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Authors: Aleister Crowley
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be sure not to let your opponent get the psychology on you, as happened this afternoon.”
“Ye’re a gran’ thinker, sir. I didn’t quite get your name; I wish ye’d dine wi’ me the nicht.”
“Iff,” said the old man, “Simon Iff.”
“Not much If,” muttered Macpherson, “aboot your wurrk on the green!”
“But I’m afraid I’m busy to-night. Are you free Monday? Come and dine with me at the Hemlock Club. Seven thirty. Don’t dress!”
Macpherson was enchanted. The Hemlock Club! He had a vision of Paradise. It was the most exclusive club in London. Only one scandal marred its fame; early in the eighteenth century, a struggling painter of portraits, who had been rejected by the Academy, was blackballed by mistake for an Archbishop of York, whom nobody wanted. They made it up to the painter, but there was no getting rid of the Archbishop. So the committee of the club had dismissed all its servants, and filled their places with drunken parsons who had gone to the bad; in a month the Archbishop withdrew with what dignity remained to him. They had then hung his portrait in the least respected room in the club. To consolidate their position, and arm themselves against counter-attack, they passed a rule that no man should be eligible for membership unless he had done something “notorious and heretical,” and it had been amusing and instructive to watch bishops attacking cardinal points of their faith, judges delivering sarcastic comments on the law, artists upsetting all the conventions of the period, physicists criticising the doctrine of the conservation of energy, all to put themselves right with the famous Rule Forty-Nine. Most of these people had no real originality, of course, but at least it forced them to appear to defy convention; and this exercised a salutary influence on the general tone of Society.
On the walls were portraits and caricatures of most of the club worthies, with their heresies inscribed. Wellington was there, with his “Publish and be damned to you!” So was a great judge with that great speech on the divorce law which begins, “In this country there is not one law for the rich, and another for the poor,” and goes on to tell the applicant, a working tailor, that to secure a divorce he needed only arrange to have a private act of Parliament passed on his behalf. Geikie was there with “I don’t believe that God has written a lie upon the rocks”; Shelley with “I had rather be damned with Plato and Lord Bacon than go to Heaven with Paley and Malthus;” Byron with “Besides, they always smell of bread and butter,” Sir Richard Burton, with a stanza from the Kasidah; “There is no God, no man made God; a bigger, stronger, crueler man; Black phantom of our baby-fears, ere thought, the life of Life, began.” Swinburne was there too, with “Come down and redeem us from virtue;” and a host of others. There was even a memorial room in which candles were kept constantly burning. It commemorated the heretics whom the club had failed to annex. There was William Blake, with “Everything that lives is holy;” there was James Thomson, with “If you would not this poor life fulfil, then you are free to end it when you will, without the fear of waking after death;” there was Keats, with “Beauty is Truth, Truth, Beauty;” John Davidson, with a passage from the Ballad of a true-born poet:
We are the scum
Of matter; fill the bowl!
And scathe to him and death to him
Who dreams he has a soul!”
Aubrey Beardsley, Ernest Dowson, Beddoes, Crackenthorpe, were all represented. They had even Victor Neuburg, with “Sex is one; go now, be free.”
There was in this room a votive tablet with the names of those who had been invited to join the club, and refused; notably Whistler, below whose portrait of himself was his letter of refusal, which he had sent with it; “I could not possibly consent to meet people of my own kind; my friends tell me it
“Ye’re a gran’ thinker, sir. I didn’t quite get your name; I wish ye’d dine wi’ me the nicht.”
“Iff,” said the old man, “Simon Iff.”
“Not much If,” muttered Macpherson, “aboot your wurrk on the green!”
“But I’m afraid I’m busy to-night. Are you free Monday? Come and dine with me at the Hemlock Club. Seven thirty. Don’t dress!”
Macpherson was enchanted. The Hemlock Club! He had a vision of Paradise. It was the most exclusive club in London. Only one scandal marred its fame; early in the eighteenth century, a struggling painter of portraits, who had been rejected by the Academy, was blackballed by mistake for an Archbishop of York, whom nobody wanted. They made it up to the painter, but there was no getting rid of the Archbishop. So the committee of the club had dismissed all its servants, and filled their places with drunken parsons who had gone to the bad; in a month the Archbishop withdrew with what dignity remained to him. They had then hung his portrait in the least respected room in the club. To consolidate their position, and arm themselves against counter-attack, they passed a rule that no man should be eligible for membership unless he had done something “notorious and heretical,” and it had been amusing and instructive to watch bishops attacking cardinal points of their faith, judges delivering sarcastic comments on the law, artists upsetting all the conventions of the period, physicists criticising the doctrine of the conservation of energy, all to put themselves right with the famous Rule Forty-Nine. Most of these people had no real originality, of course, but at least it forced them to appear to defy convention; and this exercised a salutary influence on the general tone of Society.
On the walls were portraits and caricatures of most of the club worthies, with their heresies inscribed. Wellington was there, with his “Publish and be damned to you!” So was a great judge with that great speech on the divorce law which begins, “In this country there is not one law for the rich, and another for the poor,” and goes on to tell the applicant, a working tailor, that to secure a divorce he needed only arrange to have a private act of Parliament passed on his behalf. Geikie was there with “I don’t believe that God has written a lie upon the rocks”; Shelley with “I had rather be damned with Plato and Lord Bacon than go to Heaven with Paley and Malthus;” Byron with “Besides, they always smell of bread and butter,” Sir Richard Burton, with a stanza from the Kasidah; “There is no God, no man made God; a bigger, stronger, crueler man; Black phantom of our baby-fears, ere thought, the life of Life, began.” Swinburne was there too, with “Come down and redeem us from virtue;” and a host of others. There was even a memorial room in which candles were kept constantly burning. It commemorated the heretics whom the club had failed to annex. There was William Blake, with “Everything that lives is holy;” there was James Thomson, with “If you would not this poor life fulfil, then you are free to end it when you will, without the fear of waking after death;” there was Keats, with “Beauty is Truth, Truth, Beauty;” John Davidson, with a passage from the Ballad of a true-born poet:
We are the scum
Of matter; fill the bowl!
And scathe to him and death to him
Who dreams he has a soul!”
Aubrey Beardsley, Ernest Dowson, Beddoes, Crackenthorpe, were all represented. They had even Victor Neuburg, with “Sex is one; go now, be free.”
There was in this room a votive tablet with the names of those who had been invited to join the club, and refused; notably Whistler, below whose portrait of himself was his letter of refusal, which he had sent with it; “I could not possibly consent to meet people of my own kind; my friends tell me it
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