The burden of caught clap. How sore it is!
A burden of sad shameful suffering,
The bitter bastard of a bloody kiss,
The Parthian arrow poisoned from Love’s sling!
Lo, sweet Lord Christ, thou knowest how sore a thing
Is a cock crooked and consumed of fire
Shooting out venomous sap that hath a sting!
This is the end of every man’s desire.
– ‘A Ballad of Burdens’,
from White Stains – Aleister Crowley
I f I am to die in the mountain pass, it must be pointed out now that I have always believed that Black Magic is suicidal. In boxing, one may fight according to the Queensberry Rules or one might do the other thing. I approve of some kinds of magic and not others. I disbelieve in the form known as Black Magic, which is not only foul and abominable, but, for the most part, criminal. To begin with, the basis of all Black Magic is that utter stupidity of selfishness which cares nothing for the rights of others. People built thus are naturally quite unscrupulous. In many cases, Black Magic is an attempt to commit a crime without provoking the harshness of the law. The almost main instrument of Black Magic is murder, either for inheritance or some other purpose, but to gain personally out of it.
I have always preferred to use the power of the mind, the power of suggestion, the strength of the drugs, the magnetism of the flamboyant leader, the variants of nature and THEN a well-measured mixture of the flimsiness of others’ minds to be moulded and then harness the power of their own brain, like the well-set cement in the kiln to hold unholy water.
Eleven hours to go.
I moved into my university residence at 16 St John’s Street, the breadth of a well-hung cat’s cock hair from King’s College and Bridge Street, a fraction farther from where it was intended that I study, Trinity College. Quite vitally, I had discretionary access to fifty thousand in pounds sterling from Papa’s estate. I was free, twenty and white.
We started this tale by settling on the correct pronunciation of my name, and I moved into Cambridge with a similar intention. I was no longer Alexander, Alick or Alec. I needed something that would reflect my blooming and my metamorphosis into the world. Crowley is a name with its roots in Ireland, and, in those love-flecked days, we of a poetic bent were celebrating much that was Gaelic. So, I would now be Aleister, the Celtic translation of my birth name. This snake was undressing, layer by layer, and by luncheon on my first day, I had also made it very clear that I would never attend chapel. I told the Dean that Sunday worship was forbidden by the Brethren, and outside of my faith. My precise words to him were: ‘The seed planted by my father, watered by my mother’s tears, would prove too hardy a growth to be uprooted.’
The Dean reluctantly agreed, but perhaps sensed there was a troublemaker in his charge. This was confirmed to him after my first economics lecture, when the professor spoke of the subject as being a tough one because of the lack of reliable data. The stubborn spirit of that little lad who once dived into a clump of nettles clutching his King James Bible was on show again, for I now made it very clear that I favoured the hard facts of science (as well as the rigidity of German). I simply closed my notes, rose from the body of sheepy students and walked out. I went back once, to pass, quite easily, my exams.
I always ate alone and I studied alone. However, my solitude suited me, and also Dandylyon would before long arrange for my access into a temple by King’s College to socialise with other types with similar intrigues and interests to mine. These pursuits would be not of the academic kind, far more towards the extra-curricular pastimes of the Occult, but more of this soon. In short, I was never lonely. I was a liberated and happy young man, not wishing to waste any time with the superfluous niceties of my first year. I was surrounded by a more-or-less happy, healthy, prosperous set of would-be parasites.
When my brain tired of reading and writing in my study, I walked the streets of Cambridge all night many times, a flâneur sucking in the Will of the ages, often until dawn. I sensed the ghosts of great men who had laid foot on those same spots. I would stand and meditate in the dawn mist from the river on Garret Hostel Bridge, as it clouded the Latham Lawns by Trinity Hall or transmigrate through the centuries by Newton’s Apple Tree or across from the Judge’s Bedroom. Or observe the angled path of the moving rain from my window that framed the tower of St John’s Chapel. Along with the well-trodden biographical paths and the newspaper lies about me, I will not repeat the obvious and waste all of our time in extoling the wonders of that bewildering city. This is never to suggest that I took her magnificence for granted. She aided me daily, hourly, in the transportation of my being to other spheres. Cambridge did not do this with a rough boot up my backside, for she is a stylish and generous lass, but rather with a helping hand up, and a comforting embrace into an unseen realm. Every person ought to see Cambridge. To live there with the latitude and licence that I had was where this god’s heaven and that once fat-ankled, big-titted child’s playground met. I breathed with her. I still do.
As I would later marionette global events, I learned the role of the puppeteer from the Master; a bearded doctor with an oddly spelled French name, who smelt of brioche and who himself seemed to be manipulated, from time to time and with his permission, by the brains and beauty over his right shoulder, that most benevolent nurse/witch, dressed perpetually in maroon and cream and a delight to inhale.
Prudence and Dandylyon kitted me out immediately with the requisite Cambridge attire du fop. The silk shirt was en vogue: drooping bow tie and the limp, broad hat were dans le vent. I read poetry in public while speaking to very few. I absorbed Browning, Swinburne, Fielding. I was captivated by the adventurer and scholar Sir Richard Burton and his crazed tales into Africa, the Mid- and Far-East. When Burton disguised himself in order to be the first white man into Mecca, bearded, darkened and speaking fluent Arabic, I had my first true role model, though Shelley soon allowed me to fully emulate another; a trait that had been forbidden in my hellish schooling. Recall those poor mites of 51 Bateman Street, Cambridge, a mouthful of spittle’s distance from here, disallowed from scoring runs at cricket by a sodomising man of the Scriptures. Well now, The Beast had been emancipated, greedy for flesh and knowledge. I was utterly affected by Ruskin’s remark that any book worth reading was worth buying, and in consequence, like a spoiled imbecile, acquired volumes literally by the tonne. Flesh, taut or saggy, fresh or musty, eager or shy, was not far behind.
And so, the lyrical Shelley aided the flowering of my impressionable soul and urged my pained writing. One might call it the follies of youth, but, still, I squirmed for the longest time at my own nonsense …
My poetic instincts, further, transformed the most sordid liaisons into romance. I found, moreover, that any sort of satisfaction acted as a powerful stimulus. Every admirer was the direct cause of my writing poetry.
This lame refrain was regurgitated in Cambridge Magazine, Cantab and The Granta. That I was being published in these venerable titles infuriated my tutor Professor Verrall, for I was also a constant absentee in his lectures, and he did not want to encourage desertion from his class. Yet when I wrote to him, explaining my epiphany regarding English literature, I was again given free rein (I do not believe any of my protectors were interfering) to explore the riches of those libraries, unimpeded by anything as crude as an instructor. There is little to tell of those early weeks and months at college, usually so fresh and exciting for young men. And this is because I was to fall in love, and so this was a period that was defined almost exclusively by that lover. The exceptions were the initiations I was to experience with Prudence and Dandylyon; rites of passage into the worlds of the Occult and politics. So, there were no frolicking gangs of fresh-faced lads on punts and by cricket fields. I remained blind to sun-flecked days so heralded by other students. I would have special and far more elite joys to relish; those of witches, spies and cock. I shall now explain and illuminate.
It has always been thought that I spent the winter of 1896 travelling through Scandinavia and the Low Countries with a single detour to Switzerland to climb, and with the precise intent to channel the poem, ‘A Descent of the Moench’. The latter was true, but the former a ruse.
14 December 1896
Prudence and Dandylyon were inside my chambers when I let myself in. It seemed they had prepared a travelling case for me. I walked over to my study desk, and saw four first-class tickets for the boat train to St Petersburg. They were for dusk the following day. I chuckled. Dandylyon approached me, touched my arm and brought his cakey beard close.
‘It is time. There is much to do before we leave tomorrow. Please walk out with us, my love. Tonight, you shall finally be inducted into the Hermetic Order.’
