Haunt · 1904
Restaurant Paillard
Address · 2, rue de la Chaussée-d'Antin, 75009 Paris
Metro · Chaussée d'Antin (7, 9)
Today · Gone
The story
The Paillard restaurant stood at the corner of rue de la Chaussée-d'Antin and boulevard des Italiens, at No. 2 of the street. The collections of the Bibliothèque historique de la Ville de Paris present it as the continuation of the Maison Maire, and the chef Léopold Mourier, who joined Maire in 1883, became its head chef in 1886, at a time when the house belonged to a Madame Paillard. The website devoted to the painter Guirand de Scévola dates the establishment to 1878 and describes it as a meeting place for the Tout-Paris and crowned heads during the Belle Époque. An annex, the “Petit Paillard”, was located on the Champs-Élysées.
In 1905, Guirand de Scévola decorated the ceiling of the main dining room with a composition titled La Femme au vingtième siècle, unveiled in early October; the press thought it recognised Cléo de Mérode, La Belle Otero or Polaire in it. No photograph of this ceiling has been found.
On Tuesday 26 April 1904, Crowley and his wife Rose Kelly, sister of the painter Gerald Kelly, invited Arnold Bennett by telegram to lunch at Paillard. The couple were returning from Egypt: a few weeks earlier, in Cairo, Crowley had received Liber AL vel Legis, or The Book of the Law, and he left Paris the very next day for London and then Boleskine. Bennett noted in his journal a red waistcoat studded with jewels and the largest ring he had ever seen; he added that he found Crowley rather likeable. The conversation turned to how a great brain works, then to Oscar Wilde, Crowley claiming to know a man who had supposedly met him in the Pyrenees while he was in prison.
In Egypt, Crowley had presented himself under the name “Prince Chioa Khan”; the timeline mentions him in February 1904 at Helwan. Bennett's journal does not say that he was still using this name in Paris, but his attire shows that he was still cultivating this Oriental persona.
The 19th-century establishment has disappeared. A photograph by André Gandner, held at the Musée de la Libération de Paris, still shows an “Au Paillard” sign at this corner in 1944, with the Église de la Trinité at the end of the street. An online directory listed a chain restaurant of that name at No. 2 in 2015; the corner building can be seen from the crossroads, but the sources mention no surviving original decoration.