Comments by Sally Davis. The site called Beni Hasan was a set of 11th
and 12th dynasty rock-cut tombs, on the eastern side of the
Nile. The EEF’s work there was part of
its Archaeological Survey of Egypt project.
Winter was the digging season in Egypt so the EEF’s two-man survey team
arrived in November 1891 and set up home in one of the tombs. MWB seems to have
been acquainted already with Percy Newberry, the survey team’s leader. MWB appeared at Beni Hasan some weeks after
the survey work began, as an independent traveller. As a trained artist his offer to help out was
very welcome, both to those doing the survey and to their bosses in
London. Newberry might also have
welcomed a third person to the team as he and George Willoughby Fraser were
very different types and didn’t really get on.
The task facing the survey team was enormous: the tombs were being
robbed and left open to the elements and 12000 square feet of wall-paintings
needed recording before they disintegrated.
His main task was to take the tracings already done by Percy Newberry as
his template, and colour them in, trying to use colours and shades as close to
the original colours as he could. But he
helped out in other ways as well: he designed a set of pulleys to help lift a
fallen column upright; and a hoist to speed the removal of 40 tons of debris
from two shafts which led down to the tomb of Khnumhotep. Despite the trouble they had reaching
Khnumhotep’s tomb, the EEF’s men still found that tomb-robbers had got there
first.
Sources:
Times Monday 23 February 1891 p13 Amelia Edwards’ report to the EEF’s 4th
ordinary general meeting held in London.
Times Thursday 18 June 1891 p12 The Royal Society - Ladies’ Conversazione.
Egypt Exploration Fund Special Extra Report: The Season’s Work at Ahnas
and Beni Hasan. This volume covers work done
in 1890-91 and contains an introduction by Amelia Edwards and reports by Édouard
Naville on Ahnas (also spelled Hanes or Henassieh); and by Percy Newberry and
George Willoughby Fraser on Beni Hasan.
Published 1891 London: Gilbert and Rivington Ltd for the EEF.
Archaeological Survey of Egypt.
Beni Hasan Part 1. As volume one
of the EEF’s Archaeological Survey of Egypt, series editor: F L Griffith BA
FSA. Authors Percy Newberry with plans
and measurements by George Willoughby Fraser.
Published 1893 London: Gilbert and Rivington Ltd for the EEF.
That MWB and Newberry had met before 1891; and more on Beni Hasan:
Howard Carter: the Path to Tutankhamun by T G H James. Kegan Paul
International 1992: pp12, pp15-28.
17 JUNE 1891
The Egypt Exploration Fund took some wall space at a Royal Society
evening event at Burlington House; and showed some of MWB’s coloured copies of
wall paintings from Beni Hasan. There
were also some wall paintings from the tombs of Ameni and Khnumhotep on display.
Times Thursday 18 June 1891 p12 The Royal Society - Ladies’
Conversazione. The guest list as
reproduced in the Times only covered the great and good, unfortunately, so it’s
not clear whether MWB actually went to the soirée.
MID-DECEMBER 1891 TO 2
JANUARY 1892
MWB was in Egypt again,
doing another session with the EEF as a volunteer. This time he was at El Bersheh, a site of
middle-kingdom tombs. As well as doing
copying and colouring work he also acted as George Willoughby Fraser’s
assistant surveyor.
Comment by Sally Davis:
perhaps this time MWB was taken on as a volunteer by prior arrangement rather
than just turning up. Percy Newberry and
George Willoughby Fraser were working together again at El Bersheh; but this
time they had with them Howard Carter, just starting out on his career. With Carter doing most of the work tracing
and copying the wall-paintings, MWB and George Willoughby Fraser worked
together to survey the whole valley; unlike Beni Hasan where the tombs were all
in a line like a street of houses, the tombs at El Bersheh were scattered over
a wide area.
Sources:
For the survey at El Bersheh:
Archaeological
Survey of Egypt: El Bersheh. Part I: The
Tomb of Tehuti-Hetep by Percy E Newberry; with a plan and measurements of
the tomb by G Willoughby Fraser FSA.
London: Special Publication of the Egypt Exploration Fund 1895. Based on Newberry’s records and his reports
to the EEF Council. The frontispiece of this volume is MWB’s copy of part of a
frieze from El Bersheh Tomb 2, the tomb of Tehutihetep. It shows a young woman holding a lotus
flower. MWB’s copies of wall-paintings
also appear in later volumes on El Bersheh.
Archaeological Survey of Egypt: El Bersheh. Part II series editor F L Griffith,
BA FSA. Authors: F L Griffith and Percy
E Newberry with plan and measurements of the tombs by George Willoughby Fraser
FSA. London: special publication of the
EEF 1895. This volume contains most of
the reproductions of the wall-paintings but only Plate V was coloured by
MWB. Most of the reproductions were
coloured by Percy Newberry and by another, later, volunteer, Rosalind
Paget. For MWB’s surveying work at El
Bersheh: Willoughby Fraser’s report: p55.
CHRISTMAS 1891
MWB, Percy Newberry and George Willoughby Fraser spent the Christmas
holiday as guests of Robert Hanbury Brown, an Irrigation Inspector working for
the Egyptian government.
