The Magician | Page 3

old friend had by then rooms in
Pall Mall, and I was able to take a bedroom in the same building and
use his sitting-room to work in. The Magician was published in 1908,
so I suppose it was written during the first six months of 1907. I do not
remember how I came to think that Aleister Crowley might serve as the
model for the character whom I called Oliver Haddo; nor, indeed, how
I came to think of writing that particular novel at all. When, a little
while ago, my publisher expressed a wish to reissue it, I felt that, before
consenting to this, I really should read it again. Nearly fifty years had
passed since I had done so, and I had completely forgotten it. Some
authors enjoy reading their old works; some cannot bear to. Of these I
am. When I have corrected the proofs of a book, I have finished with it
for good and all. I am impatient when people insist on talking to me
about it; I am glad if they like it, but do not much care if they don't. I
am no more interested in it than in a worn-out suit of clothes that I have
given away. It was thus with disinclination that I began to read The
Magician. It held my interest, as two of my early novels, which for the
same reason I have been obliged to read, did not. One, indeed, I simply
could not get through. Another had to my mind some good dramatic
scenes, but the humour filled me with mortification, and I should have
been ashamed to see it republished. As I read The Magician, I

wondered how on earth I could have come by all the material
concerning the black arts which I wrote of. I must have spent days and
days reading in the library of the British Museum. The style is lush and
turgid, not at all the sort of style I approve of now, but perhaps not
unsuited to the subject; and there are a great many more adverbs and
adjectives than I should use today. I fancy I must have been impressed
by the écriture artiste which the French writers of the time had not yet
entirely abandoned, and unwisely sought to imitate them.
Though Aleister Crowley served, as I have said, as the model for Oliver
Haddo, it is by no means a portrait of him. I made my character more
striking in appearance, more sinister and more ruthless than Crowley
ever was. I gave him magical powers that Crowley, though he claimed
them, certainly never possessed. Crowley, however, recognized himself
in the creature of my invention, for such it was, and wrote a full-page
review of the novel in Vanity Fair, which he signed 'Oliver Haddo'. I
did not read it, and wish now that I had. I daresay it was a pretty piece
of vituperation, but probably, like his poems, intolerably verbose.
I do not remember what success, if any, my novel had when it was
published, and I did not bother about it much, for by then a great
change had come into my life. The manager of the Court Theatre, one
Otho Stuart, had brought out a play which failed to please, and he could
not immediately get the cast he wanted for the next play he had in mind
to produce. He had read one of mine, and formed a very poor opinion
of it; but he was in a quandary, and it occurred to him that it might just
serve to keep his theatre open for a few weeks, by the end of which the
actors he wanted for the play he had been obliged to postpone would be
at liberty. He put mine on. It was an immediate success. The result of
this was that in a very little while other managers accepted the plays
they had consistently refused, and I had four running in London at the
same time. I, who for ten years had earned an average of one hundred
pounds a year, found myself earning several hundred pounds a week. I
made up my mind to abandon the writing of novels for the rest of my
life. I did not know that this was something out of my control and that
when the urge to write a novel seized me, I should be able to do
nothing but submit. Five years later, the urge came and, refusing to

write any more plays for the time, I started upon the longest of all my
novels. I called it Of Human Bondage.

The Magician

I
Arthur Burdon and Dr Porhoët walked in silence. They had lunched at a
restaurant in the Boulevard Saint Michel, and were sauntering now in
the