Do What Thou Wilt

by Lawrence Sutin

  Sieveking agreed, during his meeting with Crowley in Cassis, to make efforts on the Beast’s behalf in British publishing circles. To this end, Sieveking paid a visit—after his return to London—to Yorke, in whose residence certain Crowley manuscripts were in storage. (Yorke may, of necessity, have brought these manuscripts into England surreptitiously. For, back in November 1924, Crowley had shipped two large cases filled with his books, manuscripts, and paintings to London. Those cases were destroyed by British Customs on the grounds of obscenity.) Neither Yorke nor Sieveking were successful in finding a willing British publisher.

  In the alternative, Yorke was willing to partially fund a private printing of Magick in Theory and Practice. It was this option that Crowley resolved upon—out of desperation—by the end of 1928, with the Lecram Press in Paris chosen as the printer as it would be unhindered by the legal restrictions of England. Yorke put up an initial £300 for a print run of 3,000—an optimistic number, based on Crowley’s assurances that there would be eager subscribers. (In fact, the Lecram Press received payment for a mere seven subscriptions by May 1929.) But in late 1928, Crowley was buoyant enough—not only as to Magick, but also as to his unpublished novel Moonchild and the Confessions—to hire a publicity agent. This was a British journalist based in Paris, C. de Vidal Hunt, whom Crowley had met some years earlier.

  Hunt was initially optimistic, convinced that Crowley was a gifted writer unfairly pilloried by the press. But the Beast simply could not conduct himself properly. In a November letter to Yorke, Hunt complained:

  The unfortunate part of all this is his utter inability to ‘act’ pretty over a cup of tea. As an impresario I am very discouraged. He can’t be taught new tricks. When in company he appears to be plunged into a mental torpor from which it is difficult to arouse him. And this is not exactly the way to make himself popular with the ladies. However, we’ll carry on and present the lion as a surly old beast whose gnarls should frighten no one.

  The “torpor” and reticence were likely the symptoms of ongoing heroin use. Relations between Crowley and Hunt soon came to an unpleasant end. Crowley claimed that Hunt threatened blackmail and then went to the French police with dire stories of the doings of the Beast. Whether Hunt played the part of informer remains unclear, but Crowley’s troubles with the authorities did ensue shortly after Hunt’s departure.

  Crowley had every reason to wish to remain peacefully in France. It was there that Magick would appear. He was being kept in a comfortable apartment by the funding of Germer and other disciples. Regardie was on hand as a promising student and a willing worker. And, as 1928 came to an end, Crowley found an admirable successor to Kasimira Bass to serve as Scarlet Woman.

  Her maiden name was Ferrari, but it was as Maria Teresa de Miramar that Crowley encountered her in Paris. She was born in Granada, Nicaragua, in 1894, of an Italian father and a French mother. Aged thirty-four when she and Crowley met, her appearance was sufficiently exotic that Crowley was—for the first time—paired with a woman who produced as great a startle on sight as he did. Jack Lindsay, a literary editor who became acquainted with Crowley during this time, recalled that she drank “heavily” and was formidable. Here is his portrait of the couple:

  She was a fairly well-blown woman, oozing a helpless sexuality from every seam of her smartly cut suit, with shapely legs crossed and uncrossed, and keeping all the while a sharp glittering gaze on her swarthy and unsavory husband with his bowtie, his staring uneasy pop-eyes, his prim lax rosebud mouth, his sallow skin and brown shaven egg-shaped head, which at the time I mistook as naturally bald. There was a mustiness about him that perhaps came from his scent of mingled civet, musk and ambergris, which was said to have a compelling effect on women and to make horses neigh after him in the street. Maria spoke in various languages, including English, which I could not understand, and he listened attentively like a well-behaved poodle, giving an impression of uxorious dependence. However I gathered that in private she made many scenes, accusing him and his friends of attempting to poison her.

  There is no evidence—and no likelihood—that Crowley had any intention of poisoning de Miramar. That she was capable of scenes and accusations, there can be no doubt. The romance—and ultimate marriage—between de Miramar and Crowley was as turbulent as any in Crowley’s lifetime. De Miramar showed her nerve when she stayed by Crowley’s side even after a troubling encounter with her predecessor. In February, while riding on a bus in Paris, she was accosted and threatened by Kasimira Bass—whether out of jealousy on Bass’s part, or for other motives, remains unknown.

