I did not hate God or Christ. Merely the God and Christ of the people I hated. The Christianity of hypocrisy and cruelty was not true Christianity.
– Aleister Crowley
It is rare to receive a letter these days. I am brought the saddest news of grotesque importance that changes everything. I steady myself. I am aware I must leave now for England. The Crackdown may now be imminent.
There is chit-chat there, of a disturbing kind. Gossip is nothing new, of course.
I was once faced with a charge of treason against, and of spying for the enemies of England, during the Great War. I rejected with all my being such an absurd and monstrous accusation. It was so ludicrous that it might only have been hypothesised by the hare-brained, the limp of spirit and the viciously under-informed. They have now had their turn, and their woeful charges are nothing more than any squinting and imbecilic clod might have read in yesterday’s Evening Standard or Daily Mail over the shoulder of some sweaty villain or briefcased buffoon on the Northern Line or at any time over the last hundred years. As decades of perfumed summers slipped by, I sat while these oafs expounded upon their clumsy and boyish fibs, and instead I thought of Sunday mornings with dear friends on the Embankment or in Cambridge, with temporary and numbered acquaintances in broad Mayfair beds and alone, ecstatic and barefoot in the zoo.
But this chit-chat is different. It will be hard to leave here. Such a decision, after all, is very likely to kill me, as that vortex exposes my real age and I turn to dust.
Twelve hours to go.
It is important too, to note, if it were not made clear already, that this confession seeks not to repeat the well-publicised deeds and professionally authored achievements of my life, nor the rumour, though that might be challenged. There will be the acknowledgements of certain cornerstones and touchstones, of unavoidable nodes and markers in my life. My revelations shall mention those of note to me, but I shall not labour on what has already taken up a sagging shelf. We shall concern ourselves with the stuff that very few know. I shall connect the dots, yoke and couple the stars in my skies, and examine the previously private black matter between. There is little time for anything but.
It was Mother who first called me The Beast. I would teach her. Yet it was an inauspicious path to revenge, as I now grew breasts to accompany the matching horrors of my fat ankles and plump neck.
The succubus was waiting for us. Father and I reluctantly arrived in Redhill with a bearded, young doctor wearing gargantuan spectacles and who possessed sparkling eyes. The doctor, a Professor Horace Dandylyon, was, Father had assured me, pre-eminent in his field of oral cancer, and was a good friend of Captain Orr. He was, what I later found out to be, a wunderkind in his field. (It takes one to know one, they say.)
We had been firmly escorted by a muscly Amazon filly of a nurse, who smelled of delicious, crisp apples and gardenia, laughed out loud to herself with a perversely timed regularity and had tubbier ankles than mine. It was a pleasant combin ation, and just bizarre enough, aided by the strength of her teal-tinged stare, to inspire a warm confidence. She always wore maroon and cream. Her name was Prudence Venus-Coshe.
I was fascinated by this engaging pair from the very first moments. They both kept their eyes on me as the grown-ups, including them, chatted in the carriage. I sensed they were speaking to me without the use of any words, so intent was their benevolent stare.
‘Don’t worry, young fellow. Don’t worry, young fellow. Please,’ I seemed to hear, above all the other din. It was the sort of stunt Christ3 might have pulled off.
The carriage drew up on the soft gravel on the wide drive to the house. My new home was intimidating in size and splendour: well pointed, lush, mostly covered with verdant Boston ivy and blessed with the cooing of wood pigeons that could not be heard on the approach and so seemingly came with the house, providing an enclosed and private concert. My year of joy might have been over, drawn in by that lengthy shepherding crook of the mean and niggardly penny-pinching false god on high, but the birds revelled on. At least now I knew how they felt when they soared and glided. I knew that I would take flight again, for freedoms and friendships were intoxicating drugs.
I recalled 2 Corinthians 4:18; that horror, like joy, would pass.
While we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen: for the things which are seen are temporal; but the things which are not seen are eternal.
Neither Papa nor I acknowledged the brooding horror of Mother, swaddled still in black, in the arches at the front of the vast property. Father wore a thick scarf around his neck, and was encouraged not to speak. The doctor said nothing to Emily Bertha Bishop, barely registering a flicker, as he led my father up the two stones steps and into the colossal hallway.
As I passed her, I said quite audibly so as to let her know that I was not – and would not – be cowed by her, ‘I shall wager five bob that you did not see that coming, Mother dear!’ The half-expected prod from my father to let me know that I had overstepped a boundary did not come.
The nurse gave Mother a wide berth, sensing as would a wild hound that something was crooked in this creature that had given birth to me. The effect of Mother’s mean eyes, too close together to be trusted, set amid unnourished pale skin, and slitted to minimise the escape of greeting, warmth or affection, was a chilling one. Yet, for now, I did not feel alone as I walked into the house that smelled of recently turned sunflowers and would hold pockets of pleasant times for me, but only when within arm’s reach of Father and these two new proxied protectors, Dr Dandylyon and Prudence.
*
Later that same morning, I saw from the shadows of one of the large and darkened hallways, the doctor and Mother arguing in one of the libraries. I heard them, as they clashed.
‘I shall have you struck off for malpractice, Dandylyon!’
‘It is Dr Dandylyon to you, ma’am. And please do. I shall give you the address of the Medical Association myself. You shall be doing me a favour. And please spell my name correctly when you write to them. They are as inefficient as you are unwelcoming, and I would not want any delay in their ending this forsaken career of mine.’
He spelled out his name.
‘It is a thoroughly silly name.’
‘Careful, madam! I put you on notice now. It means lion’s teeth in French. I firmly advise that you do not force me to bare mine while I am making your poor husband comfortable. He only has two years to live, you do know?’
