It reads a trifle foully.
Cast before swine these pearls of thine,
O, great Aleister Crolley
“Granta” to-day, not strange to say,
Repudiates them wholly.14
Several of these books included the SPRT catalog and an entry form for a contest: Crowley was offering £100 as grand prize for the best essay written on his works. He designed the scheme to promote sales of his “Collected Works” (see below) and the overstock of his previous works. The flier is every bit as silly as that for Why Jesus Wept:
THE CHANCE OF THE YEAR!
THE CHANCE OF THE CENTURY!!
THE CHANCE OF THE GEOLOGIC PERIOD!!!
A CAREER FOR AN ESSAY15
By this time, SPRT’s booklist numbered nineteen titles, with volume one of the collected works offered at cost to any competitor, who was free to write either a hostile or appreciative essay. His first editions were also for sale, priced from twenty-one shillings (Aceldama, Jezebel, Alice, Goetia, and Why Jesus Wept) to one shilling (Appeal to the American Republic, The Star and the Garter).
The Works of Aleister Crowley, volume 1, covered his books from Aceldama to Tannhäuser (omitting the anonymous publication White Stains), edited and footnoted by Ivor Back. The uneven quality of his writing notwithstanding, Crowley’s accomplishment, at age twenty-nine, of a three-volume collection of his published works remains remarkable.
Five hundred copies of Oracles: The Autobiography of an Art (1905) were also available, with the SPRT catalog bound in at the end. This book was a collection of poetic odds and ends, including his early work and selections from the unpublished Green Alps. The author described this book as “a hodgepodge of dejecta membra … [containing] beastlinesses too foul to cumber up my manuscript case any more.”16
Crowley, ever searching for new ways to make his works rare and desirable, issued the two-volume Orpheus: A Lyrical Legend (1905) in five editions distinguished by the covers’ elemental colors (either white, yellow, red, blue, or olive green). A one-volume edition was also available on India paper. Of this work, Crowley later wrote, “They had never satisfied me.”17
Rosa Mundi: A Poem (1905), published by Philippe Renouard, featured the fifteen-page title piece and a lithograph of one of the sketches Rodin had given him. Gargoyles: Being Strangely Wrought Images of Life and Death (1906) marked what AC considered a new phase of his work. Finally, in addition to publishing new works, Crowley reissued some of his older books in inexpensive editions, including The Star and the Garter, Songs of the Spirit, and Alice: An Adultery.
Although the effort would not make Crowley famous, this publishing and publicity spree would soon mean more to Crowley than he ever dreamed.
Jacot-Guillarmod arrived at Boleskine on April 27 and presented the lord of the manor with a copy of his book about their climb on K2, Six Mois dans l’Himalaya.18 Crowley recalled how Guillarmod spent his hours on the glacier keeping a journal—it was probably the only thing that kept him from snapping like the others—and gladly accepted the gift. He reciprocated with a copy of Snowdrops from a Curate’s Garden.
During his visit, Guillarmod and Crowley discussed their respective adventures. When Guillarmod began to boast of his big game hunting, it piqued Crowley’s interest. “Have you ever seen a haggis?” he asked.
“Haggis? What’s that?” the Swiss asked.
Haggis was a Highland dish of minced sheep’s heart, liver, and kidneys boiled with oatmeal in the animal’s stomach. Drawing a dramatic breath, Crowley explained: “I am one of the only people who would dare answer that question. A haggis is a wild rogue ram.” Guillarmod knew of Burma’s wild buffaloes, and of elephants that were thrown out of their herds. Although he had never heard of a haggis, he equated it with these creatures. Crowley continued, “Just as rogue elephants are taboo, so is the haggis sacred in Scotland. They are rare, and, when found, must only be touched by the chief of the clan. They are also very dangerous.”
Guillarmod nodded gravely, suitably impressed. It gave Crowley a wonderful idea.
Two days later, Crowley and Guillarmod rested in the billiard room after breakfast. Their idyll was interrupted when Crowley’s servant, Hugh Gillies, burst breathlessly into the room, panic and urgency in his eyes. “My lord,” he blurted out, “there is a haggis on the hill.”
