The manuscript of Gumilëv's verse play, The Poisoned Tunic, now in the possession of Professor Gleb Struve, was presented to him by Boris Anrep, mosaic artist and one-time contributor to the well-known Russian literary and art magazine Apollon, together with a number of papers, notebooks, and other belongings of the late Nikolaj Gumilëv. Gumilëv left these things with Anrep in London before his return to Russia in 1918.
In 1917 Gumilëv, then an officer of the Aleksandrijskij Hussar Regiment, had been sent to Paris for later assignment to the Salonika front. He was detained in Paris from the summer of 1917 to January, 1918, at which time he went to London, where he wanted to join the British Army in the hope of being sent to Mesopotamia. He stayed in England until April and saw Anrep frequently before returning to Russia.