In August 1939 the Richmond period of Crowley's life began: “I have been guarding the Holy Grail in Richmond,” he later wrote to Yorke. Lady Harris had a rented flat in this famously pleasant southwestern district at number 3 The Paragon, 57 Petersham Road, and Crowley had already been there: “delightful lunch in sunlit room overlooking the river.” It was in the telephone book under the name of Chutney, from her pseudonym Jesus Chutney.
She lent it to him, and on 5 August 1939 he moved into a high room at the back of the building: “lovely flat, big windows, high above Thames”. The next day he had two friends round for lunch, Hamilton and Louis Umfreville Wilkinson, for what he called “Nuncheon”, an archaic word for a light midday snack. Crowley wrote up a little menu card for the occasion, typical of his sense of fun and the trouble he could go to for friends.
The idea that it was just Nuncheon may have been a modest little joke: it was a heavy lunch by any standards, with a starter followed by roast beef, Yorkshire pudding and two veg, all washed down with a serious Burgundy (a 1933 Gevrey Chambertin) then tiger melon and a cheese course before coffee and cognac. The starter was his own “Zakowski Louis LXIX”, for which his recipe was “Herring Roes, Anchovies, Balachow, Curry powder, Red and Green Chillis cooked in butter. Serve hot on fried bread.”
One night he had Tom Driberg round to the Paragon for curry, when Driberg played what he admits was “rather a mean trick”. Unknown to Crowley, he had come into possession of a lost Crowley item (left behind with a landlady, according to Driberg, “either as payment in lieu of rent or in the course of a moonlight flit”). It was a little square book, “bound in red morocco and encased in baroque silver which must have held a missal or breviary” and it contained a Crowley diary.
Crowley would sometimes draw a little pentagram, then ask Driberg to look at the space in the centre and tell him what he could see. Driberg never saw anything. But this time he started speaking in an entranced voice, saying he could see a little book, with red leather, and shining baroque silver, and some writing inside which he couldn't quite read…
I had never seen Crowley so staggered: he leaned forward in desperate eagerness. ”Go on,” he said, “go on.” But the vision faded. Try again, he pleaded. “No” I said. I can't see anything more…
Driberg never let on, and years later he sold it to Jimmy Page.
Other events in the Paragon era include the appearance of Crowley's last significant sexual partner, Alice Speller (more about her later) and – no less important – the start of the Second World War.