ADONIS
THE CEFALU POET
By
Barry Van-Asten
Raoul Loveday
‘Loveday,
when he was a scholar of St John’s College, Oxford, was a stocky, untidy,
carelessly dressed young man. Beneath his short hair, which was cut en brosse, he had a merry rather than a
good-looking face, with bright blue eyes of incredible innocence.
He was a
good soccer player and a spectacular climber. After the college gates were
closed at midnight, he regularly climbed in and out. His feat of climbing the Martyrs’
Memorial and cementing an enamel chamber-pot to the top won him a romantic fame
throughout the university.’
[The
Magic of my Youth. The Adonis of Cefalu.
Arthur Calder-Marshall. 1950. p. 110.]
Frederick Charles Loveday was born
in Rangoon on 3rd July 1900 and he was christened sixteen days later. He was
one of three children [Frederick had two sisters named Nellie and May] to
George Loveday (born 1859) a Royal Navy Petty Officer and Amelia Ann Lewendon
(born 21st January 1859) in Newington, Surrey. George and Ann were married on
1st October 1882 at St Saviour’s Church, Denmark Park, Middlesex.
As a child in Rangoon, young
‘Raoul’ caught malaria and when the family moved to England, they lived at 112
Barry Road, East Dulwich, South London.
On 2nd August 1918 eighteen year old ‘Raoul’
enlisted in the Officers Training Corps at London’s Inns of Court, a volunteer
battalion and part of London’s Territorial Force in Berkhamsted, Berkshire,
from September 1914-June 1919.
Following this he became an undergraduate of St
John’s College, Oxford where he studied History and enjoyed writing poetry and
playing football. It was here that his interest in the occult began. He was
also a member of the Hypocrites Club, a philosophical discussion group at
Oxford University and Raoul became the club’s secretary. The club was founded in 1921 and they met at rooms in a house in St Aldates; the club was closed in May 1925. On one occasion while
Raoul was out of college after hours he tried to climb back in but slipped and
impaled his thigh on an iron gate railing. He left Oxford in 1922, graduating
with a 1st Class Degree in History.
In Oxford Raoul was living at 2 London Place, St
Clemente and in 1922 he married Betty May; they had met at Soho's 'Harlequin
Club' some weeks previous to their marriage.
Betty May
Betty May was born Bessie Golding in 1894 in
London’s Limehouse and she was the daughter of George Golding.
Betty became an artist’s model and she had been living in Paris and was
frequently using drugs, mostly cocaine. Her first husband, Miles L Atkinson
(they married at St Marylebone, London in the summer of 1914) was a drug addict
and after he died Betty married George D K Waldron at St Martin’s in London
during the autumn of 1916. George divorced Betty because of her drug use.
Betty and Raoul were married at the Registry
Office in Oxford in September 1922 and a photo of the couple was taken in St
John’s College gardens. In October 1922 the young couple were living in Fitzroy
Street.
At Oxford, Raoul had been studying The Equinox
from 1920 until he graduated in 1922, the same year that Raoul met Betty Bickers,
the wife of Sheridan Bickers who contributed to The Equinox. It was through
Bickers that Roaul met Aleister Crowley as he was staying with Bickers at her
home 31 Wellington Square, London. Raoul called on Crowley alone and did not
return home to Beak Street, Soho and to his wife Betty, in fact he spent three
days with Crowley, taking ether. Betty had already met Crowley in 1914 at the
Cafe Royal and was decidedly unimpressed with the magician. It wasn’t long
after the great meeting of Raoul and Crowley that the younger man lost all
ambition in having an academic career and his mind became obsessed with Crowley
and the study of magick. Seeing the huge potential Raoul had for magick,
Crowley invited him (and Betty) to the Abbey of Thelema in Cefalu.
In mid October 1922 Crowley departed for Cefalu, stopping off in Rome where he wrote to Raoul: 'I hope you will come p.d.q. and bring Betty. I honestly tell you that the best hope for your married life is to get out of the sordid atmosphere of 'Bohemian London...' By 4th November Crowley was at his Abbey.
In mid October 1922 Crowley departed for Cefalu, stopping off in Rome where he wrote to Raoul: 'I hope you will come p.d.q. and bring Betty. I honestly tell you that the best hope for your married life is to get out of the sordid atmosphere of 'Bohemian London...' By 4th November Crowley was at his Abbey.
