Perdurabo

by Richard Kaczynski

  A 1894 portrait of Oscar Eckenstein (1859–1921) by Alphonse Legros. (photo credit 2.3)

  Eckenstein’s neat, logical, and tactical approach to climbing provided the perfect foil for skilled but undisciplined AC. Short and stocky, Eckenstein was a complete athlete with seemingly limitless stamina and an uncanny sense of direction. His right arm was so strong that he could grab a ledge and pull himself up with just a few fingers. As Crowley later reported to hill-climber and writer Joseph Henry Doughty (1889–1936), “Eckenstein, provided he could get 3 fingers on something that could be described as a ledge by a man far advanced in hashish, would be smoking his pipe on the aforesaid ledge a few seconds later and none of us could tell how he had done it.”70 Also enamored of puzzles, Eckenstein quickly solved climbing conundrums with great success.

  Together they climbed Wastdale Head, discussing mountaineering, the Alpine Club, and the lack of a true challenge. Eckenstein was determined to return to the Himalayas and conquer the Baltoro Glacier; to succeed where Conway failed. Crowley eagerly bought into the plan, agreeing to tackle the Himalayas some day, but only after sufficient training.

  During these animated encounters on Wastdale Head, Crowley saw a rift open between Pollitt and himself like that in the Devil’s Chimney. Not only did they seem to share little in common, but Pollitt proved an impediment to his spiritual quest. Thus, when Crowley began composing “Jezebel”71 during the vacation, he snuck off to Maidenhead to be alone to write. When Pollitt finally tracked him down, the poet at work was angry and resentful. “I have given my life to religion,” Crowley told him, “and you don’t fit into the scheme.”

  Regret sank in soon afterward. Crowley realized his error and weakness, and drafted a letter of apology that he couldn’t bring himself to send. Thus they parted on those terms, speaking only occasionally thereafter until, one day, they passed each other on Bond Street; Crowley didn’t notice, while Pollitt took it as a personal slight and never spoke to him again.

  Crowley carried bittersweet memories of Pollitt for many years, leaving scattered literary remnants as testimony to their friendship. The dedication of Crowley’s first book, which was in press about this time, refers to Pollitt as his “Lover and Lord.”72 Later, he wrote two scathing sonnets on Pollitt, published in his Works of Aleister Crowley with the apologia:

  The virulence of these sonnets is excusable when it is known that their aim was to destroy the influence in Cambridge of a man who headed in that University a movement parallel to that which at Oxford was associated with the name of Oscar Wilde. They had their effect.73

  Over a decade later, he published The Scented Garden (1910), a parody of Sir Richard Burton’s essays on Middle Eastern sexuality. References to homosexuality occur throughout, while Chapter XLI, “The Riddle,” teases the reader:

  Habib hath heard; let all Iran

  who spell aright from A to Z

  Exalt thy fame and understand

  with whom I made a marriage-bed …

  The solution to the riddle is easy enough: the first letter of each line spells out the name of Herbert Charles Jerome Pollitt. Lest there be any uncertainty, the next poem, Chapter XLII’s “Bagh-i-Muattar,” contains an acrostic spelling Aleister Crowley in reverse. The tender feelings survived four years later, when, arriving in America in 1914, he wished in his diary for a companion like Pollitt.74 In “Not the Life and Adventures of Sir Roger Bloxham,” written three years later in 1917, the character Hippolytus is H. Pollitt, while Sir Roger Bloxham is Crowley himself.75 Finally, in his Confessions, he recalls his break with Pollitt with the words, “It has been my lifelong regret, for a nobler and purer comradeship never existed on this earth.”76

  Then Judas, which had betrayed him, when he saw that he was condemned, repented himself, and brought again the thirty pieces of silver to the chief priests and elders, saying, I have sinned in that I have betrayed the innocent blood. And they said, What is that to us? see thou to that. And he cast down the pieces of silver in the temple, and departed and went and hanged himself. And the chief priests took the silver pieces, and said, It is not lawful for to put them into the treasury, because it is the price of blood. And they took counsel, and bought with them the potter’s field to bury strangers in. Wherefore that field was called, The field of blood, unto this day.

