Lodging · 1927
Rue de la Mission-Marchand
Address · 6, rue de la Mission-Marchand, 75016 Paris
Metro · Église d'Auteuil (10)
Today · Private, seen from the street
The story
Rue de la Mission-Marchand is a short street of about 70 metres in the Auteuil district, between rue Pierre-Guérin and rue de la Source. Opened in 1900, it was named by decree of 3 January 1901 in memory of the crossing of Africa by the column of Commandant Jean-Baptiste Marchand, which reached Fashoda, on the Nile, in 1898; the French government had to order its withdrawal in the face of Kitchener's Anglo-Egyptian army, a crisis that preceded the rapprochement of the Entente Cordiale.
Crowley left rue Frochot in early July 1927. His correspondence bears the address 6 rue de la Mission-Marchand from 15 July to the end of November, and again in early December; on 26 December he was at the Hôtel Foyot. Jane Wolfe, discharged from the American Hospital, left for New York on 1 October.
His daughter Astarte Lulu Panthea, born on 26 November 1920 of his liaison with Ninette Shumway, came to see him on 26 October, then again on 26 November: that day, her seventh birthday, he took her to the circus. The timeline also mentions, under 10 November, a sex-magick operation with the American photographer Berenice Abbott, but it gives the same date and the same description for the year 1926, which leaves a doubt about the year and therefore about the place.
Two years later, in April 1929, when Crowley, refused a residence permit, left Paris for Brussels, Paris-Midi mentioned the bachelor flat he had allegedly long kept in Auteuil, in a quiet street, and interviewed one of his associates and some neighbours, who denied the rumours of black masses. The article does not name the street, and Crowley was then living on avenue de Suffren: the connection with rue de la Mission-Marchand remains a hypothesis.
The street, residential and quiet, has few numbers, from 1 to 8. The sources do not describe the building at No. 6, which can be seen from the pavement in this small part of Auteuil near rue de la Source.