I had already heard a similar prediction, though this was to be a miscalculation. He would last far longer. Father’s stubbornness was a worthy trait to inherit. His mulishness stood me in good stead many times, as obstinacy is a fine central tenet in the formation of any religion, as it is for a world-class spy.
Mother gulped, rouged and stormed out past me, knocking me violently as she did so, only my fat ankles seemed to aid me in keeping stable and upright.
Dandylyon walked to me with a firm and purposeful measure, leaned down, placed his slim, hard-skinned left hand on my shoulder. He said nothing, but he did smile at me. It was most comforting, prompting me to honesty.
I said, ‘Please do not leave me with her.’
‘We shan’t. We have a friend in common in Captain Orr, and this makes you my chum. Tell me, Alick. Have you heard your father ever speak of “masonry”?’
‘I have not, sir.’
He chuckled, and squeezed my shoulder, before bringing my forehead to his and saying, ‘Be strong. I am your friend.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Good. Good. You are a fine lad. We shall get along just fine. Look in your pocket when I am gone.’
He walked off. When he had disappeared out onto the vast back lawns, I pushed my hand into the right pocket of my trouser. There was nothing there. Then I checked the left one, and there, deep in the material, which was a snug fit to my leg, was a cold metal object that chilled my fingertips. I grabbed it between my knuckles and drew it out, feeling the sturdy object against my thigh as I did, begging the question of how on earth it had got there. It was a winged beast with lengthy jaws and troubling horns in a circular pendant-type amulet, measuring perhaps three inches across. It was what I know now to be a Baphomet Talisman, an artefact of the Wiccan, intended to protect the weak or to comfort the troubled.
I still stood on the spot where I had eavesdropped on Dandylyon’s conversation with Mother. It was as if an experienced Shaftesbury Avenue theatre director were in tight control of the whole scene, for just as the doctor left the stage to my right, it was now Prudence’s turn to approach me from the left with her own version of benevolence. She came to me, and knelt so that our eyes were level. She was measured and precise.
‘I have a marvellous idea,’ she said. ‘Want to come for a walk with me? I propose that we are utterly nosy, and see what this dusty old manor has to offer in the way of fun.’
I nodded, as I pushed Dandylyon’s artefact back into my pocket. Once it was where I had found it, the nurse placed the palm of her hand on my high inner thigh and caressed the cold shape. It delighted her, it seemed, as she paused, gripped ever so tightly, before removing her hand, which she then used to ruffle my hair.
‘Come. Let’s start with the wonders of nature outside. It looks like we may be treated to a warm shower.’ And she raised a single eyebrow in quite thrilling mischief.
Prudence carried with her a broad medical briefcase that she held, with utmost care, in two hands, keeping it level as though she were holding a tray of lemonades filled to the brim. We headed outside and she seemed quite meticulous in counting her steps from the imposing arches of the rear doors. She appeared to be guided by the sun, for she seemed to stride in relation to its position in the sky. The nurse picked a spot out by an oak tree and next to an ivied brick wall. It felt like she was following in her mind the directions to buried treasure, for she stopped quite deliberately, and said, ‘This is perfect, young Alick.’
As she sat and placed the doctor’s case on the lawn, she gestured that I sit down as well.
‘Yes, ma’am.’
‘Please call me Prudence. In return, I shall drop the young. And you can be Alick. So much more civilised, don’t you think?’
She grinned and held out her right hand to shake on it, and as she did so, two courting sparrows descended to land on her arm. The most surprising thing I remember is that she was not shocked or dismayed in the slightest. Her eyelids dropped in minuscule, but quite obvious, ecstasy. The birdsong from the cooing wood pigeons above I can hear clearly now in my mind. My senses were spiked, and I knew not why. I knew I was thrilled by it, and appeared to be witnessing nature as I had never seen her before, despite those glorious days with Papa. A flirting hummingbird sashayed around us, and I knew, for some reason, she was a female. The branches of the oak and the top of the high garden wall were lined with starlings, jackdaws and magpies, all staring as if watching that theatre play.
Prudence smiled, revealing marvellous teeth, and this produced an even more pleasant overall effect, for her features were feminine and engaging. She had large green eyes, fine cheekbones and lips as plump as Amalfi figs. She leaned to open the briefcase, as the sparrows took flight. With absolute care, she removed an object. It was a small glass box with a lock on the top, which she opened with a deft touch. She then removed what appeared to be an ancient volume from the glass, as her reverence continued.
‘This is a special book that will help us to settle in to a new chapter in our lives, Alick. I want you to remember this. For ever.’
‘What is it?’
‘It is very, very, very old. It is priceless. And it will one day belong to you.’
A feral cat minced around the sunflowers, then sat beside the oak, and looked upon the scene, indifferent to the birds. Bees made loud noises, and all seem to rotate around this magnificent woman.
‘It is called The Tibetan Book of the Dead. This has been in my family for centuries. They have been quite wicked thieves for aeons, you know. And this will be yours one day, because I see your future with joy. The reason for this joy is that I see you – and for several lifetimes have seen you – as my own son. We must now bless this sacred ground as your new home.’
I sat silent and adored, as Prudence continued to look at me, as she recited words I presumed came from the text she held.
O nobly-born, that which is called death being come to thee now, resolve thus:
‘O this now is the hour of death.
By taking advantage of this death, I will so act,
For the good of all sentient beings,
Peopling the illimitable expanse of the heavens,
As to obtain the Perfect Buddhahood,
By resolving on love and compassion towards them,
And by directing my entire effort to the Sole Perfection.’