I had read much of the Order, and had discussed it at length with them both in the past, though there had never been a precise intent expressed on their behalf that this was my destiny, as far as they were concerned. They had spoken of similar societies too, while there seemed to be always some woolly and prescribed fate they had mapped out for me. It was because of my often expressed impatience to try any or all of these organisations that they knew they need not ask my permission to take me in hand as they were now doing.
‘They have observed you, and witnessed your brilliance. These are persons known and unknown to you. They have always trusted my word, but equally they rely on their own eyes, wisdom and ears. If we are the guides and advisers we strive to be, then we are sure you are ready to be elevated into the Order. We shall be proud to call you our protégé, for we know you will soon outstrip them, leave them chuntering and befuddled, and move on to become a myth, a legend, a god.’
Dandylyon looked at Prudence, who said, ‘Tonight your destiny will truly start to shape itself.’
She moved close enough for me to subtly sniff her and inhale her marvellousness, as she continued.
‘The puzzle falls together thus. One: you shall enter the Order. This is precisely where you will thrive as a diplomat. But this is a façade, of course. Two: this will allow for masonic knowledge in the short term. This is also a façade, though a handy one. And three: the Order is a step on the road to goddery in the long run. Each stage brings an increasing abundance of sex and power and cash. In the meantime, it will arm you with the basics of the Occult to run amok behind the lines of the true enemy of the twentieth century.’
She stopped, as if I should know the answer.
‘Oh! The Russians.’
Her shoulders dropped, as I sensed disappointment and a wrong answer. Her admonishment went no further. I looked at Dandylyon who switched his gaze from me to her, smiled and nodded.
I heard her sharp intake of breath, preparing to deliver the answer.
‘Good heavens, no. The fucking Germans.’
And, like a pivotal game of chess that was just hours away would end within just three of my own moves and of which I shall presently tell, that was that.
*
‘First things first, my boy,’ Dandylyon said. I trusted him, them both, with my life. He produced a black hood from the inside pocket of his overcoat, as Prudence drummed her fingers together in a slow and measured rhythm. ‘We apologise for the melodrama, but where we are going this evening, there are certain … laws to obey.’
I let myself be taken into the strong current of my friends, trusting in my own belief and in them, knowing I would be washed up on a safe shore if I did not struggle. I heard her whispering a gentle incantation under her breath, the words coagulated into an undecipherable and persistent murmur.
The soft velvet and Dandylyon’s touch were adequate comforts against the loss of light as the hood slipped over my skull. Dandylyon and Prudence led me across the floorboards of my chambers and towards the rear of the house and out into the gardens. They were indifferent to the chances that we might be seen, or so it appeared in our nonchalant pace and gait. Cambridge was full of boyish pranks, and so if a masked character were walking without a struggle, not a head would have been turned, I was sure. They led me to the path that ran behind St John’s Street, and I was helped into a carriage, as Prudence continued to softly chunter her comforting spells. This allowed me to know if nothing else that she, my partisan witch was close. Yet, the sound of the horse’s gentle trot set my bowels on edge, for it hinted at the power and danger of nature and things yet to be understood. It was a visceral edginess that was understandable, for soon I was out of the carriage and also out of the familiar touch of my friends and into a firmer man’s grasp; two or three perhaps. I could hear their grunts, and uneven breathing. I could feel their fat and ungainly mitts on me. At least one had vicious breath that permeated the mask I wore.
My shoulder and the side of my head were used to push open what felt and sounded like a large and heavy door. Our shoes and then my knees were on stone slabs that were cold to the touch as my right palm then kept me upright. I felt a rope around my waist. It tightened as I managed to stand. I was now being pulled by it, and I held my arms out in front of me.
‘Stop!’
I stopped. Still, I could hear Prudence, her tone and low volume as sturdy and welcome as previously.
‘Child of Earth, arise and enter the Path of Darkness.’
It was a strange welcome, but a welcome nevertheless. There was a strong knocking on what sounded, through a definite echo, like a larger door into a more cavernous room.
A second voice spoke more slowly and with added authority.
‘Very Honoured Hierophant, is it your wish that this candidate be brought into our number?’
With greater jurisdiction and solemnity still, a third voice answered from within the chamber. I thought this must be the Hierophant.
‘It is! Fratres Stolistes and Dadouchos, please assist the Kerus in the admission.’
The first voice spoke again, ‘Child of Earth, unpurified and unconsecrated. It is not permitted that you enter.’
A soggy finger came under my hood, and made the shape of a cross on my forehead.
‘Child of Earth. You are now consecrated with water.’
There was a stink now of a rare incense, and now for the first time, Prudence was silent.
‘Child of Earth. You are now consecrated with fire.’
The Hierophant then responded, ‘Child of Earth. Why dost thou wish to be admitted into this Order?’
One of the large-footed types who had pushed me in, now seemed to kindly help me with my line, whispering the words in my ear.
‘My soul is wandering in darkness. It seeks for the knowledge of the Occult.’
‘Thou wilt kneel on both knees. Give me your right hand, and place it on the sublime and sacred symbol. Hold my left, bow thy head and repeat.’
I repeated thus.
‘I, Aleister Crowley, in the presence of the Lord of the Universe and of this Hall of Neophytes of the Order of the Golden Dawn in the Outer, do of my own Free Will and accord hereby and hereon most solemnly pledge myself to keep this Order and the names of its members secret. I furthermore pledge and swear that I will divulge naught in the case of my resignation, demission or expulsion.
‘I will not suffer myself to be hypnotised nor to hypnotise others or to initiate evil of any kind. This remains under the penalty of violation leading to expulsion as a wilfully perjured wretch, void of all moral worth and unfit for society.’
I now had one more line to utter.
‘And in addition, under the awful penalty of voluntarily submitting myself to a deadly and hostile current of Will set in motion by the chiefs of the Order, by which I should fall slain and paralysed without visible weapon, so help me Lord of the Universe and my own higher soul.’
Again, Prudence could be heard, whispering her accompanying spell, which gave me great comfort.
The hood was roughly ripped from me, as if to remind me of the consequences of failing in my duties. Inside, I laughed. A man in a crimson cloak and hood spoke. It was the Hierophant.
‘Frater Perdurabo,9 you are received into the Order of the Golden Dawn.’
Now, I had yet another alias.
‘Close your eyes.’
I obeyed, and I could hear the hall clearing.
Finally, I smelled apples and brioche, and opened my eyes to my two friends within my grasp and an empty sanctuary beyond.
They each held a hand, as they led me through a door on the far side of the ancient temple. We took several darkened passageways that forced us to squeeze and stoop before one door vomited us out on the quiet steps next to King’s College. It was done.
The horse and carriage pulled up and we returned to St John’s Street in a satisfied and glowing silence. There, they again led me inside, where the second half of the evening’s entertainment would soon commence. In fact, the intermission between ceremonies lasted just a few minutes.
Once inside, we all sat.
Dandylyon opened his comically large attaché case, and brought out three small phials, containing a clear liquid. There were also metal objects in there, a purple velvet throw, small blackboards and white chalk. He took out from a side pocket five fat candles of dark green, and then placed all of the other contents on the broad dining table that separated us. The meticulous and patient man then laid everything out with a measured precision that forced one to concentrate.
‘We are about to enjoy a second ceremony, Aleister. With all of my surety, I know you are prepared for this too. After this evening, you are now a part of the ancient body of the Golden Dawn, and shall pass through a new stage of enlightenment. You shall be welcomed in their temple now by many who know of you already, and you might seek spiritual shelter there whenever you feel the need. Within the Golden Dawn, you shall thrive, wonder and relish each moment and stride brazenly with each new nugget of our truth. But believe me when I tell you that this is a stage, a necessary step, a temporary state of being; just as we all are. Understanding, recognising and nodding politely and in reverence to this fleeting transience is pivotal, and you shall know of its short-lived and momentary ecstasy when you pass into a new phase in years to come. Now drink the liquid, Frater Perdurabo.’
