Such blunt exchanges typified the Crowley-Yorke correspondence from this period. Referring to The Book of the Law ii.59–60, Yorke said their dealings should “Strike hard and low” when they disagree; if they were kingly men, brutally honest words would not hurt them.
When, on December 14, 1928—nearly a year after he first met Crowley—Yorke became trustee of the fund set up for Lola Zaza, he wrote AC’s oldest daughter and suggested that she, now a woman of twenty-two making seventeen shillings a week as a showroom assistant for a West End dressmaker, meet her father. She replied:
I wrote to my uncle, and he said that I am old enough to choose for myself. I will give you certain books to read, he said, and they will help you think. So I read parts of them. After all, an author’s work is a part of himself. So I have judged him by his own works and what could be fairer? But the answer is no. I really have no time to spend on a man so rude or conceited. His works are a part of him and I am very sorry for the other part. What a hash he has made of it.53
Her polite refusal must have been a disappointment for Crowley, who so desperately wanted a family. A few years later, on June 9, 1934, she would marry boot and shoe operative Frank Hill; she would outlive her husband, dying of a myocardial infarction at Battle Hospital, Reading, on March 9, 1990.54 She would never reconcile with her father.
At age twenty-seven, Yorke became director of both Mexican Railways and H. Pontifex & Sons. He offered £800 toward the publication of Magick in Theory and Practice with a promise of another £1,000. By the end of December, Lecram Press of Paris agreed to take the job. Crowley soon had an estimate in hand and a prospectus in press. He also decided on the book’s format: “By issuing Magick in four parts,” he told Yorke, “we save 12% buying tax.”55
AC believed this publication had set a powerful magical current into motion. Looking at the turmoil in his life—Kasimira leaving, Hunt threatening, plus minor events like Regardie getting sick and Marie becoming paranoid—he saw himself under magical attack. His most important works always met with difficulty going to press.
On January 9, 1929, Kasimira and Marie encountered each other on a bus. Exactly what transpired between them is unclear, as Marie seemed prone to paranoia and exaggeration. Based on Marie’s report, Crowley described the incident as follows:
Having departed for Fontainebleau on Friday afternoon, Mdme de Miramar went forth for her own base purposes … I think to the cinema … on Saturday afternoon. She was followed, I understand, more or less from the house or its vicinity by Mrs. Bass. At any rate, Kasimira took her seat beside Mdme de Miramar on the omnibus, accosted her, and began a sort of cinema Roman conversation. She was evidently quite furious at having lost her last chance in life.56
Fearing Kasimira might throw sulfuric acid on her, Marie ran. It convinced Crowley that Kasimira was plotting against him with Hunt.
Domestic worries continued as an ailing Regardie entered the hospital. On January 13, 1929, he was back home again, but would soon thereafter contract gonorrhea from a prostitute.
On the afternoon of January 17, an inspector from the Sûreté Générale called at Crowley’s flat to question Paris’s celebrated visitor. When Crowley opened his door, the man walked right in and plopped down on a chair. “May I offer you a seat?” Crowley asked with mock politeness. He was immediately suspicious.
The inspector rattled off a series of disconnected questions for Crowley to answer: why did Regardie lack a carte d’identité (identification card)? Why did people refer to Crowley as the King of Depravity? Taking keen interest in Crowley’s Bunsen-powered coffee machine, he asked if it was a drug distillery. Did he take drugs? Was he ever expelled from the United States? Did he write pro-German propaganda during the war? Was he the head of a German occult organization? Was he actually a German spy?
Crowley did his best to set the inspector straight. This wasn’t the first time the authorities got him wrong. As he recounted at this time,
We have a very valuable witness in Aumont.… I once gave a little tea-party at the Tunisia Palace Hotel, and somebody brought him along as interested in literature. Within a few hours the police called upon him, and asked him if he knew who he had been having tea with, because it was a man who had strangled three women in Sicily.57
The nature of these questions, however, demonstrated that Crowley’s colorful reputation was finally catching up with him. Where had he lived for the past year?
