Where was Crowley finding all these women? Postcards in newsagents’ windows (“French Lessons”, “Model”, “Seats Caned” and the rest) have been a well-known London contact device (particularly after the Wolfenden Report advised taking prostitution off the streets, leading to the 1959 Street Offences Act) but in the first half of the century and before there was also a considerable trade on the street and in parks, particularly Hyde Park: “Bayswater Road, Hyde Park, Pimlico and the West End were seen as trouble spots, and the police had to respond to complaints from the public in these areas”, leading to a crackdown in 1951. Hyde Park women were routinely arrested and fined, almost on a rota system, but to minimise this, and give minimum offence to the general public, they solicited as discreetly as possible with a nod, a “good evening”, or a meaningful glance.
Hyde Park was one of Crowley's regular beats: “Shikar in park” he writes one night in 1940 (Shikar is an Anglo-Indian word, from Urdu, meaning to go on a hunt or a hunting expedition) and he refers to being on a bus with a “Hyde Park grasshopper” (grasshopper was German slang for a prostitute, particularly an outdoor one, from his Berlin days). He continued to seek Maisie in the park as her regular place even after he knew her, and if he couldn't find her or she declined him he might end up with someone else (“Emmy”, or “Jessie Moran”). But shikars, in the park and elsewhere, were not always successful and he sometimes records “n.g.” [no good] (“To park, late. N.G.”) and shikars “in vain”, “futile” or “fruitless.” It was far from perfect, and when he went back to doing it after a break (“walked miles”) it struck him “Stupidity of the park stands out immediately after an interval.”
These safaris didn't have to be green and leafy. During the war he had a “Long shikar: Euston Road, Edgware Road, Marble Arch, the Dell” (the Dell, by the Serpentine, brings us back to the park). And on another occasion, failing to find a woman named Ruby Butler (“the Blonde Bombshell”), he set out on a definite quest:
Found Ruby at Hop Poles. 40B Vereker Road.
Pubs were another obvious hunting ground (“9.30 Fitzroy, on shikar”). He looked for women at the Swan in Hammersmith, a large Victorian pub with a dark wooden interior, and saw Ruby Butler, and on another occasion had a drink there with Rollo Ahmed and a Helen Fields (“huge lunar cow”). The Swan is still very much there, by Hammersmith tube station, as is the Hop Poles, another intact Victorian pub slightly further down King Street on the other side of the road. “Very disappointing shikar,” he writes one night, “ending in an actual row at the Hop Poles.”