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As Related by Nina Hamnett
from
Ray Long & Richard R. Smith, Inc., 1932 (pages 31-32, 69 & 173-180)
I was now twenty-one. I was introduced one day to a poet [Victor Neuburg]. He had long hair. He lived with an extremely beautiful girl [Ione de Forest] who was an actress. She had golden eyes and the most perfect eyebrows; she had long black hair down to her waist. He wrote hundreds and hundreds of poems to her. She had plenty of money always. The poet talked of Aleister Crowley, of whom I had heard a good deal. He was supposed to be very clever and very wicked. I was taken to his studio and introduced to him. I found him extremely intelligent and he did not strike me as being very bad. He asked me to paint four panel with signs representing the elements, earth, air, fire, and water; while I was painting Fire, apparently the Fire Element escaped, and three fires started in mysterious ways in the studio on the same day. It was said that Crowley was so wicked that no young thing could remain alone in the same room with him for safety. One day I was painting by the fire and his secretary went out, leaving me alone with him. He was lying on the hearthrug in front of the fire asleep. He woke up, stared at me, and said, "ARE YOU ALONE?" I said, "YES," and he lay down and went to sleep again. Crowley had some drug from South America; it was quite harmless and one saw colours. He never offered to give me any. One day a rich marmalade manufacturer, who had come to study magic, was given some. He was stone deaf and was sitting by the fireplace with a dreamy look on his face; he had just taken some. Every now and then Crowley would write on a piece of paper, "What are your impressions?" and the marmalade manufacturer wrote, much to Crowley's disgust, "I see coloured patterns like the tiles in the Victoria and Albert Museum."
I visited the poet and the beautiful girl quite often. She had a big studio in Chelsea. She seemed often depressed and one day said to me, "I am going away to-morrow for a long time, perhaps for ever, come in the morning and I will give you some clothes." I was delighted as I had very few clothes. I felt rather worried about her but did not know what I could do. The next day I went to the studio. Outside pinned on the door was an envelope and inside was the key. I was rather frightened. I opened the door and inside was a large red curtain. I hesitated for a moment, terrified; I pulled it aside and on the sofa she lay dead, with a mother-o'-pearl revolver and her slippers beside her on the floor. Her face was quite white and her golden eyes were half closed. She had placed the revolver to her chest, inside her dress, and shot herself through her heart and lungs. I called the caretaker and he fetched the police. I, of course, had to be a witness. This depressed me for some time.
Aleister Crowley was in Paris and I saw him from time to time. He always went out at midday to say a prayer to the sun. One day I met him in the Boulevard Montparnasse. Suddenly he stopped in the middle of the street and addressed the sun. I did not know the prayer in question, so respectfully stood behind him until he had finished. In the Quarter was a very celebrated artist's model. She was very beautiful and everyone had enjoyed her favours except Crowley. Someone said to A.C., "You really must take her out to supper and see what she is really like." The next morning everyone was having breakfast in the Dôme and Crowley appeared. They cried, "Hullo, A.C., what was it like?" and he said rather grimly, "It was rather like waving a flag in space."