Source:
Howard Carter: the Path to Tutankhamun by T G H James. Kegan Paul
International 1992: pp12-15-28.
More on Major Brown, Royal Engineers:
The Knights of England p393 Major RHB was knighted in the list issued 6
December 1902, as Inspector-General of Irrigation for Lower Egypt.
At www.sussex-opc.org LG 25
June 1926 p4161 list issued und Trustee Act 1925 includes Robert Hanbury Brown
of Newlands, Crawley Down Sussex WHO’D DIED on 4 May 1926 CHECK WHO WAS
WHO. THIS WILL HAVE TO WAIT UNTIL YOU
GET BACK TO LONDON
Some publications by RHB:
The Fayum and Lake Moeris London: Edward Stanford 1892.
The Land of Goshen and the Exodus London: Edward Stanford 1899.
Irrigation: its Principles and Practice as a Branch of Engineering London: A
Constable and Co 1907.
28 DECEMBER 1891
Percy Newberry, MWB and
George Willoughby Fraser made a short trip to what they had been told was a
tomb but turned out to be the alabaster quarries at Hatnub. The quarries had supplied the alabaster for
the rulers who had been buried at El Bersheh but Newberry decided that they
didn’t really have time to investigate them further at the moment. This annoyed MWB and Willoughby Fraser who
sent a report on their discovery to London for publication.
Sources:
Times Monday 3 October 1892 p14 The Alabaster Quarries of Ha-Nub: letter from
MWB and G Willoughby Fraser.
Proceedings of the Society of Biblical Archaeology volume 16 November
1893-December 1894 published 1894 by the Society. In the full volume pp78-82 an article that
had originally appeared in issue number 19, that of the 9 January 1894: G
Willoughby Fraser FSA: Hat-Nub.
Howard Carter: the Path to Tutankhamun by T G H James. Kegan Paul
International 1992: pp12-15-28 though James seems to imply that only MWB and
Willoughby Fraser went to Hatnub; that Newberry wasn’t with them, having had a
surfeit of their company over Christmas.
EARLY-JANUARY 1892
The work at El Bersheh was
finished and Percy Newberry returned to England to begin the follow-up
work. MWB and George Willoughby Fraser
went back to Hatnub and started to survey and record the inscriptions that they
found there.
Sources: G Willoughby Fraser
in Proceedings of the Society of Biblical Archaeology 1894: 78-82.
Comment by Sally Davis: MWB
and Willoughby Fraser’s work at Hatnub was their own idea, and they seem to
have financed it themselves (that is to say, MWB probably came up with the
money); it wasn’t an official part of the EEF’s survey work.
23 JANUARY 1892
MWB and Willoughby Fraser’s
account of the discovery of the quarries at Hatnub was published in London.
Howard Carter: the Path to Tutankhamun by T G H James. Kegan Paul
International 1992: pp12, pp15-28. The
account appeared in the magazine The Academy issue of 23 January 1892.
LATER IN JANUARY 1892
MWB returned to Beni Hasan
to finish off the work he had been doing there; but he became ill in February,
and had to stop.
Source for the dates and what
MWB did on his return to Beni Hasan:
Archaeological Survey of Egypt.
Beni Hasan Part 1. As volume one
of the EEF’s Archaeological Survey of Egypt, series editor: F L Griffith BA
FSA. Beni Hasan Part 1 by Percy Newberry
with plans and measurements by George Willoughby Fraser. Published London 1893. Printed for the EEF by Gilbert and Rivington
Ltd of London.
Comment by Sally Davis: it’s easy to get ill in hot climates, of course,
but even contemporary sources suggested that MWB’s illness was the result of
the bad feeling that now existed between him and senior EEF employees (mainly
Newberry but also Flinders Petrie and others) over the expedition to Hatnub
made by MWB and George Willoughby Fraser.
They had made it without Newberry’s consent and had used time which he
wanted Willoughby Fraser to spend concentrating on writing up El Bersheh -
Newberry had a deadline of November 1892 to meet, by which time all the work on
El Bersheh had to be finished. Later in
1892 the artist Percy Buckman was sent by the EEF to finish the tracing and
copying work MWB had not been able to; Percy Buckman’s sister Katherine Julia
later joined the GD. It had been mooted
within the the EEF that MWB might be offered more training with Newberry at
Beni Hasan and Flinders Petrie at Tell al Amarna during the 1891/1892 digging
season, with a view to employing him as an archaeologist. Newberry was also considering publishing a
book of MWB’s watercolour copies of wall paintings. But MWB’s behaviour over the quarries at
Hatnub changed people’s minds. MWB never
worked for the EEF again, even as a volunteer; George Willoughby Fraser ceased
to be an EEF employee; and when Percy Newberry left the EEF in 1894, the
difficulties he’d had with the two men were thought to be one of his reasons
for seeking another employer. The EEF
trained Howard Carter instead.
Sources for the bad feeling
about the behaviour of MWB and George Willoughby Fraser, all of which are using
the EES’s own records amongst others:
Saluki: The Desert Hound and the English Travelers who brought it to the
West. By Brian P Duggan with foreword by Terence
Clark. Jefferson North Carolina:
McFarland 2009: p55.