A magician named Robinson Smith, a retired concert
agent whom Crowley met at Austin Harrison's house at Seaford, paid the
Loveday's fare to Cefalu. After Raoul and Betty visited Nina Hamnett
(1890-1956) in Paris, they travelled to the Abbey, arriving on Sunday 26th
November 1922. The next day, Monday 27th November, Crowley assisted Raoul
and Betty as they climbed the Great Rock of Cefalu.
For the next few weeks Raoul studied his magical
work performing the Lesser Banishing Ritual daily and some visionary work which
he showed great progress in. At the Abbey, Raoul acted as the High Priest
during ritual work.
Raoul became a Probationer of
Crowley’s Magical Order the A∴A∴ and he took the magical name
Frater Aud (Magic Light) at the winter Solstice [Friday 22nd December]. Betty
didn’t enjoy life at the Abbey, finding it dirty and she could not get on with
Crowley or Ninette Shumway.
Crowley and Leah with the children at the Abbey
One day, Betty and
Raoul went for a long walk to visit a nearby monastery and after Crowley told
them not to drink the water but Raoul with great thirst drank from a spring.
During the beginning of February, Raoul was struck by malaria and was very
weak. 'On Saturday morning, 10th February, the Virgin Guardian of the Sangraal
[the Scarlet Woman, Leah Hirsig] returned from shopping in the town and found
Crowley, Betty, Ninette, Jane, and Raoul assembled in the courtyard. A violent
quarrel between Betty and Ninette was in progress. Crowley took Betty's side.
Jane listened in silence. Raoul was too ill to say anything. Finally, the row,
which had risen out of Betty's calling Ninette a slut, simmered down, and
everyone fell in with the Beast's call for greater discipline in the Abbey.'
[The Great Beast. John Symonds]
The next day, the
evening of Sunday 11th February, Betty left the Abbey and asked Raoul to send
her passport the following day. Crowley had found her reading a newspaper which was strictly forbidden at the Abbey. Betty went to Palermo. Raoul wrote a letter to Betty to persuade her
to return:
'My most dear Betty,
Let us try to get all
this silly business finished. We managed to get on well enough till a few days
ago. If you will come back to the Abbey and get yourself under control, and do
as I tell you, you will find that things will be all right. Certainly no one
wants you to stay away. I won't go to the hospital because the nuns there are
mere ornaments and in any case I am not in a fit state to be moved. Moreover, I
don't want to go - and I won't. Write me a note saying if you will come back.
If you won't you had better send for your bag. There is no one here to take it.
But be a good girl and come.
Also on the same day, Sunday 11th February, Raoul wrote a letter to his parents which Betty posted for him, the letter explained that he had been suffering from malaria for 'about ten days now and it has left me as weak as water. As you see I have had to get Betty to write this letter for me. The doctor here is giving me various things but I do not seem to be making much headway. I trust, however, that by the time you get this letter I shall be quite well. Betty, herself has been unable to keep anything in her stomach for the last week but I think she is just on the turn now. I believe that the air or the water or something here, perhaps the place, does not agree with me.'
Always yours,
Raoul.'
[The Great Beast. John Symonds]
Also on the same day, Sunday 11th February, Raoul wrote a letter to his parents which Betty posted for him, the letter explained that he had been suffering from malaria for 'about ten days now and it has left me as weak as water. As you see I have had to get Betty to write this letter for me. The doctor here is giving me various things but I do not seem to be making much headway. I trust, however, that by the time you get this letter I shall be quite well. Betty, herself has been unable to keep anything in her stomach for the last week but I think she is just on the turn now. I believe that the air or the water or something here, perhaps the place, does not agree with me.'
Jane [Wolfe] called
on Betty at the Hotel in Cefalu the next day, Monday 12th February, and a
little later at 11 a.m. Leah Hirsig turned up with Raoul's letter and so Betty returned to
the Abbey that day sometime after noon to be with her husband, Raoul.
