Haunt · 1902–1905
Le Chat Blanc
Address · 13, rue d'Odessa, 75014 Paris
Metro · Edgar Quinet (6)
Today · Gone
The story
Le Chat Blanc was a small restaurant on rue d'Odessa, close to the Gare Montparnasse, where a circle of English-speaking artists and writers dined in the early 20th century. According to Somerset Maugham's recollections, the same diners met there almost every evening and gave passing visitors a rather cool welcome. Maugham met Arnold Bennett and the critic Clive Bell there. Samuel J. Rogal, author of an encyclopedia devoted to Maugham, sees it as the model for the restaurant the novelist calls “Gravier's” in Of Human Bondage (1915).
It was the painter Gerald Kelly, Crowley's future brother-in-law, who took Maugham there, and Maugham got into the habit of dining there every evening. Crowley, back in Paris at the end of 1902 and lodging at 8 bis rue Campagne-Première in early 1903, was among the occasional visitors. Maugham describes him as a brilliant, boastful and amusing talker, whom he found unlikeable but interesting, and who talked to him about magic and occultism. Rogal dates their meeting to 1904.
Bennett, for his part, recorded in his journal on 9 March 1905 a dinner at the Chat Blanc in Crowley's presence, noting his dirty hands, his large rings, hair that seemed to him dyed, a showy waistcoat, a fur coat and tennis shoes.
Maugham wrote The Magician in the first half of 1907; the novel appeared in 1908. In it he gave his magus, Oliver Haddo, many of Crowley's traits, while making him more sinister and attributing real powers to him. Crowley recognised himself and responded with a long review published in Vanity Fair on 30 December 1908, signed “Oliver Haddo”; Maugham claims never to have read it.
The restaurant has disappeared and the sources report no plaque. Rue d'Odessa still exists, in the shadow of the Tour Montparnasse; No. 13 is identified by a photographer as the former site of the Chat Blanc.