kaos

Correspondence
Grant’s and Letchford’s versions of Austin Spare
David—Have you considered that Kenneth Grant mythologized Spare just as much as
he has obviously mythologized Mrs Paterson?
As for Mrs Paterson, Spare doesn’t mention her at all in his own books, which Kenneth
Grant himself concedes on p 18 of Outer Gateways. Since Grant is unreliable from a
historical perspective, if Spare does not mention Mrs Paterson save through Grant’s
words then it seems Frank Letchford’s testimony as to the existence of Mrs Paterson is
the best we have. And I note that Letchford says only that Austin mentioned her in
vague terms. We could assume, given that Letchford must rely on Grant for the rather
routine information that she was “an elderly colonial clairvoyant who instructed Austin
in the Tarot, Ouija board and other means of occult communication”, that these terms
were indeed so vague that Austin may not even have mentioned her by name to Letchford,
and that for this too he is reliant upon Grant. Spare appears to have mentioned little
more to Letchford than that there was a woman in his past who was important to him
in some way. Even Letchford’s statement that her portrait may be in The Focus of Life is
qualified as secondhand information: “Her portrait is said to appear in The Focus of
Life.” That doesn’t make it sound like Spare ever opened up the book and said to him
this is a picture I did of Mrs Paterson. Does Grant, indeed, say that her portrait appears
in The Focus of Life? Indeed he does, in 1972 in The Magical Revival:
He drew several portraits of Mrs Paterson, one of which appeared in The Focus of Life,
published by the Morland Press in 1921. Another drawing of her by Spare recently
appeared (1971) in the part-work encyclopaedia Man, Myth and Magic, where she is
shown after having “exteriorized” herself in the form of a nubile girl. [p 181]
So it seems Letchford is probably relying on Grant for this information, relating
recollections of vague things Spare mentioned to him to specific things written by
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