Jane Wolfe and Leah Hirsig at the Abbey
On Tuesday 13th
February Crowley recorded in his diary that he felt 'a current of Magical Force
- heavy, black and silent - threatening the Abbey.' [The Great Beast. John
Symonds] But the next day [Wednesday] Raoul became much worse and Dr Maggio was
called for and he diagnosed acute enteritis. Crowley sent a telegram to Raoul's
parents explaining his condition. Raoul Loveday, ‘Frater Aud’ died of enteritis
on Friday 16th February 1923 at 4 p.m. at the Abbey of Thelema. He was swiftly
placed into a coffin, about an hour after his death and that night the coffin
was placed in an outhouse while Crowley kept vigil over it all night, uttering
prayers for the young Thelemite. He was buried the next day [Saturday 17th
February] outside the Catholic cemetery in non consecrated ground. Crowley led
the proceedings for Raoul’s ‘Greater Feast’ with Betty, Jane [Wolfe], Ninette
[Shumway], Leah and Leah's son Howard in attendance. Raoul was the first
Thelemite to die in the Aeon of Horus. His parents later had his body exhumed
and brought back to England for re-burial. Following the funeral, Crowley retired to his bed where he remained for a month suffering sickness and fever.
Betty May left Cefalu on Tuesday 20th February and returned to England. Her fare was paid by the British Consul at Palermo.
On Friday 23rd February Crowley writes a letter to his friend and follower, Frank Bennett - Frater Progradior, saying that he has 'been quite seriously ill for 6 weeks or more, only on one or two days able to leave my bed. My principle assistant here, Frater AUD, a boy of 22, the most brilliantly promising magician I ever even dreamt of, came here on Nov. 26 and died last Friday. It is an absolute knock-down blow. I had built the greatest hopes on him as a helper. He had just come down from Oxford with First Class honours in History, he understood the Law, the principles of Magick and Yoga almost, as it were, by instinct.'
The hearse which took Raoul to the cemetery.
Inset: Kenneth Anger at the Abbey in 1955
The hearse once more! Picture Post. 1955
Betty May left Cefalu on Tuesday 20th February and returned to England. Her fare was paid by the British Consul at Palermo.
On Friday 23rd February Crowley writes a letter to his friend and follower, Frank Bennett - Frater Progradior, saying that he has 'been quite seriously ill for 6 weeks or more, only on one or two days able to leave my bed. My principle assistant here, Frater AUD, a boy of 22, the most brilliantly promising magician I ever even dreamt of, came here on Nov. 26 and died last Friday. It is an absolute knock-down blow. I had built the greatest hopes on him as a helper. He had just come down from Oxford with First Class honours in History, he understood the Law, the principles of Magick and Yoga almost, as it were, by instinct.'
On Sunday 22nd April
1923 following the arrival of Norman Mudd that day came two Oxford undergraduates
named John Pinney, of Christ Church and Claud Bosanquet of New College. They
came to investigate the Abbey following the death of their friend and fellow
student Raoul Loveday, whom they believed may have died under suspicious
circumstances. They stayed for three nights and had a delightful time climbing
with Crowley and found no truth in the claims of wickedness at the Abbey. On
Wednesday 25th February 1925 the front page of the Sunday Express had the
headline: 'New Sinister Revelations of Aleister Crowley' and Betty May was
laying the blame for Raoul's death at Crowley's door!
In 1929 Betty May
published her autobiography ‘Tiger-Woman: My Story’. Sometime in the
nineteen-thirties Betty married again and was Betty May Sedgwick living in
Hampstead and in the nineteen-fifties there was a fifth and final marriage to a
gentleman named Bailey.
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law
Love is the law, love under will
Having read so much about the poet and disciple of Aleister Crowley, Raoul
Loveday (1900-1923) and found much of it inaccurate or incomplete I decided to
research the Loveday family and to create an embryonic tree perhaps for future
research and reference. The first port of call was to the census!
In the
1911 census the Loveday family are living in Camberwell, East Dulwich. The head
of the household is George Loveday, aged 50, born 1859 in Lambeth, London, a
‘Naval Pensioner’. His wife, Amelia Loveday nee Lewendon, is also 50 years old,
born 1859 in Newington, London (although she is entered as ‘Southwark’ on the
census). Daughters Nellie, aged 15, born 1895 in ‘Portsmouth’, ‘an apprentice’,
and May, aged 14, born 1896 in ‘Portsmouth’ and is a ‘pupil attending school’.
