Chapter 1: A gift from the Arabian nights

Rich, famous, of easy virtue but also cheated on, married to an aristocrat and the daughter of a Spanish gypsy, Victoria Sackville-West gifted her husband with a yacht by way of a reconciliation for the couple. In memory of her utstanding dancer mother, she would name her Sumurun, inspired by a tale from the Arabian Nights.

On Wednesday 29 April 1914, Lady Victoria Sackville-West (1862-1936), who had been trying for months to curb the impulses of her libertine husband, Lionel Edward Sackville (1867-1928), third baron of Sackville, and to reconcile their failing couple, treated him to an original and sumptuous gift, which glided gently across Fairlie’s shores in Scotland: Sumurun.
A 28-metre yacht with a highly exotic yet deliberately chosen name, she was designed by the master William Fife.
This name, Sumurun, inspired by a tale from the Arabian Nights, is the title of a hit pantomime created in 1910 by the Austrian theatre producer, Max Reinhardt (1873-1943). In London, the show remained engraved all the more on peoples’ memories as, in many ways, it matched the atmosphere that reigned in certain affluent circles. After all, doesn’t the intrigue amount to a story of interconnected loves, of which one of the heroines, the female dancer Sumurun, drives the men with whom she mixes wild?
What might appear to be a trivial anecdote is, albeit in its own unique way, an indication of the deep upheaval which, for fifty years or so, spilled over into British Edwardian aristocracy. For generations, nobility is restricted to managing its domain or entering politics, but towards the end of the English Renaissance it is considered good form to indulge in outdoor sports. Activities which, for the most part, are henceforth practiced all over the world…