“I have a friend here in France,” Crowley answered, “Dr. Henri Birven, who calls me the Patriarch of Montparnasse. I first went to Montparnasse in 1899 and settled down there in 1902. Since that date, I have lived constantly there.” Crowley paused and looked at the inspector askance; “the only exceptions being when I was elsewhere.”58 Referring to his diary, Crowley gave the Inspector the address of every hotel he had stayed at for the last year, plus the date and hour of his every move.
Wearied by details, the inspector moved on. “People come to consult you. And what do you advise them to do?”
“That depends entirely upon the questions. My sheet anchor is common sense. In any case, I should not advise them to do anything against the law, which I honestly respect as far as it will allow me to do so.”
“And how much are you paid for your advice?”
“I take no money for consultations.”
He was incredulous. “None?”
“None.”
“Do you tell fortunes?”
“No.”
Stumped, he moved on to the kabbalah.
“It takes seven years of uninterrupted study to even begin to know about it,” Crowley answered. To the bewilderment of the Inspector, he launched into a long disquisition on the kabbalah.
After a while, the inspector commented, “For the first time in my life, I don’t understand at all what is being said to me.”
Crowley smiled. “This is very natural: I have been spending over fifty years trying to make myself clear, but nobody seems to benefit by my endeavors.”59
At that, the inspector became polite. When he concluded the interview, he seemed satisfied that Crowley was a decent man.
But on February 15, Crowley learned that the authorities had declined to renew his identity card, issuing a refus de séjour despite his frequent visits since 1920. The news came as a shock, and Crowley searched for a reason: that idiot inspector thought his coffee machine a cocaine distillery; or that miscreant Hunt cried to his government contacts because Crowley refused to falsify those horoscopes to cement an arranged marriage; or perhaps Regardie’s sister, worried about her brother’s welfare, had asked the authorities to intervene. Perhaps all of these played a role. When Paris Midi reported Crowley had been expelled—not merely having his identity card renewal denied—for being a German spy using OTO as his cover, matters only became worse.
Crowley wrote to the British Embassy, but they would not intercede on his behalf.60 He then wired Yorke to come over and help clear up the mess. Yorke, reluctant to have himself or his family dragged into the incident, declined. Instead, he urged AC not to start any trouble.
Crowley called Yorke a coward, unwilling to stand up for truth and decency. He was also foolish to think he could hide from the press. If he didn’t rise up indignant, he would only look guilty. No, Crowley decided, he would rather defy the order, stay in Paris, and wind up in prison rather than buckle under and leave. If the government was going to arrest him, they’d have to press charges and prove he had done something wrong, which he hadn’t. It was a Mexican standoff. The story and its newspaper coverage made Crowley a sensation in Paris … just the thing to generate brisk sales for Magick.
At the time this bombshell fell in Crowley’s lap, he was sick with a cold. Paris’s winter of 1929 was damp, shrouding the countryside with rain, snow, and frost. A week after the refus de séjour, Crowley was so ill he spent the next five days in bed. Owing to illness, authorities allowed him to stay in France until he recuperated—which, Crowley planned, would not happen unti
l he saw Magick through its publication.
Meanwhile Regardie, fingered as an associate of Crowley’s, and Marie, also lacking a valid carte d’identité, were asked to leave the country. The police told Marie they were doing her a service by separating her from Crowley. On March 9 Regardie and Marie left for England, only to be refused entry because Marie was neither a citizen nor possessed of a visa. Turned back, France denied them entry, forcing them to go to Belgium. They arrived in Brussels on March 11. Holed up in a foreign nation, Marie took advantage of the naive Frater Scorpio and seduced him.
While Regardie spent the next weeks worrying what Crowley would do when he found out, Beast was performing sex magick with a woman named Lina “to help deM[iramar] out of her trouble.”61 He spent his remaining time correcting proofs of Magick; on April 12 he held an advance copy of the book, his first major publication since the blue Equinox a decade earlier. Crowley spent his last day in Paris speaking to reporters and being photographed. He left France on April 17 satisfied Magick would appear as scheduled.
