chapter 1 Funeral and Fairy Tale
FUNERAL AND FAIRY TALE
The funeral had been the strangest any of us had ever attended.
The tiny cemetery chapel was rented for only an hour and stood almost empty.
I counted only fifteen mourners. We were joined by three members of the press eager to squeeze one last drop of scandalous blood from the black turnip of England’s most notorious character.
Unlike the turbulent life of our departed guest of honor, the brief ceremony was quiet and respectful.
Louis Wilkerson read “Hymn to Pan,” my favorite of the old boys’ poems; three old friends said a few words; and then that was that.
Predictably, the next day’s newspaper headlines couldn’t have been more luridly inaccurate.
Aleister Crowley—Worst Man in the World Dies
Cremating “Great Beast”
Desecrated by Black Mass
It hardly seemed a fitting goodbye to a genuine holy man, Logos of the Aeon, Prophet of a New Age. But then, perhaps it was perfect.
I returned to London by train with Lady Harris, who invited me to stay at her home in town for the few days that remained before I sailed back to New York.
I eagerly accepted her offer. It is not every day a green Hollywood scriptwriter is invited to unpack his toothbrush at the home of the artist-wife of an influential member of parliament.
I was especially keen to attend the lavish “curry wake” that Lady Harris was scheduled to host the next evening in honor of our departed master.
He did so love his curry—the hotter the better.
However, it was the guest list of this most esoteric of soirees that made my mouth water—one guest in particular, Sir Francis Bendick.
This would be perhaps my one and only chance to meet and interview this legendary film director.
Bendick was one of only a handful of British filmmakers to resist the lure of Hollywood throughout his long and distinguished career.
He was a bona fide genius who helped give birth to the industry at the turn of the century.
He would go on to elevate the silent medium from inane shorts and melodramas to serious literary theatre.
He wrote, he directed, he edited, and he occasionally appeared in the films that continually reinvented the state of the art.
Most remarkably, he worked his magic throughout the bloody madness called the Great War.
His propaganda efforts for king and country were powerfully inspiring, poignant, and breathtakingly honest. He was knighted for his wartime efforts by George V during the exuberance of the roaring twenties—a time when sound was giving a voice to Bendick’s genius of touching souls in the darkness.
During the Second World War he was consulted regularly by the Joint Intelligence Committee; offering vital intelligence concerning the Third Reich’s influences in the British and American film industries.3
Only a handful of extraordinarily discrete individuals were aware that Bendick was also a devoted disciple and benefactor of Aleister Crowley and had been since 1907.
He knew more about Crowley and his work than any other living human being.
The fact he could keep such devotion a secret from the public and three wives for over forty years was truly amazing.
At the request of Lord Harris, he did not attend the funeral. But nothing short of death would keep him from Frieda Harris’s Crowley-curry wake.
Sir Francis and I had two things in common.
We were both ceremonial magicians, initiates of Crowley’s magical order, Ordo Templi Orientis, and we were both in the movie business—he at the end of his illustrious career, I at the beginning of mine.
Meeting him in person and having the opportunity to pick his brain was the reason I had traveled at my own expense to dreary old England in the damp December of 1947; he and my own dream of producing a proper feature film about Aleister Crowley, the man I considered the most important, the most colorful, and the most misunderstood holy man of the 20th century.
If all went well, Sir Francis Bendick would help me write it.
The Harris’s home in town was located at Number 3 Devonshire Terrace, Marylebone High Street.
It was a testament to the eccentric nature of its residents.
Its exterior was modest and understated; a fitting facade for a powerful member of parliament, deputy leader of England’s Liberal Party, and his bohemian/artist wife.
The home’s interior was furnished (as if by order of the studio prop department) with clichéd antique perfection.
The walls, however, were bereft of the stodgy portraits of ancient ancestors and horses one might expect in such affluent British homes.
Instead, they were festooned with Lady Harris’s abstract paintings of mystical and Masonic themes, a few of which, I confess, I found to be nothing short of disturbing.
I was billeted in a guest room large enough to engulf my Silverlake bungalow.
