Aleister Crowley (28 page)

The only paying work Crowley had ever performed—aside from training in
thelema
—was writing and he approached his friend Austin Harrison at the
English Review
. Harrison commissioned some articles, which Crowley wrote under pseudonyms; Harrison could not publish them otherwise. In “The Great Drug Delusion” and “The Drug Panic,” Crowley argued that drug addiction was a myth; he even presented himself as a “New York specialist,” whose private clinic successfully treated patients through “moral reconstruction.” Crowley’s ideology, it seems, was getting the better of reality.

Crowley fell out with Harrison but his expertise with drugs would come in handy. The novelist J. D. Beresford, an editor for the publisher William Collins, liked Crowley’s proposal for a sensational novel about drugs. There was a readership for books about the white slave trade; drugs and sex went well together, and Crowley could easily meet this requirement. Ostensibly the book would warn readers to avoid drugs, but it would also be a wish-fulfillment fantasy in which Crowley’s fictional alter ego would cure addicts through magick. He could also extoll the virtues of the abbey and encourage readers to travel there. With an advance of £60—modest but sizable for the impecunious Ipsissimus—Crowley set to work. It was his first book that was not self-published.

On June 4, 1922, in his room in the Kabbalistically significant No. 31 Wellington Square, off the King’s Road in Chelsea, with Leah as scribe, Crowley started dictating
The Diary of a Drug Fiend
. He finished on July 1. For less than a month’s work it is an impressive achievement. Crowley dictated about five thousand words daily; as a working writer I can confirm this is a hefty quota. Leah wrote in
longhand and was shattered by the end. She coughed blood and feared she had tuberculosis; after taking down Crowley’s 120,000 words, she immediately left for Cefalù. Their own addiction was going strong; the two consumed substantially as they produced a fairy tale about how drugs were ultimately harmless.
The Diary of a Drug Fiend
is not a good novel. It rambles considerably, Crowley’s characters are cardboard—it is an unabashed roman à clef—his alliteration gets the better of him, and he is too easily drawn into satirizing his enemies. But what it lacks in literary finesse it makes up for in imagination and dash; his account of the hell of addiction and his descriptions of the Abbey in Telepylus (Cefalù) are, as mentioned, often striking. In 1972 John Symonds annotated a paperback edition identifying all the characters. Peter Pendragon, the protagonist who becomes addicted and comes to the abbey to be cured, is based on Cecil Maitland. We’ve already mentioned Mary Butts’s depiction. But the most revealing characterization is of Crowley himself. He appears as King Lamus, otherwise known as the “Big Lion” (Great Beast). In Homer’s
Odyssey
King Lamus is the ruler of the Laestrygonians, a race of cannibal giants. Lamus is, to put it bluntly, a superman. Those unable to recognize him as a genius fear and despise him, while those who can, revere and adore him. One gets the feeling that Crowley was saying this to himself for a long time. When I first read the book in 1975 I knew nothing about Crowley’s life and accepted his idealized self-portrait at face value; it was, I admit, one of the reasons why I went on to pursue magick. Reading it again, knowing Crowley’s depressing and turbulent life, I find it often heartbreaking. Crowley’s unsatisfied hunger for recognition is simultaneously repellent and poignant.

Collins was so impressed with
The Diary of a Drug Fiend
that they
commissioned Crowley to write an autobiography, what later became
The Confessions of Aleister Crowley
, giving him a £120 advance, twice as much as for the
Diary
. Crowley could feel that finally, after all his toil, he would receive the recognition he deserved; he could also feel confident that a modest income could be had from his pen—or Leah’s. When the book appeared in November, the literary reviews were not glowing, but neither were they scathing. They were, all in all, respectful and encouraging. For
The Times Literary Supplement
—London’s literary Holy Grail—the book teemed with an “amazing fertility of incidents and ideas” and was rife with an “amazingly rich crop of rhetoric . . . and verbiage.”
The Observer
found it had a “compelling power” in its “descriptions of degradation.” Yet not all were so tolerant.

