Cloaked, Balzac stands and sees. Immense disdain,
Egyptian silence, mastery of pain,
Gargantuan laughter, shake or still the ignited
Stature of the Master, vivid.30
After returning unfulfilled from his world travels, he finally had a cause to get behind. Just as he fought for Mathers and Eckenstein, he now defended a great artist from ignorant critics. Crowley presented his poem, along with a sonnet titled “Rodin,” to the artist. Rodin read English no better than he spoke it, but based on reviews by his friends, Rodin gave them to Schwob to translate.31 Schwob’s rendering of the laudatory poems, especially their “unexpected flower of violence, good sense and irony,”32 pleased Rodin. The author published these poems privately as “Balzac: Hommage à Auguste Rodin,” with eighteen copies on Japanese vellum and six on China paper. They also appeared in Maîtres Artistes later that year, causing “a considerable stir in Paris.”33
Rodin invited his champion to stay with him at Meudon and write poetry about his best works. Crowley accepted, with many of the poems appearing in the Weekly Critical Review, a bilingual periodical devoted to literature, music, and the fine arts edited by Arthur Bles and published in Paris from 1903 to 1904 alongside contributions from luminaries like W. B. Yeats, Havelock Ellis, and H. G. Wells.34 When Crowley finally left Meudon, Rodin presented him with ten nude drawings, seven of which Crowley used as illustrations when he published the poems four years later as Seven Lithographs by Clot from the Watercolours of Auguste Rodin, with a Chaplet of Verse (1907), also known as Rodin in Rime.
By spring of 1903, Crowley tired of Paris and its provincialism and cliquishness. Wrapping up business, he completed The Sword of Song and left it with Parisian printer Philippe Renouard on 19 rue des Saints-Pères for private publication. Then he sent copies of “Summa Spes” to his friends and returned to Boleskine for another go at the Abramelin operation.
Back in Scotland, having decided against marrying Eileen Gray, Crowley put his energies instead into the Abramelin operation. An old family friend, L. C. R. Duncombe-Jewell, a.k.a. Ludovic Cameron, had come to Boleskine for a week’s visit but, according to Crowley, “managed somehow or other to settle down there as my factor.”35 He was a sportsman, poet, chess enthusiast, and advocate of the Cornish language; as a Plymouth Brother turned Catholic who wore a kilt and advised visitors to speak Gaelic, he was a perfect fit for Crowley’s Highland home.
Louis Charles Richard Jewell (1866–1947) was born on September 10, 1866, the eldest son of Richard and Mary Jewell of 112 Barras Street, Liskeard, Cornwall. His father was a bank manager, but later become an accountant and moved his family first to 25 Granville Road, London, then to Beech Villa on Barrow Road, Streatham, just a few blocks from the Crowley and Bishop families.36 As Duncombe-Jewell recalled, “I have known Edward Alexander Crowley—which is his correct name, though he has gone under many aliases—since he was a boy of 14: his mother and uncle having been friends of my father and mother.”37 The friendship was natural, since the Jewell family were Plymouth Brethren; like Crowley, he was taught by private tutors.
Jewell tried his father’s line of work but soon abandoned banking for writing, publishing in 1881 “a jejune railway novel.”38 In 1893 he began to write on foreign politics and military subjects (being a lieutenant in the 3rd Volunteer Battalion of the Royal Fusiliers), contributing successively to the St. Jame’s Budget, the Sketch, the Globe, Black and White, and the Pall Mall Gazette. In November 1895 he assumed the surname Duncombe in accordance with his grandmother’s will, and married Mary Amy Slaughter (1870–1904).39
Around the time of his marriage he edited The Royalist, a journal dealing with Irish and Welsh Jacobitism and Cornish identity. It was subsidized by Celtic-Cornish scholar and activist Henry Jenner (1848–1934). Both the magazine and Jenner were part of a larger Legitimist movement that sought dynasty change by restoring to the throne Don Carlos VII of Spain and Charles XI of France, among others. Jenner and Duncombe-Jewell had a long acquaintance, and both were actively involved in Legitimism.40 Ironically, Duncombe-Jewell was also Spanish correspondent to The Times (1898–1899), covering the Carlist uprising at the same time he was participating in it. Crowley too was involved around 1899; for instance, his poem Carmen Sæculare contains the Carlist verse:
O piteous fallen tyranny of Spain!
