92 Aleister Crowley, The Diary of a Drug Fiend (London: William Collins, 1922), 4. Crowley’s annotated copy in the Yorke Collection notes on this passage, “I idealized from The Grange, Redhill, Surrey, where I lived from 1881 to 1886 E.V.”
93 Confessions, 46.
94 Advertisement, The Lancet, 14 Aug 1886, 42. Death records, Q4 1885, GRO, Hastings, Sussex. British census, 1891 GRO, RG12, piece 765, 48: 41. Birth records, Q3 1861, Gravesend, Kent. Birth records, Q3 1864, North Aylesford, Kent.
95 See Confessions, 48–9, for Crowley’s recollections surrounding Habershon’s death.
96 Aleister Crowley, Crowley on Christ, ed. Francis King (London: Daniel, 1974), 187 (first published in 1953 in a limited edition of two-hundred spiral bound, mimeographed copies as The Gospel according to St. Bernard Shaw. Barstow, CA).
97 “Memories of the 1880’s and 1890’s,” Bateman Street newsletter c. 1999, courtesy of Ian Glover.
98 Aleister Crowley, The Works of Aleister Crowley (Foyers: SPRT, 1906), 2: 11 (originally published in 1905 in Oracles: The Autobiography of an Art. Foyers: SPRT). The last line quotes Proverbs 20: 1.
99 For English-language editions of his works, see: Cesare Mattei, Electro Homeopathy: New Vade-Mecum: New and True Guide for All Who Wish to Cure Themselves by Electro Homeopathy (London: Modern Press, 1883). Cesare Mattei, Electro-Homoeopathic Medicine; A New Medical System, Being a Popular and Domestic Guide Founded on Experience (London: Stott, 1888). Kennedy’s book is announced in the Times (London), 13 May 1886, 31758: 12. By July 14, 1886 (31811: 12), the text “for Cancer and Kindred Diseases” is added.
100 Directory of Southampton, and Neighbourhood (London: George Stevens, 1884), 188, lists a house called Glenburnie on 27 Hill Lane.
101 This estimate is based on several Consumer Price Indices which indicate that a dollar today is equivalent to roughly $0.04 in 1887. (A dollar was equivalent to exactly $0.06 in 1913, but conversions to earlier years require extrapolations which are, at best, approximate.) Thus, £150,000/.04 = £3,750,000. However, since £1 is equal to approximately $1.70, we must multiply £3,750,000 × 1.7, yielding a net worth of $6,375,000.
102 Ironically, Crowley’s schoolmaster, H. d’Arcy Champney, wrote A Letter to the Saints Gathred in the Name of Jesus Christ (Cambridge, 1890) in defense of Raven’s ministry and in 1903 would write the poem “The Battle Fought” in memory of Raven’s 1903 passing. See http://mybrethren.org/bios/frambios.htm (accessed Apr 23 2010).
103 Confessions, 36.
104 World’s Tragedy, xx.
105 GRO birth records, Q1 1838, Strand, London. GRO death records, 26 Nov 1854, Taunton, Somerest. Percy Sitters, TBB of the CSSM: A Memoir of Tom Bond Bishop (London: Children’s Special Service Mission, 1923). “Archives Edwin Roberts: Biographies, Books, Branches, Churches and Organisations,” http://study-more.org.uk/arcedbbb.htm (accessed Apr 23 1910).
106 Confessions, 55.
107 A. Quiller Jr. [Aleister Crowley]. “My Crapulous Contemporaries No. VI: An Obituary,” The Equinox 1912, 1(8): 243–49.
108 Thomas B. Bishop, Evolution Criticised (Edinburgh: Oliphants, 1918). Aleister Crowley, “The Tank,” The Equinox 1919, 3(1): 284–6. In his critique, Crowley vents about his mother’s death in 1917 and Bishop’s response thereto.
109 David C. Clark, Robert Pynoos, & Ann E. Goebel, “Mechanisms and Processes of Adolescent Bereavement,” in Robert J. Haggerty, Lonnie R. Sherrod, et al. (eds). Stress, Risk, and Resilience in Children and Asolescents. Processes, Mechanisms, and Interventions. (New York: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1996), 100–46. Steven Fleming & Leslie Balmer, “Bereavement in Adolescence,” in Charles A. Corr and David E. Balk, et al. (eds), Handbook of Adolescent Death and Bereavement (New York: Springer, 1996), 139–54.