At her prompting, we then repeated the spell in five equidistant spots around the grounds that Prudence had clearly predetermined in her mind, so precise appeared the coordinates.
‘Alas! When the Uncertain Experiencing of Reality is dawning upon me here,
With every thought of fear or terror or awe for all apparitional appearances set aside,
May I recognise whatever visions appear, as the reflections of mine own consciousness;
May I know to be of the nature of apparitions in the Bardo;
When at this all-important moment of opportunity of achieving a great end,
May I not fear the bands of Peaceful and Wrathful Deities, mine own thought-forms.’
Prudence kissed me with a surprising heat on my crown, as that feral cat rubbed the back of its neck passionately on my chunky left ankle, and I heard naught but revelling and frolicsome birds.
I was a young boy, and took in Dandylyon’s and Prudence’s every word as if it were the god’s honest truth. I loved to hear from their treasure trove of stories of how they knew each other from their family histories, and also how they had then been introduced to my own family. They both repeated the general trajectory of the tale many, many times, though each time they seemed to take flight of fancy and weave in new subplots. Though they told me hundreds of episodes of how both of their familial lines had stuck together throughout the centuries, I shall give only a flavour of them here. That they would weave such fables (as I believed them to be) for me meant the world to this scared lad, for this was a barometer of their dedication to my battered, young spirit. In doing so, they brought magic and wonder back into my world.
I recall the general thread to be something, as follows:
Dandylyon’s professional path of medicine had always seemed determined from childhood, as he came from a lengthy line of society physicians, who had treated the ailments of aristocracy and royalty for many eras. It had become accepted within his family that any boys would follow a similar career path. Given the proclivity towards incest and inbreeding in those lofty social worlds, the procession of Dr Dandylyons throughout the ages witnessed many twisted and malformed types, the kind to confuse any regular doctor. He was always quite fortunate in that he was in possession of the secret notes and unpublished works of his antecedents, as well as a magnificent network of contacts. His vocation, like his father’s and his father’s father’s, was therefore really the path of least resistance.
Horace Dandylyon’s forefathers had served kings and queens for centuries. One Dandylyon had attempted to treat Henry’s syphilis before the monarch exploded by the maze at Hampton Court. Another had written prodigiously of Mad George’s arousal in his own defecate. One had even treated Boadicea with a mild calendula in her undergarments, in order to quell her preternatural libido. This was seen, by her counsel and her doctor, as crucial if she were to keep the respect of her armies, as it was believed by Dandylyon the Elder that her tendency to visit the fellows in the barracks by night was undermining her authority. If the truth be known, the administering of her nightly lustful desires was having precisely the opposite effect on the impressed and motivated troops, such was her enthusiasm and physical magnetism.4
And it was through Boadicea that, according to the pair of them, a first-century Dandylyon had first become acquainted with the ancestral line of the first Prudence. She was a young servant to the rebel queen, dressed in maroon and cream, and had one afternoon, by a forest camp, seduced a quack doctor of large beard, and the pair had formed a sexual union that ought to have impressed the beasts of the forest. Post-coitus, they agreed on their goal to protect Boadicea by preventing her evening visits to the soldiers. Prudence had her own ideas as to how to stop Boadicea, for she was a practising and quite brilliant witch.
The rebellion led by Boadicea to oust the Romans from Britain had a profound effect on Prudence, who from then on in used her magic to urge revolution of all kinds. As did all the Prudences yet to come. On the night of victory over the invaders, she cast a spell that she swore would last thousands of years. Her wish was that there would always be a Dandylyon and a Prudence, in unison, close to power in England.
They wed and had two children, a Dandylyon and a Prudence, who then began their own dynasties of bearded surgeons on his side and attentive witches on hers. She was a magnificent witch too, for in those days only the truly special ones covered their tracks, hypnotised those who might present danger, and hence survived.
Prudence’s line had then continued to meddle in witchcraft, the perfect foil to the Dandylyons’ science over the years. In my boyhood, this modern-day Prudence must have told me of a thousand spells and invocations that her maternal line had cast. She confessed to their role of the dominatrix throughout the ages, and how they had all conducted a pilgrimage to the oceans every single spring to sing to the mermaids, urging them to continue to be ever-generous in their attentions to lonely sailors. The mermaids always sang back, assuring the Prudences that they would always honour a wayward shipman, no matter how putrid was his breath or unwelcoming was his groin.
It should be noted that an eleventh-century Prudence had narrowly avoided being bricked in at Glamis Castle in Scotland, the royal household of King Malcolm, himself the basis for the legend of Macbeth. One of those three witches was a Prudence, and she set a curse upon Glamis, and this shall become pivotal in my own story. Please bear with me.
There was also a direct impact on my own life from the Dandylyons, young Horace too, for all the latter-day ones had studied at King’s College, London and Trinity College, Cambridge, beating down a path for me and my own studies, for I became his surrogate boy, but, again, more of this soon.
Dandylyon’s own father had become acquainted with one Edward Crowley (my papa) and his father in the moneyed circles of England’s pioneering Industrial Revolution. These were now the days when serving the aristocrats and royalty was no longer enough, for power was shifting into the ownership of mills, factories, shipping lines, manufacturing, mining and raw-material grabs in Africa and Asia, and beer brewing for the grubby and pie-eyed masses in London, a market dominated by Crowley’s Alton Ales.
And so came into my life, magic and wonder, beards and maroon. Dandylyon and Prudence. Palaces and witches. Kings, queens and mermaids. Utter sensations.