  —Matthew 27:3–8

  The soil of Potter’s Field in Jerusalem, according to tradition, could consume a corpse in twenty-four hours. Its Hebrew name, Aceldama, means “field of blood.” In 1218 boatloads of its soil were shipped to the Campo Santo in Pisa. In 1898 it became the title of Crowley’s first book.

  Aceldama: A Place to Bury Strangers In was a poem in thirty-two stanzas brimming with passion and ranging from the erotic to the divine. It reveals the author’s delirious struggle with base emotions and the trance of sorrow while striving for a glimpse of his guru upon the spiritual pinnacle:

  This was a dream—and how may I attain?

  How make myself a worthy acolyte?

  How from my body shall my soul take flight,

  Being constrained in this devouring chain

  Of selfishness? How purge the spirit quite

  Of gross desires

  That eat into the heart with their corrupting fires?

  Old Buddha gave command; Jehovah spake;

  Strange distant gods that are not dead today

  Added their voices; Heaven’s desart way

  Man wins not but by sorrow …77

  The book appeared in an edition of one hundred copies. Of these, two were on outsize vellum, ten on Japanese vellum, and eighty-eight on handmade paper. Copies sold for half a crown. Because of its small print run, and because copies did not go out for review, his debut garnered little press reaction. One rare reviewer wrote apprehensively:

  Induced by we know not what course of reading, the book is not one that can be recommended to the young, for though its stanzas are sufficiently musical, there runs through them a vein of scepticism and licentiousness which requires to be treated with caution.78

  Crowley, of course, assessed the book more generously. “I attained, at a bound, the summit of my Parnassus. In a sense, I have never written anything better.”79 College influences are readily apparent in Aceldama. The author of the book is given as “a gentleman of the University of Cambridge” in homage to Shelley, who published his St. Irvyne; or the Rosicrucian: A Romance (1811) as “a gentleman of the University of Oxford.” The book’s flowing, lyric style is likewise modeled after Shelley. Pollitt’s influence is visible not only in the dedication to his “Lover and Lord,” but also in the introduction, which smacks of the Decadent literature to which Pollitt had introduced him:

  It was a windy night, that memorable seventh night of December, when this philosophy was born in me. How the grave old Professor wondered at my ravings! I had called at his house, for he was a valued friend of mine, and I felt strange thoughts and emotions shake within me. Ah! how I raved! I called to him to trample me, he would not. We passed together into the stormy night. I was on horseback, how I galloped round him in my phrenzy, till he became the prey of a real physical fear! How I shrieked out I know not what strange words! And the poor good old man tried all he could to calm me; he thought I was mad! The fool! I was in the death struggle with self: God and Satan fought for my soul those three long hours. God conquered—now I have only one doubt left—which of the twain was God? Howbeit, I aspire!

  Although to conclude from this dramatic account that Crowley was a Satanist would be missing the point entirely, the passage does reflect his inner conflict over religion, just as the poem itself describes his aspiration for enlightenment. Crowley’s Decadent mindset is evident when one considers that he inscribed one of the two outsized vellum copies to Beardsley.80 Alas, the artist died before AC could present it. Another copy of the book he inscribed to his publisher: “To Leonard Smithers from Aleister Crowley hys fyrst booke.”81

  Smithers, as mentioned earlier, was a friend of Po
llitt and Beardsley. He possessed an incongruous mixture of admirable and repugnant traits. Learned and generous, vulgar and irresponsible, he drank brandy excessively—although he favored absinthe—and was notoriously unfaithful to his wife. Oscar Wilde wrote of him, “He loves first editions, especially of women: little girls are his passion. He is the most learned erotomaniac in Europe. He is also a delightful companion and a dear fellow.”82 He was a lawyer who, in 1891 or 1892, entered into a bookselling and publishing partnership, issuing some of the most beautiful books ever produced. Admirers called Smithers the cleverest publisher in London. He supplemented his income with erotic literature such as Teleny, or, The Reverse of the Medal (1893).83 In 1894 he started his own successful book business, offering titles such as Sir Richard Burton’s The Carmina of Caius Valerius Catullus (1894), Ernest Dowson’s Verses (1896), Alexander Pope’s Rape of the Lock (1896), Arthur Symons’s Amoris Victima (1897), and Ben Jonson’s Volpone (1898).