110 World’s Tragedy, xviii.
111 Confessions, 69.
112 World’s Tragedy, xvii.
113 The fate of Champney and his school is open to some debate. While Crowley reports the man’s downfall shortly after this incident, subsequent research has produced conflicting results. Martin Booth says that Champney came under official observation, the school closed shortly thereafter, and, impoverished, he applied for aid under the Clerical Disabilities Act in 1899 (A Magick Life: The Biography of Aleister Crowley, London: Hodder & Stoughton, 2000, p. 23). Conversely, Lawrence Sutin’s Do What Thou Wilt (2000) contends that Champney remained headmaster for another twelve years, after which the still-thriving school relocated to Bexhill (Do What Thou Wilt: A Life of Aleister Crowley, New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2000, p. 30). Available evidence suggests that the truth may lie somewhere inbetween: The school did not close but was taken over, renamed and ultimately relocated. A. G. Brown, who knew Champney, says Champney “ran the brethren’s school at Cambridge which my father [A. J. H. Brown] subsequently took over and transferred to Bexhill about 1898” (http://mybrethren.org/bios/frambios.htm, accessed Apr 23 2010). Indeed, Arthur John Henry Brown (1866–1934) is associated wtih the Ebor School in Bexhill-on-Sea (College of Preceptors, The Calendar, for the Year 1900, London: Francis Hodgson, p. 200), which was located in Bexhill as early as 1897 (see Education Outlook 1897, v. 50), and possibly earlier.
114 Certifed record of death, 13 Sep 1888, GRO, Croydon, Surrey.
115 Line 285.
116 Confessions, 73.
117 The bicycle had only been invented some twenty-nine years earlier, in 1862, and quickly became a popular alternative to the horse drawn carriage or train.
118 1891 census, GRO, RG12, piece 1703, 70: 33. Birth record, GRO, Q2 1866, Ecclesall Bierlow, Yorkshire. 1881 census, GRO, RG11, piece 4634, 61: 14. James A. Douglas was the second of Robert Douglas’s three sons.
119 World’s Tragedy, xx.
120 The 1851 census of England and Wales indicated that 40 percent of female servants were under age nineteen; frequently, they were in the thirteen- to fourteen-year-old range. A parlour maid—the “junior” staff position in the household—was more likely to be young, so one may assume that this parlour maid was roughly contemporary with Alec’s fifteen years.
121 Confessions, 80.
122 AC to John B. Jameson, 5 Jan 1939, Yorke Collection.
123 Unabridged Confessions, v. 3 (with thanks to Hymenaeus Beta).
124 World’s Tragedy, xxi.
125 Crowley’s Confessions recount that he actually began climbing as an amateur prior to this time, out of sheer enjoyment of his recovering health. For instance, his application to the Scottish Mountaineering Club records ascents as early as summer, 1890, for Ben Vane (3,002 feet), Ben Cruachan (3,694 feet) and the highest mountain in the British Isles, Ben Nevis (4,409 feet). Likewise, in August, the month prior to meeting Lister at Skye, Crowley had also climbed the following Scottish peaks: Ben Ledi (2,884 feet), Ben A’an (1,488 feet), Ben Vorlich (Loch Earn, 3,232 feet), Ben More (Crianlarich, 3,852 feet), Ben Lawers (3,983 feet), Ben Lui (3,707 feet), Ben Oss (3,376 feet) and Beinn Dubhchraig (3,209 feet). But it was his experience with Lister that opened his eyes to climbing as a competitive sport. (Thanks to Clint Warren, Scottish Mountaineering Club archivist Robin Campbell, and William Breeze for Crowley’s SMC application.)
126 Nick Greenslade, “Tonbridge and the Beast,” Tonbridgian, date unknown, 18–9 (courtesy of Ian Glover). Nearly forty years later, Crowley would take a cottage in Knockholt, Kent, near his literary partner and editor, P. R. Stephensen.