Dandylyon and Prudence took rooms in the house, and kept me company often. Dandylyon loved to play chess and backgammon, and told me long stories of his feats of mountaineering. He told me of his days as a student doctor in India, Ceylon, Rangoon and China, and his mastering of the techniques of yoga and meditation. I told him that I had already asserted a similar discipline in the gardens of a Marylebone hotel to suppress my excitement one morning the previous May. This thrilled him. He showed me how to play billiards and snooker, while he taught me German (from Berlin) and Macau Cantonese. He insisted on the importance of the intonations of Cantonese and how they were, in principle, a mirror image of the angles that made one a champion in billiards. He was often plied with the fine sherry that Father kept stocked for him when we played. The drink seemed to change him quite amusingly throughout the evening.
The pair of them spoke to me of Father’s illness more than Papa himself was able. The impression of what they told me was absorbed over several chats. They said that Father would leave me one day, and go to Heaven. I dismissed this, of course. I recall the look between doctor and nurse, when they realised the usual line was not a digestible one. They shifted gears, offering instead a warm and soft landing for this scared child. They did this by extending friendship, time and understanding. Either Prudence or Dandylyon was always there for me, night or day. I stayed with Papa on a chaise longue, reading to him late into many nights, often until we both slept. Mother was nowhere, unless there was vitriol or nastiness to dish out. The pair made every effort, it seemed, to ensure I was never lonely, afraid or sad, but rather surrounded by grown-ups who cared.
From what I now know of them, the doctor must have been in his late twenties, and she too. They appeared old to me, of course, and this was exaggerated by the reverence in which he seemed to be held both by Papa and the small squadron of other, far older, medical types who came to visit and who kept vigil.
On many days and in all seasons, we walked the countryside and satellite hamlets of Redhill, over the parks and through the woods. They schooled me in nature, mathematics, science, and in the basics of medical care. We played tennis, Prudence with more agility than the thoroughly enthusiastic, but lanky, ungainly and windmilling Dandylyon, on the lawn courts of the tennis club at the end of our lane. His hair flopped on his face, and then his hand swept it back, jerkily and well meaning, scratching and grooming his beard in the same movement. The combination made for an endearing sight, for either he was not conscious of his lack of coordination or simply cared not. I liked this immediately. We flew kites with gusto on the downs, and hid from sudden storms. They never told me we had to go home, but instead they waited for me to tire. We chose books from the library and took turns to read them to each other. When Mother fell ill from time to time, they made sure she was comfortable, nothing more. After I became ill with the scarlet fever, Dandylyon stayed by my side with the dedication not only of a physician, but also a parent. I recall that his sleeves were always rolled up with a precision that meant they never needed fixing. When he had to sleep, Prudence was devoted and purposeful in my febrile flushes and heated delirium. Yet I know I was not in a daze when that committed, benevolent and faithful lady went beyond duty. I have heard since of the practice of plump-lipped Victorian nursemaids, able to calm baby boys in such a thoughtful manner, and quite acceptable in some Asian cultures for mothers too. My nurse soothed me thus with the fine generosity of medical fellatio. I was pacified from that vicious illness at its zenith by a lengthy and tender nursing, some might consider ill-measured. Since that hot afternoon, I may have, in my mind, added Prudence’s enjoyment to what may have been simply a perfunctory act, a kind and humanitarian gesture. Perhaps I may have not.
I recall the grey and soggy day, lit only it seemed from the inside of the house, that Dandylyon and I properly discussed his interest in a strange world where spells, nature and science appeared to meet. It was as if the moroseness of the day outside had forced the truth out of him, and like a squeezed pustule, out it popped. That day and then over time, he showed me many books that he always brought along in his medical bag. They were tales of magic and friendly witches. He showed me pendants, miniature trident wands, helmets, necklaces, and small trinket boxes. The books contained pages of images of beasts, grotesques and incantations. He explained each, and left me with many toys from his lessons, but when he gave me my first silver pentagram, he was earnest in his assertion that this was no plaything. She was also nothing of which to be afraid. She required only reverence and respect, and her rewards would be a bounty over the years. I still have her today.
In Papa’s chamber one mid-morning, I told Prudence and Dandylyon of our days with Orr and The Legion. They smiled, as I regaled them with tales of our year around England and London, sweet, clouded evenings by that Camden chimp cage, Coote trumpeting at our pals across the wall. Father often sat silent throughout, prompting from time to time with a scribbled note for me to tell the story of the day of the tornado at Sandhurst. Or with the nuns on Brighton Pier. Or when the Yeomanry changed the clock in the Cambridge University dressing rooms at Henley, commandeered their boat and raced in their place in the regatta, a coxed eight with two blind men, a legless fellow and a seven-foot-tall ginger type screaming the team home, before rowing on to the nearest bankside ale house. Papa was discouraged from speaking, but remained a perpetual and willing conversationalist with his small bell and sketchpad and ink nib to deliver his input. It was hard for him to prevent his laughter some afternoons though, as he began to see humour in sadness, as well as the more obvious pathos in comedy.
I thought of my Yeomanry pals every day. I resolved to write to the battalion at their Camden digs, and they replied with a typical promptness and rhythm. Of course they did. By return, I enquired as to when they could visit, and they came on the first Sunday of each month for two years.
Of course, Dandylyon knew of their dependency on opium, and aided them with their pain. Father was now also reliant on morphine. Many times, I saw Dandylyon take the narcotic himself, and I then sat among them as they shut up, apart from the murmurs of truncated gibberish of ecstasy. They appeared to be as happy as I had once been with Prudence on my centre at the height of my fever.