Flinders Petrie: A Life in Archaeology by Margaret S Drower. University of Wisconsin Press 1st
edition 1985; this is from the 2nd edition, published 1995: p171,
pp186-193.
Howard Carter: the Path to Tutankhamun by T G H James. Kegan Paul
International 1992: pp12-15-28.
DURING 1892
MWB remained in Egypt for
at least part of the year. He and George
Willoughby Fraser made two more expeditions to Hatnub, surveying the quarries,
compiling a map and tracing and copying the many inscriptions (in ancient
Egyptian hieratic script) that they found there.
Sources: G Willoughby Fraser Proceedings
of the Society of Biblical Archaeology 1894: 78-82; and Times
Monday 3 October 1892 p14.
Comment from Sally Davis:
there was no water supply at Hatnub so each night a camel had to be sent to
bring back a day’s supply. However, the
results were worth the difficult conditions: MWB and Willoughby Fraser found a
second quarry, evidence of several rockfalls, and remains of the houses and
tools used by the masons. From the
graffiti they identified several kings previously unknown to archaeologists;
and they were able to work out that the quarries had been in use from the time
of the 4th ancient Egyptian dynasty to about the 12th.
MID SEPTEMBER 1892
MWB and George Willoughby
Fraser, finishing off their work at Hatnub, sent a short account of what they
had found there to the Times newspaper.
Source: Times Monday 3 October
1892 p14 The Alabaster Quarries of Ha-Nub: letter from MWB and J Willoughby
Fraser; written 15 September [1892] at Dahobyah Strange Hathor, Manfalűt.
Comment by Sally Davis: I think the letter was by way of preparation for
the publication of the graffiti they had copied at Hatnub:
Collection of Hieratic Graffiti from the Alabaster Quarry of Hat-nub
(sic) situated near Tell el Amarna. “For
Private Circulation Only”; there’s no indication of how many copies were
printed. No date of publication appears
in the volume but the British Library catalogue dates it as 1892. Just noting that T G H James thought the
publication was a poor-quality one, particularly in not having an introduction:
see Howard Carter: the Path to Tutankhamun by T G H James. Kegan Paul
International 1992: p27.
3 OCTOBER 1892
Times published MWB and G
Willoughby Fraser’s letter.
BY 1894
MWB was back in England -
at least, I think his two paintings dated 1894 were done in England. Never exhibited to my knowledge, they were
two portraits, meant to be a set. They’re
both now owned by MWB’s great-grand-daughter. Both dated “1894" and
initialled “WB”. One of the two was a
self-portrait.
Source: the portraits,
photographed 2014 by MWB’s great-grand-daughter.
Comment by Sally Davis: In
his self-portrait MWB showed himself wearing a light brown suit, sitting in a
chair against a dark background. MWB has
a neat beard; both it and his hair are grey, making him look older than you’d
expect a man who was 30 to look. Perhaps
this was the effect of a couple of years in north Africa. MWB’s
great-grand-daughter is sure the companion portrait is of Hilda Franklyn, MWB’s
wife-to-be. However, I would question
this: Hilda (born 1885) was only 9 at the time it was painted. The subject is clearly a woman in her
twenties or thirties, sitting reading in what looks like a nice
conservatory. It’s more likely to be
Hilda’s mother Lottie Franklyn, née Alves Jones; or maybe his sister Ada Mary
(then aged 22). Either that or MWB is
looking to a future in which he and an adult Hilda will be companion pieces;
that might also explain how old MWB looks in his self-portrait - that’s how he
will look when Hilda is an adult.
1895
MWB bought a copy of
Collectanea Hermetica volume 6 - The Chaldaean Oracles of Zoroaster.
Source: the book, now in the
Freemasons’ Library, with MWB’s name in pencil on it and annotations to some
pages, also assumed to be by him.
Publication details: Collectanea Hermetica Volume 6:
The Chaldaean Oracles attributed to Zoroaster. Series editor: Sapere
Aude. Introduction by LO. Translated and with a preface by William Wynn
Westcott. Published 1895 London:
Theosophical Publishing Society. And
Madras: office of The Theosophist, Adyar.
Comments by Sally Davis:
there’s nothing remarkable in MWB buying a book, of course, and this book was
not so far from his interests as you might think - the introduction argued that
the Oracles should be studied with the Kabbalah, Egyptian theology and the
tarot (which was also thought to have Egyptian origins) in mind. However, probably unbeknown to him at this
stage, MWB was making first contact with the GD. The Collectanea Hermetica series, though
available to the public, was a GD project: William Wynn Westcott as Sapere Aude
was the series’ editor and the contributors were GD members, the contributor in
this case being Levavi Oculos - Percy William Bullock.
See wikipedia for more on the
Chaldaean Oracles which are now thought to be not ancient Persian as Westcott
assumed, but Hellenistic, probably from 2nd century AD.
17 FEBRUARY 1896
Several years after he had
gone off in a huff (his own account) or become persona non grata (account of
the GD’s SRIA members) a ballot of members allowed A E Waite back into the GD’s
Isis-Urania Temple.
