Travel, mountain-climbing, dabbling in occult rituals, and financing the publication of luxurious editions of his own poetry

Of all the people who frequented the Chat Blanc, no one was more bizarre nor as interesting to Maugham as Aleister Crowley. An eccentric English poet and Satanist, Crowley had inherited £40,000, which he soon exhausted on travel, mountain-climbing, dabbling in occult rituals, and financing the publication of luxurious editions of his own poetry.

R. Calder, Willie: the life of W. Somerset Maugham