I hastily drank it, and they drank too. I recalled in years to come his prescient words, for he seemed to know that I would splinter from the Golden Dawn.10 Of course, he did.
Dandylyon then spoke in what I knew to be Sanskrit, and it was not long before the visions and the spirits arrived, just as the door opened and a fourth person joined us. I shall write of him presently.
That night, I was awakened to the knowledge that I possessed a magical means of becoming conscious and of satisfying a part of my nature which had, up to that time, concealed itself from me. By this, I mean sodomy. It was an experience of horror and pain, combined with a certain ghostly terror, yet at the same time it was the key to the purest and holiest spiritual ecstasy that exists. This was so different to the abuse at school. It was the rough love of a large gent, aided and abetted by compelling and persuasive narcotics. Throughout it all, Prudence held my hand, and whispered encouragement, spells and sometimes filth, in my ear.
I was a pioneering young man, barely out of boyhood, who now, in the midst of passion, endured a brutally loving man’s fist in my mouth and was soothed by a comforting maternal voice near my ear. Where they had previously been muffled, the words of her invocation now became clear to me. She was, indeed, my true friend.
‘I am the daughter of Fortitude and was ravished every hour from my youth. For behold, I am Understanding, and science dwelleth in me, and the heavens oppress me. They covert and desire me with infinite appetite, for none that are earthly have embraced me. I am shadowed with the Circle of the Stars, and covered with the morning clouds.’
I felt her hands tighten with a loving clench on my knuckles that so richly emphasised the adoration in her verse.
‘My feet are swifter than the winds, and my hands are sweeter than the morning dew. My garments are from the beginning, and my dwelling place is in myself.’
When his fist was withdrawn from my mouth, Prudence’s face drew close and her cheek and nose nuzzled mine, like a friendly mare. I felt her breath on my brow, cooling the sweat that formed there before her silk skin smeared it. The words were well-used ones in witchcraft,11 but I was acutely aware of the subtext in her intonations that urged me to enjoy.
My blessed nurse continued.
‘The Lion knoweth not where I walk, nor do the beasts of the field understand me. I am deflowered, yet a virgin; I sanctify and am not sanctified. Happy is he that embraceth me, for in the night season, I am sweet, and in the day, full of pleasure. My company is a harmony of many symbols, and my lips sweeter than health itself.’
Prudence withdrew marginally to look into my eyes. Her voice deepened markedly.
‘I am a true fucking harlot, for such as ravish me, and a virgin with such as know me not. Purge your streets, O ye sons of men, and wash your houses clean; make yourselves Holy, and put on righteousness.’
I briefly wondered at that moment whether it was still she who was in control of the spell, her words and her own Will. I was very soon convinced that she was. In fact, Prudence was in absolute control of her art to the point where she toyed and played with it in the palm of her hand. Just like all those other Prudences had for centuries before her.
‘Cast out your old strumpets, and burn their clothes and then I will bring forth children unto you, and they shall be the Sons of Comfort in the Age that is to come.’
Prudence continued to captivate and charm me, as the soggy and stubborn man behind me tried his best to better her brilliance. Then long into the night, she repeated that spell and the following two verses, ad infinitum but never ad nauseam,
Black Moon, Lilith, sister darkest,
Whose hands form the hellish mire,
At my weakest, at my strongest,
Moulding me as clay from fire.
Black Moon, Lilith, Mare of Night,
You cast your litter to the ground
Speak the Name and take to flight
Utter now the secret sound!
I loved her and her power so, I can barely explain even to this day.
The next evening, Prudence, Dandylyon and I left Cambridge for London, Waterloo Station, the boat train and Russia.
As we walked out of the door at St John’s Street, Dandylyon said, ‘We shall tell you of our plans when we arrive in London. These damned trains are not safe to talk about the kind of matters we need to cover.12 Especially as those we might call adversaries might already know that we are booked on the 6.02 to Liverpool Street, and also, in which carriage. I shall explain all when we arrive in London.’
And so en route in a compartment of four seats (with one empty as Dandylyon had reserved all four for privacy), we discussed Cambridge, her architecture, her history and the latest instalment in The Strand magazine of Sherlock Holmes. It was well-disguised small talk, while in all likelihood we need not have been so concerned of eavesdroppers. As Dandylyon was carrying a volume of Conan Doyle’s ‘A Scandal in Bohemia’, we set about comparing Holmes, Edgar Allan Poe’s C. Auguste Dupin and Émile Gaboriau’s Monsieur Lecoq, the trio of cerebral sleuths who vied for the affections of the broad swathes of crime readers in those days, hooked on the arcs of our heroes.
Dandylyon read several splendid passages for us, before finally declaring his conclusion.
‘Holmes is my man,’ he said, ‘though I realise it is his Englishness that tips the balance for me. I was an acolyte from his first words in A Study in Scarlet.’
‘Dupin for me,’ I said. ‘He inspired Holmes. Without Dupin, there is no Sherlock. Originality edges it for me. And Holmes’s overt fondness for cats disturbs me somewhat.’
We both looked at Prudence, intrigued as to her opinion. But she stared out of the carriage window into the gloom. Dandylyon and I continued to discuss the various merits of the men.
Random lines might have been picked up by any audio tape recorder, little lad on the way to the WC or intrigued ticket collector.
‘He’s too nice to Watson.’
‘He is too cruel to Watson.’
‘He misses vital clues, he is too sympathetic.’
‘Dupin is too conceited.’
‘The French criminal is easier to apprehend.’
‘He smokes too much opium.’
‘He doesn’t smoke enough.’
‘Moriarty is Holmes’s better, and could kill him off any time he wants.’
‘Piffle.’
‘Dupin didn’t deserve to survive until “The Purloined Letter”. I still suspect he was complicit in “The Murders in the Rue Morgue”. I despise those vain enough to follow a career just to please their parents.’
‘Yes, but I adore that he sticks up for the falsely accused, and does not seek payment. Only his own enjoyment.’
Still Prudence remained silent as we neared London with the smog markedly thickening outside.
When the guard blew his whistle to announce our arrival, she spoke. ‘Oh boys! It is simple. I suspect that the greatest is the one who would win in a single hand of cards.’
We waited for her rationale, as the train pulled to a halt on platform four.
‘Skill and judgement are nothing without luck. And in such deadly games, one cannot afford to lose the first round. We must be born lucky, and stay so. So, I say Lecoq. I have never witnessed such good fortune as The Rooster’s.13 Holmes has Mycroft as a mentor. Dupin has the police department’s resources. Lecoq has destiny and brains and … solitude. Such beautiful luck is hard to improve upon. It reminds me of my own fate that landed me with you two. Definitely Lecoq. He is also the most handsome and well mannered, of course. But you forget that I am a greedy one. I would take all three of them. Three is a quite magic number. Come, a table awaits us.’
And we rose to all of our chuckles (Dandylyon’s the loudest by far), and stepped from our compartment onto the grubby and well-worn stone of Liverpool Street, from where we took a hansom cab across the city to Waterloo.
Unhurried and with time on our side, we enjoyed a magnificent Beaujolais in the Royal Station Hotel, a Domain de la Romanée-Conti ’45 that, I sensed, served the occasion well.
Dandylyon lit a plump cigar, and was engulfed in clouds of smoke that he refused to help shift. His voice came from within the white plumes.
‘Prudence is quite right about fortune. And none are so blessed as we. I shall explain why, but it is precisely that luck that brings us allies in the right places at the right time and with the most interesting intentions. Seneca the Younger14 was right when he said that luck is when opportunity meets with preparation.’
‘Yes,’ I said, ‘but Seneca also said, “Nusquam est qui abique est. Vitam in peregrinatione exigentibus hoc evenit, ut multa hospitia habeant, nullas amicitias.”’15
Dandylyon and Prudence looked at me, and said nothing.
It is now I look back on this, I wonder how prescient this might have been. But then again, I might just be searching for self-pity. None of us is truly immune.