Aleister Crowley at the time he left France in 1929. (photo credit 17.3)
Paris Midi had company in taking up his story. As he recorded in his diary, “Articles going on by the dozen. Hear that U.S.A. has already had lots of wild fables.”62 On April 17 the New York Times ran the headline “Paris to Expel A. Crowley.” On April 21, Reynolds Illustrated Newspaper published an interview with Crowley, who expressed bewilderment at his treatment. “There is no accusation against me,” he told the reporter:
My sweetheart was expelled.… When she demanded what it was the French authorities had against me they suggested that I was a trafficker in cocaine. This is ridiculous. Afterwards, they said: “It is not that. Perhaps that is not true. It is something else. The real reason is too terrible.”63
Meanwhile, back in England, John Bull gloated:
Soon Hell will be the only place which will have you. You were driven out of England, America deported you and so did Sicily. Now France has given you marching orders. Since I exposed you for the seducer, devil doctor and debauched dope fiend that you are, not a decent country will tolerate either you or your sinister satellites.64
If Marie could not enter England because she was not a citizen, then the solution was to make her a citizen. Thus Crowley proposed to marry her. It was simply a matter of practicality: neither romance nor passion influenced the decision. He even ignored the I Ching’s May 13 description of his proposed marriage as “a rash act” (Kwan, hexagram XX), huffing to himself, “I knew that.” Delays crept in, however, as Crowley learned that, to marry in Brussels, he needed a copy of his divorce papers from Scotland and a translator to render them into French. Realizing the requisite papers would take months to collect, Crowley applied, in vain, to the British Consul for permission to bring Marie to England on grounds of public morality. Reflecting on his persistent misfortunes, he remarked, “It is like sitting on the Baltoro Glacier waiting for two consecutive fine days which never turned up.”65
The publicity over Crowley’s “expulsion” incited people to deluge Scotland Yard, insisting they arrest Crowley for all the women he killed in France. Lieutenant-Colonel John Filis Carré Carter (1882–1944) of Scotland Yard’s Special Branch66 politely questioned young Yorke, knowing his involvement with AC. Yorke insisted Crowley was not as bad as people made him out to be, and suggested, “Why not bring AC over and put these questions to him yourself?” Carter handed him £10 and said “Bring Crowley to London.”
Crowley arrived on June 11 for dinner with Colonel Carter. They apparently got along well, for Crowley noted in his diary, “All clear” and thereafter referred to him as “ol’ Nick” and “Saint Nicholas.” Thereafter the two met occasionally for dinner.
While in London, Crowley visited some of his acquaintances, including Gwen Otter, Montgomery Evans II, and linguist Charles Kay Ogden (1889–1957). Observer art critic Paul George Konody (1872–1933) expressed interest in Crowley’s work, encouraging him to paint. Thus when James Cleugh, literary director of the Aquila Press, mentioned that the press was for sale, Crowley planned to buy it, turn it into a gallery, and charge artists to exhibit their works. Major Robert Thompson Thynne, whom he met at this time, promised to help with the scheme. And although he still planned to sue John Bull, a publishing contract and £50 advance from the Mandrake Press distracted him.
The Mandrake Press was a small publishing house run by Edward Goldston (1892–1953) and Percy Reginald Stephensen (1901–1965). Goldston was an enterprising businessman who went from working in the Oriental department of Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner and Company to running his own rare bookstore and publishing house on Museum Street. Both his clients and his books were rich—in 1925, for instance, he bought and sold the vellum Melk monastery copy of the Gutenberg Bible—and Goldston shrewdly reinvested his profits into other private presses. Jack Lindsay (1900–1990), who sought a publisher for D. H. Lawrence’s artwork, united Goldston with Stephensen to form the Mandrake Press. Stephensen, an Australian nicknamed Inky, was
a thin and immensely energetic young man, with a sandy moustache, fierce, keen eyes and a quick, nervous manner. He was a Rhodes scholar at Oxford, where his views were rarely exactly coincident with those of the university authorities.67
In his school days, he had been a staunch defender of Communism. He later married but continued to spearhead various causes. In his native Australia he operated for a time the Fanfrolico Press, and this background made him an ideal business partner for Goldston.
