes and Peter Quennell arrived on the scene. I left Bosanquet with them and returned with Alostrael to Cefalu. This time I was allowed to see 'la chambre des cauchemars', a small room whose walls were covered with crude paintings of such obscenity that I had difficulty in preserving the gravity to be expected of one being initiated into a new religion.

I left convinced that Raoul had died a natural death, and Dr. Maggio, an obviously reliable man who had attended him, confirmed this. I returned relieved to Palermo, rejoined my friends, and spent a day climbing with them on the Pizzo del Carne above Altavilla. That evening Hughes, Quennell and Pilley decided to spend the night on the mountain, and Bosanquet, who mistrusted their capacity to look after themselves, stayed with them. I, less conscientious than Bosanquet and aware to what depths he temperature in April may drop at night, even in the far south of Europe, descended the mountainside to the railway and returned to Palermo and the Hotel de France.

The next morning I was due to begin my return journey, intending to break it at Naples where I had been told to look for Crowley at Michaelson's bookshop. I therefore asked the manager for my money. He looked at me suspiciously.

'What money?'

'The money Mr. Bosanquet and I left with you.'

'Certainly Mr. Bosanquet left money with me and I gave him a receipt.'

'Half of that was mine.'

'How do I know that? Where is your receipt? Believe me, sir, I do not really disbelieve you, but you must see that without Mr. Bosanquet's permission I cannot give you any of the money he left in my charge. And where is Mr. Bosanquet?'

'For all I know he is frozen stiff on the summit of the Pizzo del Carne. I have only three lire. How on earth can I settle your bill and get home to England?'

'As to my bill, leave with me a note to Mr. Bosanquet asking him to pay me. As to your return, I would advise you to consult the British Consul.'

Frederick Gambier MacBean, his Britannic Majesty's Consul in Palermo, was a small, unsmiling Scot who listened to my story and then expressed at great length his detestation or irresponsible under-graduates. He refused to lend me any money. I suggested that he might send a telegram to my father, but he had no funds earmarked for such a purpose. I threatened to throw myself on the mercy of the police as a vagrant without visible means of support. This shook him a little and after another diatribe he sent a clerk with me to the station with instructions to buy me a third-class ticket to London, but to give me no cash. I started the long journey with my three lire still intact.

At Michaelson's bookshop they told me that Crowley was in Taormina, which I did not believe. I crossed the road to Thomas Cook, and was inquiring if they knew the whereabouts of Mr. Aleister Crowley, when a voice behind me chanted, 'Do what thou wilt shall be the Whole of the Law,' and I turned and introduced myself. He was a big man of forty-seven, inclined to be corpulent, with a bald head, grey hair and a sallow complexion. His figure drooped and he had a dragging gait. His manner was peevish ands he had a slight cockney accent. He was not my idea of a magician and seemed disappointingly unsinister.

I spent the morning with him and had a good lunch which, thanks to Frederick Gambier MacBean, I greatly enjoyed. I was far from impressed by the great magician's mental powers. For a long time he would not leave the subject of rock-climbing. When finally I got him to talk about drugs and sex, he seemed rather bored. Drugs, he believed, are only dangerous to those who fear them; the wise man uses heroin or opium or cocaine as he uses alcohol or nicotine. Ether perhaps pleased him most; it was possible to get drunk and sober again several times a day. As to sex, copulate freely by all means, but don't get too emotional about it; the emotion of love destroys the intellect.

He was immensely conceited. I asked him why he didn't sue the papers which so vilely maligned him. 'I am', he said, 'great enough to ignore public opinion. Did Shelley bring libel actions? No, he came to Italy? Did Byron bring libel actions? No, he came to Italy? Did I bring libel actions? No, I have come to Italy.' But years later he went back on these words.

I saw Crowley again occasionally over the next twenty years. He never again achieved the notoriety of 1923. He continued to write poems and occult books that nobody read but that now are valuable collectors' pieces. I don't think he was 'The Wickedest Man in the World' as the journalist 'Cassandra' called him. He was a very silly man and I doubt whether he did anybody any real harm.

I was, at twenty-three, far too shy to borrow money from him and so, still with three lire in my pocket, I boarded the train to Rome. The third-class carriage was almost filled with peculiarly odorous and apparently villainous men, the exception being a very young and pretty fair-haired girl, who was obviously in great distress. Noticing that she was reading an English novel, I asked her whether I could help her. She told me that she was Swiss and had been with her husband in Naples. She wanted to go to Capri, but her husband, who knew the island well, preferred to explore Naples, so she went alone, arranging to meet him on her return. He was not at the station and she panicked. She succeeded in getting herself and her luggage aboard, thinking only of rejoining her family in Rome, but there her courage failed. The thought of removing her luggage and herself from the train and reaching her hotel was more than she could face. At Rome I took her under my wing, refused the services of a porter, found a cab and drove her to her hotel, wondering how I could pay the driver. At the hotel a porter opened the door of the cab and took charge of her luggage. I told him in a lordly way to pay the driver, and was about to escape when she seized me by the arm crying, 'No, you cannot leave me yet. They may not be here.' There were, a large and friendly Swiss family who, after a moment of justifiable suspicion, decided that I was Sir Galahad. I ate well, knowing that it might be my last meal for many hours. After dinner her father took me to the station, settled me in my compartment and disappeared. He returned a few minutes later with a vast basket of food and a bottle of wine. I ate well all the way to England, and arrived at Victoria with my three lire intact.

Crowley died in obscurity in 1947, and the journalist 'Cassandra' went to his funeral in the crematorium at Hastings. 'Crowley, this strange old man, this dubious artist in necromantic mumbo-jumbo, who had founded an iniquitous abbey in Sicily, had been expelled from France, banned in England, and entangled in a series of ferocious and disreputable lawsuits, had come to the end of the road. An elderly man stepped up to what passes for a pulpit in a crematorium. . . . In a deep loud voice of considerable eloquence he began to read A Hymn to Pan:

"Oh Pan! Pan! Pan! Satan has come on a Milk White Ass. . . . The Great Beast has come. . . . I am in the grip of the snake. . . . O Pan! O Pan! Oh Pan! I am borne to Death on the Horns of the unicorn. O Pan! Pan! Pan! Do what thou wilt shall be the Whole of the Law. Love is the Law, love under will."

The Knight Guardian of the Sangraal was silly, even in death.