  Unsettling as this must have been, it paled beside what had already befallen the couple. On January 17, an inspector from the Préfecture of Police paid a visit to Crowley’s flat, based on negative information provided by the Sûreté Générale. The source of this information could have been Hunt; Regardie, however, believed that his American sister had been the primary accuser by way of concerned letters from America as to the sinister man with whom her brother had fallen in. On March 8, the inspector returned with a refus de séjour—a revocation of the residency permits of Crowley, de Miramar, and Regardie. They were given twenty-four hours to leave France. The reason for the expulsion remains unclear. According to the Paris Midi—one of the many newspapers in France, England, and America to cover this latest furor surrounding the Beast—Crowley was regarded as a German spy, based both on his World War One activities and his leadership role in the German-origin O.T.O. One may speculate that allegations of black magic and immorality also played a key role.

  But Crowley would not leave tamely—not with the printing of Magick under way. Regardie and de Miramar were placed on a boat to England on March 9, with assurances by Crowley that he would join them as soon as he could. But the two were refused permission to land in England. According to Regardie, they were viewed, by virtue of their association with the Beast, as “undesirable aliens”—this despite the fact that England was the birthplace of Regardie. The British authorities put them on a Channel steamer to Brussels, where they subsisted on funds provided by Crowley.

  Prior to his forced departure from Paris, Regardie had lost his virginity—at Crowley’s urging—by paying a visit to a brothel. Now, in Brussels, Regardie experienced sex with the Scarlet Woman herself. De Miramar seduced the young man. It may have been a respite of a sort for de Miramar, who had grown weary of Crowley’s proclivities. As Regardie recalled: “That pair used to have the most godawful rows, though. The trouble was that Crowley loved giving it to her up the arse and she used to get sick of it. When she was annoyed, she suddenly used to turn on him and hiss, ‘Pederast!’ And he’d be going, ‘Oh, mon cherie, how can you say this to me!’ as he tried to kiss her and she’d still be hissing ‘Pederast!’ until finally he grabbed her and they’d start fucking again.” Crowley, in a diary entry made the day that de Miramar and Regardie left for England, responded to de Miramar’s objections: “The real inferiority of women to men is shown by their hate of paederasty, which they regard as unfair competition. Men on the other hand rather approve of Sapphism, as saving them trouble & expense.” For his part, Regardie found de Miramar “a magnificent animal of a woman.” Crowley was nonplussed by the affair when Regardie confessed it to him some weeks later; perhaps, as with Sapphism, he appreciated the trouble it had saved him in keeping de Miramar content during a time of chaos.

  Crowley tenaciously delayed his own refus de séjour by obtaining a certificate from a cooperative French doctor declaring him unfit for travel due to poor health. This gambit bought the time he needed. Eight days later, on April 12, came the fruition: “Advance copy Magick arrived 5:55 p.m. Victory!” Delay tactics were no longer necessary. Over the next four days—as the story of the expulsion of the Great Beast from France went public—Crowley gave out numerous interviews and posed in dignified mien for photographs. On April 17, he went by train to Brussels, where he and de Miramar enjoyed a passionate reunion. It has been held that Crowley decided, later in this
year, to marry de Miramar strictly as a legal expedient to obtain her entry into England. On the contrary, on the very night he arrived in Brussels, the two engaged in sexual magic for the dual purposes of “success to our campaign [of revoking the refus de séjour and returning to France] & happiness in marriage.” Sexual workings with the latter aim in mind continued over the next two months. Crowley’s desire to marry de Miramar was no mere stratagem.

  In late May, Crowley went over to England to assess legal and publishing options. His fare was paid for by Colonel Carter, a Scotland Yard investigator who had met with Yorke and received the latter’s assurances that Crowley was, for all his traitorous reputation, a loyal British subject. Crowley and Carter met for a four-hour dinner on June 11—a meeting that Crowley summarized with the diary entry “all clean.” Such, indeed, was the case. Despite the flamboyant press coverage in Britain of his ejection from France, and the fear of Yorke and others that Crowley would be prosecuted or harrassed by authorities in England, nothing of the sort occurred at this point—nor for the remaining years of Crowley’s life, most of which were spent in England.

