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Sylvia, the new Ranee Muda of Sarawak in 1911, in Malay costume |
Jewel in the crown of the last White Rajah
Martin Sheppard reviews a new biography of Syvia Brooke, an English woman who became the Ranee of Sarawak
Sylvia, Queen of the Headhunters.
By Philip Eade. Orion Books £20.
IT is not generally realised that the British Empire was at its greatest extent after the Second World War: all its captured territories had been freed as part the Allied victory and several new ones added.
Its very last acquisition, in July 1946, was Sarawak in the north of the island of Borneo, ceded by its third and final English Rajah, Sir Vyner Brooke.
Sir Vyner’s great uncle, Sir James Brooke, had established an extraordinary personal empire there in 1841, following his suppression of a rebellion against the Sultan of Brunei.
The White Rajahs split their time between Sarawak and Britain. They combined absolute power in Sarawak, exercised benignly, with a routine upper-class existence at home.
Sarawak, with its Dyak headhunters and impenetrable jungle, was treated by them almost as an exotic country estate. There was, however, always a tension between having imperial status in Sarawak and being mere knights at home.
Sir Vyner married Sylvia Brett, the younger daughter of the second Viscount Esher, a
confidant of Queen Victoria and Edward VII, in 1911.
Sylvia, a talented woman and protégée of both George Bernard Shaw and JM Barrie, was the author of numerous novels and two autobiographies.
Lacking in personal self-confidence, however, she was given to exhibitionism and to embellishing the truth.
Disappointingly, from a dynastic viewpoint, the Brookes had three daughters but no son, leading to endless family wrangling over the succession. Vyner made it clear soon after their wedding that he would not be faithful to Sylvia. Although they continued to esteem each other, they very often lived apart.
Left at an emotional loose-end, Sylvia became star-struck. Finding the line between royalty and celebrity easy to cross, she consorted with actors and made numerous visits to Hollywood, even working on a film script with Errol Flynn for The White Rajah.
Her daughters, Leonora, Elizabeth and Valerie, followed her example, marrying between them (among other liaisons), the all-in wrestler Bob Gregory and the band leader Harry Roy, the “King of the Hot-Cha”. All this naturally generated a mass of publicity.
Philip Eade has been an editor on the Daily Telegraph obituaries page, the final home of many imperial lives. Sylvia, the Queen of Headhunters is a fine example of an exceptionally exotic life.
If not profound, it is well-researched and readable, providing an enjoyable portrait of the pleasures, quirks and jealousies of a now vanished society.
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