Guillarmod’s gaze shot from Crowley to the servant and back again. AC, doing his best to keep a straight face, nodded in acknowledgment. “Good man,” he muttered as he walked over to his gun case. “The best servant I’ve had.” He grabbed his .577 Double Express and handed Guillarmod a 10–bore Paradox with steel-core bullets. “That gun,” he told Guillarmod, “will bring down an elephant with a shot. You may need it. Now fall to. We haven’t a moment to lose.”
Crowley led Gillies, Guillarmod and Rose on a low-crouching, tiptoed course through icy rain that chilled them by the time they reached the artificial trout lake on his estate. Playing his part to the hilt, Crowley insisted, “We must wade through the lake to throw the haggis off our scent.” So, with guns held high overhead, they marched through the neck-high water. Emerging on the other side, they climbed the hill on all fours. Stealthy and cautious, they finally reached the hilltop ninety minutes after leaving the house. Crowley looked over to the servant. “Where is it?”
Gillies pointed a trembling finger through the mist. “Th-there.”
By this time, Guillarmod was so tightly wound that he advanced and fired at the beast in the mist. As the explosion of gunfire echoed through the hills, Crowley grabbed Guillarmod’s arm to restrain him. “If you value your life, stay where you are.” Lord Boleskine stepped into the gray haze. There, he found the ram he had purchased in town from Farmer McNab and tethered on the hill. Both bullets from the rifle had struck and expanded, completely blowing away the ram’s rear section. Crowley arranged to have the ram cooked and served for dinner the next evening. Guillarmod, none the wiser, had the animal’s head mounted on a plaque as a trophy.19
As great an adventure as the haggis was, Guillarmod did not come to Boleskine to hunt rogue rams. He had come to discuss mountains. Six Mois dans l’Himalaya chronicled their attempt on K2, and he again desired that type of experience. He suggested to Crowley that they climb Kangchenjunga, the third highest mountain in the world.
Located twelve miles south of the main Himalayan chain, it was only forty-five miles north of Darjeeling, eighty miles east of Mount Everest. Its name literally meant “Five Peaks” for its pentad of summits ranging in height from 25,925 to 28,169 feet. These pinnacles were buttressed by huge ridges with several lesser though nevertheless spectacular peaks of their own; running east-west and north-south, they formed a giant X around the range. At 28,169 feet, Kangchenjunga was less than one hundred feet smaller than K2.
Climbers considered it the most treacherous mountain in the world. Receiving more precipitation than virtually any other mountain, hundreds of feet of snow and ice plastered its face and slowly plowed down the mountain in the form of glaciers, and its millions of tons of debris could easily tumble down as an avalanche. Its history testified to its inhospitability: in January 1849—when mountaineering was still in its infancy—Antarctic explorer Sir Joseph Dalton Hooker (1817–1911) attempted Kangchenjunga, but snow turned him back. Returning three months later, difficult conditions cut his climb short. Three years later, in 1852, an earthquake brought thousands of square yards of debris down the mountain, preempting Captain J. L. Sherwill’s attempt.20 W. W. Graham claimed to have circumnavigated the mountain in 1882 and to have climbed two of its lesser peaks in October 1883, but the account was controversial. Douglas Freshfield’s 1899 tour around the base of Kangchenjunga was cut short when a storm dumped twenty-seven inches of rain on Darjeeling in twenty-eight hours. In 1905, Kangchenjunga remained unclimbed.21
The challenge appealed to Crowley. Disappointed by his abortive attempt on K2, he saw an opportunity to get it right. He insisted on leading the expedition, and he and Guillarmo
d both put five thousand francs into expenses. Crowley, realizing what little time they had if they wished to attempt the mountain that summer, devised a plan: Guillarmod would go to London and round up provisions while Crowley proceeded to Darjeeling to arrange transport, hire porters, and coordinate details with the local government.
When Crowley set off for London on May 6 to get his affairs in order, he was prepared to die. He left written instructions for his body to be embalmed, dressed in magical garb, and sealed in a vault on ground chosen and consecrated by his GD mentor, George Cecil Jones. In London, he sought Eckenstein, who considered the adventure foolhardy and declined to participate. Undaunted, Crowley gathered provisions and proceeded to Darjeeling. On May 12, Crowley sailed for India, where a month earlier a severe earthquake had killed over 19,000 people in its northern territory. He arrived in Bombay on June 9 and headed for Darjeeling the same day. From there he could have seen Kangchenjunga—and even the Himalayas—if not for the rain: it never stopped, and left everything damp and musty. Moving into the Drum Druid Hotel, he concluded he simply didn’t like Darjeeling.
