As Related by Sylvia Beach

from

SHAKESPEARE AND COMPANY

Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc., 1959

(page 94)

Hardly a day passed without another visitor bringing his manuscript and sometimes a backer, who, in the case of Aleicester [sic] (pronounced Alester) Crowley was as peculiar as he sounded in the tales told of him, and, of course, in his own Diary of a Drug Fiend. His clay-coloured head was bald except for a single strand of black hair stretching from his forehead over the top of his head and down to the nape of his neck. The strand seemed glued to the skin so that it was not likely to blow up in the wind. A self-mummified-looking man, he was rather repulsive. My acquaintance with him was brief. I wondered, looking at him, whether what some of my English friends hinted was true—that he was in the Intelligence Service. I thought someone less conspicuous might have been chosen.

The monks in the monastery on Mount Athos, Black Masses, and so on—all of these were in Crowley's books. The billygoat and the Oxford student, I hope, were inventions of others; he never mentioned them.

It was quite alarming to see the blonde lady open a portfolio and produce a prospectus announcing the "Forthcoming Memoirs of Aleicester Crowley" [The Confessions of Aleister Crowley] under my imprint and the draft of a contract with Shakespeare and Company requiring only a signature. Everything had been taken care of in advance, even to the provision that Shakespeare and Company turn over 50 per cent of the book's earnings to Mr. Crowley, and give him our mailing list as well!