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As Related by Ethel Mannin
from
Penguin Books, 1937 (page 203)
Downstairs there is a dining-room designed by Mrs. E. V. Lucas, canvas-coloured walls with a reddish-orange paint-work. Striped orange linen curtains, and on the wall opposite the fireplace a John [Augustus John] lithograph of Aleister Crowley, that high priest of black magic who likes nothing better than to be regarded as His Satanic Majesty the Prince of Darkness, and who would take it as a compliment to be called an arch-devil.
Knowing that Crowley is one of Gwen Otter's [Gwendolen Otter] oldest friends I asked her if she could tell me the truth about him and the dark stories of drugs and black mass circulating about him, but I gathered from her, as from a woman artist I know who once had a studio next door to his apartments, that there is no clearly definable truth about him; save that he is a poseur who has come to believe in his own poses—so that they are no longer poses—and that having built up this sinister reputation for himself he goes on playing up to it. |