I remember the day that Father and I had subscribed to that old circus pamphlet, now to be mailed to our new address. I now wrote care of their classifieds to the Maximus de Paris Rouge circus, apologising to Small Man both for our sudden departure from the gradients of Alexandra Park that night when Father fell silent and also the unintended loss of his pal, Gerald, back in Royal Leamington Spa. I updated Small Man on most of my news (details of the drugs, thoughtful Prudence and the vicious bitch who bore me and whom I rarely saw were all omitted). I invited him to visit Redhill were the circus ever to visit Clapham Common or Goodwood for the annual horse race meet. I mentioned my friend Dandylyon, but offered no hint of the translation of his name from French for fear of disrespecting poor, late Gerald. Gerald was now likely fodder for worms of a different kind to the chunky critter that had caused the tamer’s shocking death below the gasping trapeze girls and only feet from the weeping midgets.
I told Dandylyon of Small Man, and the doctor was as generous as ever. He procured a vast stash of worming tablets to forward to the circus in honour of the former lion-tamer. Such small gestures were perhaps quite pivotal in establishing my developing world view that those who followed Christ were barely able to speak a word to me, never mind a tender one, while the unorthodox were kind and overflowing with benediction. Father, largely still in his rooms, remained neutral and silent on all such matters now. I sat with him many days, reading to him from Ballantyne and Longfellow, never the Bible. I read stories that I had written and from the less controversial texts I was being exposed to by his physician.
And I would one day receive a reply from Small Man. By this time, Father would be long gone. In this thrilling correspondence, Small Man would kindly offer his services and that of his elephant should I ever need some muscle, but I rush ahead.
And so, it is generally assumed and written that I was an innocent boy until I tarnished a maid in mother’s bed at the age of fourteen, quickly followed by the contracting of gonorrhoea from a prostitute.5 These milestones are fair yardsticks and barometers to measure one’s progress and battle scars, of course, but they ignore the events from the age of seven onwards, yards from the alleged strictness of the Brethren, when I witnessed military subterfuge; slow deaths; monstrous and abhorrent parenting; daily drug use; vast alcohol consumption; meddled, as any fortunate urchin in my position would, with the occult and its accompanying pornographic sketches of bestiality and orgy, and relished that rarest of treats for a prepubescent ragamuffin: benevolent oral sex from a plump-lipped tigress with the most humanitarian bent. Looking back, it was obvious how I would turn out. One really did not require the subtlety of the runes or the crux of the tarot to predict the trajectory of The Beast.
My life descended into true sadness on the first day of September 1883, when weeks before my eighth birthday, Mother got her way and I was sent away from Father, Dandylyon, Prudence and my home to boarding school across the town in Redhill. Boarding school is a vile enough punishment, but to endure it when one’s vast family house and fading parent are in the same small town is savage and perverse. At the news, I was sure that my ankles bloated, my neck too, though worse was the source of bullying from day one. My mighty bosom forced worrying second glances in the showers from the other boys.
On the day I left home, as I hid my utter desperation, I was taken in to see Papa. I had not heard him speak for two years, and I would never hear him speak again after that day. He read to me from chapter nine of Genesis. It was the part when Noah survives the flood, plants a vineyard, gets drunk on the crop, and, in his intoxication, loses his clothes. His three sons, Ham, Shem and Japheth witness this and cover their father’s middle with a cloak.
‘Son, never let anyone touch you there.’
‘I swear upon the holy Bible and the greatness of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit that I shall never allow this to happen, sir.’
I thought I saw Prudence shuffle ever so minutely. Was it guilt, embarrassment or even excitement? I now ponder. I was convinced that Dandylyon smiled at her.
From late 1883 to 1885, there were two years of evangelical boarding school, under a malevolent arse called H. T. Habershon. This was a time that was beyond vile. The procession of schools I was forced to attend were all of a type, just different geographical coordinates upon which to be kicked and punched and probed. Habershon was one of those martinets I mentioned, dark in spirit from his own physical horror. He had a broad neck, bulbous eyes, peeling rosacea, sausage fingers, sweaty pits and teeth like a Dickensian cemetery; all leaning at odds, chipped and unwelcoming. He ruled with a violence that drained into the psyche of the establishment. It was hell on earth. I prayed for his death and when it happened, I recall believing for the first time in the existence of what Dandylyon had referred to as the power of the Will. If only now, I thought, I could exert the same influence on my physical appearance. If I could wish Habershon dead, then could I also shrink my tits? This would be a challenge I would surmount in good time, but first, following the brief joy of my schoolmaster’s demise, I had another preparatory school to endure. My new tutor, one Reverend Henry d’Arcy Champney was a brute and a sadist too, but at least, in the scorching early autumn of 1885, I saw for the first time the city that would witness my eventual blooming. My esteemed and beloved Cambridge.
Mother, Habershon and Champney were the antithesis of human kind. We all would have benefited significantly from their immediate death. I have since, and with precision, copulated, micturated, farted, invoked spirits and shat on all of their tombs, they would be thrilled to learn. Herein lies a lesson never imparted on those tedious chalkboards or forced to learn courtesy of a whip or a strap or a cane:
Be extremely careful as to whom you hurt.
There is little need to touch upon the horror of these days. I suspect that most have experienced the lows of schooling and the roughest discipline. All the clichés are true, so I need not go over the well-trodden turf of forced sodomy and ice cold showers. At 51 Bateman Street, Cambridge, however, beneath the preached evil of the Reverend Champney, I saw a Spanish Inquisitor, who might well have relished in the use of the rack on these petrified souls, these still hairless boys, who ought to be playing snakes and ladders with mother. Cricket, the sporting delight of the English schoolboy, was allowed, but we were not even permitted by the sick bastard to score runs, for it was feared that the competition might encourage unchecked desire in the lads. When the boys were beaten, they were not even beaten on the buttocks for the fear that it would spark a youthful excitement in them. I considered an early letter to Small Man to come with the trumpeting cavalry.
