ALEISTER CROWLEY IN MAIDENHEAD
BY
BARRY VAN-ASTEN
During the Easter vacation of 1898 when Crowley was an undergraduate of Trinity College, Cambridge, he travelled alone to The Bear Hotel, Maidenhead, to complete his poem 'Jezebel'.
The Bear Hotel, High Street, Maidenhead
Crowley was reaching a spiritual crisis; he had become romantically involved with a man named Herbert Charles Jerome Pollitt (1872-1942) whom he met at Cambridge towards the end of the October term 1897 when Pollitt, a female impersonator was performing with the Footlights Dramatic Club. The two men seemed to hit it off from the start and saw each other a couple of times over the remaining months of 1897. Crowley is in Amsterdam during December (his poem 'The Goad' is written there on Thursday 23rd December 1897) and a chain of romantic letters flow between Crowley and Pollitt. Not long after this explosion of romantic desire, they meet on New Year's Eve, Friday 31st December 1897, at of all places, The Queen's Hotel, Stephenson Street, Birmingham (the hotel is no longer there and was attached to New Street Station). On their first meeting in the reception lobby Crowley feels a little disappointed at Pollitt's less than romantic greeting and after dinner they retire to their rooms; Crowley sits in Pollitt's room talking endlessly around eleven p.m. and no doubt share a New Year greeting until Crowley feeling tired retires to his room just before midnight; just before that accursed hour that signals the death of the old year and the beginning of the new, Pollitt enters Crowley's room and seduces him for the first time.
During the Easter term of 1898, (Crowley had moved into new rooms at Cambridge, 14 Trinity Street in January), Pollitt was in residence at Cambridge and they saw each other almost every day. Crowley spent the Easter vacation with Pollitt in Wastdale, walking the fells, but it was becoming clear to Crowley that there was very little they had in common between them! They stayed at The Wastdale Head Inn from 14th March-18th April 1898.
A later image of The Bear Hotel
Crowley spent much of his time reading, especially 'The Cloud Upon the Sanctuary' by Karl von Eckartshausen, published in 1896 and no matter how much he tried he could not persuade Pollitt, with whom Crowley had his 'first intimate friendship', to attempt any climbing, something as dear to Crowley's heart as poetry, in fact, Pollitt must have been thoroughly bored by the experience, he had no interest in Crowley's spiritual aspirations, which were indeed hostile to Pollitt or his poetry and must also have realised that the relationship was unlikely to go much further. 'Pollitt was perhaps the first man who enabled Crowley to indulge his feminine feelings in a straight forward sexual sense'. ('The Great Beast'. The High Magick Art. John Symonds.) Perhaps Crowley's sado-masochistic desires were beginning to bloom as Pollitt introduced him to the artists and authors of the Decadent movement - 'I lived with Pollitt as his wife for some six months and he made a poet out of me.'
The Bear Hotel today
'I had gone down to the Bear at Maidenhead, on the quiet, to write 'Jezebel'. I only told one person - in strict confidence - where I was going; but Pollitt found out that person and forced him to tell my secret. He walked into the room shortly after dinner, to my surprise and rage - for when I am writing a poem I would show Azrael himself the door!
I told him firmly that I had given my life to religion and that he did not fit into the scheme.'
The famous Bear frontage
'He understood that I was not to be turned from my purpose and we parted, never to meet again. I repented of my decision, my eyes having been enlightened, only a little later, but the reconciliation was not written! My letter miscarried; and in the autumn, when he passed me in Bond Street, I happened not to see him; he thought I meant to cut him and our destinies drew apart.' (The Confessions of Aleister Crowley. Chapter 17)
In chapter 29 of 'Not the Life of Sir Roger Bloxam', written by Crowley, he says that he wrote and posted the letter from the Gare de Lyon; with some romantic notion Crowley chose not to take his degree from Cambridge and in the summer of 1898 went climbing in Zermat, Switzerland.
'It has been my life long regret, for a nobler and purer comradeship never existed on this earth, and his influence might have done much to temper my subsequent trials.' (The Confessions).
Aleister Crowley also travelled to the Thames Valley during late summer 1909 when he was in the midst of divorce proceeding from his wife Rose. Again he was in Maidenhead - 'On August 22nd [1909] 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 weir by Boulter's Lock.' (The Confessions. Chapter 65)
The Weir at Boulter's Lock
It was here in his canoe that Crowley composed his poem 'Aha' in a white-hot marathon of 60 hours!
The poem is a dialogue between a teacher named Marsyas (Crowley) and a pupil named Olympas.
The poem encompasses many diverse spiritual states and principles of initiation and shows Crowley's forced concentration at a time in his life which was personally difficult (the loss of his child and his separation and divorce from Rose) and his spiritual growth (his magical attainments and the re-discovery of the manuscript Liber Al vel Legis at his home, Boleskine House, Scotland, which was 'given' to him in April 1904 and he thought had been lost forever! But perhaps Maidenhead would remain in Crowley's heart as the place where the 'first intimate friend' of his whole life was lost!