‘You are a marvel, lad. And with such insights, I am left in no doubt that you are right for the role, for which you have been hand-picked and groomed.’
He took a sip at his wine, put down his glass and then enjoyed another large inhalation from the cigar. He touched Prudence’s hand, and she smiled.
Prudence said two words. ‘Semper Occultus.’
‘Always Secret,’ I said in a heartbeat and quite inadvertently.
‘Semper Occultus,’ Prudence said again.
Dandylyon repeated the words.
‘Semper Occultus. It is the motto of another mysterious society of ours. It is not an ancient mystery like you have seen with the Golden Dawn. We shall now tell you of a modern undercover society. Some know of it as the Secret Intelligence Service. It is run from Whitehall, and is puppeteered by the highest powers within the government and the Palace. The SIS not only controls the Empire, but seeks to expand it at the expense of our enemies. We have told you before of how Orr and the lads are seeking new ways to fight the wars of the future. Well, we also need to manipulate the peace, as well as stir up trouble in the homelands of our foes. It is a vast challenge, and it is the perpetual task of the SIS. Please bear with me.
‘There is a young English officer, who has seen brutal action against the Boers and the Zulus. His bravery and cunning on the battlefield shocked all sides. He has been decorated more than many fusty old generals. His approach to the politics of Empire is a radical one, and one that some old guard in Whitehall have, quite remarkably, consented to test out. This officer is now a member of parliament too,16 and has the staunch backing of a group of Tory MPs. His family is supremely influential, and it appears that this interesting upstart impressed at a Rothschild dinner and had viceroys, princes and ministers aghast spitting out their soup. They were all then chided and belittled by this intriguing chap, as he exhibited his cool cunning, knowledge, and political insight and demonstrated the hurtful timing and tone of his tongue.
‘Orr knows him, met him one day at Sandhurst, and speaks so very highly of him. He is only a couple of years your senior, and he is recruiting a mischievous mob to cause a stir abroad. Mix it up. Bold and wicked audacity where the Japanese, Russians and Prussians least expect it. They call him a wunderkind and it seems he lives for subterfuge. He detests the old guard and is looking for some contemporaries as equals. You are one, for he has heard Orr, Prudence and me out, and he trusts our word. The other recruit we shall meet in Russia.
‘These MPs he has surrounded himself with are followers of Lord Hugh Cecil. They are known privately within Westminster as the Hughligans. They are famously ill-mannered around the bars and hallways of the House of Commons. Cecil has commandeered this faction of the Conservative party as his own. They are all vehemently opposed to vast and superfluous military spending, for they see a new kind of war that needs to be fought. This is a war of intelligence and counter-intelligence, espionage and danger. And so, the SIS is recruiting rebels, mischief-makers, antagonists and insurgents dressed up as fine young diplomats. This is where you come in, Aleister. You might have heard of it referred to as MI-1, and it holds an even higher priority than the eradication of dissent and insurrection at home.’
‘How marvellous, I am in.’
‘We knew you would be,’ said Dandylyon.
‘Do you have any questions?’ asked Prudence.
‘Whom shall we meet in Russia? And who is this intriguing English soldier, who courts me?’
‘To the first part, I say, “All in good time.”’
‘And the second part?’
‘This we can answer. It is a chap, whom we believe you will appreciate. His name is Winston Churchill.’
And so I found myself as an apprentice in the arena of international intrigue and mischief, spying for Britain. It was to be espionage and meddling on behalf of the Empire for me. As far as the rest of the world was concerned, I was to be introduced to the diplomatic staffs of the British and the Russians in St Petersburg, exchange niceties, and smile politely and modestly at all the correct pauses. In truth, however, I was en route to meet the most intriguing fellow; one who would mould my life and my philosophy, and one who would be our man on the inside of the Slavic dynasty.
Between Dover and Calais, I planned to write the much-discussed poem, ‘At Stockholm’. It would speak of my new intrigue in cock.
We could not speak, although the sudden glow
Of passion mantling to the crimson cheek
Of either, told our tale of love, although
We could not speak.
But it was only an intrigue. And just as my total homosexuality was a façade and a fraudulent cover, then so were my whereabouts as far as the student body of Cambridge was concerned. No Stockholm. No Sweden. Instead, we were Russia-bound to begin to learn the profession of diplomacy. I wrote the poem in twenty minutes, and I could not have phrased my apparent enthusiasm for fucking – or getting fucked by – lads any more diplomatically. There is really no separation between buggery, drugs and the Occult. They come hand-in-hand, in-step menacingly and either to damnation or into legend.
He who would seduce me first I could not forget.
I hardly loved him but desired to taste
A strong new sin. My sorrow does not fret
That sore. But thou, whose sudden arms embraced
My shrinking body, and who brought a blush
Into my cheeks, and turned my veins to fire,
Thou, who didst whelm me with the eager rush
Of the enormous floods of my desire,
Thine are the kisses that devour me yet,
Thine the high heaven whose loss is death to me,
Thine all the barbed arrows of regret,
Thine on whose arms I yearn to be
In my deep heart thy name is writ alone,
Men shall decipher – when they split the stone.17
The name of the man who had buggered me in front of Prudence was Herbert Charles Jerome Pollitt, and he was the first of several generous and loving fellows as I exposed myself with malice aforethought to experience, arming myself with the knowledge of how I would satisfy my longings in the future. I had not been forced or prompted to engage with this chap. It had all been at my own instigation. The march into degradation might be decided on the spot or overnight by some or not considered at all by others, and I do not criticise this. But if I were going to turn from mere beast to Great Beast, then I would need to be knowledgeable. I was not sure if sodomy (or to be precise, being sodomised) was for me, but to remain ignorant of a path, well, that I considered criminal. And I would have to be careful, of course, as these were all still highly illegal acts that might yet threaten my liberty.
The late morning that followed my deflowering was a dank autumnal day. He and I walked out into the drizzle. It was thoroughly miserable to the point that only made my excitement burn and throb more potently. He and I strolled towards the River Cam.
Pollitt was a Cambridge man, a gentleman of leisure, tasteful collector of art, educated, stylish, funny and a fine female impersonator. I had heard of his reputation and I knew of him by his stage name, Diane de Rougy. He was an obvious admirer of the great Liane de Pougy, the celebrated and notorious Parisienne courtesan, vedette at Les Folies Bergère, and a quite mucky sort. Pollitt was known to make stylish and pretty ladies quite livid with jealousy.
Pollitt was just four years my senior, but had seemed to be reasonably well versed both in the ceremony of the Occult and of a gent’s delight. We replayed our tryst many times, and we were not precious or jealous. But soon I would live with him as his wife, and our desires to fuck others drizzled away.
These were erotic times in which we lived, and they had infused me with the firm belief that we were created to be pansexuals. The Romans knew it. The Greeks too. Yes, we might enjoy loyalty, and absolute fidelity might be achieved, but there is no crime in giving in to absolute sin and lust. We were empowered to choose our own path. We were not jealous children or sheep in the congregation, but rather we were mighty fucking gods in the making. And even gods were allowed to fall in love and be faithful.
As we walked, the silence dragged out, but it was not uncomfortable. He spoke first.
‘I have read your poetry.’
I waited for his opinion. God, I cared for a moment.
‘I sense you can do better and I can make you into a true and, even, great poet.’
Ordinarily, this slight would vex the least precious artist. However, I too knew I could do better, I was flattered by his belief in me, and even more thrilled that he might wish to be in my life long enough to blood me as that true poet.
I kept him waiting for my response, and so started our boyish games.
Eventually, I said, ‘You fuck me all night and that is your opening gambit?’
I even peppered it with mild anger as a test.
I was thrilled that his answer then took even longer than mine had, and that we seemed (I could have been wrong) to really understand each other.
A hansom cab came by at speed and splashed his well-chosen tweed trouser. He said naught, but I could sense the absolute disdain he felt. I too said nothing. It was his turn.