I had met once in London, at the Eiffel Tower, a few months before, a very good-looking young man, who had been at Oxford. He had told me that he was coming to Paris, and hoped to get into the Diplomatic Service. He spoke French, German, and Italian extremely well, and suddenly arrived in Paris from Italy. He had a charming voice and sang in all three languages. He visited exhibitions with me, and took to wearing a large black hat, corduroy trousers, and black sand shoes. This I strongly disapproved of, as they did not suit him at all, and finally induced him to abandon them and wear his ordinary clothes. By this time I had had quite enough of artistic-looking people, long hair and shabby clothes, and was only too thankful to be seen about with a presentable person. Evan Morgan was still in Paris and knew him well. Aleister Crowley was there and they were very anxious to be introduced to him, having heard the most dreadful stories of his wickedness. Crowley had a temple in Cefalu in Sicily. He was supposed to practise Black Magic there, and one day a baby was said to have disappeared mysteriously. There was also a goat there. This all pointed to Black Magic, so people said, and the inhabitants of the village were frightened of him. When he came to Paris he stayed in the Rue Vavin at the Hôtel de Blois. I asked him if I could being some friends to see him and he asked us to come in one day before dinner and have some cocktails. He said that he had invented a beautiful cocktail called Kubla Khan No. 2. He would not say what it was made of. I told Evan and he, I and two young men went to try it out one evening. Crowley had only a small bedroom with a large cupboard. He opened the cupboard and took out a bottle gin, a bottle of vermouth, and two other bottles. The last one was a small black bottle with an orange label on it, on which was written "POISON." He poured some liquid from the large bottles, and then from the black bottle he poured a few drops and shook the mixture up. The "POISON" I found out afterwards, was laudanum. I believe that it is supposed to be an aphrodisiac but it had no effect at all on any of us except Cecil Maitland, who was there also. After we left he rushed into the street and in and out of all the cafes behaving in a most strange manner, accosting everyone he came into contact with. I introduced J. W. N. Sullivan to Crowley. They got on very well together, as they both were very good chess-players and very good mathematicians as well. I don't think that Sullivan was much interested in magic, but they found plenty to talk about. Crowley had taken to painting and painted the most fantastic pictures in very bright colours. He painted a picture about a foot and a half wide, and nine inches wide, of a man on a white horse chasing a lion. It was very interesting, a little like the Douanier Rousseau; it had a great deal of life and action. I would have liked to have bought it, but I was very broke, and he wanted a high price for it. He gave me a painting, on a mahogany panel, of a purple negress, with a yellow and red spotted handkerchief round her head, and a purple rhinoceros surrounded by oriental vegetation. The rhinoceros had got rather mixed up with the vegetation, and it was rather difficult to distinguish between the trunks of the trees and the animal's anatomy; it was quite a beautiful colour however. He wife arrived from Cefalu. She was a tall, gaunt Jewess, very thin and bony, with a strangely-attractive face and wild eyes. She had been a schoolmistress in New York. She had had a child by Crowley which had died, and Crowley was very much upset about it. He showed me a photograph of himself and her and some children standing up to their knees in the sea, with no clothes on. I got on very well with them. They were very anxious for me to go to Cefalu. I did not care for the type of person who clung to Crowley. They seemed so very inferior to him and so dull and boring that I could never understand how he could put up with them.
Betty May, whom I had known in London in 1914, with Basil, arrived in Paris one day. She had been one of Epstein's models and one of the principal supports with Lilian Shelley, of the Crab Tree Club, which was started in 1913. I only went to it once with Basil in 1914. Betty had married recently her fourth husband, a most brilliant young man called Raoul Loveday, who was only twenty and had got a first in history at Oxford. He was very good-looking, but looked half dead. She was delighted to meet me and we all sat in the Dôme and drank. They were on their way to Cefalu as Crowley had offered him a job as his secretary. He was very much intrigued with Crowley's views on Magic. He had been ill the year before and had had a serious operation. I had heard that the climate at Cefalu was terrible; heat, mosquitoes, and very bad food. The magical training I already knew was very arduous. I urged them not to go. I succeeded in keeping them in Paris two days longer than they intended, but they were determined to go and I was powerless to prevent them. I told Raoul that if he went he would die, and really felt a horrible feeling of gloom when I said "Goodbye" to them. After five months I had a postcard from Betty on which was written, "My husband died last Friday; meet me at the Gare de Lyon." I could not meet her as I got the postcard a day too late and she went straight through to London. He died of fever. There were no doctors at Cefalu and one had to be got from Palermo, but it was too late when he arrived. There is a long and very interesting description of life in Cefalu in Tiger Woman, Betty May's life story, but not half so good as the way in which she told me the story herself.
Cecil Maitland and Mary Butts were very much interested in Crowley and went to Cefalu. Everyone in the temple had to write their diary every day and everyone else was allowed to read it. The climate and the bad food nearly killed Cecil and Mary, and when they came back to Paris they looked like two ghosts and were hardly recognizable.
