Lodging · 1926
Hôtel Vouillemont
Address · 15, rue Boissy-d'Anglas, 75008 Paris
Metro · Concorde (1, 8, 12)
Today · Other use. Today the Sofitel Le Faubourg hotel.
The story
Rue Boissy-d'Anglas, in the Madeleine district, already appears on a plan of 1652; it has borne several names, including rue de la Madeleine and, for its section near the Concorde, rue des Champs-Élysées, before receiving in 1865 that of François-Antoine Boissy d'Anglas, president of the National Convention. It links place de la Concorde to boulevard Malesherbes, crossing rue du Faubourg-Saint-Honoré.
The Hôtel de Vouillemont, as spelled by the establishment that succeeded it, was an elegant address in this neighbourhood. Proust mentions it in Swann in Love, and its fashionable and foreign clientele was large; in the 1930s, Pirandello, Cocteau, Picabia and Surrealists frequented it. The same building later housed the offices of Marie Claire magazine.
Crowley stayed there at the beginning of August 1926, back from Tunisia, where he was still living at La Marsa in June. It was a difficult summer: Dorothy Olsen and Jane Wolfe had left Tunis in early July for the region of Pau, where Olsen was being treated for her gall bladder. On 6 August his address is recorded at the Hôtel Vuillemont; the next day, 7 August 1926, he was evicted for failing to pay his bill. The episode says much about the precariousness of his finances. He then went to join the two women, whom he met up with on 12 August, before returning to Paris: on 23 August he was at the Hôtel du Béarn, rue de Lille, then on the 26th he moved to rue Frochot, after a stay at a Hôtel des Ambassadeurs.
Since 2000, No. 15 of the street has been occupied by the Sofitel Paris Le Faubourg hotel, which combines two former hôtels particuliers of the 18th and 19th centuries and claims the heritage of the Hôtel de Vouillemont. The timeline devoted to Crowley, however, gives only the name of the hotel, without a number, and the sources do not specify which of the two buildings corresponded exactly to the former establishment. From the street, one sees the façades of the present hotel, a stone's throw from the Faubourg-Saint-Honoré.
To be checked · Number to be checked.