Mandrake made a big splash by publishing and exhibiting Lawrence’s paintings at their 41 Museum Street offices: the authorities had already suppressed his Lady Chatterley’s Lover, and after newspapers attacked the exhibition, the police raided the show and seized any artworks that showed pubic hair or genitalia—about half the pieces. The final trial, held on August 8, ended with Mandrake returning the paintings, stopping the exhibition, and destroying the books; however, no charges were pressed. Although losing Lawrence’s book struck the small press hard, it also gave Mandrake a sensational launch. Through the publicity, Mandrake signed twenty new titles between June and August.
Stephensen, in the midst of a battle against censorship, was eager to take on a dark horse like Crowley. A controversial figure whose theories of sexual liberation were sure to outrage the prudes who attacked the Lawrence exhibit was just what he wanted. The press offered to publish The Stratagem and Other Stories and talked of exhibiting his paintings. On June 28, AC signed a contract and received his £50 advance. He would use it to rent a cottage in Knockholt, Kent, which he would occupy that fall. Stephensen had found it for him; it was thirty miles south of London and separated from Stephensen’s own weekend place by a household of elderly spinsters.
Telegrams were usually bad news, and the July 19 cable from Marie was no exception: she and Regardie were forced to leave Brussels. Crowley called on the Germers, who had returned to Berlin on July 4, and they met Marie the next day, taking her to Leipzig, where Sister Martha Küntzel put her up. Realizing the situation had become untenable, Crowley on July 24 signed a power of attorney allowing Yorke to conduct business for him. He also signed another contract with Mandrake to bring out Moonchild, Golden Twigs, his autobiography, and a critical treatment of Crowley’s work. Then he left for Leipzig, fetched Marie, and made wedding plans. Crowley hoped that as a married person he could bring Lulu to England and legally adopt her. On August 16, 1929, at 11:20 a.m., Marie Teresa de Miramar became Mrs. Aleister Crowley in a ceremony before the British consul in Germany. That evening they left for London, arriving the following night. “No one to meet us,” AC lamented.
Returning to work brought new problems. One of them emerged from Crowley’s visit to Germany, where he permitted Birven, who was publishing the magical magazine Hain der Isis, to serialize a German translation of parts of Magick, as well the entirety of his article “The Psychology of Hashish” … in violation of his Mandrake contract. Meanwhile, Yorke, G
oldston, and Stephensen all agreed that Crowley needed to change the names of Moonchild’s characters, which AC had modeled after real-world people such as Yeats, Mathers, and Desti, before they could publish it. Finally, on August 29, Crowley instructed Lecram Press to send the copies of Magick to Mandrake for distribution; however, December would arrive before the books.
Nevertheless, Mandrake soon released new Crowley titles. The Stratagem and Other Stories came out September 10, followed on September 25 by Moonchild, which boasted a dust jacket by artist Beresford Egan (1905–1984). Mandrake also released another book of lesser interest to the Crowley corpus: not only did Merry Go Down by Rab Noolas contain poetry by Victor Neuburg but Noolas was a pseudonym for Philip Heseltine, better known as Peter Warlock (1894–1930). He was one of Stephensen’s drinking buddies who had helped with the Fanfrolico Press.
The public eye also beheld Crowley in Betty May’s biography, Tiger Woman: My Story. Published by Duckworth in 1929, it identified Crowley only as “The Mystic,” painting a kind picture of him. Most significantly, the book stated that Raoul died not from drinking cat’s blood during a ritual but from contaminated water. When he lunched with Duckworth’s representative Anthony Powell (1905–2000) one afternoon, Crowley complained just a bit about Tiger Woman, his main gripe being the hard life of a magician. Powell would model Dr. Trelawney of his acclaimed twelve-volume novel sequence Dance to the Music of Time (1951–1975) after Crowley.
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