Source for the readmittance:
Freemasons’ Library GD collection GD 2/3/1/9: the certificate which readmitted
him.
Comment by Sally Davis. There was an on-off friendship between A E
Waite and Robert Palmer-Thomas during the 1890s and early 1900s. It was Palmer-Thomas whose enthusiasm for what
was going on in the GD persuaded Waite to ask to be taken on again. During his second-time-round membership Waite
despised William Wynn Westcott and Samuel Liddell Mathers just as much as he
had done after his original initiation in 1891.
But he did stay a member for rather longer this second time; and got to
know MWB well.
Source for AEW’s side of
it:
Shadows of Life and Thought: A Retrospective Review in the Form of
Memoirs by Arthur Edward Waite. London:
Selwyn & Blount of Paternoster House EC4 1938 pp159-160.
LATE 1896
Florence Farr’s treatise
on Egyptian Magic was published.
Source:
Collectanea Hermetica volume VIII,
which contains the article Egyptian Magic by SSDD (shorthand form of Sapientia
Sapienti Dono Data - GD motto of Florence Farr). Series editor William Wynn Westcott as Sapere
Aude. London: Theosophical Publishing Society 1896.
Comment by Sally Davis: there’s
no direct evidence that MWB owned a copy of Florence Farr’s treatise but I find
it hard to believe he would not want to have a copy, once he’d found out about
it. It’s just possible, I suppose, that
MWB joined the GD in time to have been able to contribute some input to
Florence Farr’s work - but that’s just speculation on my part.
27 AUGUST 1896
MWB was initiated into the
Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, at its Isis-Urania temple in London.
Source: R A Gilbert’s The
Golden Dawn Companion p156.
Comment by Sally Davis: MWB
may have had friends in the GD in 1895-96 - though they weren’t supposed to let
on about it to non-members - but he could equally easily have contacted
Westcott or Bullock via Collectanea Hermetica’s publisher, and
been drawn in to the GD that way.
MWB’s motto is an interesting
one: Ma Wahanu Thesi, which I’ve never seen translated. I very cautiously suggest that it’s MWB’s
transliteration of some Egyptian hieroglyphs.
MWB will have been
particularly sought-after as a possible initiate: although many members of the
GD were interested in the religions and magic of ancient Egypt, hardly any
members had actually been to the country to see its famous sites or had been
able to master ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs and hieratic script. Once he was a member, MWB would have gained
access to the GD’s own literature on ancient Egyptian magic, much of which
circulated amongst the members in manuscript; including Florence Farr’s The
Book of the Concourse of the Forces which contained watercolour drawings of
Egyptian gods.
Source for the book:
Freemasons’ Library GD collection GD 2/1/8: The Book of the Concourse of the
Forces; with date 12 October 1893.
A more mundane comment: in
1896 MWB’s address for post from the GD was 16a Oxford Square, Paddington but
he didn’t do more than stay there occasionally, it wasn’t his home but his
father’s. Marcus Seton Blackden seems to
have moved into the house in preparation for his second marriage to Mary
Elizabeth Cotter in 1884. They were
living there with their daughter and son, and MWB’s full-sister Ada Mary.
6 NOVEMBER 1897
MWB was initiated into the
GD’s inner, 2nd Order - until you had achieved this second
initiation, you were not allowed to do any practical magic.
Source: RAG Companion
p156.
Comment by Sally Davis: from
original initiation to 2nd Order initiation within 15 months was
rare in the GD for a number of good reasons.
MWB had an advantage over most new initiates when it came to doing the
study-work and exams quickly - he knew a lot about Egyptian magic and symbolism
already; and he didn’t have to go to work or run a household and family. Nevertheless, the speed at which he gained
that level of proficiency in the western occult tradition is impressive.
DURING 1898
MWB spent much of the year
living in East Anglia, in Norwich and at Oulton Broad in Suffolk. He joined the Norfolk and Norwich Art Circle
and exhibited with them.
MID-1898
MWB joined the Sphere
Group, a sub-group within the GD led by Florence Farr.
Sources:
R A Gilbert’s The Golden
Dawn Companion
Ellic Howe’s The Magicians of
the Golden Dawn (full details in the Sources section below) pp250-51; quoting a later
account of the Group, written by one of its members, Robert William Felkin: The
Group As I Knew It.
For the Sphere Group’s
purpose:
A E Waite: Magician of Many Parts R A Gilbert. Wellingborough: Thorsons Publishing Group Ltd
under its ‘Crucible’ imprint. 1987. Chapter 12 p113.
