In May 1938 a man called John Jameson wrote to Crowley, and they had lunch. He was a young actor who suffered from stage fright, and Crowley took him on as a student. Jameson had money, and Crowley saw him as a possible financial backer for various projects including rejuvenation pills and a stage production of Mortadello. In the summer of 1938 he went on tour and sublet his flat at number 6 Hasker Street to Crowley, precipitating a discreet flit from Manor Place.
Crowley had bad dreams at Hasker Street, and blamed them on the Book of Abramelin: “Two or three really bad nightmares. I am a fool to sleep with Abramelin in the room, as I have for some 4 or 5 days.” The following night was no better: “Another terrific nightmare. Removed Abramelin. (This was a ‘double-decker’ dream: i.e. one in which one dreams that one wakes & checks up on the dream, & finds it true!)” 1
Frieda brought Sir Percy here to meet Crowley and talk about politics, and Pearl was still visiting as a friend, but meanwhile Crowley had met a new woman, housekeeper Peggy Wetton, who became his primary partner and moved in with him. This had all fallen apart in drink, madness and jealousy by the time they moved out. It was like Pearl all over again (and it was the same horrible formula, living with a highly strung woman who drinks and then making her jealous).
“Kempinski A.1 wild duck with Louis Wilkinson; back to 6 [Hasker Street] to enjoy 1827 Brandy & Peggy's ravings”
“Peggy hopelessly drunk again”
“An admirable dinner: my prawns now perfect. Peggy raving & weeping most of P.M.”
Peggy was unlucky with accidents. One evening in November, Crowley asked her to fetch the Evening Standard so he could find the time of the news on the wireless, and she went out only to smell something burning. Opening the stove, it exploded into a fat fire, and as she got the dish out with a wet cloth she was badly burned on her right arm and hand (and, Crowley noted, “utterly heroic and unselfish”).
After a Dr Cosgrove said they should wait 24 hours and see how it developed, she was taken into Charing Cross Hospital for what turned out to be ten days; she made a violent scene about being kept in. “The day was curiously peaceful,” Crowley noted that Saturday at Hasker Street: “One must not have women about.” After ten days she was discharged, but then admitted a couple of days later to St. Lukes, Muswell Hill; this was a psychiatric hospital (“a positive paradise for Peggy”) where Charing Cross may have recommended assessment.
Meanwhile Crowley was involved with several other women, including a Norah Knott (“She has a complex or fixation, but is as nymphomaniac as Peggy”) who did some secretarial work for him. This is almost certainly the Norah Knott who had been secretary to the Reverend Harold Davidson, disgraced for his relations with prostitutes, who ended up as a circus performer and met his end after being mauled by a lion. Like Crowley he was an extrovert public figure (in his performances he acted out being roasted on a spit by the devil) and he had recently died, in June 1937.
Crowley also had a couple of works with Pat Harvey and, most notably, on the day Peggy went into hospital, a woman called Josephine Blackley (more about her shortly): this was “Wunderschon!” [wonderful] and it was done with the intention of healing Peggy's arm, to which end he put some elixir (mingled fluids) on the right arm of Peggy's dressing gown.
There has been a widely noted ‘psychologization’ of twentieth-century magic, which Crowley spearheaded with ‘The Initiated Interpretation of Ceremonial Magic’ back in 1904. In it, he argues that when an old magical grimoire talks of evoking a demon who finds money, this really means stimulating the part of the brain that governs business ability. In line with this, much of his sex-magical activity (for his own health, or for a creative endeavour, or for giving a good talk) is within the realm of motivation, confidence, and inspiration, along with more nebulously causal but still partly self-determined areas such as ‘luck’ or ‘prosperity’ or success with another woman. But, like his works with Maisie to bring on the Second World War, his opus with Josephine Blackley and the arm of Peggy's dressing gown is notable not only for its generosity – although it might not be a generosity Peggy would have appreciated – but for its fully supernatural expectations.
There was more love interest during the Hasker Street period with Marie-Louise Draghici, a sometime dressmaker (at one point she had or was involved with a lingerie business at 77 Baker Street) who lived at 48 Chepstow Villas, not far from Phyllis Wakeford: Crowley performed a couple of works with Maisie Clarke intended to “get” Marie-Louise,2 but their relationship petered out in social engagements and lunches, including lunch with Peggy, who fell down the steps at number 48 as they were leaving.
Crowley was well dug in at Hasker Street for about eight months, and he had a letterhead printed there with “666”. But eventually young Jameson wanted his flat back. In February 1939 he wanted Crowley and Peggy out, and it came to conflict:
John Jameson shows heroic rage
Against sick men of thrice his age.
Against sick women in his care,
Frieda Harris helped Crowley look for new lodgings, and in the last week of February 1939 he moved out.