  Crowley first met him in 1897 as part of Pollitt’s Decadent circle. Although finely crafted books no longer sold well—nor did clandestinely published erotica—Smithers remained committed to publishing fine editions despite financial hardship. He published Beardsley’s Book of Fifty Drawings (1897), A Second Book of Fifty Drawings (1899), and the periodical The Savoy (1898). After Oscar Wilde’s trial, he was the only publisher willing to handle Wilde’s last three books: The Ballad of Reading Gaol (1898), An Ideal Husband (1899), and The Importance of Being Earnest (1899).

  “I’ll publish anything the others are afraid of,” he bragged to Crowley, who took the statement as an invitation. Smithers had already taught him how publishing deluxe editions can bolster a book’s collectability; given him an appreciation for Japanese vellum as book stock; and introduced him to erotica with a copy of Teleny. Crowley regarded the publisher, his pale face framed by a straw hat on one end and a blue tie on the other, and determined to produce a book for Smithers to publish. Whence Aceldamaworks.

  Portrait artist and Royal Academy President Sir Gerald Festus Kelly (1879–1972) was just another Cambridge student when Aceldama appeared. He purchased it at a specialty bookshop that carried the book as a courtesy because Crowley spent so much money there on first editions. The book, particularly its quotation from Swinburne’s “The Leper,” fascinated Kelly. He wished to meet the mysterious “gentleman of the University of Cambridge,” so the bookseller arranged it.

  Their meeting in May 1898 went wonderfully. They discovered many common experiences: Both had suffered debilitating childhood illnesses. Both came from affluent families. Both were reacting against clerical fathers. Both identified with their Irish ancestry. And both were passionate artists.

  Gerald Kelly was the grandchild of Frederic Festus Kelly, His Majesty’s Inspector of Inland Letter Carriers who, in 1835, began publishing Kelly’s Directories, which were essentially the Victorian version of the yellow pages. Gerald was the third child and only son of the Reverend Frederic Festus Kelly (1838–1918), Vicar of Camberwell, and his wife, Blanche Bradford (born c. 1845). He had two older sisters, Rose Edith (1874–1932) and Eleanor Constance Mary (born 1877). Gerald enjoyed the benefits of affluence, and in 1896, at age seventeen, sailed with Rose for South Africa to recuperate from a liver abscess. Macey, his cabinmate, praised Gerald’s early watercolors and urged him to study painting in Paris. Although he and Macey saw each other only occasionally after they arrived in Cape Town, the notion of becoming a painter consumed the young man.

  When he eventually returned home with a clean bill of health, Gerald announced his intention to become a painter. “Rot” his father said. “No member of my family ever showed the slightest talent.” Mrs. Kelly, who adored Gerald, defended his decision, and after six months’ argument they reached an agreement: if Gerald went to Cambridge as his father had,84 then Reverend Kelly would allow him to become a painter.

  In 1897, Gerald matriculated to Trinity Hall. He had no intention of following a regular course of study; he was simply there to pass time and enjoy himself. Thomas Thornely (1855–1949), lecturer in moral and historical sciences, was disappointed to find the Kelly heir uninterested in history, but did his best to expose the lad to poetry. Gerald would spend the next three years reading poetry in a desultory manner, leading eventually to Crowley. Four years younger than Crowley, Kelly saw a worldly and charming role model in the poet, and they immediately became close friends. Reflecting on this time more than fifty years later, Kelly mused, “Aleister and I were great friends for several years,” and “I liked him; we made each other laugh … he was certainly a delightful companion.”85

  Smithers was the logical publisher for Crowley’s next book, White Stains (1898). Although tame by today’s standards, some of its pieces—such as “A Ballad of Passive Paederasty,” “With Dog and Dame,” and “Necrophilia”—required the seasoned hands of an underground publisher. Because of its content, Smithers sent the book to Amsterdam to be typeset by Binger Bros. Crowley published it anonymously, and as with Aceldama, only one hundred copies were printed.

