Haunt · 1908
Maison Lavenue
Address · 68, boulevard du Montparnasse (angle de la rue du Départ), Paris
Metro · Montparnasse-Bienvenüe (4, 6, 12, 13)
Today · Gone. Closed in 1937; another restaurant on the corner.
The story
The Maison Lavenue, also known as the Hôtel de France et de Bretagne, stood at the corner of boulevard du Montparnasse (No. 68) and rue du Départ (Nos. 1-3), facing place de Rennes, now place du 18-Juin-1940. It was a stone's throw from the old Gare de l'Ouest, whose departure platforms rue du Départ had run alongside since 1849. The façade bears the dates 1854 and 1897: the first corresponds to its foundation, the second to the renovation carried out by M. Gruffaz, who had taken over the business after the sudden death of his predecessor, M. Charuet, in 1890.
The hotel-restaurant was popular with artists. In The Real Latin Quarter (1901), Frank Berkeley Smith lists among its regulars Auguste Rodin, Alexandre Falguière, Jean-Paul Laurens, Léon Bonnat, Whistler, Sargent and the American sculptors Saint-Gaudens and MacMonnies. The house also hosted political dinners, notably those of the Patrie française, with Maurice Barrès and François Coppée. It went bankrupt in 1937.
Crowley moved in at the beginning of June 1908. The Aleister Crowley Timeline places him on 3 June at the “Hotel Lavenue, place de Rennes”, the very day the London Vanity Fair published his story “Jeremiah in the Quartier Montparnasse”, soon followed by “Ezekiel in the Quartier Montparnasse” (22 August). He had left his wife Rose Kelly at the end of April and that summer also stayed at the Hôtel de Blois, rue Vavin. In the autumn he returned to Paris for a major magical retreat begun on 1 October and completed on the 13th; the diary he kept of it would be published under the title John St. John.
It was during this retreat that he had a birthday lunch at Lavenue's, recorded at 12:40 p.m. in his diary according to the Culinary Crowley website: well-cooked kidneys, strawberry tart, a Burgundy he praised lavishly, coffee, cognac and a Cuban cigar he judged the best of his life. Crowley was born on 12 October 1875; the same article, however, places the eve of his birthday on the evening of the 12th, which would suggest the 13th, so the exact date of the meal needs to be checked against the text of John St. John.
After the bankruptcy, the corner housed the Chez Dupont restaurant and the Miramar cinema, later taken over by Gaumont, then a Taverne de Maître Kanter until 1994; a grill-restaurant chain occupies it today, and the corner pharmacy has survived through the eras. From the street, the dates 1854 and 1897 can still be read on the façade, the only visible reminder of the house.