What dogs are tearing at thy bowels yet?
Let thine own King, saith God, resume his reign!
Loyal and happy seasons may forget
The ancient scars. Thy moon is on the wane?
Thy sun may never set!
As Crowley elaborated in his Confessions:
My cousin Gregor had made me a romantic Jacobite.… I actually joined a conspiracy on behalf of Don Carlos, obtained a commission to work a machine gun, took pains to make myself a first-class rifle shot and studied drill, tactics and strategy. However, when the time came for the invasion of Spain, Don Carlos got cold feet. The conspiracy was disclosed; and Lord Ashburnham’s yacht, which was running the arms, fell into the hands of the Spanish navy.41
Here Crowley refers to the June 17, 1899, seizure by the Spanish government of Lord Ashburnham’s British yacht Firefly off the coast of Arcachon in the Bay of Biscay. Its crew of fifteen—including its commander, Thames Valley Legitimist Club Vice-Chairman and Royal Navy Lieutenant Vincent English—were arrested, and its cargo of 3,664 Chassepot rifles confiscated.42 According to Lowenna, not only were Jenner and Duncombe-Jewell involved in this foiled plot, but Crowley himself appears on the Firefly crew pay list for August 26, 1899, as “C. Alexander.”43 Although Crowley’s involvement in these activities appears, like many of his romantic fancies, to be short-lived, he did receive a knighthood from one of Don Carlos’s lieutenants.44
This, however, would not be Crowley’s only contact with Legitimism. Mathers was also a Jacobite, and was translating magical texts at the British Library during the time that Jenner was Keeper of Manuscripts. Indeed, Lowenna contends that it was Mathers’s preoccupation with Legitimist politics in France that took his focus away from the GD and ultimately led to the London temple uprising.45 Lowenna reports that Crowley’s friend, writer Herbert Vivian, was also connected to Lord Ashburnham.
After the Firefly debacle, Duncombe-Jewell served as Morning Post war correspondent with the 3rd South African Field Company from 1899 to 1900, receiving the queen’s South Africa medal.46 However, love of his birthplace, Cornwall, dictated the majority of his activities at this time. As early as April 1901 he appears in Celtia magazine as a contributor to the Pan-Celtic Congress;47 by the August issue, he announced, “I shall attempt to found a Cornish Language Society a part of whose programme will be the revival of the Miracle Plays in the language.”48 He founded the Celtic-Cornish Society (or Cowethas Kelto-Kernuak) on August 15, 1901, with Henry Jenner as one of its vice presidents and himself as honorary secretary.49 At the Pan-Celtic Congress that month, he proposed the recognition of Cornwall as a Celtic nation,50 and in October published the first sonnet in Cornish.51
Alas, misfortune soon surrounded Duncombe-Jewell. His “disastrous personal financial situation led to his dismissal in the summer of 1902” from a projected Victoria History of Cornwall.52 That November, a clearly preoccupied Duncombe-Jewell visited W. B. Yeats and asked Annie Horniman to read his tarot cards concerning “a certain matter which he could not describe in any way.” Mollified by the divination, he privately confided to Yeats,
I came back from Ireland on Wednesday. I have not slept since then, with the exception of a few hours today. I have been in great trouble. My conscience has been going here and there like a weather cock. I could not find out what I had to do—I wanted to do right. She has held my conscience still. I know now where it is pointing. But there may be no miracle play now. This may be social extinction for me.53
Ludovic Cameron, a.k.a. Louis Charles Richard Duncombe-Jewell (1866–1947). (photo credit 5.2)
A few months later, on April 28, 1903
, his son Anthony Michael Duncombe-Jewell was born at 11 St. James Terrace, Plymouth;54 however, this child was not with him at Boleskine, nor is he mentioned in Duncombe-Jewell’s biographies.55 A year and a day later, on April 29, 1904, his wife Mary, aged thirty-four, died of shock from on operation for double salpingitis (inflammation of both fallopian tubes); her sister Frances H. Slaughter was present at the time of death.56 It is unclear whether Duncombe-Jewell was present at either of these events; he is not the informant for the certified record of either the birth or the death. At this time, he changed his name by deed poll to Ludovic Cameron; Lowenna suggests this may have been a tactic to dodge creditors.57 Whether the subject of his divination was financial, paternal, matrimonial, or other, his old friend’s house Boleskine provided the perfect opportunity for Ludovic Cameron to lay low.58
In June, Crowley moved his bed into the temple, and five days later began practicing meditation for the Abramelin working. His introspection lasted nearly a month until, during a July 13 trip to Edinburgh to restock on wine, he hired a “red-haired Arabella” as his mistress and housekeeper. Endowed with wine and woman, Crowley moved on to song, writing “The God Eater.”