I sank so deeply into the canopied bed that I felt I would be swallowed in the night like an insect trapped in a Venus flytrap, so I spent a chilly and restless night stretched out on two chairs that I pushed together near the fire.
(Yes. The bedrooms each had a fireplace.)
The next morning, I was called downstairs to breakfast only to discover that I was conspicuously underdressed. I self-consciously hovered over the sideboard and scooped a pile of scrambled eggs onto my plate, hoping no one would mention the fact that I was not wearing a tie.
I completely panicked when Lady Harris announced, “We’ll be dressing for tonight’s wake, dear.”
If I wasn’t properly attired for self-serve breakfast, then I wasn’t likely to have full evening dress upstairs in my Gladstone bag. Over toast and marmalade, I confessed my predicament and threw myself upon the mercy of Lady Harris. She was neither particularly amused nor upset.
“You look to be about Percy’s size. I’m sure we can find you something, dear,” was her only comment.
After breakfast, she put me in the care of Archie, a frail and severely attired octogenarian whom I assumed had been in service to Harris family since before the Restoration.
I spent the remainder of the daylight hours in his silent company trying on an array of His Lordship’s trousers, shirts, ties, stockings, braces, and shoes.
What didn’t fit was soon whisked away to be duly and truly altered.
By 4:30 p.m., I had secured an entire ensemble and barely had time to bathe before the dinner guests (and Sir Francis) arrived.
It was 5:00 p.m. and already dark. The Harris house smelled like an Indian restaurant. I was famished. I’d had nothing to eat since breakfast (I’d missed lunch in the fitting room with old Archie).
Lady Harris stationed me at her side like a Selfridges manikin and introduced me to the guests as they arrived. She obligingly rattled off a breathless summary of each illustrious life and their connection to Crowley.
I instantly recognized the first to arrive from wartime newsreels: J. F. C. Fuller, the greatest military mind of the 20th century and architect of modern armored warfare. Lady Harris grabbed his arm and pulled him near us.
“Milo Harland from Hollywood, this is Captain—forgive me darling . . . Major General Charles Fuller. He and Old Crow had a bit of a falling out before the wars, didn’t you Charles?
Doesn’t matter now. We all did sooner or later.
The general was an early disciple of the master.
He edited and contributed to his ponderous Equinox magazine for a time.
He also wrote that glowing paean, The Star in the West. Oh yes, and that marvelous Treasure House of Images.
Oh Charles! I still swoon at that one . . .
‘I renounce unto Thee the kisses of my mistress, and murmur of her mouth, and all the trembling of her firm young breast; so that I may be rolled a flame in Thy fiery embrace, and be consumed in the unutterable joy of Thine everlasting rapture.’
“. . . Oh, darling, that one still makes me moist!”
General Fuller and I both squirmed a little at Lady Harris’s little performance. I tried to mumble my “how-do-you-dos,” but Frieda chattered on.
“Quite the military mind, too, aren’t we Charles?
Invented that dreadful blitzkrieg thing.
You are a naughty boy Charles—and those ponderous tank books of yours.
Such unpleasantness. But Hitler just loved you before the war, didn’t he darling?
—only Englishman he ever praised in public.
I think he wanted you on his team. Can’t blame him.
Invited you to his birthday party, as I recall.
Thank God, you didn’t go, old chum. I dare say, m’ husband Percy still thinks you a bit of a fascist. But then he says that about everyone in uniform these days.
But we love you, don’t we. It’s so sweet that you came tonight.
The master thought the world of you. I know he did. ”
Lady Harris rattled on like that about every guest who came through the door. She had a photographic memory and a biting wit. She told the guests remarkably little about me, however—that is, until Sir Francis arrived.
After greeting the old man with a kiss, she grabbed me by the arm like a proud mother and introduced me to him.
“Francis, dear, I would like you to meet Mr. Milo Harland who traveled all the way from Hollywood, California.” She lowered her voice a little.
“He’s a ninth-degree member of our Agape Lodge, O.T.O.
and is in the movie business. He sailed over to attend the master’s funeral yesterday, and he’s staying with us for a few days more. He’s—”