Gabrielle Enthoven (1868 – 1950) was a collector, campaigner, writer and performer with a passion for the theatre. She collected thousands of prints, playbills, playtexts and programmes, campaigning for a 'dedicated theatrical section at a national museum'. In 1924 her vision became reality when the V&A accepted her entire archive, founding its Theatre and Performance collection.
Nicknamed the 'theatrical encyclopedia', Enthoven led a remarkable life. Born Gabrielle Romaine, she was the founder and president of feminist theatre company the Pioneer Players and became the first president of the Society for Theatre Research. A playwright and translator, she was also a humanitarian, receiving an OBE for her work as Head of the Correspondence and Indexing Department for the Red Cross. She was a friend of several theatrical luminaries, including Oscar Wilde, Noël Coward and Eleanora Duse, as well as being at the centre of a bohemian lesbian circle, which included Edith Craig, Mercedes de Acosta and Radclyffe Hall.
Her fierce dedication and passion for theatre began with her first trip to see The Forty Thieves, aged 12. In her own words:
I got out of a window with my brother, who was 17 years older than myself, in order to attend the First Night at the Gaiety Theatre… Being little, I got through the legs of the people till I got to the door of the gallery, when a large navvy said, ‘What do you want?’ ‘I want to see the play.’ ‘Have you got the money?’ To which I replied ‘Yes’. He then put me on his shoulder, carried me upstairs and paid for his entrance with my shilling… When I got out again, I looked everywhere for my brother and eventually found him. ‘Wasn’t it gorgeous?’ I said. ‘I don’t know, I was sick’. But we got back and nobody found out.
After hearing that story, a friend gave Enthoven a 6ft 3ins long glove, supposedly worn by the actress Kate Vaughan (who played Morgiana in The Forty Thieves), which is now in the V&A collection.
As an adult, Enthoven continued to be a dedicated 'first nighter'. She also wrote and acted in plays including the Actress Franchise League's A Pageant of Great Women. After marrying Major Charles Henfrey Enthoven in 1890, she began to collect playbills (posters advertising theatrical performances), soon amassing a collection which made her a centre for enquiries about theatre history.
After her husband’s death in 1910, Enthoven began to publicly campaign for the founding of a national theatre collection. She spent over a decade writing to museums, theatre professionals and newspapers to galvanise support. Writing to the Observer in 1911, she argued for:
A comprehensive theatrical section in an existing museum to comprise specimens of all the different branches necessary to the workings of a play, from the construction of the theatre, the designing of the scenery and costumes to the smallest workings necessary in the house... I want the section to be the place where the producer, actor, author and critic will naturally go for information, both of what is being done in this and other countries at present and what has been done before.
She contacted The British Museum, Museum of London and the V&A hoping to find her collection a permanent home, but each request was met with resistance. The V&A initially suggested that she house it in the newly planned National Theatre, but she was adamant that it needed to go to a museum. She corresponded with then V&A director Sir Cecil Harcourt Smith over several years, determined to get her way.
In 1922 the V&A hosted the International Theatre Exhibition: Designs and Models for the Modern Stage. In the exhibition catalogue, Cecil Harcourt Smith stated, 'The Museum is the officially constituted centre and home for all branches of Industrial Art and Design, and there is, obviously, no branch of Art covering quite so wide a field as the Theatre, which touches Architecture, Painting, Design, and Decoration in many forms.' A selection of items from the exhibition were afterwards acquired for the museum, and this helped Enthoven and Smith to reach an agreement. Finally, in 1924, the V&A accepted Enthoven's collection.
The collection was named the Gabrielle Enthoven Theatrical Collection, and housed in the Department of Engraving, Illustration and Design. Although the V&A took ownership, Enthoven volunteered at the museum to catalogue and index it, and paid for cataloguing assistants out of her own pocket. She also paid for new acquisitions, using her network within theatrical society in London to accumulate material. Working through a continuously increasing collection, her team used index cards for cross-referencing and her famous blue pencil for underlining names.
The collection attracted more and more attention from researchers, and Enthoven appreciated its significance:
I believe there is nothing exactly like it [my collection] in the world – a one woman collection, worth £35,000... It is becoming more and more known that I really can answer questions about most things concerning London theatres... all facts go to make history and my Collection is to be a history of our London theatres.
Work on her collection paused only during the Second World War, and she picked up her blue pencil again on 13 August 1945. She was still working through the cataloguing up until her death in 1950. Dedicated to the last, in her Will she stipulated the cheapest possible funeral so as to maximise the amount left to the V&A, to continue cataloguing and acquiring material for the theatre collection. In a speech after her death, curator George Nash described her character:
She enjoyed breaking all the rules, did not understand their need for requisitioning and form filling and gaily expected everyone to give way to her in everything. She was our 'enfant terrible' but all the same, she was also our inspiration… If she felt that you were not doing your best for her beloved theatre collection, she would be down after you like one of the furies…
Gabrielle Enthoven's contribution to theatre history over 40 years is still being felt, from the establishment of charities for the preservation of theatre buildings, to the development of dedicated drama departments in universities. A campaign to establish a Theatre Museum was bolstered by the existence of her collection, leading to the opening of the V&A Theatre Museum in 1974. After the closure of the Theatre Museum in 2007, Theatre and Performance galleries were opened at the V&A. Enthoven's collection is now the core of the permanent Theatre and Performance Collection, which now encompasses not just theatre, but also dance, opera, pantomime, circus, film, television and popular music. Now the UK's National Collection for the Performing Arts, it continues to celebrate Enthoven's founding mission to collect, preserve and share the history of performance.