I recall with joy the time the police removed Champney from Bateman Street in cuffs. It was not for the buggery he engaged in with his students, however.6 It was for an unwelcome intrusion of a completely different hue. It was before the general election, the last day of June 1886, when he was carted off by three large-footed officers. Lord Salisbury’s Tories would defeat the previous administration of Gladstone’s Liberal Whigs in such a resounding victory, that it was of little importance outside of our ward that all of the ballots had been destroyed during a midnight break-in. The interloper did not leave, the court was later told, until after 6 a.m. when all of the ballot papers had been altered. Would-be voters were, apparently, to have had no choice as to their preferred candidate, for all of the papers now had four boxes to tick, each of which sat next to the words, ‘I vote for Jesus Christ.’
Champney was given a suspended sentence and a manly handshake by a judge, who seemed to admire the deed far more than the election officials or the competing candidates, who had to delay their victory or defeat speeches by seventy-two hours. I was, indeed, surrounded by arses.
My misery under his putrid tutelage continued and straddled the day in March 1887 when Dandylyon and Prudence (to the precipitous intrigue of some boys) appeared at the school gates with news of the death of my hero, my friend, my father. It was no surprise for I had had a precise vision of the scene the previous night, as I half-slept. Now I was, in effect, an orphan, but I would like to be clear that I would never wish to be perceived as a victim of my circumstances, nor would I ever apportion blame. I see each of the unfortunate events that I reveal as quite marvellous opportunities, or as wheels of fortune that sculpted me and allowed me to flourish into the Great Beast. I wish this opinion to be placed quite firmly on the record, for they allowed for a quite magical life. Those who wished to help me as a boy will be delighted with my gratitude, while those who looked to hurt me will be annoyed to a similar degree. Both were fine fuel to me. Such is life.
I understood from a sudden increase in Champney’s snide remarks about spoiled brats and vile rich kids that he presumed that I had inherited my father’s wealth. And so the frequency of punishments accelerated, and their severity peaked too. I am rather sure that these thrashings were the cause of my misbehaving, rather than the results of it.
I must have been flourishing physically, for I was finally sodomised for the first time by my headmaster. I informed Dandylyon’s office in Pimlico by smuggled letter, and the doctor had me withdrawn from the school on the premise that I had developed albuminuria.7 He did this unilaterally, and then told Mother of the sexual assault. She was unconcerned by it, he told me much later.
Her response seemed to corroborate this, as she shipped me off to more schools; first Malvern (1887) and then Tonbridge (1888) – the names are unimportant, the dates too, for they may as well all have been one corner of hell for a little boy who just wanted to walk the countryside with his now-departed father. Oh how those days seemed distant and from a different sphere. At least I knew happiness and how it felt. And it strengthened my resolve to find it once more. And so, these schools were to me a requisite stage, I knew the horror would pass. These schools were architecturally pleasant, cornerstones of the revered English school system. Yet when each ancient and ivied corner spells a new beating or molestation, it is hard to appreciate the finer points of any establishment, regardless of its physical splendour or high reputation among those idly rich parents.
My only fun during those miserable days was the amusement and solace extracted during religious studies, as I would show a knowledge as polished as that of the learned teachers. I was able to repeat the Scriptures from the beginning of the Bible to the end without once glancing at the page. I could pinpoint any verse or chapter. I was viewed as a freak and a prodigy, but they were all falling for my master plan. I drew them in, convincing them of my freakish level of knowledge and giving myself a real authority. I was patient, though it hurt to give credence to the Bible. When I began to point out the scores of chronic and infuriatingly childish inconsistencies within the Scriptures (my favourite was the nonsense of the three days in a cave grave and the resurrection), the belittled professors would sanction mental and physical torture on me from the other boys. My measured and tactical response was to smoke cigarettes, and to practise incessant and uncomfortably energetic masturbation. I would exhibit the same zeal that I had in mastering the Scriptures in disobeying them. And I would hit the scholars and their god where it hurt most. I would sin against their cherished Holy Ghost. That would show them.
In the spring of 1889, reports of my new mischievous scholarly pursuits in Tonbridge reached Mother. So this time, I was packed off to a personal Brethren tutor by the sea in Eastbourne. As with my introduction to Cambridge, there was now a chink of light, directly and gratefully received from her meddling, for I was permitted to enrol in chemistry classes at the college there, and so piqued my intrigue in alchemy. This trajectory of turning shit into gold was, after all, one I had attempted ever since the days of Dandylyon and Prudence in Redhill, but now here were the precise practicalities of the treasured process and the gateway to the sciences, which in turn would one day soon take me back to my true home of Cambridge.
With the vast vacuum created by the evacuating of my brains of the stale defecate known as the Scriptures, my unshackled mental capacity soared exponentially. I was able now to play chess blindfolded as I had once witnessed as a boy on a May train carriage from the Cotswolds to Marylebone. At school, I gained minimal respect from this party piece, but respect all the same. It was a start, but one that seemed to coincide with the thrust into puberty; as my ankles trimmed, appearing almost normal, and for the first time, finally a hint of real definition in my jaw bones through the toad-flesh of my neck and chin. My right tit seemed to be firmer, some variable I simply had to put down to the inexhaustible use of my right hand on my tool thrice daily at an absolute minimum. I therefore began to self-pollute intermittently with my left hand, and the results upon my left udder seemed to be almost instantaneous, perhaps a direct consequence of the extra exertion of the less skilled, slightly wayward grip. Perhaps, the flimsy myth that two wrongs do not a right make had been debunked. I knew that there were benefits to be had from self-abuse and sinning. This process of renewal and change deserved a renaming of the boy. I was now to be Alec. It was June the first 1889, and the Ugly Duckling had fucked off.
