Re: Clues and Reference Thread
More information on the Carlyle expedition members:
The Carlyle Family History
The first Carlyle, Abner Vane Carel, was transported to Virginia in 1714, having been convicted of "unwholesome and desperative activitie" not otherwise characterized by Derbyshire authorities. Abner was the illegitimate and discredited son of an undistinguished Midlands nobleman. Abner's son Ephraim moved to New England, adopted "Carlyle" as a more gallant surname, and made sound investments in lumber and textiles, the basis of the family fortune to come. The Carlyle interests amassed huge profits during the American Civil War, and far-sighted management further expanded the financial empire in the half-century thereafter.
Roger Vane Worthington Carlyle
Always wealthy, always neglected and ignored by his father. Young Carlyle craved attention. His lawyers evaded a paternity suit when he was 17. Roger underwent short treatments for alcoholism when he was 18, and again at 20. Miraculously, he graduated from Groton, but was allowed gentlemen's resignations from a succession of excellent universities (Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Miskatonic, Cornell, and USC) in the next three years.
When his parents died in a car crash, Carlyle seemed to take stock of himself and for the next year gained the general approval of his peers, retainers, and relatives. But he slipped back into his old ways when his sprightly sister (who had not neglected her studies) showed a better grasp of family affairs.
His lack of character seemed confirmed when Carlyle fell under the influence of a mysterious East African woman, a self-styled poetess with the nom de plume of Nichonka Bunay (M'Weru?). Rumors of debaucheries and worse circulated among the police, journalists, and others whose business it is to know the backgrounds of public personalities. Roger Carlyle began to drain great sums of money from family interests, which prompted vicious arguments between himself, Erica, and their executives. In person Carlyle remained forthright and friendly, and was a popular figure at glittering New York night spots.
In the months before he left for Egypt, Carlyle seemed to withdraw and become more serious. But though Carlyle might have been maturing, the goals of the expedition remained nebulous and secretive.
Dr. Robert Ellington Huston
No police record; no military service. The youngest of three sons, his father was a Chicago M.D. who as a young man was reputed to have been caught up in the utopianism of the early plains, and to have belonged to several deviant sects.
Robert Huston graduated with honors from Johns Hopkins. After three years he threw his circuitory-ailments practice (and his wife), and went to Vienna to study first under Freud and then under Jung. Huston was among the first Americans to undertake this esoteric and controversial study of the mind, which dealt so much with sexual behaviour that no respectable person could talk about it. Huston's seemingly salacious and dangerous past, along with his elegant manners and sardonic wit, made him in much demand when he returned to New York City. There he established a practice in psychoanalysis catering to the very wealthy.
Huston enjoyed fame and notoriety. His fees were whispered to be $50-$60 per visit (bearing in mind that a college professor might make $4000 a year). Women found him suave, handsome, sensitive, perceptive, and sexy. Among his patients was Roger Carlyle. Though Huston supposedly went on the expedition with Carlyle to continue his treatment, Huston had just broken off an affair with Miss Imelda Bosch, who had then committed suicide. Roger Carlyle helped hush up the scandal, perhaps in return for Huston's company on the expedition.
Imelda Bosch (former affair of Dr. Huston)
Imelda was a much publicised torch singer and actress, her last film being the American version of Henrik Ibsen's 'A Doll's House'. There was talk among the community whether her death in 1919 was suicide or was murdered at the hands of Dr Huston. There was an investigation, but in the end Huston was cleared of any wrong-doing.
Miss Hypatia Celestine Masters
She has no poice record or record of public service. She is heiress to the Masters armaments fortune, the dark antecedents of which have been chronicled in the muckracking Masters of Corruption by Nikolai Steinberg. Miss Masters' grandfather, Aldington Masters, held onto and increased the holdings by leaving most decisions to a series of chief executives who uniformly made intelligent, far-ranging, and profitable moves. George, her father, also adopted this relaxing way of life, spending his time doting on his daughter.
Hypatia attended Swiss and French academics, showing facility for langauges. Her great interest proved to be photography. Several of her shows earned good reviews and enthusiastic attendance. A daring streak in her led to an incautious affair with a Catholic Marxist, one Raoul Luis Maria Pinera, at City College of New York.
Miss Masters dated Roger Carlyle several times, but apparently only as a friend. Her presence on the expedition might have been Carlyle's gallant whim. No one actually knows why she was invited or why she was accepted.