While in India, Crowley kept up on business by mail. His contest for the best essay on the works of Aleister Crowley had drawn a contestant in the form of J. F. C. Fuller (1876–1966), a young army captain stationed at Lucknow. He had ordered a copy of Why Jesus Wept based on a review in The Literary Guide; the book impressed him and, finding the contest entry form, he decided to try his luck. Since he had none of the poet’s other works, Crowley sent along copies of everything. This included volume two of the Works of Aleister Crowley, which was still in press.
To prepare for the expedition, Crowley sent four tons of food to be taken as close as possible to the Yalung Glacier, where they would begin their ascent; this was conveyed by 130 porters provided by the Indian government. On the last day of July—having weathered a monsoon and mechanical difficulties—Jacot-Guillarmod arrived with two other Swiss climbers.22 Crowley and a servant met them at the train station to help bring their bags to the hotel, where the manager had reserved for them his best rooms.
The team that Jacot-Guillarmod had assembled was solid. Charles Adolphe Reymond (1875–1914) of Fontaine, Val de Ruz, was a Swiss Army officer with Alpine experience, quiet and dour. He called himself a Lebenskünstler, or connoisseur of the art of living. His small pension afforded him a pleasant and simple lifestyle; for instance, he once spent an entire winter at Sainte-Croix, Switzerland, skiing and lazing in the sun. He was a natural and skilled climber, having worked with a guide primarily in the Valais and Mont Blanc chains. Until being enlisted for this climb, he worked as an editor at the Swiss telegraphic agency in Geneva.23 Reymond quipped that the primary purpose of the expedition was to have a good time; beating the world altitude record was secondary.24 AC liked him: he had good sense and seemed stable.
Charles Adolphe Reymond (1875–1914) of the Kangchenjunga expedition. (photo credit 6.1)
Crowley also liked Reymond’s companion, Alexis Pache (c. 1874–1905) of Morges, Switzerland, whom he found to be an unaffected and unassuming gentleman. Aged thirty-one, he was the only son among the four children of Charles Louis Frederick Pache and Henriette Emma (née Cart); his sisters were Helene Marie Suzanne, Marguerite, and Marie.25 Like Reymond, Pache was a Swiss army officer, having become a dragoon lieutenant in 1894.26 Between 1899 and 1901, he spent twenty months in the Boer War at Natal, fighting the British on behalf of the Boer government. He returned home to some celebrity: A three-part interview concerning his observations on the war and the respect he found for his indefatigable and chivalrous opponents ran in the Gazette de Lausanne, and was picked up from the London Times to the New Zealand Star.27 Although lacking in climbing experience, he was energetic and adventure-loving, joining the expedition mainly for the opportunity to hunt in the Himalayas.28 Indeed, Jacot-Guillarmod noted how excited he got seeing monkeys and other animals from the train to Darjeeling.29 Pache also brought along several glass specimen vials to collect indigenous ants for Professor Auguste-Henri Forel (1848–1931), a distinguished Swiss psychiatrist and neuroanatamist who retired to devote himself to myrmecology.30
AC also invited along Alcesti C. Rigo de Righi, the Italian manager of the Drum Druid Hotel on the Mall and proprietor of the Woodlands Hotel adjacent to the railway station.31 The latter was Darjeeling’s leading inn when American humorist Mark Twain (1835–1910) visited in 1896,32 and Baroness Mary Victoria Curzon of Kedleston (1870–1906), after nine days’ stay in 1900, raved about how “M. Righi took the greatest pains to see that everything was nice.”33 Climber Charles Granville Bruce (1866–1939) noted that de Righi was “always ready to assist any traveller to the upper ranges,”34 while English illustrator Walter Crane (1845–1915), visiting in 1906, remarked, “He occasionally entertained his guests by a lecture in the evenings, illustrated by photographic slides taken on the expedition.”35 Although de Righi was a novice climber, he spoke Hindustani and Tibetan, which Crowley considered invaluable. Plus, “he spoke English like a native.”36 Thus, de Righi became the expedition’s transport manager. Much like Guillarmod, de Righi also brought along his camera to document their historic climb. These five—Crowley, Guillarmod, Reymond, Pache, and de Righi—made up the party.