Shortly after returning, he received a letter from Gerald Kelly. His mother was undergoing a medical cure in nearby Strathpeffer, and Gerald invited Crowley to join him there. Bored with the placidness of his Scottish estate, and with Arabella still packing in Edinburgh, he made the trip twenty miles north of Foyers and met the Kelly entourage: Gerald’s mother was a typical Victorian lady who “worthily preserved the conditions of Tennysonian dignity.”59 His sister Rose Edith Skerrett (1874–1932), who accompanied Mrs. Kelly on the trip, was beautiful but uneducated, charming yet nervous. Rose’s fiancé, a solicitor named Hill, was also present.
On August 11, while Gerald and Hill played golf, Crowley found himself and Rose walking along, watching and talking. “Your brother is a daring young man,” he told Rose. “Playing golf is not the sort of thing one brags of to friends in London.”
Rose laughed politely and smiled gracefully. Crowley was unsure what else to say to her: Her education was social and domestic in focus, leaving her ignorant of art and literature. Fearing Gerald’s friend would continue looking at her dumbly, she said the first thing that came to mind: “ ‘Bright Star, would I were steadfast as thou art.’ ”60
He smiled. “You like Keats?”
“Yes,” she answered, eyes glittering, then averted her gaze. “Well, truth to tell, it’s the only line I know. I keep a book of poems in my dressing case so I can impress Gerald’s college chums by asking them to fetch it for me. I’ve never even read the book.”
“I must applaud your brilliant device. It certainly served to find a suitor in Mr. Hill.”
“Yes,” she muttered with downcast eyes which suddenly rose to meet his gaze. “Can I confide in you?”
“ ‘In quietness and confidence shall be your strength.’ ”61
She regarded him blankly. “Excuse me?”
“Mademoiselle,” he clarified, “nothing would please me more.”
Rose nodded in understanding, and explained her predicament. At age twenty-one—on August 31, 1897—she had married a man more than twenty years her senior, Major Frederick Thomas Skerrett (c. 1859–1899) of the Royal Army Medical Service.62 He had received his medical license in 1879 through the King and Queens College of Physicians in Ireland, and became a fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland in 1880.63 Rose lived with him in South Africa until he died two years later, then returned home and enjoyed numerous lovers, two of whom even proposed. Not having the heart to turn either of them down, Rose accepted both offers. Suitor number 1, Hill, returned to South Africa to earn some money for their future, while Suitor number 2, Howell, a Cambridge chum of Gerald’s, returned to America to ask permission of his father. Unfortunately, she did not love either man. No, she was in love with a married man named Frank Summers, who wanted to put Rose up in her own flat. As if this scandal wasn’t enough, Rose convinced her parents to give her £40 for an abortion when in fact she merely wanted dinner and some new clothes. This pushed them to the limit, and when Hill and Howell both cabled that they were coming to marry her, her parents insisted she wed one of them. Her predicament was that her parents were pressuring her into a loveless marriage, while her true love, Summers, was already taken.
The tale brought out Crowley’s “Shelleyan indignation,” and he felt it incumbent upon himself to intervene. They sat down under a tree to ponder the circumstances. After contemplation, Crowley broke the silence by suggesting that she marry him. Afterward, he would return to his poetry, mountains and magick, and she would be free to do as she pleased.
Rose pondered the idea and did the thing that got her into trouble in the first place: she said yes. Counting her first husband, it was the fourth time Rose had accepted a proposal of marriage. For Crowley, it was the third time he had become engaged. Rose, despite AC’s reservations, told her brother the news once he rejoined them from his game. Gerald laughed heartily, dismissed the announcement as a prank, and finished the course two under par. The future groom looked at his bride-to-be and shrugged. “And I was afraid the news would put him off his game.”