  Crowley and Carter continued to meet sporadically on into early 1930. The inspector seemed to view the Beast as a useful contact on various secret societies of some concern to His Majesty’s government; the O.T.O. was not one of these. Crowley was happy to oblige with information, relishing his role as a mysterious “insider” and hoping to parley Carter’s interest into a source of income—and power within the British establishment.

  Despite the rapprochement with Carter and Scotland Yard, Crowley’s reputation, in the eyes of most British publishers, could not have been more repugnant. Graphic testimony of this is offered in the memoirs of publisher Rupert Grayson, to whose office Crowley came during this time, in hopes of placing the Confessions:

  Alastair [sic] Crowley, the Black Magician, had propelled his drug-charged body to see us; looking into his yellow eyes, set in a brown-pocked yellow face, across the two-foot-wide Georgian table that divided us, I was truly revolted.[ … ] When he left the room I opened the door and windows to rid the room of the atmosphere of aromatic evil he had left on his brief visit.[ … ]

  The manuscript Crowley brought us was as strange and sinister a work [ … ] as one would expect; it was the only book I remember turning down for no better reason than our instant dislike for its author.

  The irony was that Crowley considered, at this very time, creating a perfume for public sale. With Montague Summers, he discussed the prospects of a perfume that Crowley named, simply, “It.” The ingredients, if it ever was concocted, are not known. It is safe to say that Crowley, from decades of magical practice that included the use of incenses of all kinds, had developed a range of olfactory tolerance beyond the norm of his contemporaries—hence the oft unfortunate impact of his scent experiments upon them.

  But the primary task on Crowley’s mind was neither to build relations with Scotland Yard nor to market elixirs, but rather to find a publisher for Magick. The printed pages were still with the Lecram Press—along with an unpaid bill for printing costs. Crowley’s luck with publishers did, however, take a sharp turn for the better when he called upon P. R. Stephensen, the editorial director of the newly founded Mandrake Press, in June 1929.

  Stephensen, a young Australian who had gone to Oxford on a Rhodes Scholarship, had a taste for writing that was sexually frank, morally nonconformist, and polemically spiced. He was, in short, the ideal editor for Aleister Crowley. The Mandrake Press, owned by rare book dealer Edward Goldston, cut its teeth on controversy with its very first title, The Paintings of D. H. Lawrence, issued in the very month that Crowley paid his call. Lawrence was then at the height of his notoriety as the author of Lady Chatterley’s Lover. The Paintings volume created a succès de scandale. The Observer and the Daily Express led the media cry of outrage against the sensuous paintings of Lawrence, and a London exhibition of Lawrence’s works (held in conjunction with publication) was raided by the police in July.

  The heated reception for Lawrence’s work underscores the gamble Stephensen took in signing on Crowley. Their contract in late June, which provided a badly needed £50 advance for Crowley, resulted first in the September 1929 publication of The Stratagem and Other Stories, a slim collection of three unexceptional stories that attracted little attention. Stephensen further issued Crowley’s novel, Moonchild (also in September 1929), and the massive Confessions (the first two volumes of which, exquisitely printed and bound, appeared that autumn).

  In so doing, Stephensen incurred the skepticism not only of owner Goldston but also of his chief author, D. H. Lawrence. In a letter to Stephensen, Lawrence offered this counsel: “I’m a bit sorry you’ve got Aleister Crowley at such heavy tonnage, I feel his day is rather over.” Lawrence—who died the following year—was correct to doubt the market draw of Crowley. The public notoriety that had plagued the Beast for two decades now failed to manifest, just when it might have drawn the interest of young Bloomsbury rebels and fashionable book collectors. The Mandrake titles of Crowley were altogether ignored.

  The association with the Mandrake Press intensified, for Crowley, the appeal of once more establishing roots in England. But there remained the problem of de Miramar, which was still being denied entry to the country. Marriage, which they both already desired, was now the obvious answer to the problem of British residence. But Belgium, where de Miramar resided, posed legal restrictions to marriage by foreigners on its soil. So in late July 1929, Crowley went to Germany to meet there with de Miramar. In Leipzig, on August 16, the Beast and the Scarlet Woman were wed, and shortly thereafter returned to London.