Drum Druid Hotel manager Alcesti C. Rigo de Righi. (photo credit 6.2)
It was raining so incessantly that Darjeeling’s average annual rainfall of 120 inches was already reached in July, and the downpour continued throughout the party’s nine days there. The rain was so persistent that they only caught fleeting glimpses of the famous view of Kangchenjunga.37 On Tuesday, August 8, 1905, at 10:16 a.m., they marched in the pouring rain on their winding path through the countryside toward Kangchenjunga, with several thousand pounds of food, luggage, and camping equipment carried by an additional hundred porters. Even at this early stage, the expedition was plagued by problematic porters: because of the thin atmosphere at this altitude, it was a difficult haul. Several porters snuck off daily, taking with them days’ worth of rations, requiring one of the team to be designated to bring up the rear. The explorers also resorted to tactics like offering a pack of cigarettes to the first ten porters to reach the next day’s destination. To top it off, they discovered that the 130 porters they’d sent ahead had still not arrived; thus, de Righi went ahead to search for them. It was a sharp contrast to the dependable help they had on K2.38
At the last possible moment, word arrived that they had received official permission to cross into Nepal, which was normally prohibited to Europeans;39 this allowed them to take the most direct route to the mountain, marching north from the Singalila Range to the Yalung Valley. On arrival, the 130 porters supplied by the government dropped their supplies at the foot of the glacier and left, refusing to go any further. To the Tibetans, mountains were strongholds of the gods, and these porters feared offending them. Between this and the other defectors, this left them with eighty porters.
On August 21, Crowley left Pache in charge of Camp 1 while he ventured up the glacier and set up Camp 2 at 14,000–15,000 feet, about two miles from Kangchenjunga’s peak. Here, two pinnacles were visible, although clouds obscured the main peak, Kangchenjunga itself. The sight of their goal filled Crowley with excitement: He was in top shape, the weather was good, and the path looked easy. He was sure this ascent would make his adventure on K2 seem like a bad dream.
Guillarmod was not so optimistic. The sight of the glacier discouraged him: he had never seen one so tangled and torn, and the west ridge looked like it was constantly rained with avalanches. He declared this approach unclimbable, and objected to attempting it. That Crowley preferred this approach added more tension to what was shaping up to be a stressful expedition.
Crowley had good reason to choose this course: in 1899, Freshfield, based on his reconnaissance of the mountain, recommended the nearby ridge as a means of overcoming the steep glacier. In the view of the team that later surveyed the mountain in 1954, Guillarmod overreacted while Crowle
y formulated a reasonable, albeit optimistic, plan.40
By the next day, Crowley had already picked out the site for Camp 3 with his binoculars. Heading west up the steep slopes, he set up camp in the heart of Kangchenjunga’s basin. From here, he could survey the surrounding landscape. The route to the summit appeared to be clear.
Later that day, from Camp 3 he could also see as Guillarmod and his men came up the ridge and set up their own camp. AC harangued Guillarmod for his failure to follow orders, while Guillarmod claimed Crowley had marked the path poorly and left him no choice but to take control of his own men. Such miscommunications typified the expedition.
Guillarmod and Crowley clashed again over the march to Camp 4.41 Crowley wished to start early to take advantage of the clear weather; so he rose at 3 a.m. and prepared his men by six. Guillarmod, however, insisted he wait until eleven so the men could warm in the sunlight. “That’s absurd,” Crowley retorted, and set forth. He found the route steep and slick, more difficult than he expected. In a series of short sprints, the team reached the flat ridge at the top of the slope, the site for Camp 4. Crowley thought the spot was a little narrow. Looking up the hill, the only other likely campsite was another three hours’ climb. He noticed Reymond and Guillarmod were exhausted, and opted to set up camp where they were.
After putting a rope down the slope for the porters to retrieve supplies from below, he sent word to Pache: Camp 4 is established, move from Camp 2 to Camp 3. Crowley was surprised when Pache climbed up to Camp 4, reporting that de Righi was not sending up necessary supplies, and they were now low on petroleum and food. Owing to these conditions, some of the porters deserted; one of them, going off alone, had disappeared. Jacot-Guillarmod went down the next day to investigate, and discovered the missing man’s badly mutilated corpse where he slipped and fell on the rocks 1,500 feet below. Examining the remaining porters, Guillarmod noticed some of them exhibiting altitude sickness and ophthalmia, their eyes bloodshot and painful.42
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