  The book, with the descriptive subtitle “The literary remains of George Archibald Bishop, a neuropath of the Second Empire,” was a reaction to Austrian police doctor Richard Freiherr von Krafft-Ebing’s (1840–1902) study of sexual aberrations, Psychopathia Sexualis (1893): the book that coined the term masochism after the fiction of fellow Austrian Leopold Ritter von Sacher-Masoch (1836-1895). Although Krafft-Ebing translated the racier sections of his text into Latin, the book became a sensation among erudite pornographers everywhere. Crowley, determined to do a better job of explaining the nature of sexual deviance, wrote a story from the perspective of a poet who goes astray, taking on various vices and ultimately committing murder. Crowley later clarified, “The work is entirely one of imagination, as he had no actual experience, even by hearsay, of the subject on which he was writing.”86

  Although White Stains has been hastily dubbed pornographic, it actually belongs to Decadent literature, with poetry a natural style for Crowley to choose. Swinburne’s Decadent poem “Tannhauser” impressed him so much that he would later re-tell the tale in his own book of the same title. And Reed’s description of Decadence, although applied to Flaubert’s The Temptation of Saint Anthony, also applies to White Stains:

  a sequence of set pieces rendered in a complicated and ornate self-advertising style. The segments of the work are detachable, yet when read in sequence they create an anticipatory mood like that of musical composition.87

  Other Decadent themes incorporated into White Stains include the pursuit of pleasure, irreverence toward religion, and repugnant subject matter.

  Crowley’s third manuscript, Green Alps, was next in Smithers’s hands. It contained “Two Sonnets in Praise of a Publisher”: two poems for Smithers with little praise and much shocking imagery. This collection of poetry never appeared. A fire at the printers destroyed the sheets and Smithers went bankrupt shortly thereafter. Proofs of the dedication and pages 81–107 are known to have survived, although Crowley published some of these poems later.88

  With Smithers defunct, Pollitt out of the picture, Beardsley dead, and Crowley at the end of his senior year, it was time to move on. Just as the diplomatic service, like all other mortal aspirations, was an exercise in futility, so was a Cambridge degree. It was merely window dressing for one’s pride. Although he had successfully completed his coursework and exams up to this point, Crowley never appeared for the second part of his finals. He felt he had mastered the subjects, and that was good enough for him. In the tradition of Byron, Shelley, Swinburne, and Tennyson, he left the university without a degree and pursued his own star.

  The entire month of July 1898 passed camped in a tent above the Alpine snow line at 11,500 feet, below the Dent Blanche (14,291 feet) and beside the Schönbühl Glacier.89 Crowley was training with Eckenstein in techniques necessary to attempt the Himalayas. “You never know when you’ll have to jump in an emergency,” Eckenstein instructed, and, by way of pre
paration, Eckenstein ran his student through grueling training. Early on, he made Crowley slide headfirst down a snowy incline, with instructions to do nothing to stop himself until given the word; then he had to the count of five to stop and end up standing. From there, the training became increasingly difficult and dangerous, with glissades from various positions and slopes.90

  He also taught Crowley how to use crampons, or ice claws. Eckenstein attempted to introduce them to British mountaineers, insisting that they made cutting steps with ice axes unnecessary; but English and Scottish climbers panned them for years as “artificial aids” before finally accepting them. In 1908 he would invent a hinged ten-point crampon that would become commercially available in 1910, known today as the Eckenstein crampon. Another of Eckenstein’s later innovations was to turn the typical ice ax, or alpenstock, into a one-handed implement by shortening it by five inches and making the head smaller; while poorly received in England, it proved to be most effective in combination with his crampon designs. Both were offered by A. Hupfauf of Einsiedeln, Switzerland.91

  The indifference of the climbing establishment to Eckenstein’s innovations typified his clash with the Alpine Club. To him, the club was merely a means for mediocre climbers to congratulate themselves for lame achievements. Like Crowley, he found their Alpine guides useless and their recommended routes hardly more than a scramble. When the Club condemned their guideless ascents as reckless, AC accused the Club of “virulent, dishonest, envious intrigues against guideless climbing and climbers.”92 Eckenstein, meanwhile, joked sardonically that he could take a cow up the Matterhorn if he tied its legs. He wrote in his “Hints to Young Climbers,”