James Douglas, a columnist for the
Sunday Express
, had already attacked James Joyce’s
Ulysses
—for many years considered obscene—and Aldous Huxley’s inoffensive
Antic Hay
. Like de Wend-Fenton, Douglas was a self-proclaimed moral watchdog, and Crowley’s novel made him growl.
The Diary of a Drug Fiend
was, he wrote, a “book for burning.” Douglas’s growls had increased sales for Joyce and Huxley, but such was not Crowley’s luck. The
Express
smelled blood and attacked. All the old mud came up and was slung at the Big Lion, and new revelations were added. Following Douglas’s attack, the
Express
launched an all-out assault, aided by an interview with Mary Butts. “Complete Exposure of ‘Drug Fiend’ Author,” the banner read, “Black Record of Aleister Crowley.” Mary was handed an opportunity to retaliate for her portrait in the book and took it. She spoke of “profligacy and vice,” “bestial orgies”—the unfortunate goat—and other depravities. A woman, Betty Bickers, who knew Crowley, also revealed that he had borrowed money from her that he never repaid.
This supported the erroneous charge that Crowley had stolen £200 from a widow. The “widow” was Laura Grahame, from whom he had extracted (exactly how remains ambiguous) the £100 with which Allan Bennett had sailed to Ceylon. Other articles followed, accusing Crowley of, among others things, running a prostitute ring in Palermo; it was untrue, but it was the sort of thing Crowley delighted in. Once again friends urged him to sue, but Crowley could not afford legal costs.

The book quickly sold out its first run of three thousand copies, but Collins, cowed by the bad press, didn’t reprint and quietly let it fade away. They also canceled the
Confessions
, although Crowley did keep the advance. The irony is that there is nothing obscene in
The Diary of a Drug Fiend
; Crowley, knowing well the depths of addiction, depicted them sincerely, even if he was equally sincere about the delights of indulgence. It didn’t matter; he took a beating. Sensational half-true accounts about lurid sex and drug-filled rituals sold papers. How much Crowley had himself to blame is debatable.

While
The Diary of a Drug Fiend
was under attack, Crowley was in Cefalù, enjoying, to some degree, the publicity. As synchronicity would have it, on the very Sunday—November 26, 1922—that the
Express
exposed the “orgies in Sicily,” Crowley welcomed a couple who would spell doom for the abbey. Crowley had met Betty May at the Café Royal in 1914. She didn’t like the Beast, but Betty’s career was as checkered as his. She had grown up in a Limehouse brothel. After working as an artist’s model in her teens, she had joined the Apaches in Paris, where she helped the gang relieve rich customers of their francs. She became known as the Tiger Woman and later returned to London and again took up modeling; she was introduced to Crowley by the sculptor Jacob Epstein. Like Crowley, she
used cocaine and was a heavy drinker. She had already run through two husbands and had hit thirty when she met Frederick Charles Loveday—a much younger man who liked to be called Raoul—and married him. Loveday was not her usual type. He had a first in history from Oxford, but Loveday also had a wild side. At Oxford he belonged to the Hypocrites Club, a society of thrill seekers, and Loveday seems to have been its leading light. He once climbed the Martyrs’ Memorial to put a chamber pot on its top; on another occasion he fell from a roof onto a spiked railing that impaled his thigh. He also had a fascination with ancient Egypt and the occult and had read much of Crowley.

Betty Bickers—who had unwisely loaned Crowley money—was putting up the Beast, who had left his room in Wellington Square. Crowley gave lectures at her place, and at one of these Betty introduced him to Raoul. Crowley took an instant liking to Loveday, sensing in him another Neuburg or Maitland. When he invited Raoul to a private interview, Betty May tried to put him off. But Loveday was hooked, and three days later he returned to Betty’s flat, his breath reeking of ether and with a strange look in his eyes. He had been astrally traveling with the Beast the whole time and had only escaped by climbing out of the window and down a drainpipe. A few days later Crowley turned up at their door in his kilt, wig, and lipstick—perhaps his failure with Russell made him take precautions—and invited himself to dinner. As had Frances Gregg, Betty feared the worst. Crowley—an occult bully who liked threatening women—took note and told Betty she would soon be cooking for him.

When Loveday announced he intended to visit the abbey, Betty reluctantly agreed. Nina Hamnett, whom they met en route in Paris, tried to dissuade them, but Raoul was determined. At Palermo they
couldn’t afford the train to Cefalù and had to pawn Betty’s wedding ring. Appropriately they reached the abbey at nightfall. Crowley, dressed in his magical robes, let Raoul pass, but Betty remained outside until she answered Crowley’s invariable greeting with “Love is the Law, Love under Will.” Loveday, christened Frater Aud (“Light”), took to the abbey immediately. Betty found it dirty, smelly, and unappetizing. Raoul started his magical work eagerly. But Betty was made housekeeper—Ninette, who had performed this function, was again pregnant. Part of Betty’s duties included cooking. Crowley had fulfilled his promise.