Through all of the bullying, I had maintained a stoic calm. I knew I would have to bear this torture in order to make this man whole. Such an approach might rightly lead to accusations of sadomasochism, and quite rightly so.
This theory of mine is solid, for I could have ended the torture from the boys and masters with one letter to Camden. I never did this. A friend called Dandylyon did, however, and when the Warwickshire Yeomanry appeared in the centre of Eastbourne to swoop on five particularly cruel bullies, the misery I suffered at school was over.8 The masters, too, relented, so I suspect a military manoeuvre across the school grounds to visit the teachers that same day. I was then even asked for my opinion on my own schooling: what would I most enjoy as my studies of choice? I responded, ‘Mountain-climbing.’
I had of late been reading prodigiously on the subject of mountaineering, obsessed as little boys can be. The two climbing books I adored the most were, first, Thackeray’s son-in-law, Sir Leslie Stephens’ Playground of Europe (Longmans, London, 1871) and, also, Albert Frederick Mummery’s My Climbs in the Alps and Caucasus (T. F. Unwin, London; Scribner, New York, 1895). They were my two new bibles, and I took them across the south and east of England with me, as I was given a regular pass out of school. This was made all the more fun as I was convinced that Mother knew nothing of this. Crikey, she would have been livid.
In July of 1889 during the summer holidays, Mother moved from Redhill closer to London, to the suburb of Streatham to be with her brother, Tom Bishop. Tom was an equal horror to Mother, and he took it upon himself to direct my education that summer when I was in his care. But once back at school and once the boys of The Legion had stuck their beaks in, and acquainted themselves with my tutors’ headmasters, I was a free boy. Orr had developed into a sturdy beast to do justice to that once-lanky frame. I had my own minders now, uniformed and broadcasting enough military menace to scare the hell out of anyone I wished to intimidate, even if that intimidation just allowed me to be treated like a human being. The power was, of course, a potent drug, with which I knew I had to exhibit self-restraint, such was my love and respect for the men. Before long, other drugs like cocaine and heroin would be my less-respected servants. They would be mine to boss around, like a soggy-eyed and perpetually disappointed dog that sees its owner aroused and with his trousers down, but who can say nothing.
On long spring and summer days, I was now excused from hell. For now, my grand climbing passion was Beachy Head. The fantastic beauty of the cliffs can never be understood by anyone who has not grappled them, especially that obeliskian spike, the Devil’s Chimney with its twin crests, the Tooth and the Needle. Beachy Head offers rock problems as varied, interesting and picturesque as any cliffs in the world. Chalk is probably the most dangerous and difficult of all kinds of rock. One can hardly ever be sure that any given hold is secure. In wet weather the chalk forms a paste that clogs the boots and makes a foothold impossible. But for all of that, many of my happiest days were spent on that face. The Yeomanry often came with picnic blankets, booze and opium, though, by this time, their number had dwindled to eight. Fairfax, Runciman and Coote had passed away, the result of slow descents and drug dependency from their combat injuries. Coote’s trumpet was carried always in their memory. It was Orr who became my best friend from the unorthodox troop, and we wrote to each other twice weekly. I sensed he saw me as a son. I saw him and Dandylyon as fathers, supremely fine ones too.
I was a young boy, zipping around the south-east of England on trains, given leave from my schools, writing poetry in fields of daisies, weeds and daffodils, practising yoga on solitary hillsides and climbing the steepest rock faces in the region, all of which were around Beachy Head. I struggled to find more difficult ways of conquering them, for although they were not even considered mountains, it barely matters where one falls two hundred feet onto sharp rock, never mind the presence of an angry sea below. The result is the same.
When the same illness of albuminuria, with which I had been diagnosed by Dandylyon, took the life of my father’s brother Jonathan on September the thirteenth 1889, Mother showed minimal concern that I might be next to die. Instead, her measured opinion was that I was to be forced to cycle to godforsaken Torquay in the west of England, a trip of a couple of hundred miles. This wisdom landed me with the whooping cough when I collapsed twenty miles outside of London, but my convalescence was with the best tutor yet. James Archibald Douglas was a twenty-five-year-old teacher of arts and philosophy from the northern industrial city of Sheffield. I had heard northerners were a different and queer lot. Quite marvellous they were too, as it turned out. Indeed, Douglas was certainly a far cry from the morons and dummies with whom I had been saddled to date. Douglas smoked and drank, and revelled in the company of ladies. My tutor showed me how to play cards and would have taught me billiards had I not unfurled the skills and dexterities, manual and geometrical, taught to me by Dandylyon on the slate baize in the snooker room in Redhill. He attempted to teach me that these vices were permitted, if one was able to enjoy them in moderation. It was a fair attempt, I suppose, and one perhaps I might have heeded were I not the Great Beast and a greedy drug and sex fiend. Douglas taught me sense and manhood, and I shall not easily forget my debt to him. I suspected that Douglas had been planted by either Orr or Dandylyon. Or my precious Prudence, of course.
As proficient as Douglas was in deceiving Mother and Uncle Tom, it was not long before I was brought home to live in Drayton Gardens, Streatham with them. When Tom caught me with cigarettes, he lectured me lengthily on the Two Wicked Kings, the twin evils of drin-king and smo-king. He had recently written an article for Boys’ Magazine on this very subject and was keen to share his wisdoms.
‘Alec, my lad.’
I was NOT his lad.