Cauda Pavonis volumes 11-16 1992: article on the Sphere Group by
Sharon E Cogdill pp7-12. Cauda
Pavonis was the newsletter/journal of the Hermetic Text Society, published
by the Department of English, Washington State University at Pullman, beginning
in 1982 though I’m not sure when publication ceased. Some at least of its volumes can be seen at www.alchemywebsite.com/cauda.html
Comments by Sally Davis: information on the Sphere Group isn’t all that
easy to find - it was an informal group which didn’t really keep records. However, Sharon Cogdill was able to say that
Florence Farr had originally founded the group to teach Egyptian symbolism and
invocation, and it seems to have developed and matured from there. Felkin listed its human members: himself; Ada
Waters; Cecilia Macrae; Helen Rand; Florence Kennedy; Florence Farr’s sister Henrietta
Paget; Robert Palmer Thomas (of whom more later); Edmund Hunter; Dorothea
Hunter; Fanny Hunter; and MWB who must have known as much about the subject in
terms of ancient Egypt as Florence Farr, but perhaps not as much about the way
the ancient symbols might be used in a modern magical order. An astral entity understood by the group’s
members to be “an Egyptian figure” (to quote Felkin) appeared at the centre of
the sphere during the ritual, which lasted about an hour. The members of the group didn’t have to be in
the same place to play their part in the ritual; but they did have meetings,
which would have been an opportunity for MWB to get to know Robert
Palmer-Thomas. According to Felkin’s
account, the group lasted from mid-1898 to 1901, when the astral entity
announced that he (sic) would no longer be available to the group; so that it
had to be reconstituted.
Sources for East Anglia though unfortunately neither of the websites
gives details of what works MWB exhibited in 1898.
Website www.suffolkpainters.co.uk, entry for MWB which has a
lovely illustration, one of the copies MWB did at Beni Hasan - a bush full of
birds, part of the larger fishing scene from Beni Hasan tomb 14, the tomb of
Khnumhotep.
Website www.nnartcircle.com
22 JUNE 1899
MWB’s sister Ada Mary was
initiated into the Order of the Golden Dawn.
Source: RAG The Golden
Dawn Companion p160.
Though never as active a
member as her brother, Ada Mary did do the work necessary to be admitted to the
2nd, inner order, on 22 November 1900. She was not a member of either the
Independent or Rectified Rite or Stella Matutina.
DATED JUNE 1899
MWB copied out Samuel
Liddell Mathers’ “Abridged Treatise on the Taro” (sic). This was a set of instructions on how to use
tarot cards for divination; and some tables of correspondences between
particular tarot cards and symbols from the Kabbalah, colours, and the signs of
the zodiac.
Source: the original 214-page
volume, now in Freemasons’ Library GD collection and signed by MWB: call number
GD 2/1/23.
Comment by Sally Davis: being
handed a manuscript of magical instructions, for you to copy out, was the usual
way of learning in the GD.
1900
Some of MWB’s work at Beni
Hasan appeared in two small volumes on the site.
Sources:
Beni Hasan 1900, 9 pages.
Contributors: Howard Carter, MWB, Percy Brown. I take it this is not the same book as
Zoological and Other Details Volume 4 of Beni Hasan,
Volume 7 of Memoir. Published by the
Archaeological Survey of Egypt. 9
pages. 1900. Contributors: Howard Carter, MWB, Percy
Brown, Percy Buckman, Percy Edward Newberry.
DURING 1900
MWB was living at 6 Topsfield Parade Crouch End.
Sources: some of the documents I mention as sources for the trouble in
the GD in spring 1900 have this as MWB’s address.
DURING 1900
MWB was working on
Egyptian compilation known as The Book of the Dead: the meaning of the Pillars
which are often referred to in it.
Comment by Sally Davis: this
was the beginning of a programme of translating and interpreting The Book of
the Dead, which continued until around 1914.
Source:
Yeats’s Golden Dawn by George Mills Harper using GD papers kept by Yeats
after he resigned, and now in the Yeats’ collection in Ireland. London and Basingstoke: Macmillan Press Ltd
1974.
The papers include The Scribe’s Account of the Executive Difficulty,
prepared 26-27 February 1901 by Annie Horniman, to give her side of the events
of a particularly rumbustuous meeting of the new GD Council; about which, more
below. Specific reference to MWB’s talk
is on p61. Annie H was infuriated
because in order to allow him more time to prepare his talk, MWB was let off
doing the “D exam”. London and Basingstoke:
Macmillan Press Ltd 1974.
FEBRUARY TO APRIL 1900
MWB got caught up in the aftermath of a letter Samuel Liddell Mathers
sent Florence Farr, in which he told her that the GD’s founding documents were
faked.
A summing-up of what happened, in date order: RAG The Golden
Dawn Companion pp73-78. See
also Ellic Howe.
EARLY MARCH 1900
MWB agreed to join a committee set up by Florence Farr and Percy William
Bullock to investigate whether Mathers’ allegations were true. At some point before April 1900 he also
agreed to take charge of the contents of the Isis-Urania temple, which included
manuscripts as well as furniture and other paraphernalia used in rituals.
Comment by Sally Davis: Mathers swore Florence Farr to silence on the
subject but after several days of worry she decided she really must tell other
senior members of the GD. Although he
had not been a member as long as some others, Florence trusted MWB’s opinion
and discretion enough to make him one of the few people she told.
Source: Freemasons’ Library GD collection call number: GD 2/4/3/2.
END MARCH 1900
As the investigation began, Mathers attempted by letter to reassert his
authority over the GD members in London.
