City of the Beast: The London of Aleister Crowley by Phil Baker

Author:Phil Baker [Baker, Phil]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781913689322
Publisher: MIT Press
Published: 2022-05-17T00:00:00+00:00

It was also strongly associated with prostitution, probably due to the proximity of Victoria Station. During the split with Mattie, Crowley consoled himself, somewhat vengefully, with another woman on the same street. This was Ethel Donley, at number 113: “another Alderney (street) cow” – Alderney is a type of cattle – and “dreadfully well-meaning”, and moreover “one in the eye for Maat”, as he thought of it, although he was “three parts drunk, agonizing for Maat.”

Other women in the area included Peggy Young, in the basement at 87 Gloucester St SW1, and Rose Wilson, at 46 Lillington St SW1 (“Fat toothless hag – & superb!”).4

Crowley also had frequent sex with a woman named Maisie Clarke, overlapping with Mattie. She worked a regular beat in Hyde Park but her bed was on the Victoria edge of Pimlico at 1 Gillingham Street (at the corner with Vauxhall Bridge Road, currently a sushi bar).

Crowley had a number of ‘works’ or ‘operations’ with Maisie in 1938 specifically directed to bringing on the likely war, hoping for an “A1 War” and putting their mixed fluids on a dagger. He was not only a regular client – he records having sex with her about 25 times – but they grew to know each other socially and ate together, although he continued to seek her out in Hyde Park. Sadly and rather touchingly, she cried when she felt excluded from his more middle-class circle.

When things were good with Maisie they were very good (“Opus… Superb opn.”), but they didn't always run smoothly. Nonetheless he thought of taking her on as his housekeeper, and at best found her pleasant company: he even wondered if another woman, Mary Wilcox (“amusing”), might be a “possible Maisie.” It seems to have petered out in boredom and bitterness after a couple of years, but at his most affectionate Crowley invented a dish in her honour. This was along the lines of Peche Melba (invented in the 1890s by Escoffier at the Savoy, in honour of the great soprano Nellie Melba) and it was Peche Maisie: “Steep peaches in cream with sugar whipped up with Kirsch & Benedictine. Ice some hours.”

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