This week's post is inspired by a report from the Guardian about a display currently on show at the V&A in London. Theatre lover Gabrielle Enthoven is getting the recognition she deserves.
Short version: Gabrielle Enthoven fell in love with the theatre at a young age and continued her obsession till the day she died, in 1950. She married but it doesn’t seem to have been a happy arrangement, and after her husband died she never remarried. A child of privilege, she had connections to royalty and spent her life among high society.
She never missed a show.
I don’t know if any of you work in theatre or are theatre fans, but if you are, you know Gabrielle’s type. Someone who’s always there. Seats booked, opening night. Knows the cast on a first name basis. Can’t be kept away from the theatre door. If she breaks her leg then she’s there the next day on crutches – or in her sedan chair, more likely.
Her obsession led her to become a collector’s collector. She wants everything from playbills to scripts to tickets to costume designs. Her home was stuffed full of theatrical ephemera which she did her best to pass on to a museum for curation and safekeeping, a self-appointed task that proved surprisingly difficult. It eventually went to the Victoria and Albert and formed the basis for that institution’s theatrical collection.
In the 1930s she would have been in her early sixties, a fixture of the London theatrical scene. By that point she was working daily at the V&A cataloguing the museum’s collection – her collection - and was paying for three staff to assist her. Anything and everything to do with the theatre, past and present, was meat and drink to her.
From a Bookhounds perspective, she’s a perfect Patron. Assuming the Hounds can attract her attention. Any number of theatre mavens, Bright Young Things and other moths drawn to her flame might come to the Hounds for material. Actors on the rise, or trying to avoid the fall, might seek her help, and therefore the Hounds’ help in finding material she’d deem suitable. In 1933 she becomes Vice President of the Passing Theatres Association, a group dedicated to seeking out ephemera related to old, dead theatres. Which sounds a lot like Plot Hook Central for Hounds and has the added advantage that the Hounds themselves can be members of the Association.
People likely to know her or want to know her: Scribblers (p42 main book), Artists (p48), Bright Young Things (p45), Boffins (p48, particularly if connected to the V&A or a similar institution). Possibly Solicitors of the older generation, particularly if they spent some time in the Colonial Service; her father was Judge Advocate General in the Crimea and India, a renowned legal brain.
Her parties are famous and she's well-travelled, so she's likely to know all sorts of people. She spent some time in New York and knows that city's theatrical establishment well, and her connections to royalty mean she has links with the highest levels of society both here and on the Continent. Once she gets her museum collection, she spends a lot of time cataloging material at the V&A, so if the Hounds want to ambush her at her place of work, they'd best stake out the museum, which she visits every day at 10am on the dot.
All that said:
A Most Exclusive Gathering
Lounger Harvey Walters, fresh off the boat from America, wants in to Gabrielle Enthoven's inner circle. He's desperate to find something to win her favor and to get him into the Passing Theatres Association.
He haunts all the bookstores looking for prizes, and the Hounds can earn a few spondulicks selling him whatever they can scrape up. Walters appears to be minted, but it's always difficult to tell with loungers. Maybe he has it in the bank, maybe he doesn't.
He becomes obsessed with the Corinthian Hall, a rather grand establishment in North Finchley that was built in 1850 and expired in 1910, briefly becoming a picture house before burning in a fire. The original building's been knocked down but there's been arguments over how best to use the site, so nothing's been built there since.
If the Hounds can get him something from the Corinthian Hall that impresses Gabrielle Enthoven enough to let him into one of her exclusive parties, Walters offers the world on a plate. Money is no object.
Option One: Dreaming, Dreaming. There is still a Corinthian Hall in North Finchley. Every night six dreamers will it into existence again, to remind themselves of past glories. If the Hounds can track them down, using Magick or Megapolisomancy, they can enter the dream, find the Hall, and take what they like from it. However, they need to be careful. Nightgaunts circle the Hall, guarding it from intrusion. Should the Hounds attract their attention they may find themselves on an unscheduled flight, high above London.
Option Two: Gabrielle's Dilemma. Gabrielle Enthoven knows Harvey Walters all too well. When she was in New York the fellow was an absolute pest, wittering on about Mythos forces lurking in every shadow while committing every sort of faux pas imaginable at her New York parties. She dispatches agents of her own to make sure that the Hounds fail in their mission. If the Hounds ally with Gabrielle and secretly sabotage Harvey, those Mythos forces he blithers on about may become all too real. There is no wrath like a Mythos stalker scorned.
Option Three: Corinthian Shadows. The ruins of the old Hall are very dangerous to the unwary. Anyone who gets too close finds themselves obsessed with the former Theatre, and eventually sacrifices their lives in an attempt to get close to it. This is because the Hall is home to a kind of psychic vampire that exists by draining life energy; the vampire's physical body was destroyed in the fire, and it's building another out of bits of its victims. Gabrielle Enthoven knows about it which is why she and her friends in the Passing Theatres Association never try to get anything from the Corinthian Hall. They've warned Harvey but he won't listen. Will the Hounds?
That's it for this week. Enjoy!
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