MID APRIL 1900
Threatening letters having failed, Mathers authorised a group led by
Aleister Crowley to take possession of the 2nd Order’s rooms at 36
Blythe Road Hammersmith and restore his authority by making every 2nd
Order member take a new oath of allegiance.
Crowley and his group failed to keep control of the Blythe Road rooms,
partly because MWB did not give them the help Mathers and Crowley had expected
from him.
A good source for the events in date order: RAG The Golden Dawn
Companion pp73-78.
The source I usually use: Ellic Howe’s The Magicians of the Golden
Dawn: p220; p222 Howe had access to
GD archives and also to a copy of Crowley’s Abra-Melin diary in which Crowley
wrote up his view of what was going on (which is not necessarily to be relied
on).
Comment by Sally Davis: not all 2nd Order members had a key
to the rooms in Blythe Road. MWB was one
of those who did have a key and initially, Mathers hoped that MWB would hand it
over to Crowley when asked. But he didn’t;
Crowley had to ask Dr Berridge instead.
Mathers had also told Crowley to ask MWB for a list of the 2nd
Order’s current members. But MWB didn’t
hand that over either.
21 APRIL 1900
MWB went to the Mark Masons’ Hall in Covent Garden, which was rented by
the GD for rituals and meetings involving all the members. He took away various GD props and
paraphernalia that were stored there, and hid them in a safe place. He wrote a note to the investigating
committee saying he wouldn’t allow anyone access to them until the situation
with Mathers and Crowley had been resolved.
Source:
Freemasons’ Library GD collection call number: GD 2/4/3/28, MWB’s note
to the other members of the investigating committee, dated 21 April 1900.
Comment by Sally Davis: as you can also see from his actions in Egypt,
MWB was rather high-handed. However, his
quick action probably saved a lot of the GD’s property from falling into the
hands of Mathers’ supporters in the GD.
It seems that the GD’s contemporary members never got their possessions
back: the hoard passed into the keeping of MWB, and then Helen Rand, as senior
members of the Independent and Rectified Rite (for more of this Order see the
net file in this life-by-dates sequence) resurfacing in 1930 after Helen’s
death.
Source: Yeats’s Golden Dawn by George Mills Harper using GD
papers kept by Yeats after he resigned, and now in the Yeats’ collection in
Ireland. London and Basingstoke:
Macmillan Press Ltd 1974: p155.
21 APRIL 1900
The 2nd Order held a hastily-arranged meeting. At this meeting, MWB was deemed no longer to
be a member of the investigating committee.
Helen Rand replaced him.
Source: Freemasons’ Library GD collection call number: GD 2/4/3/26a, GD
2/4/3/35.
Comment by Sally Davis: Not all the people who attended the meeting of
21 April 1900 are named; but MWB is not amongst the names that are listed. I think he didn’t attend the meeting; perhaps
if he had, there wouldn’t have been so much doubt about which side he was on.
AROUND 21 APRIL 1900
MWB wrote to Samuel Liddell Mathers, asking why Mathers’ had refused to
cooperate with the investigating committee; and exactly what Crowley’s
involvement was.
Source: Mathers’ reply, in the Freemasons’ Library GD collection, call
number GD 2/4/3/31.
Comment by Sally Davis:
The letter MWB wrote has been lost, but in his reply Mathers did quote
from it and it does seem that MWB had not been tactful in his approach. He had written not in bewilderment, but in
some anger at the way Mathers was behaving: “Am I to understand”, he’d said, “that
there is never to be any truth and light let in upon the Order?” However, he did warn Mathers that the GD
members in London were seriously considering a future without him; and asked
him what he should do about it. Any
criticism of his actions, however slight and politely phrased, always brought
out the worst in Mathers and MWB received in reply a rant in which other GD
members were called “swine” and “rebellious children” though he himself was
only accused of acting with “more precipitation than discretion” and condemned
for “the liberty of speech that you have dared to indulge”.
27 APRIL 1900
MWB received a telegram from Aleister Crowley asking him to keep secret
the fact that he was acting as Mathers’ agent in London.
Comment by Sally Davis: MWB might have dropped out of the investigating
committee, but he was not completely on Mathers’ side either: he handed over
Crowley’s telegram to the investigating committee. It was far too late for Crowley to be seeking
anonymity: that he was the man who had acted for Mathers in attempting to seize
the rooms at Blythe Road was widely known in the GD’s 2nd Order.
Source: Freemasons’ Library GD collection call number GD 2/4/3/33a-c,
which is the telegram, one copy of it and the envelope it was delivered in.
19 APRIL 1900
Mathers and his supporters were expelled from the GD.
21 APRIL 1900
A new, post-Mathers, constitution and administrative/ritual hierarchy
was formulated for the GD, in which MWB agreed to serve, as Adeptus Litteratus
with responsibility for ceremonial.
Sources: RAG The Golden Dawn Companion pp77-78.
Ellic Howe The Magicians of the Golden Dawn p228. There were seven adepti litterati, each with
responsibility for teaching and advising on their particular area of expertise.
Collected Letters of W B Yeats Volume III 1901-94 pp32-33 lists the
Council members.