We crossed the road, and walked onto the paths by Trinity College.
‘Opening gambits should always be considered and mine was. So many treat them as a standard. So much harm can be done within three moves. Most shall never understand this.’
‘I agree. E4,’ I said, with little thought.
‘E5,’ he said, with equal haste.
‘Knight to f3.’
‘Knight to c6.’
‘D4.’
This simple minute brushed away the complications and complexities of chess and life. And although the game was played precisely as Orr and the lads had done on a May morning train to Marylebone and was only five moves in, there was an inevitability about the outcome. Fait accompli. Les jeux sont faits. And such is love. White had, in effect, already won. He laughed loud enough to (quite likely) vex the librarians through the stained-glass arches to our flanks.
‘I knelt and stood behind you all night, perhaps, but I just let you fuck me in the name of good, clean fun. Are we even, Aleister?’
‘No, let’s play again. And for real this time.’
And play we did, as we rested our backsides on a park bench by the riverbank under a weeping willow. We fought lengthy games in our minds and without a board, mighty tussles, proverbial fists in mouths, and this time as equals, staring at ducks and posturing fools in boats on the river. As dusk settled, we walked to his rooms that were stocked with sagging shelves of decadent literature, many first editions from Aubrey Beardsley and Leonard Smithers,18 framed photos of him in action as a muddied rugby half-back, tough and agile, and ink erotica of the kind that a policeman should not regard.
And this day set a pattern for the days and weeks and months that followed. I saw little of Cambridge and made few friends, because I had skipped the foreplay and found bliss. Pollitt had failed his exams, and proved that academia was no cornerstone to happiness even in this city. I was happy to follow his example of rebelling against course work and lectures, though I knew even then that I would pass my exams with ease. Pollitt, however, was already leaving an imprint on contemporary literature. E. F. Benson’s 1896 novel, The Babe B.A., was set in the city, and therefore supremely well known there. However, the popularity of the book (whose subtitle was Being the Uneventful History of a Young Gentleman at Cambridge University) was vast beyond our colleges and a global phenomenon within the educated strata, at least. The character of Babe himself was clearly based on my lover.
The Babe was a cynical old gentleman of twenty years of age, who played the banjo charmingly. In his less genial moments he spoke querulously of the monotony of the services of the Church of England, and of the hopeless respectability of M. Zola. His particular forte was dinner parties for six, skirt dancing and acting, and the performances of the duties of half-back at Rugby football. His dinner parties were selected with the utmost carelessness, his usual plan being to ask the first five people he met, provided he did not know them too intimately. With a wig of fair hair, hardly any rouge, and an ingénue dress, he was the image of Vesta Collins, and that graceful young lady might have practised before him, as before a mirror …
The furniture of his rooms was as various and as diverse as his accomplishments. Several of Mr. Aubrey Beardsley’s illustrations from the Yellow Book, clustering round a large photograph of Botticelli’s Primavera, which the Babe had never seen, hung above one of the broken sofas, and in his bookcase several numbers of The Yellow Book, which the Babe declared bitterly had turned grey in a single night, since the former artist had ceased to draw for it, were ranged side by side with Butler’s Analogies, Mr. Sponge’s Sporting Tour, and Miss Marie Corelli’s Barabbas.
He and I turned into clichés as we strolled by dusk and stumbled (from drugs and alcohol) by dawn around the city, throwing chess moves at each other in remarkably tight struggles. We walked in symbiosis, and many must have thought us idiotic, as we played games to make grandmasters perspire, not on boards but in the space above our crowns. There was, however, one fissure in our bond that, given we were just boys, grew and broadened so unnecessarily, until we had a daft fight over it. My passion for mysticism outstripped his, and this became a problem, for I became obsessed. The evening I turned down a stroll, a game of chess and a fucking in order to attend a ceremony of the Order to honour the solstice was pivotal in our affair. I slipped out of Cambridge the next day, feeling guilty, and went up to London to buy him a pair of the finest rugger boots from Lillywhite’s in Piccadilly Circus. How the fuck was I supposed to know he was there in the city too, buying me a gift of the finest tuberose incense from Fortnum’s. It seems that apparently we passed each other on Bond Street, each with a pal in tow. Mine declared he had seen Pollitt see me, and flick his beak in the other direction. Pollitt’s chum seemingly convinced him that I had done the same. And we never played chess or strolled or fucked again. Never believe anything of what you are told, and only half of what you see. I live by this tenet now, because those two cunts, who lied to us both, were responsible for a lifelong regret. I could not even speak his name for decades, and only managed to type it for my publisher when I dedicated The Scented Garden of Abdullah the Satirist of Shiraz to him several years later in 1910. How unreasonably sad.
To this day I believe I still have his blasted (brand-new) rugger boots in a locker at Liverpool Street Station.
Adieu, mon copain.
That fourth train ticket was not for Pollitt, however. It was for Orr, who met us at Waterloo Station. The ogre had grown again, and his vast smile, too, in an equal and truly pleasing proportion. The journey from London to Dover took us yards from Tonbridge School, where, years earlier, my misery had perhaps been at its peak. The schoolboy in me would have relished in cocking a snook in its direction, but I already knew that was worthless and beneath me. And so as we passed, I maintained a dignified silence in the style of a modern-day Scarlet Pimpernel, keeping his own counsel. Perhaps the disciplined quiet I showed in that moment was the seedling of a lifelong practice in keeping my mouth shut when the temptation was to scream the truth. As the four of us rattled along to the east under empurpling and bruising skies, perhaps it was in those very seconds that I turned from boy to man.
I wrote and read Russian en route, played chess, and even once reprised the scene with Prudence from my childhood episode of scarlet fever, as Orr and Dandylyon (I believe) dozed. I looked at, with vast interest, a tome given to me by the doctor called A. E. Waite’s The Book of Black Magic and of Pacts (1898), and spoke willingly to Slavic travellers in the dining car, working on the dialects and colloquialisms as we pioneered forward. When the four of us were alone in our compartment, Dandylyon spoke.
‘Let me tell you that Orr and I have been friends for a slightly longer time than perhaps you are aware. It has been since the day I walked into a South African prisoner of war camp near Smitswinkel Flats on the Cape. It was a devilish spot called Jourdan Siding where thirst and sunstroke ruled. Your fortuitous encounter with his lads between Leamington and London that day brought you into my life. I shall be ever grateful for that. When your dear papa fell ill, we were honoured to be asked to care for you from near and far. Your father so approved of our role of the adoring puppeteers. But let’s be clear now that mostly we no longer see you as our charge, but as one of us. This is never to suggest that our job is done, and this is because we are but a small troupe of nosy bastards, who love to nudge and mould the continent and the Empire. You are now treading onto the boards of the most exhilarating stage of the lot. Power. You might rule the world one day, my lad.’
He touched his right cufflink, squeezed it between forefinger and thumb. He lifted his gaze to the ceiling of the carriage, and appeared to listen intently to the rattle of the locomotive. This prompted the slightest smile on the lips beneath the beard. He repeated that word with a kittenish tenderness and lingered upon it: ‘Power.’
He then paused, before going on.
‘First, there is an adventure to be had, and an intriguing new ally to meet. You shall enjoy Russia. They are a mauve lot. There will be perfunctory meetings and handshakes that shall take place in St Petersburg. To the outside world, you are to be a junior trainee diplomat, and you shall use your real name and confirm your status as a Cambridge student. There shall be a week-long course with introductions to the staff of the British consul and the British embassy, as well as a dinner with the ambassador. As much as I fully trust your acting skills to play the part, there is a school of thought that states the less you know, the more you shall fit in.’
He belly-laughed. We all laughed together, as if we were rehearsing for some wooden melodrama. The stakes were high, as they were throughout my life, but one should never forfeit laughter. I knew this, and thought of Stoker’s Dracula; and specifically, Professor Abraham Van Helsing and his adorable imaginary friend, King Laugh. When one deals in the darkness of the human soul, one must tether our greatest ally: humour. For one’s enemy’s enemy is our true pal. And true evil fears mockery and lampoonery the most.
