Sylvia Brett

Sylvia Brett
File:Sylvia Brooke.jpg H.H. The Ranee of Sarawak, by Paul Tanqueray, 1930
Born	(1885-02-25)25 February 1885 No. 1, Tilney Street, Park Lane, Central London
Died
Spouse	Charles Vyner Brooke
Issue	Leonora Margaret Brooke Elizabeth Brooke Nancy Valerie Brooke
Father	Reginald Brett, 2nd Viscount Esher
Mother	Eleanor Van de Weyer

Sylvia Leonora, Lady Brooke, Ranee of Sarawak, born The Hon. Sylvia Leonora Brett, (25 February 1885 – 11 November 1971), was an English aristocrat who became the consort to Sir Charles Vyner de Windt Brooke, Rajah of Sarawak, the last of the White Rajahs.

Early life

Sylvia was born at No. 1, Tilney Street, Park Lane, Central London, the second daughter of Reginald Baliol Brett, the 2nd Viscount Esher, KCB. Her mother Eleanor was the third daughter of the Belgian politician and revolutionary Sylvain Van de Weyer and his wife Elizabeth, who was the only child of the great financier Joshua Bates of Barings Bank. Sylvia grew up at the family home, Orchard Lea, at Cranbourne in Winkfield parish in Berkshire. Her paternal grandmother Eugenie Meyer was French, born in Lyons.

Sylvia's early life was somewhat troubled; by the age of 12 she had made two attempts at suicide, the first by eating rotten sardines, and the second by lying naked in the snow.

Ranee of Sarawak

She married His Highness Rajah Vyner of Sarawak at St Peter's Church, Cranbourne, Berkshire, just before her 26th birthday on 21 February 1911. They first met in 1909 when she joined an all-female choral orchestra, established by Vyner's mother. She first visited Sarawak in 1912, where her husband (from 1917) ruled a 40,000-square-mile (100,000 km²) jungle kingdom on the northern side of Borneo with a population of 500,000, an ethnic mix of Chinese, Malays, and the headhunting Dayak. Sylvia was invested with the titles of Ranee of Sarawak on 24 May 1917 and Grand Master of The Most Illustrious Order of the Star of Sarawak on 1 August 1941. Rajah Vyner died in 1963.

Sylvia was distraught that her daughter, Leonora, under Islamic law, could not take the throne; as a result she hatched various plots to blacken the name of the heir apparent, Anthony, the Rajah Muda.

Richard Halliburton, the celebrated adventurer, met her as he circumnavigated the globe in 1932 with his pilot, Moye Stephens. She became the first woman in Sarawak to fly when the pair gave her a flight in their biplane, the Flying Carpet. Halliburton narrates an account of the visit in his book of the same name.

She was described by her brother as "a female Iago", and by the Colonial Office as "a dangerous woman, full of Machiavellian schemes to alter the succession, and spectacularly vulgar in her behaviour". She died in Tuffett Cottage, Sandy Lane, St James, Barbados.

She was the author of eleven books, including "Sylvia of Sarawak" and "Queen of the Head-Hunters" (1970). Fort Sylvia in Kapit is named in her honour.

Children

She was survived by three daughters:

• Dayang Leonora Margaret, Countess of Inchcape, wife of Kenneth Mackay, 2nd Earl of Inchcape (by whom she had a son, Lord Tanlaw, and a daughter), and later wife of Colonel Francis Parker Tompkins (by whom she had a son).
• Dayang Elizabeth, a RADA educated singer and actress, wife of firstly Harry Roy (with whom she had a son,David Roy and daughter, Roberta Simpson), secondly, Richard Vidmer until her death.
• Dayang Nancy Valerie, married, firstly, Robert Gregory, an American wrestler, secondly, Senor José Pepi Cabarro, a Spanish businessman, thirdly, Scot, Andrew Aitken Macnair, and fourthly, Memery Whyatt. She died in Florida and had one son, Stewart Macnair (b. 1952).

Sister

Sylvia's elder sister Dorothy Brett, known as Brett (1883–1977), went to the Slade School of Art in 1910 and became friends with painter Mark Gertler (1891–1939), and then with salon hostess Lady Ottoline Morrell (1873–1938) and the Bloomsbury group, living for a while at Garsington Manor. In 1924 she went to live on a mountain ranch near Taos, New Mexico, with D.H. Lawrence and his wife Frieda, partially fulfilling Lawrence's dream of establishing an artists' colony.

Ancestors

Family of Sylvia Brett

8. Rev. Joseph Brett                       4. William Brett, 1st Viscount Esher                             9. Dora, daughter of George Best                       2. Reginald Brett, 2nd Viscount Esher                                   10. Louis Mayer                       5. Eugenie Mayer                             11. Fanny                       1. Sylvia Leonora                                         12. Josse-Alexandre van de Weyer                       6. Sylvain Van de Weyer                             13. Francoise-Martine Goubau                       3. Eleanor van de Weyer                                   14. Joshua Bates                       7. Elizabeth Bates                             15. Lucretia Augusta Sturgis

Further reading

• Maurice V. Brett (ed.), Journals and Letters of Reginald Viscount Esher, Vol I: 1870–1903, London, 1934.
• Margaret Brooke, My Life in Sarawak, 1913.
• Sylvia of Sarawak: an autobiography, 1936.
• Sylvia, Lady Brooke, Queen of the Headhunters, 1970.
• Philip Eade, Sylvia, Queen Of The Headhunters: An Outrageous Englishwoman And Her Lost Kingdom, (352 pages), Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2007. Lynne Truss, reviewed Eade's book in The Sunday Times, 17 June 2007.
• Sean Hignett, Brett: From Bloomsbury to New Mexico, A Biography, London, Hodder & Stoughton, 1984.
• R.H.W. Reece, The Name of Brooke: The End of White Rajah Rule in Sarawak, 1993.
• S. Runciman, The White Rajahs: A History of Sarawak from 1841 to 1946, Cambridge University Press, 1960

External links

• An essay on Silvia Brooke in The Daily Telegraph (UK), Saturday 2 June 2007, by Philip Eade.
• National Portrait Gallery, London Photographic images of the Brookes by Bassano; Ottoline Morrell; and Paul Tanqueray, 1917 and 1932.