  De Miramar, in poor health and under a nurse’s care, was now buffeted by emotions the causes of which are not known; the results, however, were anguish for them both. Crowley wrote of one anguished night: “M. [Miramar] had a quite bad attack of insane temper, & wrote to G.Y. [Yorke]—I don’t know what. She makes imbecile accusations about Nurse Walsh—that I am making love to her &—sometimes—that we are trying to poison her—She ‘has witnesses’.” An October 1929 move to Ivy Cottage in Knockholt, Kent brought no change in de Miramar’s condition. Crowley could be a fearful misogynist, but his perceptions of de Miramar at this time were shared by Yorke, a trustworthy observer. For Crowley, these scenes must have inspired memories of his first wife, Rose. As with Rose, Crowley would minister aid to de Miramar for a time—and then move on. But with de Miramar, the time cycle of despair and departure would be severely foreshortened.

  Through the winter of 1930, the couple resided in relative isolation, with hopes of making their marriage work. But the publication of the remaining volumes of the Confessions (now canceled by the failing Mandrake Press) and of Magick (still held captive by the Lecram Press) still required Crowley’s attention. To bolster his literary reputation, Stephensen—Crowley’s neighbor in Kent—was persuaded to embark on a work entitled The Legend of Aleister Crowley, which would document and decisively refute the long-time press campaign of vilification against the Beast. Crowley had an ample scrapbook of press clippings on hand, and Regardie—who had at last been cleared for entry into England—could serve Stephensen as amanuensis and guide to Crowley’s thought. In fact, Regardie emerged as a full collaborator; when Legend was republished in 1970, he was credited as a coauthor.

  Stephensen was a believer in Crowley’s literary talent, not in his occult mission. But the two men were united in their desire to keep the Mandrake Press afloat. They took desperate financing measures which amounted to a temporary infusion of life. A new company, the Mandrake Press Ltd., was founded in March 1930. There were four new directors: Yorke, Stephensen, Major Robert Thynne (whose reasons for interest in the venture remain unclear), and an associate of Thynne’s, Major J. C. S. Mac Allen. It was anything but a stable alliance. Crowley soon accused Thynne of misappropriating funds, a charge Yorke rejected. According to Yorke, it was Crowley who blatantly diverted the £500 invested by Cora Germer. Stephens
en, in retrospect, saw both Crowley and Thynne as overly free with the working funds of the press, indulging themselves in fine dining at posh London establishments.

  It is clear that Crowley continued to insist on his luxuries, even with the publication of his major works in the balance. The assertion of his “kingly nature” was fundamental to Crowley’s Thelemic outlook. Those who were exasperated earned Crowley’s contempt for lacking the courage to live by a like standard. Dining at the famous Café Royal in Piccadilly was one of his favorite extravagances. There is one strange account—set in this café—which, if true, testifies both to the Beast’s outlandish public image and to his own sanguine acceptance of it:

  He [Crowley] believed that he possessed a magic cloak which rendered him invisible. One day he appeared in it, a magestic figure in star-encrusted conical hat and a black cloak decorated with the symbols of mysticism, and walked slowly through the Café from Regent Street to Glasshouse Street in an awestruck silence.

  No one could convince him that the flabbergasted patrons had seen him. “If they saw me,” he would ask unanswerably, “why did nobody speak to me?”

  The Café Royal was a stage upon which Crowley could create remarkable effects. And perhaps there was no real extravagance to his patronage; one patron testified that on the last occasion Crowley dined there, he left “an unpaid bill for over £100.”

  The irony is that the one small publishing success Crowley and Stephensen did enjoy came in February 1930, when the old Mandrake was in abeyance and the new had yet to be formed. Crowley had been invited by the student committee of the Oxford University Poetry Society to give a lecture. The subject he chose—the infamous fifteenth-century Frenchman Gilles de Rais, a feudal nobleman, a military warlord, alleged black magician, and putative murderer of some 800 children, who was ultimately hanged—had nothing whatsoever to do with poetry. One of the members of this committee was Arthur Calder-Marshall, who went on to enjoy minor success as a man of letters. Calder-Marshall and his peers were fascinated with Crowley’s aura and erudition, just as had been (twenty years earlier) Victor Neuburg and his fellow students in the Cambridge University Freethought Association. And just as the Cambridge authorities had objected to Crowley’s presence in 1910, so too did the Oxford authorities in 1930, led by the eminent theologian Father Ronald Knox, the Catholic chaplain. While no formal action was ever taken, Knox made it plain that severe sanctions would result if the Crowley lecture went on as scheduled on February 3.