127 World’s Tragedy, xxi.
128 Crowley’s Eastbourne Gazette contributions included “A Welcome to Jabez,” reprinted in Oracles (1905). His contribution to The Christian is quoted in the Confessions, 73.
129 Crowley’s Eastbourne Gazette column ran every Wednesday beginning on January 31, 1894, and ran for thirteen weeks (through April 25). For copies of the articles, see http://www.lashtal.com/nuke/Downloads-req-viewdownloaddetails-lid-52.phtml.
130 Crowley’s application to the Scottish Mountaineering Club records his April/May 1893 climbs in Snowdonia as including Tryfan (3,002 feet), G
lyder Fach (3,261 feet), Glyder Fawr (3,278 feet), Y Garn (Glyderau) (3,107 feet), Foel Grach (3,202 feet), the Craig Yr Ysfa ridge, Carnedd Dafydd (3,425 feet), Carnedd Llewelyn (3,491 feet), Yr Elen (3,156 feet), Pen yr Helgi Du (2,733 feet), Y Lliwedd (2,946 feet), the Twill Ddu cliff of Cloqwen y Geifr, and the highest mountain in Wales, Snowdon (3,560 feet). That June (and later that September) 1893 he visited the Lake District for the following Cumbrian ascents: Helvellyn (3,117 feet), Dollywaggon Pike (2,815 feet), Harrison Stickle (2,415 feet), Stickle Pike (1,230 feet), Thunacar Knott (2,372 feet), High White Stones (High Raise, Langdale)(2,500 feet), Sergeant Man (2,415 feet), Skiddaw (3,054), Helvellyn Lower Man (3,035 feet), Bowfell (2,959 feet), Great End (2,986 feet), Ill Crag (3,068 feet), Broad Crag (3,064 feet), Scafell Pike (3,209 feet), Sca Fell (3,163 feet), Pillar (2,927 feet), Great Gable (2,949 feet), Pike o’ Blisco (2,313 feet), Crinkle Crags (2,818 feet), Shelter Crags (2,673 feet), Bowfell (2,959 feet), Hanging Knott (2,828 feet), Rossett Crag (2,136 feet), and Pavey Art (2,288 feet). Thanks to Clint Warren, Scottish Mountaineering Club archivist Robin Campbell, and William Breeze for Crowley’s SMC application.
131 Aleister Crowley, Essay on magic and yoga, Old E1, Yorke Collection.
132 Walter Parry Haskett Smith, Climbing in the British Isles: England (London: Longmans, Green, 1894).
133 P. 288 in E. A. Crowley, “Chalk Climbing on Beachy Head.” The Scottish Mountaineering Club Journal, 3(17): 288–94.
134 In his article, Crowley said it was “called, I believe, after a lady who never walked there” (p. 289).
135 John Cleare and Robin Collomb, Sea Cliff Climbing in Britain (London: Constable, 1973), 20.
136 Crowley, “Chalk Climbing,” 291.
137 Ibid., 293.
138 Unofficial UK Climbing home page, http://www.lbell.demon.co.uk/chalk/history.html.
139 Cleare and Collomb, Sea Cliff Climbing, 12. For additional details on the climb, see Edward Charles Pyatt, Climbing and Walking in South-East England (Newton Abbott: David & Charles, 1970).
140 “The SMC abroad in 1894,” Scottish Mountaineering Club Journal, 3(16): 238. Of the Suldenspitzse, Crowley noted “My first snowslope. Got on to ice, slipped, and the guide failed to hold me but himself fell.” Of the Königspitze, “Guides too drunk to start. Went a solitary climb up Eissespitze, reported facts, and they were struck off the list” (Aleister Crowley, “On the Kinchin Lay: V. Mountains or Metaphysics?” The Pioneer, 15 Oct 1905, 3–4).
141 “Proceedings of the Club,” Scottish Mountaineering Club Journal, 3(16): 229. Crowley was one of seven members elected at this meeting.
142 World’s Tragedy, xxi.
143 This is not only Crowley’s own estimation but also that of T. S. Blakeney in a review of Symonds’s Great Beast in the May 1952 Alpine Journal.