Comment by Sally Davis: the other members of the Executive Council to
run the GD from now on were Florence Farr; Dorothea and Edmund Hunter;
Henrietta Paget; Helen Rand; and Robert Palmer-Thomas, all of whom were in the
Sphere Group; so MWB was amongst friends.
AROUND END APRIL 1900
If MWB had any doubts about whether to remain loyal to Mathers, these
must have been eased by receiving SLM’s ranting letter from Paris, written on
26 April 1900.
Source: the letter, now in the Freemasons’ Library GD collection, call
number GD 2/4/3/31.
Comment by Sally Davis: as with the telegram from Crowley; MWB felt
enough loyalty to the GD in London to hand them the letter.
NOVEMBER 1900
MWB gave his talk to GD
members on the meaning of the Pillars in the Book of the Dead.
Source: Yeats’s Golden Dawn by George Mills
Harper using GD papers kept by Yeats after he resigned, and now in the Yeats’
collection in Ireland. London and
Basingstoke: Macmillan Press Ltd 1974; p61.
1901
The Egypt Society was
founded, with MWB as its first president.
Source for its founding
though the founding date isn’t mentioned: Collected Letters of W B Yeats
Volume III 1901-94 p121 note 7.
Comment by Sally Davis: there doesn’t seem to be much information on the
Egypt Society and perhaps it didn’t last very long. It may have only had one purpose: to get a
play put on in public, whose subject was taken from ancient Egyptian myth. I would suppose that MWB was elected its
first president because he had been very active getting the Society off the
ground. It’s likely Florence Farr was
active too - it was her play.
1901
The Sphere Group was reconstituted with less Egyptian input: the figure
at the centre of the sphere now being the Holy Grail.
Source: Robert Felkin’s account of the Sphere Group, quoted in Ellic
Howe’s The Magicians of the Golden Dawn pp250-251 though it’s not clear
from the account exactly which Sphere Group members moved on to the new group,
and which dropped out.
MID-FEBRUARY 1901
GD Council members began to prepare for a Council meeting at which they
would discuss a way of holding elections to the Council. MWB sent a letter to the Council secretary
(Scribe) Annie Horniman, putting forward 3 motions to be discussed at the
meeting; one about alterations to the 5=6 ceremony; 2 others about how the
voting in Council elections was to be counted and by whom.
Source: Yeats’s Golden Dawn by George Mills Harper using GD
papers kept by Yeats after he resigned, and now in the Yeats’ collection in
Ireland. London and Basingstoke:
Macmillan Press Ltd 1974; p37, p41 and p229 et seq.
Comment by Sally Davis: after the meeting Annie Horniman was quite sure
that MWB had been acting, not alone but as spokesman for a group of Council
members who opposed the ideas she was proposing; I imagine she was right about
that.
25 FEBRUARY 1901
MWB played a major role at the GD Council meeting - 2 hours of
acrimonious debate over electoral procedure and the existence of cross-rank
sub-groups, in which Annie Horniman and W B Yeats were opposed by the majority
of the GD Council members. MWB
apparently acted as the main spokesman for the majority group, as the meeting
fought its way through the agenda.
Sources:
Yeats’s Golden Dawn by George Mills Harper using GD papers kept by Yeats
after he resigned from the Order; now in the Yeats’ collection in Ireland. London and Basingstoke: Macmillan Press Ltd
1974. Particularly the Appendix The
Scribe’s Account of the Executive Difficulty, Annie Horniman’s take on what
happened p229 et seq, in which she seems to be blaming MWB for all the
uproar; but also pp37-45 and pp61-64.
Collected Letters of W B Yeats Volume III 1901-94 pp32-33.
Ellic Howe The Magicians of the Golden Dawn pp247-251.
Comment by Sally Davis: the meeting went on so long that some of the 12
Council members who’d been there at the start had had to leave. Although most of the debate was about how to
carry out elections to the GD Council, the real point on which Annie Horniman
and W B Yeats disagreed with everyone else at the meeting was the existence of
sub-groups within the Order. The Sphere
Group and others like it, had broken the rule of magical orders that sub-groups
within them could only consist of members at the same level of initiation -
that is, the same level of learning and understanding. The 12 who argued against Annie Horniman and
W B Yeats had all been members of the Sphere Group - Annie Horniman was all too
aware of that; but she didn’t understand how much the Sphere Group’s members
had got, out of being members of it. The meeting ended with a vote 6:2 in
favour of the continuation of the sub-groups; Annie Horniman’s ideas for the
handling of Council elections were also voted out. Annie Horniman and W B Yeats were the ‘2';
they both resigned from the GD on 27 February 1901.
FEBRUARY 1901-END 1902
Nearly all of the GD Council members who had attended the meeting of 25
February 1901 resigned from the GD; for a variety of reasons. MWB and Helen Rand became de facto leaders of
those who remained.
Source for the resignations: Yeats’s Golden Dawn by George Mills
Harper using GD papers kept by Yeats after he resigned, and now in the Yeats’
collection in Ireland. London and
Basingstoke: Macmillan Press Ltd 1974: p96.