Then we find young Frederick Charles Loveday, aged 10, born in Rangoon, Burma,
also a ‘pupil attending school’. The Lovedays have two boarders staying with
them: Alice Hardy aged 40, a widow born in Mogi Japan listed as a ‘visitor’,
and Cecil H Hardy aged 17, born in Ivybridge, Devonshire, who is a ‘boy clerk’.
We can assume that the Lovedays were not in England for the 1901 census and so
we turn to the Lewendon family:
In the
1861 census we find the family living at Forty Acres, Kingston, Surrey. Charles
Lewendon, the head of the household is 33 years old, born 1828 at Whitechurch,
Oxfordshire and he is a bricklayer by profession. His wife Sarah is 30 years
old, born in 1831 in Kingston, Surrey. They have three daughters: Elizabeth
aged 9, born in 1852 in Kingston, Surrey and she is a ‘scholar’; Emma aged 7
born in 1854 in ‘London’ and Amelia aged 4, born in 1857 in ‘London’.
In the
1871 census they are still living in Kingston, Surrey, Charles is 37, still a
bricklayer and he is born in ‘Hill Bolton, Oxfordshire’ – the census is not
reliable for accuracy of birth details! His wife Sarah is 37, Amelia Ann is a
scholar born 1859, and there is also Rose Lewendon, 10 years old, Alice aged 6,
Charles aged 3 and Alfred aged 1, all born in Kingston, Surrey.
Ten
years later in the 1881 census the family have moved to Ulverscroft Road in
Camberwell, London. Charles, the head of the family is 46 and a bricklayer, his
wife Sarah is also 46 and a laundress; the children all born in Kingston,
Surrey, are: Elizabeth aged 26 born in 1855 is a ‘Cook (domestic)’, Amelia is
21and a ‘Barmaid (Inn Servant)’, Alice is 16 and a ‘Nursemaid (domestic)’,
Charles is 13, Alfred is 11, George is 8 and Clara is 4. Also living at the
address is Charles Lewendon’s father (Amelia’s Grandfather and Raoul’s Great
Grandfather) George Lewendon, a widower aged 60, born in 1821 in Oxford and a
bricklayer by profession.
A SONG
OF TOWN
Sing now
of London
At fall
of dusk;
A summer
dragonfly
Crept
from the husk.
Dragonfly,
on whose wing
Run
golden wires;
So, down
a street pavement,
Lamps
throw their fires.
Dragonfly,
whose wing is pricked
By many
a spark;
Electric
eyes of taxis
Bright
through the dark.
Dragonfly,
whose life is
Cold and
brief as dew,
Drone
now for London dusk,
Soon
dead too.
[Raoul
Loveday. St John’s. Oxford Poetry. 1922. P. 26.]
THE MARRIAGE OF RAOUL AND BETTY
The signatures of Raoul and Betty
on their marriage certificate
Raoul and Betty were
married at the Oxford Registry Office on Sunday 3rd September 1922.
Raoul, or Frederick Charles to give his birth name, is 22 years old and he
gives his profession as ‘author’; he is living at 50 Walton Crescent , Oxford Cornmarket Street , Oxford
Raoul requested
special leave from Oxford
University
‘We were married, in Oxford
On the day of our
marriage [Sunday 3rd September 1922] a thing happened which although
even at the time it filled me with a certain foreboding, I never imagined would
return to me in such circumstances of horror. We were walking through the
gardens of St. John’s
That evening a party
of us went to one of the dance halls forbidden to undergraduates. It was rather
a sordid place, with a bad floor and a worse band, whose chief allurement must
have been the fact that it was forbidden. Rather drunken undergraduates were
dancing with cheap-scented girls of the town. Some of them greeted Raoul
noisily. However, he was not in the slightest degree embarrassed, and treated
them with his usual easy insolence of manner.
We stayed there a bit.
It was not very amusing, but there did not seem to be anything else to do in Oxford eleven o’clock the alarm went round that the
proctors were coming. There was a rush for the door, and I was left alone. Two
undergraduates only had not fled, and they were hiding under a seat in the
ladies’ cloak-room, protected by the skirts of their partners. The proctors,
well up to the trick, and untroubled by modesty, searched that apartment as a
matter of course. It was an exciting moment. They were just going when one of
the idiotic girls laughed, and the proctors returned and dragged the fugitives
ignominiously by the ankles from their concealment.