Jack Oriel "Brass" Brady
An Australian veteran of the Great War. His police record (in Australia, New Zealand, the USA and UK) lists assaults and barroom brawls, petty theft, loitering, gambling, mopery, public drunkeness on both sides of the pond, and an acquitted murder charge in California.
As a corporal in the ANZAC, Jack Brady served in Egypt, Palestine and then the Gallipoli campaign.
He is rumored to have been a mercenary in Turkey just after the war, and to know Turkish and Arabic as well as several Chinese dialects. In Oilfield, California he was in a barroom brawl where he struck his opponent, causing him to collapse and expire in a fit, all in front of horrified witnesses.
The Oilfield murder piqued the curiosity of Roger Carlyle, who just then was being expelled from USC. After an hour long interview, the two forged an intimate alliance, amazing everyone who knew Roger, for the youth had never made any strong friendships. Carlyle summoned the best legal minds in the country for the defense, who proceeded to blow to pieces the seemingly open-and-shut case offered by the county prosecutor and eclipsing the tesimony of seven eye-witnesses. Brady was acquitted on a variety of technical grounds. From that time, Jack Brady was Roger Carlyle's bodyguard, and at other times was his spokesman. For the expedition, Brady acted as general foreman and manager, and by all accounts performed well.
Brady's nickname comes from a brass plate about four inches square which he carries over his heart. The plate is described as covered with strange signs and inscirptions. Bullets twice have denied it. Brady has said that his mother, a recluse in Queensland, had The Eye, and that she made this plate to guard her impetuous son.
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"Huston, the psychoanalyst, had several files detailing of Roger Carlyle, and Erica as well. They were released to his sister, Erica, whom we met back in New York and was most helpful."
The investigators had indeed met Erica, and the thick packet of information was there for anyone who wished to read the files.
Huston's Files from the Medical Affairs Board
The files contain only a few relevant excerpts, though through reading them you perceive that the more Huston grew to know Carlyle, the less he was willing to put pen on paper about him.
Huston's file for Erica Carlyle
Her file notes a few innocuous consultations for which he charged her an outrageous $90 each, and establishes that she was troubled by her relations with her brother, Roger. Huston believed Erica to be of remarkably fine character, and notes that he saw such capable adjustment to the problems of living. He suggested that he would be glad to talk to Roger.
Huston's file for Roger Carlyle
Dr Huston's file for Roger Carlyle contains minor interview notes for about twenty sessions over the span of a year.
quote:
CARLYLE, ROGER VANE WORTHINGTON
First Meeting: Jan. 11, 1918
Reference: Erica Carlyle
Closest Relative: Erica Carlyle
At his sister's insistence, Mr. Roger Carlyle visited me this morning. He deprecates the importance of his state of mind, but concedes that he has had some trouble sleeping due to a recurring dream in which he hears a distant voice calling his name. (interestingly the voice uses Mr. Carlyle's second given name, Vane, by which Mr. Carlyle admits he always thinks of himself.) Carlyle moves towards the voice, and has to struggle through a web-like mist in which the caller is understood to stand.
The caller is a man - tall, gaunt, dark. An inverted ankh blazes in his forehead. Following the Egyptian theme (C. has no conscious interest in things Egyptian, he says), the man extends his hands to C., his palms hold upward. Pictured on his left palm C. discovers his own face, on the right palm C. sees an unusual, asymmetric pyramid.
The caller then brings his hands together, and C. feels himself float off the ground into space. He halts before an assemblage of monstrous figures, figures of humans with animal limbs, with fangs and talons, or no particular shape at all. All of them circle a pulsating ball of yellow energy, which C. recognizes as another aspect of the calling man. The ball draws him in; he become part of it, and sees through eyes not his own. A great triangle appears in the void, asymmetric in the same fashion as the vision of the pyramid. C. then hears the caller say, "And become with me a god." As millions of odd shapes and forms rush into the triangle, C. wakes.
C. does not consider this dream a nightmare, although it upsets his sleep. He says that he revels in it and that it is a genuine calling, although my strong impression is that he actually is undecided about it. An inability to choose seems to characterize much of his life.
September 18, 1918. He calls her M'Weru, Anastasia, and My Priestess. He is quite obsessive about her, as well he might be - exterior devotion is certainly one way to ease the tension of megalomaniacal contradictions. She is certainly a rival to my authority....
December 3, 1918. If I do not go C. threatens exposure. If I do go, all pretense of analysis surely will be lost. What then will be my role?
This message was last edited by the GM at 08:36, Wed 25 Jan 2012.