144 Aleister Crowley, “With a Madman on the Alps.” Vanity Fair, 24 Jun 1908, 823.
145 Crowley, Essay on magic and yoga.
146 The club has certainly evolved over the years, and functions to this day. For the Alpine Club’s early years, see Ronald Clark, The Victorian Mountaineers (London: BT Batsford, 1953). For its current activities, see http://www.alpine-club.org.uk/.
147 Christine Mill, Norman Collie, A Life in Two Worlds: Mountain Explorer and Scientist, 1859–1942 (Aberdeen: Aberdeen Univ. Press, 1987), 94–9. For additional details on his scientific work, see E. C. C. Baly, “John Norman Collie 1859–1942,” Obituary Notices of Fellows of the Royal Society 1943, 4(12): 329–56, and Ronald Bentley, “John Norman Collie: Chemist and Mountaineer,” Journal of Chemistry Education 1999, 76(1): 41–7.
148 Aleister Crowley to Elihu Thomson, 23 Aug 1916, Elihu Thomson Papers, MS Coll. 74, #MS61-930, American Philosophical Society, Philadelphia, PA. Regarding Collie’s abiding interest in alchemy, see also “Birth of Atom Stirs Scientists: Sir William ramway Points Out Momentous Possibilities of British Experiments: New Line in Nature’s Book: Prof. Collie, a Fellow-Discoverer, Asserts that Transmutation of Elements Is Achieved,” New York Times, 8 Feb 1913, 1. This “discovery” was also covered in Henry Smith Williams, “Science,” Hearts’s Magazine 1913, 23(5): 793–4. Mark S. Morrison, Modern Alchemy: Occultism and the Emergence of Atomic Theory (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 2007) demonstrates how a resurgence of interest in alchemy among nineteenth and early twentieth century scientists influenced the discovery of radioactivity and atomic theory. In this light, the number of chemists and scientists that Crowley would meet over the coming years makes sense.
Chapter Two • A Place to Bury Strangers
1 Confessions, 107.
2 T. S. Blakeney prints it in the Alpine Journal, op. cit.
3 Confessions, 107.
4 In The Equinox of the Gods (London: OTO, 1936) Crowley describes H. E. Atkins as “The first man to beat him” (p. 43).
5 Nicholas Culpeper, private communication, 19 Feb 1991, paraphrasing the Oxford vs. Cambridge record of inter-university contests. See also British Chess Magzine, May 1896, 16: 196; “C. U. Chess Club v. City of London Chess Club,” Cambridge Review supplement 25 Feb 1897, 18(452): xlviii; “Chess,” Cambridge Review supplement, 29 Apr 1897, 18(455): lviii; “C. U. Chess Club,” Cambridge Review, 25 Nov 1897, 19(467): 109; British Chess Magazine, Jan 1897, 17(19): 3; “Deaths,” Times (London), 28 Jan 1941, 48835: 1; “Obituary,” British Chess Magazine, Oct 1902, 22: 431–3. Fox and James (1987), The Complete Chess Addict.
6 University of Cambridge, John Venn, and John Archibald Venn. Alumni Cantabrigienses; A Biographical List of All Known Students, Graduates and Holders of Office at the University of Cambridge, from the Earliest Times to 1900 (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1922–1958).
7 John Ruskin (1819–1900) was an influential English writer and champion of the Gothic Revival in architecture.
8 Confessions, 113.
9 In 1922 he wrote the English Review’s centennial article on Shelley: Prometheus. [Aleister Crowley], “Percy Bysshe Shelley.” English Review, Jul 1922, 16–21.
