Meet Baron De Kusel (Bey)

This is Baron De Kusel (Bey). In 1880, he met rich brewery heir Sir Henry Meux and his wife Lady Valerie Meux when they arrived on their yacht Vanadis in Alexandria. They were on a delayed honeymoon after their marriage in 1878. Lady Meux went on to to create a collection of Egyptian antiquities which she kept at her country house, Theobalds Park, Waltham Cross, Hertfordshire. It seems Kursel played a part in the Lady Meux's collecting activities.

"I was also able to assist these visitors with the Egyptian Authorities, to procure a permit for the exportation of the different mummies and antiquities they had purchased in Cairo," the Baron wrote.

Samuel Selig Kusel (the 'de' was an affectation added later in life) was born in Liverpool, England, on 12th June 1848, the son of naturalised German immigrants, and spent half his life living abroad, mostly in Egypt, then Italy, before returning to England in 1908-09 to settle in Surrey.

In Egypt, Samuel Selig Kusel worked as Controller-General of the Egyptian Customs. He was created a Bey by the ruling Turkish Khedive in Egypt in May 1882 in recognition of his services during the Egyptian crisis. (Bey roughly translates as the Turkish for chieftain.)

On the 17th May 1876, he married an Italian, Elvira Chini, of Leghorn (now Livorno), Italy, and Cairo. This connection explains the years spent living in Italy after he left Egypt.

On 23rd October 1890, Samuel Selig Kusel was created Barone Kusel by King Victor Emmanuel III of Italy. Nothing appears to be known as to the reasons for the grant of the title. However, Queen Victoria (8th February 1893) granted a Royal License for him to assume and use this title in the United Kingdom.

Kusel, as the New York Times remarked on the 24th October 1915, "seems to have known nearly everybody of consequence in Egypt, and he speaks of them in an offhand, easy way which shows a deep familiarity with all that had transpired in Egypt."

I have not yet been able to trace when Baron de Kusel (Bey) died, probably in England. But, at the age of 66, his heart remained in Egypt: "I hear the East a-calling. And the thought of the colour and sunny skies of the mysterious Nile and the gorgeous sunsets, makes me very sad and despondent and when the cold east wind cuts through me, I feel inclined to return once more to Egypt if only to hear that familiar cry of the East, 'Allah el Akbar La Illah, illa Allah wa ashhadwar Mohamadur Rasul il Allah'."

An Englishman's Recollections of Egypt 1863 to 1887 by Baron De Kusel (Bey) was published in London, 1915, by The Bodley Head.