A battle of wills began between the two. Betty broke the abbey rules at every turn. She ignored
Liber Jogorum
and said “I” whenever she liked, but Loveday’s arms were soon covered in scabs from his infringements. Crowley ate with his hands and washed them before and after meals in a water bowl; Betty once poured this over his head. She also found Crowley’s frenzied Dionysian dancing amusing.
⁴³
She was a tough cookie—running with the Apaches was no joke—and Crowley had his hands full, but, as Neuburg had been, Raoul was under his spell. Betty feared that the drugs and rituals were weakening Raoul. His health was already bad and meeting the demands of the Master Therion did not help. By this time Crowley and Loveday both suffered from a liver complaint, possibly hepatitis, which is associated with drug use and can be sexually transmitted. Crowley’s biographer Martin Booth suggests that Crowley could have been infected and may have been an asymptomatic carrier.
⁴⁴

The end came after a ritual involving a cat. Strays littered the abbey and Crowley said they housed evil spirits. In February 1923, one evil spirit, called Mischette, was found under the dinner table, and when Crowley hauled her up, she scratched his arms, performing an
unscheduled
Liber Jogorum
on the Master Therion. He was not amused. Crowley announced that Mischette had to be sacrificed and that it was Loveday’s will to do it. Betty May had taken a liking to Mischette and this may have had something to do with what followed.

The story is that Crowley made a pentagram over the beast and commanded that it remain on the spot, and it did. The truth was that Crowley anaesthetized Mischette with ether and put her in a sack. Loveday then recited a long incantation holding the drugged cat with one hand and a Gurka knife with another. Drawing the blade across the ill-fated feline’s throat, Loveday botched it and the cat, now awake, bolted, showering the room with blood. Mischette was caught again and again drugged. This time her blood poured into a silver cup, which Crowley offered to Loveday, commanding him to drink. He did.

Soon after, Loveday fell ill and at first Betty blamed that cup of cat’s blood. But earlier that day the two had hiked and as it was hot, Loveday had drunk from a mountain spring. Crowley had warned them not to drink the spring water—it was possibly infected by settlements higher up the mountain—but Loveday’s thirst overruled the Beast. Ironically, the one time that Loveday went against Crowley’s commands proved fatal to him, possibly. The doctor first diagnosed hepatitis, but as Loveday worsened, this changed to acute gastroenteritis, possibly from infected water; the doctor may have been lax in his duties as he was having difficulty getting paid. But the complaint could also have come from the cat’s blood; it may have had bacteria in its throat. Another possibility is that Loveday was allergic to cats. Raoul quickly worsened and on February 14 he died, at the time Crowley had predicted. Crowley had again lost his magical heir and was crushed; he had truly liked Loveday. He performed a
solemn
thelemic
funeral service, reading from
The Book of the Law
and his verse play
The Ship
. Crowley took ill immediately afterward and remained bedridden for weeks. Loveday’s remains were later exhumed by his parents and brought back to England.

Betty May received help from the British consul and soon after Raoul’s death returned to London. She told her story to some reporters from the
Sunday Express
who were delighted with it. On February 25 Crowley again made the headlines: “New Sinister Revelations of Aleister Crowley. Varsity Lad’s Death. Dreadful Ordeal of Young Wife.” The
Express
pulled out all the stops and went for Crowley with a vengeance. Betty and Raoul—who were not named—had been “trapped in an inferno, a maelstrom of filth and obscenity.” Raoul fell ill because of the abbey’s unsanitary conditions. The facts about the abbey were “too unutterably filthy to be detailed in a newspaper,” but the
Express
did its best. Children were forced to witness depraved sexual rites. Crowley, saturated with drugs, idled in a room hung with obscene pictures. And so on.

John Bull
joined in, pumping up a flagging circulation with the headlines “The King of Depravity,” “A Man We’d Like to Hang,” and, most notoriously, “The Wickedest Man in the World.” Betty May was not the “innocent young wife” she was portrayed as—nor was she the “Angel Child” as reported in the United States—and she later admitted that it was most likely the infected water that had killed Loveday (although, had he not been weakened by drugs and the exertions of his true will, he may have survived; we simply don’t know). Crowley had also not cannibalized two porters in the Himalayas, as the newspaper claimed nor had spirits counseled him to sue the
Express
for £5,000 to fund a new, larger abbey elsewhere. He did envision a grander, glass-domed abbey, and at one point approached
his landlord, the Baron la Calce, as a prospective investor. The baron declined, but he did not refuse performing occasional opera with Alostrael when Crowley was away. It is true that the mud slung at Crowley was libelous and, had he the resources, he may have won a case against his slanderers. But then, had he been less threatening to Betty May, she may have been less eager to give his detractors ammunition—we remember Mary Butts. We may also consider that a “religious leader” and “major thinker of the age” who resorts to bestiality, animal sacrifice, substance abuse, sadomasochism, and promiscuity might find it difficult explaining why modern man needs these in order to find his true will.
⁴⁵
Crowley was unjustifiably accused of many things. But he had no qualms about skating over the abyss, or reservations about those less sure-footed who followed him.