Crowley came to Paris from time to time. He gave the appearance of being quite bald, with the exception of a small bunch of hairs on top of his head, which he twiddled into a point. He shaved the back of his head and appeared entirely bald. One fête day I was sitting at the Rotonde and a most extraordinary spectacle appeared. It wore a magnificent and very expensive grey velour hat. Underneath, sticking out on each side was a mop of black frizzy hair and the face was heavily and very badly painted. This I recognized as Crowley. He said, "I am going to Montmartre and I don't know of any suitable cafés to visit." I could not think of any where he would not cause a sensation, but I suspected that that was exactly what he wanted. I told him the names of a few suitable places and he disappeared. I never saw him in this disguise again and did not dare enquire whether he had a successful evening or not. He appeared sometimes in a kilt and got howled down by the Americans, who were rude enough to sing Harry Lauder's songs at him. He had a passion for dressing up. One day the Countess A., a Frenchwoman, asked me to lunch. I had been to her home several times before and we were becoming very friendly. She spoke excellent English and had heard about Crowley. She was most anxious to meet him. I refused to introduce him to her as she had been very kind to me and I knew how fond Crowley was of pulling the legs of people whom he suspected of being rich and influential. It was a curious kink that he had which had lost him many opportunities and people that would have been useful and friendly to him. It was a kind of schoolboy perversity. A friend of mine introduced him to her and she asked him to her house to lunch to meet some distinguished and rich women who were longing to have their horoscopes read. I was not at the luncheon party, but Crowley, I heard, had a great success and told them all kinds of things about themselves that they were dying to hear. He looked at the Countess and said, "I have met you in another life." She was naturally very intrigued and asked him when and where, and he said that, in fact, he had written a story about her that had been published and that he would send her a copy. This he eventually did and to her horror when she read it, it was a perfectly monstrous story, about a perfectly monstrous and disreputable old woman bearing, of course, no resemblance to her. She was naturally furious and refused to see him again. One evening, before the unfortunate incident took place, a man whom we all knew, asked us to come to his flat and try a little hashish. I had never tried any, but only a few days before, the Irish journalist whom I knew, had told me about his experiences when he had tried some. It is not a habit-forming drug and does not do anyone much harm. The Irishman went to see some friends one day and they gave him some. I believe that one loses all sense of time and space. It takes about a hundred years to cross quite a narrow street and, as Maurice Richardson pointed out when I told him the story, probably a hundred years to order a drink. The first effect is a violent attack of giggles. One screams with laughter for no reason whatever, even at a fly walking on the ceiling. The Irishman went through all the stages and finally decided to go home. He had to walk across Paris and cross the river by Notre Dame. When he reached it he found that it was at least a mile high, and, giving it one despairing look, sat down on the quays to wait till its size had diminished. He had to wait for some time, but finally he decided that it had grown small enough for him to continue his walk home. The Countess had asked Crowley to dinner, and he appeared in what he considered to be suitable evening clothes. He wore black silk knee breeches, a tight-fitting black coat, black silk stockings, and shoes with buckles on them. The coat had a high back collar with a narrow white strip at the top. On his chest he wore a jewelled order and at his side he carried a sword. I asked him what the order was. He said, "The Order of the Holy Ghost, my dear." We went to our friend's flat after dinner. He had a large pot on the floor which contained hashish in the form of jam. On the table were some pipes, as one smoked or ate it, or did both. I tasted a spoonful, swallowed it, and waited, but nothing happened. The others got to work seriously and smoked and ate the jam. I felt no effect except that I was very happy, much more happy than if I had drunk anything. I sat on a chair and grinned. The others entered the giggling stage. This was for me a most awful bore as I could not say a word of any kind without them roaring with laughter. I got so bored that I went home to my Pole. Crowley eventually returned to Cefalu, taking his wife with him, and so we had no more Kubla Khan No. 2. |