‘Yes, Uncle?’
‘Do you know of the two wicked kings?’
I stared and said nothing.
‘Drin-king and smo-king?’ he said.
He did not know that I had read his article.
‘But, Uncle, you have forgotten to mention a third, the most dangerous and deadly of them all.’
Uncle Tom was confounded, and I did not give him the benefit of my wisdom, as to whether that third was wan-king or fuc-king. The riddle must have stayed with him, for a week later I was punished and locked in my room for three days. The twit need not have worried about my keeping myself busy, as I further sculpted my left tit through admirable exhaustion.
*
1889 was a pivotal year. Adolf was born, for one. I was thirteen for the most part of it. There were rumours of my being able to recite the Bible and win seven games of chess blindfolded. Yet I was far prouder of a level of yoga that allowed me one thrilling day to fellate myself. It should always be noted that while this remains the unholy grail of the young boy, in this quite lonely but intriguing scenario, the fellater also must fellate. This never bothered me. In truth, it spiked the whole experience towards a delicious exponential, and I rarely left my room. The filthy and glorious chrysalis was about to reveal himself.
Indeed, I had now bloomed to such a degree that Mother’s gamesome maid flirted with me, leaving trails of a girlish perfume in her wake, and made it clear she found me desirable. One Sunday I faked an illness to keep me from the furnace of church, and I took her to my pious mother’s bed. Dandylyon later spoke of Oedipus. This felt like it was far more than just another victory, this one was soggy, marvellous and spirited, over the oppression of the preachers and those vicious texts.
This tale is no secret, but still worthy of a mention, a yardstick of how far I had come and the level of disregard I had for the institutions of Church and Mother, as well as the fuelling joy of getting my own way over both. Mother still bristled in my presence, but like a hollow and unevolved lover, she hated my absence (for she could not bully me), but the thought of my freedom and happiness elsewhere drove her to distraction.
The maid then told Mother of our frenzied coupling, in an attempt to secure a higher wage. I confessed to the lesser charge of being at the tobacconist’s with some local lads at the time, and the lovely, and quite mauve, scrubber was dismissed. I was bothered by this, though. And I wrote of it at the time in my diary.
First, we have a charming girl driven to attempt blackmail, next a boy forced to the unmanly duplicity in order to exercise his natural rights with impunity, and incidentally to a woman for whom he had nothing but the friendliest feelings. As long as sexual relations are complicated by religious, social and financial considerations, so long they will cause all kinds of cowardly, dishonourable and disgusting behaviour.
The whole episode unravelled, however, in my favour, with no help from soldier, mercenary, midget or elephant. With an absolute joy, I discovered that my mischief could no longer be tolerated in the family home, so it was time to move on again, and wherever I landed for the next four years, my protectors would likely find leverage to continue my fun and my own choice of learning: yoga, mountaineering, chess, military history and strategy, Russian, German, Cantonese, poetry, pornography, the classics and of course, science. I was nineteen years of age when I completed my studies in chemistry at King’s College, London, and thereby passed the scholarship to Trinity College in Cambridge.
It was 1895 when I joined the Scottish Mountaineering Club. The clique-ish English would not have me, so I made do with an alternative as I did with Satan to the Lord. I had conquered the Alps with ease. I had not just straddled and sat upon the precipitous peaks of the Matterhorn, Trift, Jungfrau, Mönch and Wetterhorn, but I drank champagne upon them all. When I rested my arse upon the top of the Eiger, I had done so with bare feet for a bet. I could never resist a wager with a fool, from whom I separated two hundred pounds in cash when we all got to back to Berne.
I was unstoppable. Or I certainly felt it.
The world was about to hear from me, as the century approached its end. Victoria ruled. Hitler was just six; Rasputin twenty-six, and already excelling in waggery and roguishness. The Legion still boarded in Camden by a largely new cartload of chimps. Small Man was regularly worming his elephant somewhere on that sturdiest of sceptr’d rocks in the sea – my England. Mother was still a cunt. Prudence was as astonishing as ever, and Dandylyon visited me often and now, free from any harshness such interest might have provoked in my juvenile schools, the doctor began to speak for the first time in years of the misunderstood and ill-lit arts. It was truly time to blossom.
The Occult beckoned.
And shortly after we took the train from Liverpool Street to Cambridge that sodden night in October, just two days after my twentieth birthday, now ignored and released by the raggedy monstrous goblin of a parent in Streatham, the three of us would dine at George’s before I was introduced to the magic of cocaine. Prudence obliged us both with her generosity, and we all invoked a new spirit. Well, it was a new spirit to me. Absolute liberty.
3 ‘Jesus perceived their thoughts’ – Luke 5:22. ‘He knew their thoughts’ – Luke 6:8. ‘Jesus knew their thoughts’ – Matthew 12:25.
4 I remember them telling me not to worry too much about this part of the story. I know now it was a required element of their histories, for throughout they were telling me the truth. These were not fairy tales.
5 Though which delicious lass was the guilty party, and had gladdened me with her diseased sauce, cannot be fathomed from where I write. To attempt to guess would be daft, even if I knew their names, given the masses of rollicking mares of all ages, through whom I was ploughing.
6 At this time, I was not even good enough to be buggered by this tasteless imbecile, not considered up to snuff. This was the kind of clod I was forced to bear.
7 An unhealthy level of protein, likely hereditary, and a likely clue to kidney disease. Known also to cause bloating of the ankles, throat and mammaries.
8 Of course, the Yeomanry were more than up to the task, but Dandylyon later confessed that he had resisted Prudence’s mischievous pleas to also recruit Small Man and his willing elephant to scare the hell out of my young persecutors.