Those who left included some of the GD’s most long-serving and respected
members: Florence Farr and Henrietta Paget; and Dorothea and Edmund Hunter.
CENSUS DAY (April) 1901
MWB had moved into what
might have been a Blackden family-owned house in London - 3 Wells Road Regent’s
Park. Ada Mary was keeping house for him
there.
Sources: family papers;
census 1901
SEPTEMBER 1901
MWB and A E Waite were
initiated as freemasons at Runymede Lodge.
They were both recommended to the Lodge by the GD’s W F Kirby who was
already a member.
Comment by Sally Davis: there’s
much more about this in the next of the Blackden ‘life by dates’ files.
16 NOVEMBER 1901
The Egypt Society staged the play Beloved of Hathor, the Shrine of the
Golden Hawk; written by Florence Farr and her friend Olivia Shakespear.
Comment by Sally Davis: the Egypt Society members hired the Victoria
Hall, at 21 Archer Street Westbourne Grove, for their production of the
play. Olivia Shakespear was not in the
GD.
Sources:
Collected Letters of W B Yeats Vol III 1901-94 p121 note 7.
At www.archive.org you can see the
full script of Beloved of Hathor, The Shrine of the Golden Hawk. There’s an outline of the plot and an
introduction about how it should be staged and what the characters in it should
wear.
Website www.arthurlloyd.co.uk is a music hall and theatre
history site which uses local sources. There’s a good section on the Victoria Hall,
with photos.
SPRING 1902
The GD changed its name, and a new set of bye-laws was issued.
Comment by Sally Davis: with so many senior GD members resigning, it’s
likely that MWB played an important role in getting these changes agreed.
Source I used (though there’s plenty of other information out there): Yeats’s
Golden Dawn by George Mills Harper using GD papers kept by Yeats after he
resigned, and now in the Yeats’ collection in Ireland. London and Basingstoke: Macmillan Press Ltd
1974; p96.
21 and 22 APRIL 1902
There were two more
performances of Beloved of Hathor, The
Shrine of the Golden Hawk, and the text was published.
Source:
Freemasons’ Library call
number SRIA 399: Text of Beloved of Hathor and The Shrine of the Golden Hawk,
by Florence Farr and Olivia Shakespear.
Printed by Farncombe and Son. A
note on the upper flyleaf of the SRIA’s copy gives the dates in April 1902 that
the play was performed.
BY AUTUMN 1902 probably long
before this date
Sub-groups of the GD like
the Sphere Group had ceased to function.
Source:
Ellic Howe The Magicians of the Golden Dawn p251.
END OF FILE ON MARCUS WORSLEY
BLACKDEN: EGYPT AND THE GOLDEN DAWN
BASIC SOURCES I USED for all Golden Dawn members.
Membership of the Golden Dawn: The Golden Dawn Companion by R A
Gilbert. Northampton: The Aquarian Press
1986. Between pages 125 and 175, Gilbert
lists the names, initiation dates and addresses of all those people who became
members of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn or its many daughter Orders
between 1888 and 1914. The list is based
on the Golden Dawn’s administrative records and its Members’ Roll - the large
piece of parchment on which all new members signed their name at their
initiation. All this information had
been inherited by Gilbert but it’s now in the Freemasons’ Library at the United
Grand Lodge of England building on Great Queen Street Covent Garden. Please note, though, that the records of the
Amen-Ra Temple in Edinburgh were destroyed in 1900/01. I have recently (July 2014) discovered that
some records of the Horus Temple at Bradford have survived, though most have
not; however those that have survived are not yet accessible to the public.
For the history of the GD during the 1890s I usually use Ellic Howe’s The
Magicians of the Golden Dawn: A Documentary History of a Magical Order
1887-1923. Published Routledge and
Kegan Paul 1972. Foreword by Gerald
Yorke. Howe is a historian of printing
rather than of magic; he also makes no claims to be a magician himself, or even
an occultist. He has no axe to grind.
Family history: freebmd; ancestry.co.uk (census and probate);
findmypast.co.uk; familysearch; Burke’s Peerage and Baronetage; Burke’s Landed
Gentry; Armorial Families; thepeerage.com; and a wide variety of family trees
on the web.
Famous-people sources: mostly about men, of course, but very useful even
for the female members of GD. Oxford
Dictionary of National Biography. Who
Was Who. Times Digital Archive.
Useful source for business and legal information: London Gazette and its
Scottish counterpart Edinburgh Gazette.
Now easy to find (with the right search information) on the web.
Catalogues: British Library; Freemasons’ Library.
Wikipedia; Google; Google Books - my three best resources. I also used other web pages, but with some
caution, as - from the historian’s point of view - they vary in quality a great
deal.
Copyright SALLY DAVIS
18 May 2015
Find the web pages of Roger Wright and Sally Davis, including my list of
people initiated into the Order of the Golden Dawn between 1888 and 1901, at:
http:www.wrightanddavis.co.uk
Copyright SALLY DAVIS
30 March 2015
Find the web pages of Roger Wright and Sally Davis, including my list of
people initiated into the Order of the Golden Dawn between 1888 and 1901, at:
http:pws.prserv.net/Roger_Wright
***