I still recall the precise words of Van Helsing:
Ah, we men and women are like ropes drawn tight with strain that pull us different ways. Then tears come; and, like the rain on the ropes, they brace us up, until perhaps the strain become too great, and we break. But King Laugh he come like the sunshine, and he ease off the strain again; and we bear to go on with our labour, what it may be.
I thought this so true. Even if he was cutting off a lover’s head or ripping out the heart of a once-saintly friend.
And the train carriage pushed on to the chill of St Petersburg. The distance ahead was black, as the last touches of light fell behind us and we were still a full two days from our destination.
*
Upon our arrival in the city in the late afternoon when darkness had already descended, we moved into our rooms in a vast nameless mansion yards from Peter’s Square. In the horse-drawn carriage, there was no talk other than over-polite and benign chit-chat. We carried ourselves as tourists would have, I as an intrigued student of the language, the country and her literature. Orr did not wear his uniform; I saw him in civilian clothing for the first time. When we arrived, I was told that on our third day we were to travel out into the countryside to execute our true mission: to meet and recruit this mysterious Russian for MI-1.
On our first full day at the British embassy, Dandylyon introduced me to many men of an illustrious stripe – social, diplomatic and military – and I was convinced this was not the exposure usually offered to a junior diplomat. On our second evening there, we attended a temple in evening suit, Prudence in magnificent maroon.19 We were all given an animal mask as we entered an ancient necropolis. There were several hundred men and women there in a scene that even then, in those formative days of mischief, appeared to me as a cliché – faux heads of goats, dogs, cats, snakes. Sensing this, Orr insisted that I prevent myself from laughing at the quite juvenile drama.
The exciting part was that this was a secret gathering of clearly influential parties, but it was rather silly. This visceral feeling was confirmed to me as an accurate one, when I realised that masked individuals were waving and gesturing to others across the hall, and then stopping to chat with familiarity. Everyone knew each other despite the masks. The pretence irked me slightly. That is, until we took large quantities of cocaine. The masks would have provided an obvious problem in the sniffing of the piles, so we were treated to a small army of dwarves and midgets, who meandered around with the slow and polite shuffle of a drinks waiter. Upon the head of each small chap was a wide tray with impressive hillocks of the powder. The circular trays each had three tall silver bars topped by a round curtain rail from which there draped a crimson velvet hang. If one wished to maintain anonymity, one simply popped one’s head inside the curtain, lifted the mask and ingested away. Each dwarf carried a stash of silver spoons to aid the consumption, and handed them out with broad, almost troubling grins. Although I had read of orgiastic tales that neatly described what happened next en masse, and seen it all personally on a smaller scale when our number was four that last night in Cambridge, it was still a welcome and heartening surprise to see the vigour and energy of those ladies and gentlemen for the next few hours.
Our third day was our time to rusticate, and to do what we were really there to do. The recuperative powers of the younger man would have aided a lesser being than I. The previous evening’s exertions appeared to me as a frivolous opening gambit, a beguiling and alluring amuse-bouche; all part of a magnificent and broader frolic. We left the city at dawn. There was a train journey that took perhaps three hours, and then we took a horse and carriage to a small village of perhaps twelve dwellings. Eleven were lowly, one was underwhelming at best. Then there was the church of the Orthodox faith, infinitely more pleasant, and this is where we soon sat in the rear pew to the right. And we waited, and waited, and waited.
Eventually Dandylyon calmed me from my juvenile eagerness, and acknowledged that this delay was to be expected.
‘You have not been briefed on this mission, for the simple reason that we – and by this I mean British Intelligence – would like to have your unfettered and unshackled opinion on our subject,’ he told me.
This was fine with me. They trusted my opinion. I adored the word mission.
There were perhaps six rows of pews and a simple and clean feel to the boxy structure. The windows were of a stained glass that in those days were called amateur, a pernicious term today, but one that then meant produced with love; the root, a mistral one, from the Latin amare, amore, amistad, amicable, ami, before the nasty reference to money tarnished the term. I ought, instead, to describe them as the work of an artisan, blessed with a vision in his mind and with skill in his hands. The altar and the lectern were fine centrepieces, upon which I fixed my gaze and breathed in the style that I had taught myself in those Marylebone gardens all those years ago to abate a boyish excitement and to maintain my poise and dignity in front of those few who truly mattered to me. Such were my powers of the yoga (boosted by a hefty recent intake of narcotics) that I can only presume there was absolute silence from my cohorts, as I could block out all sensation and stimulus. That was until I saw a man in my mind, approaching me from behind, in an out-of-body experience. In my mind’s eye, I viewed the scene from behind him, and I could see myself ahead of him as he neared with a lazy and intended shuffle. He was tall, seemingly young, lanky, and with limp arms. He carried a very real threat in his gait. This was a very real and disturbing sensation, and yet, I knew that it was not a peril for me. There was a further feeling that was even more distinct. It was the sensation of an ally, a friend and a protector.
It was the rancid smell that brought me out of my reverie.
‘Aleister,’ said Orr as I stirred, ‘We would like you to meet someone.’
I turned with a firm measure and saw the front of the man, whom I had sensed moments before. I saw a peasant in the smock of a holy man, but immediately divined a quite absurd saintliness to him. This creature appeared to possess a dark gift, as well as a remarkable stench and troubling stare.
He spoke in a harsh dialect, and appeared to be drunk, but not in that flimsy way. His countenance was mean and robust, and portrayed an understanding of the people he was here to meet. The accent was strong, but I could just make out what he said, as he rambled at us all. He spat about the Prussians and the Irish, but changed his warring tune when he turned the subject to their females. Prudence then spoke to him in English.
‘Have you been behaving, Grigori Yefimovich?’
He growled at her and then at us all, cupping his testicles through his robe.
‘I misbehave in order to work for the Lord. It is my curse. But I serve Him like no other ever has,’ as he turned his glare upon me.
He appeared to be marginally less stewed when he spoke of God.
‘The Almighty speaks to me now. He tells me that I shall mend peasants and noblemen. I shall hold vast power. Pay me vast sums from your Queen, and let loose your frothing nursemaid on me.’
He nodded at Prudence, then looked at, and spoke to, us all.
‘And you know I shall execute this work for you. Look at her, her eyes cross in my presence. I see her exposed and ever-so-lively soul through them. Leave us in this church until daybreak. She will never know such coupling as on that altar.’
Prudence stood, walked towards him, covered the broad hands that cupped his gonads with her own, and whispered in his ear for perhaps one minute, while he gestured, nodded, glanced at the impressive scale of and the obtuse angle produced by his groin in his filthy robes, chuckled, pondered and growled between each sentence.
Then he finally roared, and tilted his neck backwards so his only view was of the ceiling of God’s forsaken house. Prudence laughed. We all laughed.
Prudence turned, loosening her grip, and still did not refute his charming offer. Was she aroused, the marvellous mare? She bloody well was.
He yelled, ‘You strike a bargain fit for a king, a czar, a queen and this Holy Man. I am yours, lady. Without question and forsaking ALL others for a while.’
And the four of us withdrew, marginally before, it seemed, the stinking mystic was about to make his approach to manhandle me to the ground, land on me, and stay there until he was spent. This appeared to be prevented from happening, for Prudence then spoke loudly and demanded all of our attention.
‘It is agreed. The terms are as proposed. He is ours,’ she said. ‘We must now leave.’
As we walked out into the insipid yellowed light, produced by a mild wind and the dusty earth, and into that pivotal day when I became a spy and thus cemented a relationship between Cambridge and those Russian lands that would span the whole of the next century, he was still bawling from within the church.
‘I, Grigori Yefimovich Rasputin am yours, my beloved. I now work for England before I work for God.’