At last the proctors
went away and some of our party returned, but Raoul was not among them.
I was very sick with
myself for having suggested coming to the dance. Raoul, with whom I was quite
unjustly angry for leaving me, had been against it, because, having got leave
to go away for the week-end so as to be able to stay with me on our wedding
night, it would have been fatal for him to be discovered in Oxford.
By now the place was
closing down. What was I to do? Would Raoul come back for me, or would he
expect me to follow him? I was undecided until my hesitation was overcome for
me by a certain famous boxer, who had been with us, and now offered to take me
back to the hotel where Raoul and I were staying.’
Betty goes on to say
that she was about to ring the night bell at the hotel but she decided to go
for a walk to the Trout Inn to look at the water meadows and the Thames by
moonlight, (4) and also to punish Raoul for abandoning her at the dance hall.
She stood leaning over the bridge by the Trout Inn; (5) after a while she
crosses the bridge and walked along the river, singing songs in her head. The
river bank was sloping and slippery and she fell head-first into the river.
Luckily it was quite shallow. Betty returned to the hotel covered in mud: ‘For
a moment Raoul could not recognise the miry apparition that met his eyes. Water
dripped from me as I stood there. He asked me what on earth had happened and
how I had managed to get like this. Had someone thrown me into the river?
“I thought I’d go for
a walk,” I explained, “and I fell into the river.”
“Good God,” he asked,
“is this what I’ve got to get used to?”
I was not going to be
reprimanded at this early stage of our relationship, so I said, “And why did
you leave me at the dance hall to find my way home alone?”
“The proctors – “
“I suppose you care
more about the proctors than about me.”
But it was not really
a very serious sort of quarrel!’
The next day, Monday 4th
September, Raoul had invited a friend of his to dinner and to meet his new
wife, Betty; the un-named friend, (6) a well-known psychic and clairvoyant, in
Betty’s autobiography was tall and gaunt and she took an instant dislike to him
although he was an entertaining speaker and he and Raoul talked about poetry;
Raoul was making a stand for the poets Ernest Dowson (1867-1900) and Lionel
Johnson (1867-1902) whom his friend said were ‘sentimental and decadent’. Raoul
defensively said that he hated the Georgian poets and declared himself a
romantic and when asked which living poets he admires, mentioned the name of
some professor and a poet of the occult whom Betty had met in 1914 at the Café
Royal – Aleister Crowley.
“What’s he doing now?”
the other asked.
“Haven’t you heard?”
“No.”
“He’s started an Abbey
in Sicily
Then the curious young
fellow suggested he knew what Betty was in a previous incarnation. In comparing
their notes on the subject Raoul and his friend had reached the same
conclusion, that she was a witch-doctor and Raoul was the chieftain of the
village who loved her but she refused to yield her love to him; the chieftain,
deciding to kill the witch-doctor set her adrift in a boat which capsized in a storm
and she drowned.
Betty and Raoul stayed
in Oxford London 55 Beak
Street Regent Street Oxford British Museum
While dining at the
Harlequin, Betty’s friend Betty Bickers came over, Bickers was interested in
the occult and when Crowley Crowley Crowley Beak Street Regent Street
After the same thing happened
again and Raoul was away for three days, Betty attempted to foil Crowley Beak Street Crowley Highland
kilt and holding a magical wand.
- The name of Registrar was J. H. B.Wright.
- The two witnesses on the marriage
certificate are almost undecipherable but diligent examination seems to
yield two names: Jean Pierre Dubont and Susan Billingham, so it would
appear that Jean Pierre is the witness who crawls after the ring.
- Betty had mocked the mummified Princess by
sticking her tongue out at her when Raoul took her to the
- The moon was three days from full which
occurred on
- The Trout is a 17th Century Inn
by the River Thames at
- Raoul had several friends from oxford such as Allan Porter, Arthur Read, and Bertram Higgins (1901-1974) born in Melbourne who read languages at Oxford; Betty’s friend ‘Dolores’ [Norine Fournier Lattimore (1894-1934)] was an artist’s model at the Harlequin Club and often joined them at social gatherings.
- This was at
- This would have been in October 1922 and
it was probably a furnished room in
*from an essay by Raoul Loveday entitled 'Ravishment' quoting Doctor Faustus by Christopher Marlowe.
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