10 Confessions, 112.
11 These contributions were largely collected and reprinted in In Residence: The Don’s Guide to Cambridge (Cambridge: Elijah Johnson, 1904). Bookseller Nicholas Culpeper kindly shared with me references he had collected to some of the original poems: “Of the Mutability of Human Affairs,” Granta, 26 Feb 1898, 11: 223; “Ballade of Bad Verses,” Granta, 30 Apr 1898, 11(233): 271; “A Sonnet of Spring Fashions,” Granta, 21 May 1898, 11(236): 308; “Ballade of a Far Country,” Cambridge Magazine, 27 Apr 1899, 1(1); “Ballade of Whist,” Cambridge Magazine, 11 May 1899, 1(3); “Ballade of Criticism,” Cambridge Magazine, 18 May 1899, 1(4); “Ballade of Summer Joys,” Cambridge Magazine, 1 Jun 1899, 1(6). One notable omission to this compilation—pointed out in Culpeper’s spring 2009 catalog—is “The Ballad of Burdens,” which appeared in Granta, 3 Feb 1899 (vol. 13). It parodies Swinburne’s poem of the same name—originally appearing in Algernon Charles Swinburne, Poems and Ballads (London: J. C. Hotten, 1866)—as a ballad for the Cambridge rowing team, as seen in a short excerpt (thanks to Mr. Culpeper):
The burden of hard rowing. This is pain,
For days shall come upon thee, when to swing,
Yea, and to finish, shall be wholly vain
Beyond thine uttermost imagining,
While down thine eyelids slowly shuddering
The sharp salt sweat drips tremulous like fire,
Till life seem hateful, and a hideous thing,
This is the end of every man’s desire.
Although Crowley included “Suggested Additional Stanzas for A Ballad of Burdens” in White Stains: The Literary Remains of George Archibald Bishop, a Neuropath of the Second Empire (n.p., 1898), 72, he never reprinted the original poem.
12 Confessions, 119.
13 “The Easter Meet at Fort-William,” Scottish Mountaineering Club Journal 1896, 4(2): 130–3.
14 W. P. Haskett-Smith, “In Memoriam: J. W. Robinson,” Climber’s Club Journal, 10(38): 56–9. W. P. H.-S., “In Memoriam: J. W.
Robinson,” Alpine Journal 1907, 23(178): 625.
15 From Songs of the Spirit (1898), reprinted in Works, 1: 43. Crowley discusses his visit to Wastdale in Confessions, 89.
16 Mysteries: Lyrical and Dramatic (1898), reprinted in Works, 1: 102.
17 In Residence, 56–8.
18 Confessions, 394. Crowley, Equinox of the Gods, 46.
19 “The S.M.C. abroad in 1896,” Scottish Mountaineering Club Journal 1896, 4: 243.
20 “The S.M.C. abroad in 1897,” Scottish Mountaineering Club Journal 1897, 5(1): 41.
21 Confessions, 124. References are scattered throughout Crowley’s writings, including Confessions (124), Equinox of the Gods (48), and The Equinox 1913, 1(10): 13. Of this event, Crowley writes in his Confessions, “I had unconsciously discovered my true will and devoted myself to find the means of carrying it out” (514).
22 Confessions, 123. See also Crowley, Equinox of the Gods, 111.
23 White Stains, 41.
24 Equinox of the Gods, 112.
25 Manuscript book, “About 1898 or earlier,” N1, Yorke Collection, Warburg Institute, University of London.
26 “Herbert Charles Pollitt” in Alumni Cantabrigienses. Registered record of marriage, Q4 1864, Kendal, Westmorland, 10b: 1023. 1871 British Census, Kendal, Westmorland, RG10, piece 5287, 54: 30. “Deaths,” Times (London), 1 Jan 1892, 33523: 1. John F. Curwen, Kirkbie-Kendall: Fragments Collected Relating to Its Ancient Streets and Yards; Church and Castle; Houses and Inns (Kendal: T. Wilson, 1900), 285. Sell’s Advertising Agency, Sell’s Dictionary of the World’s Press (London: Sell’s Advertising Agency, 1887), 265. Charles Pollitt and William Wordsworth, De Quincey’s Editorship of The Westmorland Gazette: With Selections from His Work on That Journal from July 1818, to November 1819 (Kendal: Atkinson and Pollitt, 1890).
27 “Herbert Charles Pollitt” in Alumni Cantabrigienses. Margaret F. MacDonald and James McNeill Whistler, James McNeill Whistler: Drawings, Pastels, and Watercolours: A Catalogue Raisonné (New Haven: Published for the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art by Yale Univ. Press, 1995). 1901 British Census, London, England, RG13, piece 106, 27: 4. Army Medical Office, WWI Medical Rolls Index Cards. See also Timothy d’Arch Smith, The Books of the Beast: Essays on Aleister Crowley, Montague Summers, Francis Barrett and Others. (London: Crucible, 1987).
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