Crowley went into town that day to arrange his hasty marriage to Rose Kelly. Although the parish sexton insisted that licensing took three weeks—one if rushed—he learned the sheriff could marry them on the spot.
The dawn was still dim when Crowley greeted Rose the next morning with a quote from Macbeth: “Wake Duncan with thy knocking! I would thou couldst!”64 They sneaked off furtively so as not to wake Gerald, and caught the next train to Dingwall. Since she knew no literature, and Crowley couldn’t guess what might interest her, they passed the ride in silence. “I don’t have to live with her,” he assured himself. “All I have to do is emancipate her. There’s no reason to talk to her.”
Dingwall was cold, damp, and asleep. So was the sheriff, whose maid said he would be unavailable until 8 o’clock … or 9, or 10. This was unacceptable, so they found a lawyer who said he could see them at eight. The couple nervously passed the time at breakfast, then meeting the lawyer, simply expressed their intention to marry and declared themselves husband and wife. On August 12, 1903, Alexander Ross declared Aleister Crowley MacGregor, landed proprietor and bachelor, and Rose Skerrett, widow, married. Aside from registering the marriage with the sheriff, that was all the law required.
Rose Edith Kelly (1874–1932). (photo credit 5.3)
Crowley, seeking to interject drama into the otherwise prosaic proceedings, pulled out his dirk and kissed it with a pledge of faith. The kiss was more than the bride herself received, for Gerald burst into the room at that moment, hell bent on stopping the marriage. When he learned he was too late, he threw a punch at Crowley. It missed completely, leaving Crowley smirking at his feeble gesture. When tempers cooled, they agreed it would be best if Crowley returned to Boleskine while Gerald took his sister home. Aleister was happy to comply: it was what he intended all along.
A furor erupted over the elopement. Rejected Mr. Hill insisted the marriage be annulled. Duncombe-Jewell assured the Kellys that their daughter’s marriage was in fact legal. Meanwhile, Rose, “the game little bitch she was,”65 stood by her decision. After the initial shock wore off, Crowley fetched Rose and registered their marriage with Dingwall’s sheriff. Then, to silence local scandal, they took a train to the west coast of Scotland under the pretense of a honeymoon.
Giddy at having pulled this off, Crowley considered his work done, but felt uncomfortable—even embarrassed—continuing the charade. He sat opposite Rose in the empty car and, at an uncharacteristic loss of words, made small talk and jokes until their arrival early that evening. Sheepish about registering as a married man, he made up some excuse and sent Rose to the desk clerk. He was both disappointed and relieved that she booked a room with two beds.
They drank a lot of champagne over dinner that night. When Rose finished and ret
ired to bed, Crowley went to the smoking room and drank a lot more. He was nervous about returning to the room with his “wife.” Finding a sympathetic stranger, Crowley babbled about his troubles until he scared the man off. Then, remembering he was, after all, a romantic young poet on his honeymoon, he grabbed a scrap of paper and dashed off a rondel to his bride:
Rose on the breast of the world of spring,
I press my breast against thy bloom;
My subtle life drawn out to thee: to thee
its moods and meanings cling.66
Having discovered his poetic voice, Crowley found empathy with Rose. He finished the composition, went upstairs and pondered the possibility that Rose was in love with him. He also wondered if he was in love with her.
By the time the couple returned to Boleskine, Crowley’s detached willingness to “propitiate physiology” on their honeymoon transformed into loving sentiments of “uninterrupted beatitude.” They were in love with each other.
Gerald’s initial fury about the wedding was slow to fade. Laird Boleskine was an entertaining and desirable friend while he was jaunting around the world writing sensual poetry and sending chummy letters detailing his latest conquests. But as a brother-in-law, he was a womanizing degenerate. These harsh sentiments gradually mellowed, and the friends again exchanged amusing letters. By the end of the summer, the Crowleys traveled to Paris to visit brother Gerald.
Crowley took Rose walking on the streets of Paris, showing her his old haunts and trying to impress her with stories of the local celebrities he had befriended during his last stay. While walking over the Pont Alexandre III, they encountered an even older luminary: Moïna Mathers. He chatted animatedly with Soror VNR, whom Rose assumed was a model. Only when later years left him with bitter and disillusioned memories of Mathers would he viciously claim he encountered her at a time when Mathers was pimping her on the streets of Paris. For now, they were simply fond friends.
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