Confessions of Aleister Crowley

379 saw that I was really ill and made me lie down on the sofa in the combination smoking-room and conservatory, and went to get shawls to cover me up. As she bent over me to arrange them, the door opened and Ganggs walked in with his eternal bicycle. He jumped to the false conclusion that she was kissing me -- (God forbid!) --- and started a row. I was really too ill to do more than look on lazily, with amused contempt; but after half an hour of recriminations, Gnaggs went out to telegraph to her father, his lawyer and several possible allies. She followed him out. {607} 1. WEH Note: Another artificial name, this time based on that dread but largely trivial eruptive inflammation. The remaining names are suggestive as well: "Clyster" = enema. Mercury and Iodine were then used to treat sexual and skin diseases. "Hyde" can be taken as a pun for hidding = a beating or for skin. "Knocks" = blows. "Phthisis" = a wasting disease. "Gnaggs" of course is a pun for "nags". Two minutes later I heard her scream for help. I ran out and found that he had got her by the throat. On seeing me he let her go; she ran screaming into the house. He followed, swearing to kill her. I made a beeline for the drawing-room poker, but the room was so full of trumpery ornaments that there was no room to swing it. So we clinched. We fought our way to the hall. I finally got him down on the staircase. He kicked the balustrade to splinters; but I held on. Luckily, his hair was very long, so that I could knock his head on the edge of a stair whenever he tried to break away. I begged Mrs Gnaggs and the servants to send for help, but they were much too interested in watching the scrap. I had to hold him down for an hour and a half when another guest turned up and restored peace. We sat down to dinner perfectly good friends. On second thoughts he realized that his suspicions had been absurd. But his wife got hot as he got cool. During the meal she tried to kill him, first by throwing the soup tureen and a few dishes at him across the table, and secondly with the carving knife. It was one of the most delightful dinners I ever ate. The story has no sequel. They squabbled and scrapped and scratched for some years, and then went, first to Canada, then to California, and squabbled and scratched some more. They are back in England now, separated most of the time, and only meeting when they feel they would like to squabble and scrap and scratch some more. He is madder than ever, and she has developed into a large lump of dough. She has caught his complaint, and divides her time between drunken orgies with any loose fish she can find, and passionate protestations that she is utterly pure. I really believe she persuades herself that the other half of her life does not exist. To me both extremes seem equally the debauches of an unbalanced and uncontrolled emotionalism. This view is confirmed by the fact that as she advanced in flabbiness, fat and the forties, she found it harder to attract men, and took to spasms of spiritualism. She raves about her "Guides" and explains the most natural events of life as parts of various portentous plans prepared by people "from the other side". On August 22nd the spirit suddenly sprang up in my soul like a serpent and bade me testify to the truth that was in me in poetry. I knew London would stifle me and rushed down to Maidenhead. I spent three days in a canoe, chiefly in the reach under the wier by Boulter's Lock. .............Choose tenderly A place for thine Academy. Let there be an holy wood Of embowered solitude By the still, the rainless river, {608}