Mary d'Este-Sturges (Soror Virakam)

Born: 10 October 1871 in Quebec, Canada.

Died: 12 April 1931 in New York City.

Mary d'Este-Sturges (nee Dempsey), also known as "Mary Desti" was born in Quebec, Canada, on 10 October 1871 and died in New York City on 12 April 1931.  She was the mother of Preston Sturges—to whom Crowley referred to as "The Brat"—who went on to become a famous Hollywood director.  As a child, Preston intensely disliked Crowley and later in life was quoted as saying:  "I realize my mother and I were lucky to escape with our lives.  If I had been a little older, he might not have escaped with his."

She owned a cosmetics firm called Desti Beauty Products and also owned a New York Studio that sold art, perfume, and clothing.  She was a close friend of the dancer Isadora Duncan, and authored her biography, entitled The Untold Story:  the Life of Isadora Duncan.  She later moved to Paris and adopted the habit of wearing only sandals and a Greek tunic.  She was a passionate, worldly woman, and her personality and magnetism attracted Crowley straight off.  She felt the same profound emotion toward him. He spent the evening sitting cross-legged on the floor, "exchanging electricity with her." Mary was Crowley's lover from October 1911 through the winter of 1912.

As Crowley's second Scarlet Woman she assisted him in establishing the magical link with the praeterhuman minds that inspired him with one of his greatest works, Book 4 - Part I and Book 4 - Part II.  A record of her ability as a seer can be found in the Ab-ul-Diz Working.  Her work also appears in Crowley's book, The Vision and the Voice.

Mary had been married four times. Little is known of her first marriage. Her second husband, Edmund P. Biden, was a heavy-drinking traveling salesman whose banjo playing taught her to despise the instrument. The birth of their son Edmund Preston on 29 August 1898, came as a complete surprise; both were apparently naive about the facts of life. Up to the last minute, Biden believed his wife had a tumor. Their marriage ended in January when Mary, fed up with Biden’s drunken rages, escaped with her infant to France. Reflecting on two wasted years, she detested her ex so much that she could not speak his name. Named after his father, her boy thereby went by his middle name, Preston.

While apartment-hunting in Paris, Mary met Mrs. Duncan, who took her home to meet her daughter, Isadora. The two became close friends, and Mary moved into Isadora’s Paris studio while Mrs. Duncan took charge of Preston. Mary idolized Isadora, seeing in her the person she wanted to be.

Mary wed for a third time in Memphis, Tennessee, on October 2, 1901. Her new husband was childhood sweetheart Solomon Sturges, grandson of the pioneering financier who founded Solomon Sturges and Sons, later known as the Continental Illinois National Bank and Trust Company of Chicago. Sturges adopted Mary’s son, and the new family was close and happy. Mary wrote a play called “The Freedom of the Soul,” which had a single performance at Chicago’s Ravina Park; of his wife’s penchant for writing, Sturges remarked “it was infinitely to be preferred to bridge whist playing, and it wasn’t so hard on a man’s pocketbook.” After Paris, however, Chicago stifled Mary, and not even the wishes of her husband would keep her from Isadora. The marriage became strained when Mary followed the notorious dancer across Europe. Tolerant at first, Sturges eventually tired of his wife’s dress and constant flitting across the Atlantic. After a terrible argument in 1907, they separated, and Mary later returned to Europe. Sending Preston to a Parisian boarding school, she was free to live an unconventional, liberated life. Solomon Sturges was eventually granted a divorce for desertion in January 1911.

Her fourth and unfortunate marriage would occur in London the following year—on 12 February 1912—to Turkish fortune hunter Vely Bey. They had met years ago in Chicago, where Bey had been trying (ultimately unsuccessfully) to launch a Turkish tobacco import company. This husband liked how she dressed, and as a bonus his father was Ilias Pasha, court physician to the sultan of Turkey. Both mistakenly thought the other was wealthy, and only after the wedding did the economic truth come out. This, combined with Bey’s dislike of Preston, doomed the marriage from the start. Before things blew up, Mary learned the formula for the lotion her father-in-law had concocted to cure a rash on her face; it was supposedly common throughout the harems of Turkey, and it not only cleared up her rash but also smoothed away wrinkles. Seeing a lucrative opportunity, Mary marketed it as “Le Secret du Harem,” and founded at 4 rue de la Paix her renowned perfumery “Maison d’Este.” This name derived from Mary’s dislike of her given surname, Dempsey; some amateur genealogy linked Dempsey to Desmond and d’Este, which she adopted. However, the d’Este family in Paris threatened to sue if she did not change the name of her salon and remove the garish neon sign out front. Hence the salon became “Maison Desti.”

In 1931 Mary passed away due to leukemia after being seriously ill for two months.

Mary d'Este-Sturges

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