I had still not met one of my conspirators, the one in Westminster, and still held too much of another in my nostrils, but I sensed we might run amok one day soon. Now, we were THREE. And Prudence was right, for three is, indeed, a quite magical number.
I looked at her and asked her, ‘To what did you agree?’
Did she blush? I do recall that she tilted her head, slitted her green eyes and said, ‘Your curiosity is a quite marvellous quality.’
The following afternoon, as we pulled out of St Petersburg and in the comfort of our compartment, Orr spoke of military things. Now, years later, I think of the words of my firmest of all pals:20 ‘In wartime, truth is so precious that she should always be attended by a bodyguard of lies.’ Christ, he had a point.
‘Aleister,’ Orr began, ‘military history is littered with daring ruses to baffle and deceive the enemy, leading to unlikely victories. The Turks had once lined up for battle and had their front line pull their swords, each individual then beheading himself to thoroughly terrify the enemy. It was later discovered that those headless corpses were those of their own criminals who took their own life to protect their families. The impact on the opponent proved to be pivotal, such was the awe that this action provoked. There were the fake letters in the Mamluk slave siege of 1271, the dummy cannons of the Quaker gun ruse in the American War of Independence, and in ancient Japan, Tokugawa’s quite ingenuous variation of the Empty Fort Strategy. This same tactic had already been recognised by the ancient Chinese; they called it simply number thirty-two of the thirty-six stratagems. You see, there have been many. Yes, grubby lies, if you will, but those hideously ugly ducklings sometimes blossom at the most fortuitous moment to save our world.’
These are those bodyguards, of which Winston spoke.
Orr continued: ‘The Russians have a precise word for this tactic; Maskirovka [MacKNpoBKa]. It is deception Russian-style, methods bespokely designed in order to prevail and vanquish. It is masked warfare, smoke and mirrors and quite hard to define; the definition as slippery as the concept itself. The nearest we find in English might be the little masquerade.
‘The unlikely Russian victory in the Battle of Kulikovo Field in 1380, when the Golden Hords of around 150,000 Tatar Mongols was defeated by fewer than 50,000 Russians, guaranteed Prince Dmitri’s place in this nation’s folklore. Equally, their unexpected attack of Minsk through the swamps and from the rear was a great example of Maskirovka; the sheer boldness reminiscent of Lawrence of Arabia’s taking of Aqaba – with its vast guns pointed out to sea, because no one was insane enough to come through the desert – from behind. The ingredients of Maskirovka are surprise, denial, bluff, wrong-footing, the cover of night (literal or metaphorical) and mirage. There is usually a garnish of victory, if executed correctly.’
He then looked at the doctor and his nurse.
‘Do you wish to continue?’
Prudence took up the story: ‘Three is indeed a marvellous number. Our mischief politician–soldier, Churchill, our ripe Holy Man and you, our Occultist double agent, shall constitute a fine force one day soon. But, of course, the number six is twice as alluring.’
‘Good Lord, who are the other three, then? Which poor bastards—?’
And they all bellowed together from their solar plexus, as if, yet again, scripted and directed by that cheap melodramatist. But its effect was potent and I had my answer.
And so, after I had joined in with their guffaws for a lengthy chortle, we were now SIX.
(Our seventh samurai was still a glint in my eye. Oh! Violet, my love.)
Our aim was never to start a Bolshevik revolution. We simply wanted to have an agent provocateur, a plant, an instigator and an influence in Moscow. I guess things would one day get out of hand, for we underestimated the power of that troublesome and quite magnificent monk. We were not perfect. We never said we were, but better to be too effective than not effective at all.
‘Well, we will win,’ Orr said, ‘because they do not expect Dandylyon and Prudence here to be a connoisseur and connoisseuse of their own home-grown dark art. We shall beat them at their own game and on their own turf to boot. We shall collude with our protagonists, and antagonists, to affect who governs this land. We have learned from the Crimean War, and as The Legion discussed with your father in that honeysuckled garden outside Marylebone Station, war is a different beast now. We have to evolve to win, it is Darwinist, and our survival depends on it.’
And so, Cambridge began its lengthy fuck-feud with Russia, and I was there. We soon infiltrated her royal family, her politics, prompted her revolution and so her destiny. It was not via the obvious route of their blood relatives in Buckingham Palace, but by our new friend, the Holy Man. Our Gang of Six was formed. Russia would use this same furrowed plough of dark and secret mischief back to Cambridge many decades later. Like two mauve wizards casting spells across the Highlands, the scrap had begun.
I now stir in my Himalayan paradise to turn that tide one last time. I think of and chuckle at the eleventh commandment of spying. ‘Thou shalt not get caught.’
12 December 1895
And so we returned to England with a sense of achievement, as we had our man, it seemed. I still pondered at the impact that this peasant might have, but Dandylyon assured me that the Empire was a safer place, because of the monk’s whispered agreement in Prudence’s ear. I trusted my old friend’s wisdom implicitly.
‘It may take ten or twenty years,’ he told me. ‘But the future shall be controlled by us. In the spirit of the luscious lady who gets everything she desires, we now control our own fates. This should give you great comfort, Aleister.’
It did. And even greater excitement.
‘But what exactly did you whisper to him?’ I asked her.
‘The only thing that could possibly make sense to him.’
‘Which is what?’
She smiled.
‘Tell me! Tell me!’
‘You have to guess.’
‘It is a long journey back to Cambridge. Let’s have some real fun. Let’s see how good you will be at this lark. You have twenty questions, Perdurabo. Let’s see how this wunderkind performs.’
‘I accept the challenge.’
‘You only win if you deduce all the details,’ added Dandylyon.
‘Of course,’ I said.
I sat in the compartment of four, next to the window and faced south as we travelled out of St Petersburg. The frigid temperature outside left adequate condensation on the inside of the window, and I doodled in the smallest segment by my right hand. Prudence and Dandylyon sat opposite to me and Orr to my left. I glanced at Prudence from time to time, and wondered if she already knew I was formulating not only my answer but how to deliver it to her before Waterloo.
When we were an hour from Minsk, I sat forward with a firm intent, looked at her, and then said nothing, as if I had lifted a chess piece only to regret my intended move. I said nothing, but as they all nodded off, I concluded that her agreement with the monk revolved around sex, and so I drew genitalia on the carriage window, and as we sat stationary in Minsk, I completed the doodle by incorporating it into my signature. It would be one that would last forever.
When she woke from her nap near the Polish border, I observed her to see if she was aware of my artwork. It appeared that she was not.
Of course, Rasputin wanted to fuck her. But I needed the details. As we neared Warsaw, I concluded that she had agreed. At each node on our journey thereafter, about the time when she might ordinarily have expected one of the questions, I made another firm and silent deduction in the spirit of Holmes, Dupin and Lecoq. By Berlin, I knew that the impact of the coupling would be to cause maximum impact, for the Holy Man’s vanity was unquestionable. By Cologne, it was clear to me that maximum degradation was key too, so sodomy was involved, as was an insult to the church. Each conclusion was made with another image on the damp window. Now, there was a hangman’s noose, a crown, a throne, a crucifix, an arse and a royal palace.
I wondered briefly whether one of the Prudences had met any of the Rasputins before in a different epoch across the ages. I considered the lofty levels of ribald, mischief and cunning their antecedents might have cast across their lands. Did they share an intertwined past in the same way as Prudence had with Dandylyon? What a treasure trove of devilry and pranks that would be. I didn’t mention it.
By Brussels, I knew there also had to be maximum arousal, and by Calais, I was close to breaking my silence. But I knew there had to be a better way of simply telling my friends of my single and layered answer. And so, I executed a cheap but neat trick; one where Prudence was to find a parchment within her passport as she was questioned in our carriage by HM Customs upon entry into England. This scrap of paper bore my handwriting in an ink of her own maroon, even though I carried none upon my person, and her passport had not left her bosom. When she saw this paper, and the words Open It, Unrivalled Witch scribbled on it, she looked at me, and knew that I knew. She began to nod her head, as she rose and wiped the clues from the window, already proud of their judgement.
