While re-reading her biography recently, I saw something that prompted me to take another look at her novel The Shadow of a Sorcerer. I noticed a lot more relevant material this time around and made some new connections, so there is something to add to what I have previously written about this book.
First, what I saw that gave rise to this
article:
Stella Gibbons and Aleister Crowley
When I first read Out of the Woodshed by
Reggie Oliver, I was mainly interested in the details of Stella Gibbons’s early
life. Much of the other information didn’t register, and I overlooked two references
to infamous people. This time around, their names jumped out at me. One was Adolf Hitler - his connection with Stella Gibbons has been described elsewhere - and the other was the occultist Aleister Crowley.
Her nephew tells us that Stella Gibbons once saw Crowley outside the Café Royal in central London. I don’t know the date, but guess that it was in the 1930s.
Her impression was unfavourable. When her
nephew asked hopefully if this was because of Crowley’s air of supernatural
malignancy, she said no, what repelled her was that he had the look of a man
who was desperately trying to attract attention.
This is spot on. Such people have forfeited their inner sources of sustenance and are often disconnected and empty, so they need to live off others to fill the void. They may be prisoners and hostages too, desperate for someone or something to save them.
After reading about this encounter, I
remembered Esmé Scarron, the evil occultist in The Shadow of a Sorcerer, and
wondered whether Stella Gibbons had used Crowley as the inspiration for this
character. Her book was published in 1955, so there were many years after the
sighting in which she could have talked to people and done some
research.
Whatever the source, Esmé Scarron is a person of great interest.
