D. H. Lawrence
Frequented by · 1929
He and Frieda spent the Easter weekend of 1929 at the Crosbys' mill in the grounds of the Château d'Ermenonville, in the middle of the month he was spending in Paris on the Lady Chatterley edition.
Le Moulin du Soleil (Ermenonville)
The medieval mill in the grounds of the Château d'Ermenonville that Harry and Caresse Crosby leased in 1925 and renamed for the sun. D. H. Lawrence and Frieda spent the Easter weekend of 1929 here.
- Grounds of the Château d'Ermenonville, rue Souville, 60950 Ermenonville
- Leased by the Crosbys from 1925
Illustration
The story
A mill in someone else's park
Ermenonville is best known for something else entirely. The park was laid out in the 1760s by the Marquis de Girardin as a landscape garden of the philosophical kind, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau spent his last weeks there in 1778 and was buried on an island in the lake. It is one of the founding sites of the European Romantic taste for wild nature.
The Crosbys arrived in 1925 and took a medieval mill on the estate on a twenty-year lease from Armand de La Rochefoucauld. They wanted somewhere out of Paris that was not a hotel, and they got a stone building in a park with a literary pedigree already attached to it.
What they made of it was less contemplative than Rousseau's version. The mill ran as a permanent open house for the people the press published and the people the Crosbys collected, and the weekend guest lists are the reason it is remembered at all.
Easter 1929
Lawrence had arrived in Paris on 12 March and was working through a list of people who might print a cheap Lady Chatterley's Lover. Sylvia Beach had refused him; a bookseller he had trusted had pirated the novel behind his back; the contract with Edward Titus was still a fortnight off. The Crosbys, who had already published his story "Sun" and his novella The Escaped Cock, asked the Lawrences out to the mill for Easter.
Frieda had spent most of the month in Baden-Baden with her mother and had rejoined him by then. The weekend is the one stretch of the Paris visit that reads as a rest rather than an errand.
Both men were closer to the end than anyone in the house knew. Lawrence died at Vence on 2 March 1930. Harry Crosby died in New York on 10 December 1929, shot in the temple in a friend's studio, beside a married woman who had died of the same pistol about two hours earlier. Caresse Crosby kept the mill and the press going into the 1930s.
Visiting today
- Ermenonville is about forty kilometres north-east of Paris, in the Oise
- The Château d'Ermenonville, in whose grounds the mill stood, now runs as a hotel and restaurant, with a moat, gardens and rowing boats. Guests and diners can get onto the estate; casual visitors cannot
- The mill building itself cannot be identified or visited. It was the actor Jean Richard's country house by 1969, and what has become of it since is not established
- The Parc Jean-Jacques Rousseau, next to the château, is open to the public and holds Rousseau's original tomb on the Île des Peupliers
- By car, roughly an hour from central Paris; by train, Senlis or Le Plessis-Belleville and then a taxi
- Worth the trip? For Rousseau and the park, yes. For Lawrence, this is a place to know about rather than a place to stand in
Last verified: August 2026.
Key facts
- Grounds of the Château d'Ermenonville, Oise
- 1925, on a twenty-year lease from Armand de La Rochefoucauld
- Harry and Caresse Crosby, of the Black Sun Press
- The Easter weekend, 1929, with Frieda
- Rousseau's first grave, on the island in the neighbouring park
- The actor Jean Richard's country house by 1969
- A hotel and restaurant; the mill's own fate is not established
In images
Timeline
Jean-Jacques Rousseau dies at Ermenonville and is buried on the island in the park.
The Crosbys lease the mill on the estate and rename it Le Moulin du Soleil.
They found the press that becomes the Black Sun, publishing from Paris.
D. H. Lawrence and Frieda spend the Easter weekend here.
Harry Crosby dies in New York on 10 December.
Maisons de campagne photographs the mill as the country house of the actor Jean Richard.
On the map
Questions before you go
What was Le Moulin du Soleil?
A medieval mill in the grounds of the Château d'Ermenonville, north-east of Paris, which Harry and Caresse Crosby leased in 1925 and renamed for the sun. It was the country counterpart to their Paris house and press, and it ran as an open house for the writers they published.
Did D. H. Lawrence stay there?
Yes, for the Easter weekend of 1929, with Frieda, in the middle of the month he spent in Paris looking for a publisher for a cheap edition of Lady Chatterley's Lover. The Crosbys had already published his story "Sun" and his novella The Escaped Cock.
Where exactly was the mill?
In the château's grounds, on land belonging to Armand de La Rochefoucauld. The Atlas records the coordinate of the château rather than the mill, because the mill's exact position has not been pinned to a source. The record marks the coordinate as approximate for that reason.
What is the Rousseau connection?
Ermenonville's park was laid out in the 1760s as a philosophical landscape garden, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau died there in 1778 and was buried on an island in the lake. His remains were later moved to the Panthéon; the original tomb is still on the island.
Can you visit Le Moulin du Soleil?
Not the mill. The Château d'Ermenonville, in whose grounds it stood, now operates as a hotel and restaurant, so guests and diners can get onto the estate. The mill building is a separate question: it was the actor Jean Richard's private house by 1969, and the Atlas has not established what has become of it since. The neighbouring Parc Jean-Jacques Rousseau is open to the public and is the reason most people make the trip to Ermenonville.
Writers who knew this place
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