For the record, the words she was to find were as follows:
You have not just agreed to a buggering on the Czar’s throne! You actually crave it. And you have demanded an audience of nuns and monks as witnesses, whose group testimony shall torture the Czar at a time of His, the Monk’s, and Your choosing.
Before he read the parchment, Dandylyon had already aggressively ruffled my hair, and said, ‘Good lad.’ And laughed like a proud father.
And as we neared London, Prudence leaned forward and spoke softly just to me, ‘Yes, you’re right. Aleister. But a real genius would have offered some conjecture that one of the Prudences had met one of the Rasputins before in a different century.’
I thought of esprit de l’escalier. That most annoying of moments when we realise we had the perfect retort in an argument, but it is now moments too late to deliver it.
I said nothing to her of what I had considered earlier; that I had mulled this precise possibility, but kept silent on it.
But when I removed my shirt back at St John’s Street, I found a note, in parchment form and eerily similar to the one I had planted upon her. In fact, when I flipped it over it was the same one. It was now from her. Her words read:
Of course, a genius would have thought of a Prudence and a Rasputin coupling throughout the centuries, like soaked and rabid wolves. And I know that you did. But what is important is that a genius spy would also have said nothing, even when prompted by his loving witch. Good boy.
Back in Cambridge, life, for the immediate future, was as it had been for this Beast from day one with Pollitt. I maintained a complete disregard for the curriculum, while I cultivated the most fertile soil of my mind, my ambitions for mischief and my groin – in any and all directions. I played the fop to perfection, fooling friends, acquaintances, current and future foes, biographers, deans and publishers. The spirit of the Scarlet Pimpernel had begun to fool the imbeciles and those who were not quite a full shilling once again. I regretted less each day that I had to keep the secrets of MI-1, Rasputin and Churchill to myself, away from Pollitt. My poetry remained the simplest mask, for in those days these fools were easy to deceive, hungry as they were for insipid sentiment and putridly saccharine verse. They lapped this rubbish up.
I contemplate the wound
Stabbed in the flanks of my dear silver Christ.
He hangs in anguish there; the crown of thorns
Pierces that palest brow; the nails drip blood;
There is the wound; no Mary by Him mourns,
There is no John beside the cruel wood,
I am alone to kiss the silver lips;
I rend my clothing for the temple veil;
My heart’s black night must act the sun’s eclipse;
My groans must play the earthquake, till I quail
At my own dark imagining; and now
The wind is bitter; the air breeds snow;
I put my Christ away.
I shudder at the poem, but such is the shackle of a Scarlet Pimpernel. I understand the modern-day superhero is also bound by some moribund daily employment and must fake dopery. I suppose there is wisdom in this, and, I was discovering, much fun too.
And, as further cover for my duplicity, I soon wrote an unpublished manuscript, a weepy and sappy offering called Aceldama: A Place to Bury Strangers In. It was dedicated to Pollitt, as my Lord and Lover, even though my bed was now occupied by a potentially useful type called Oscar Eckenstein. I could still not decide whether I had enjoyed Pollitt more in men’s or women’s clothing, for he made for a stunning filly when on the stage at Footlights.21 That troop of lads, fellows and transvestites, continued, though I still could not fully expunge the thought of woman from my mind. It was my destiny to discover both to their fullest.
Eckenstein, however, was an intriguing and odd fish. He was far older than I, by sixteen years. We were bonded by our love of mountaineering and had met in the Bernese Alps in early ’97. His family was of Prussian stock, and he was thrilled to learn of my membership of the Scottish Mountaineering Club. It was a well-established myth that the English club was a rancid clique. I boasted that I despised them and that I would thrive in the meritocracy of the Scots. However, over dinner at George’s, Eckenstein confirmed my suspicions of the true motive in front of a nodding Dandylyon. In reality, the English were truly fine chaps, acted like arseholes on purpose, and secretly encouraged agents provocateurs, such as I, to join the Scots, who, despite their presence on our British rock and their blue on the Union flag, still harboured rebellious tendencies that stretched back to the Tudor alliances and beyond. German spies were also well known (and covertly encouraged) to pierce the Scottish Mountaineering Club in Switzerland, usually through the joyous vices of sodomy and blackmail.
And so, I had therefore been ‘placed’ initially by the English (Prudence, Orr, Dandylyon, Churchill et al.) as a pioneering black pawn, then a flanking rook, and latterly an offensive queen to maraud, do my duty and cause bloody havoc within the Scottish club. It should be remembered that the air is so thin up in the Swiss peaks that the minutely affected opponent is devoured, especially when I was the disarming nitwit fop, reading (or even worse writing) poetry and practising yoga. This would be fun.
It was now 1899 and a rebellious and excited fizz could be sensed on the streets of London and of the cerebral Cambridge. Life was a procession of Dorian Grays and naughty girls, self-pollution was never a choice. My days were also fakery, acting, espionage, opium and cocaine, invocations and ancient runes. I would soon be leaving university without a degree, having learned infinitely more than the clods and nitwits in gowns. I was following my own star within the Golden Dawn; a dark inspection of the continuum that runs between alchemy, meditation, science, love and magick, melded together by powerful intoxicants that would soon convince me and especially my followers of its own truth.
Those who thought they observed me saw a rich, young poet–scholar, full of his own bluster. Not one of them was surprised, or perhaps even cared, when I announced that my next step was to go up to London to meet Royalty. But it was true.
The burden of bought boys. Behold, dear Lord,
How plump their buttocks be, lift up Thine eyes,
See how their cocks stand at an amorous word,
How their lips suck out life until love dies,
See, Lord, Thou knowest, how wearily one lies
Cursing the lusts that fail, the deeds that tire;
Shrunk is San Cresce to a sorry size.
This is the end of every man’s desire.
– White Stains, Aleister Crowley
9 The Golden Dawn was a magical organisation that studied the Occult, metaphysics and paranormal activities. It was masonic in nature, and highly ritualised, even to the point of the comical in the eyes of some laymen. It scared the shit out of others. Its teachings draw from Egyptian, Qaballah, Tarot, Enochian Magic and Alchemy. We drew on the spirits of Egyptian gods like Isis, Osiris and Horus. There is much dressing up and many frilly pronouncements. Fools mistake it for Black Magic. It is closer to the Wiccan and to both nature and science. It now stands forever in the shade of my then-future and glorious iteration of this sloppy, self-regarding and unctuous lot – my very own Church of Thelema.
10 This was to be my magical motto within the sect. Frater (brother) Perdurabo (I shall endure to the end). A more apt moniker they could not have mustered.
11 Ever since 1592, when they were apparently first uttered from an aged manuscript by the luckless Sir Lucius Guenchen, who went quite mad the next day, and only deteriorated thereafter to a slow and ungainly end.
12 Alexander Graham Bell’s Volta Laboratories had introduced the first tape-recording machine several years earlier.
13 Lecoq’s nickname, and a literal translation.
14 Roman philosopher, dramatist, statesman and humourist (4 BC–AD 65).
15 ‘He who is everywhere is nowhere. When a person spends all of his time in foreign travel, he ends by having many acquaintances, but no friends.’
16 For the filthy mill town of Oldham, near Manchester.
17 When this astonishing volume was first published, some fuckers burned down the printers and every copy of Green Alps and ‘At Stockholm’ with it.
18 Wilde’s publisher, filthy sketch artist and pornographer.
19 This was a Russian chapter of the Golden Dawn. The Order, despite being an ancient one, was most progressive in its acceptance of ladies. Cynics might have suggested it boosted the sexual permutations, but have they never heard of trustworthy whores, never mind beguiling witches, armed with centuries of inherited wisdom?
20 Churchill.
21 Cambridge’s revered amateur dramatics and comedy stage.