One of our visitors I liked was Hereward Carrington. He wrote books about ghosts, but only seemed to see bits of them swaddled in ectoplasm; which Father told me privately was probably cheese-cloth smuggled into the seance by the medium. So I was prepared to like another visitor who was said to be 'psychic'; but the moment I saw Aleister Crowley I thought of him as a kind of human toad.

Only Mother and [big sister] Margery were in when he came. Father was playing tennis at the Racquet Club and Iris was out shopping with Kate. The Toad sat on a sofa beside Margery and paid her fulsome compliments while she kept edging away. He said she reminded him of a beautiful golden gazelle--which must have been a change from being told she was like the women in pictures by Dante Gabriel Rossetti. Her beaux used to give her Rossetti reproductions which she hung in her bedroom until there was no more space on the walls for any more.

After tea had been cleared away Mother gave several hints to the Toad that it was time for him to go, but he stayed on and on until at last she gave an even broader hint by saying she had to go and write some urgent letters.

The moment she had left the room the Toad took his black pearl tie-pin from his purple satin cravat and stuck it into Margery's arm. He pretended it was an accident and blotted the bead of blood with his handkerchief--a white silk handkerchief with a purple edge. Margery was too terrified to shriek, but when he tweaked out a strand of her hair she squeaked, 'Mother!' She was so frightened that she sounded like a mouse.

I was just about to do something, and trying to become the kind of person who would know how to do it, when I saw Mother standing in the doorway. The Toad had not noticed her yet. He was gloating at Margery and saying, 'Now you are in my power, for I have your blood and your hair. I need a nail-paring too, but I am so great a magician that I can manage without it.'

Then Mother was really splendid. She looked at least twice as tall as usual and her eyes seemed fiery and enormous.

'My white magic is stronger than your black magic,' she declaimed. 'Down on your knees, you grubby little sorcerer!'

Her voice went through him like a sword and I almost expected him to ooze over the cushions. He tried to out-stare her and then half tumbled, half slid off the sofa and shambled across the room. He pawed at the door handle, and then I heard him stumbling away down the corridor.

When Mother was sure he had gone, she sat down abruptly in a chair and I knew her legs were shaking, as they always do when you come back into yourself too suddenly. 'What a very disagreeable man,' she said, as though he had been an ordinary person who was a little drunk. She looked sharply at Margery. 'You are looking quite green, child. Go and give yourself some sal volatile.'

Then she saw me, and for a moment looked worried. But she realised how proud of her I was feeling and I knew she was very close to tears. She blew her nose and said briskly, 'Always remember I am an efficient tiger when it comes to defending my cubs.'

EDITOR'S NOTE

Aleister Crowley had belonged to the Order of the Golden Dawn, the same group of mystics Yeats belonged to, along with Arthur Waite & Pamela Coleman Smith, who researched and painted the standard Tarot deck still used today. Crowley, though, seemed utterly selfish--just a cult leader seeking groupies.

The scene seems comically awful... but I can't help quietly envying Joan and Margery. My parents, when it came to defending their cubs, were less tiger than jellyfish--if they even tried. My sisters and I always assumed we had to protect each other--cubs in a world of unreliable adults. Joan's mom Blanche could be overbearing, but there are worse things than tigers. Jellyfish. Toads.

--Chris Wayan

SOURCE: Far Memory: the Autobiography of Joan Grant, 1956 (Ariel Press reprint, 1985), pp. 42-3

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