Confessions of Aleister Crowley

567 splendid chance of building up a circulation in the States?" But he wouldn't see it. He dropped the whole thing. I made one other suggestion --- to try to get readers among occult students. I arranged a scheme of co-operation with the Occult Review. Ralph Shirley was enthusiastic and willing to help in every possible way. But Harrison never liked the scheme. His ignorance of the importance of the occult public was not merely complete, but invulnerable to all information. I gave him the figures. I proved that for one person who cared for poetry, there were at least a thousand whose only form of reading was spiritualism, theosophy, psychical research, Magick, Yoga, mysticism, Christian Science, and its congeners, occult freemasonry, etc., etc., ad libitum. He flatly refused to admit the facts. I begged him to try it out, if only by asking a few dozen strangers what they themselves cared to read. His very secretaries rose up against him and confirmed my statement. It was useless. His own objection to the occult was so strong, that he deliberately shut his eyes to the facts; even the vogue of Conan Doyle's senile dementia did not move him. And that is the end of that. I have not seen the English Review this year. I can only suppose that it has dropped back after the spurt of last summer into its regular ditch-water dullness, if indeed it has not passed away altogether by that kind of passing away which leaves nothing whatever behind. My third string was to publish new books. Sullivan had suggested my trying Grant Richards, firstly with a plan for marketing the existing stock, and secondly with a proposal to write my memoirs. He promised to put in a good word for me as he knew Grant Richards well and was influential as being a man of sound business and literary judgment. I therefore called {895} and made my proposals. But after some consideration, Grant Richards could not see his way to accept my terms. I think we were both reluctant to part; and one night I was inspired to try him with a third artificial minnow. I would write a shocker on the subject which was catering to the hysteria and pururience of the sex-crazed public: the drug traffic insanity. It provided a much needed variation from the "white slave" traffic. I proposed as a title The Diary of a Drug Fiend and sketched out a synopsis of its contents on a sheet of notepaper. This was mostly bluff. I had not really any clear idea of my story. I took this round to Grant Richards, who said it was not in his line. I asked him to suggest a likely firm. He said Hutchinson or Collins. Neither name meant anything to me. I gave Collins the first chance simply because he was on my way home. Invited to interview the responsible man, I found myself wondering who he was --- I had surely met him before. He shared my feeling and was the first to discover the source. Over fifteen years earlier he had been on the staff of a paper called What's On belonging to my old acquaintance Robert Haslam and at one time edited by poor crazy Dartnell. The gods had certainly started a new drama. The accident of this man, J. D. Beresford his name is, being the literary advisor of Collins probably made all the difference to the fate of the book. The synopsis was accepted enthusiastically and I obtained the pledges of money and advances, as per the "Yi" forecast, to the extend of a sixty-pound advance and a contract on much better terms than a new author could have hoped. I contracted to deliver the manuscript within a month. My idea was to rush the book through as a suitable for holiday reading. I wired to Paris for the Ape, who hurried over. We sat down at once to work. She takes my dictation in long hand, and it was therefore some "stunt" to have written the 121,000 words in 27 days, 12 3/4 hours. Mrs Marshall, the best typist I ever employed --- she had worked for me off and on since '98 --- could hardly believe her eyes as one stack of manuscript came tumbling on the top of another. It gave me a chance to boost the Law of Thelema. I was able to show how the application of the principles increases efficiency as the profane deem impossible. Beresford was delighted with the manuscript and in high hopes of making a big hit. Unfortunately, my plan for publishing the book in August was not adopted. For various reasons they kept it hanging about till November. This annoyed me greatly. I expected its publication to arouse a tempest in the