Mrs. Keppel and Her Daughter

by Diana Souhami

  Mrs Keppel took long solitary walks and could not, for a moment, be civil to Violet. ‘She is diabolical in her intuitions … She knows exactly what to say to hurt me.’ She was scathing to and about her in front of the guests. The atmosphere of the house was ghastly. Violet felt like a pariah. ‘Men Chinday displays the greatest ingenuity in finding fault with me. It amounts almost to genius.’ Daisy de Brienen took her cue from Mrs Keppel. Other guests were beloved Archie, the Alingtons, the Harry Lehrs, Lady de Trafford. In the evening they played bridge. Violet stayed alone. There were, she said, no temptations of any kind.

  With her mother’s party she trailed the sights of Amsterdam and Gouda ‘trying to persuade myself that I liked stained glass’. She stayed in the grand hotels of Bruges and Brussels, Ypres and Antwerp, gambled her money, complained about the architecture, cathedrals, brassware, carillons, the Memlings and Van Eycks, the Rubens and the Brueghels. It all sickened her, she said. ‘If I can’t be a peer of the future, I won’t be a vassal of the past.’

  She lived with depression, self-dislike, and the failure of love:

  This time last year, what a lot there was to look forward to. And now … Across my life only one word will be written: ‘Waste’ – Waste of love, waste of talent, waste of enterprise …

  She tried to write a novel but felt she had no talent:

  I can only feel things. I can’t express them. I don’t know English well enough, I can’t analyse … But my chief handicap is that I cannot argue! I can only see my side of the question: I am blind to the other person’s …

  In her despair she tried to keep her love for Vita alive. Without this life was too bleak to contemplate:

  I love nothing in the world but you … not the slightest inflexion of your voice, not the subtlest nuance of your letters, escapes me … I got one yesterday that was cold, almost impersonal.

  She still wanted to believe that, after Sonia’s marriage in November, they might go away together for ever. One morning she tried to talk a little to her mother about her feelings but did not get far. Mrs Keppel was ‘nice on the whole’. She made clear that it was the prospect of scandal more than the relationship itself that affronted her.

  The day Violet returned from Holland she met Vita at Paddington. ‘It was like two flames leaping together,’ Vita said. They drove to the Dower House and spent ‘four absolutely unclouded days’. Violet then joined Denys in Brighton. They stayed at the Royal Crescent Hotel but did not speak to each other. She had ‘the most horrible kind of hallucination’ which she said she could not describe on paper. She visited Lady Sackville, who gossiped, which led to a ‘scene’ between Violet and her mother. ‘I know your mother will never ask me inside her house again,’ Violet wrote to Vita. ‘And I suppose the old antagonism will revive.’

  Lady Sackville tried to come to terms with Vita’s unorthodox marriage:

  she seems absolutely devoted to Harold, but there is nothing whatever sexual between them, which is strange in such a young and good-looking couple. She is not in the least jealous of H. and willingly allows him to relieve himself with anyone if such is his want or his fancy. They both openly said so one evening when I was staying at L. Barn and Reggie Cooper was there too. It shocked me.

  And Reggie Cooper – a schoolfriend of Harold’s – confounded Violet’s tarnished fantasy of true escape after Sonia’s wedding when he told her of a statue Vita and Harold had bought for £300. ‘I know you wouldn’t dream of being so foolish as to spend £300 on a statue that you were never going to set eyes on,’ Violet wrote on 13 November:

  How I wish I was Harold Nicolson! I envy him with every fibre of my body. He can be with you as much as he pleases. His words come back to me ‘I have always had everything I wanted’ – and I am as the beggar at your gate.

  Two weeks before Sonia’s wedding the ‘royal photographer’ Bassano asked to take Mrs Keppel’s photograph:

  We have been asked by the Editors of several papers for a new portrait for this purpose and should esteem it a favour if you would give us a complimentary sitting at our studios at an early date …

  The camera showed her grand appearance. The following week Sonia had an asthma attack and feared Rolie would get impatient with the smell of camphorated oil and Himrod’s Inhalation Asthma Cure. Her mother filled her bedroom at Grosvenor Street with flowers. Her father brought her Charbonnel & Walker chocolate peppermint creams. Bessie cleaned her room quietly. Janet drew the curtains and made up the fire. Perriat, the cook, dressed in a white tunic, brought her the menu book and recommended the cream of chicken soup. Frances, the kitchenmaid, suggested pommes soufflés with the pheasant. Rolie brought the weekly illustrated papers and magazines and news of who had phoned and called. Nannie packed for the honeymoon.

  Dr Bevan told Sonia she would have to wrap up well for the ceremony. Her ‘bachelor girl’ party was cancelled, the afternoon gathering to view the presents, organized by her mother and Violet, took place without her.

  Her mother gave her a diamond tiara, an emerald and diamond pendant, an eighteenth-century diamond brooch in the shape of a sheaf of wheat and Nannie, who was now to be her maid. Her father gave her a piano and a Georgian writing table. Sir Ernest Cassel gave her a fat cheque. Mrs Keppel said this was vulgar so, to Sonia’s regret, it was converted into furs. Violet and Denys gave her two crystal and diamond hatpins, Lord and Lady Ashcombe a turquoise and diamond pendant, Uncle Arnold and Aunt Gertie a Georgian sideboard, Uncle Archie and Aunt Ida nineteenth-century gilt candlesticks, Maggie Greville an emerald ring, the Grand Duke Michael and Countess Torbay a Fabergé snuffbox, Marjorie Jessel and eighty girlfriends a Spode china breakfast, dinner and tea service, Rolphe the butler and the servants at Grosvenor Street a silver salver, Nannie two toast racks in silver plate, each strut forming the letters ROLIE and SONIA.

  Her wedding dress was silver lamé. Mrs Keppel wore plum velvet and fox furs, Nannie a black plumed hat and white kid gloves. ‘What am I going to do without my Doey?’ her father said to her on the way to the church and Sonia silenced him to keep back tears. Ten bridesmaids and pages held her train and the band of the 3rd Battalion Coldstream Guards played ‘Oh! Perfect Love’ as she and Rolie walked down the aisle.

  At Christmas Vita sent Violet a fur coat, but her voice was cold on the phone. In January 1921 Violet and she left for two months together in the south of France, in Hyères and Carcassone. Mrs Keppel thought Violet was meeting Pat Dansey and Joan Campbell in Algiers. Violet went on ahead alone to Nîmes so London society would not know that yet again she was travelling with Vita.

  FOURTEEN

  It was their last journey together. At Carcassone they rented a house with a garden. ‘Do you remember our garden in Carcassonne with its enormous latch-key?’ They planned to go on to Andorra but were prevented by snow.

  Denys packed his possessions, left the Dower House and went home to Devon to be looked after by his mother and sister. In a letter to Harold he said he was seeking legal separation and would have nothing to do with Violet when and if she returned. ‘Damn,’ Harold wrote in his diary, fearing more scandal, more onus on Vita to be responsible for Violet. Lady Sackville was fearful for Ben and Nigel’s sake: ‘I don’t want them to blush when their mother’s name is mentioned.’

  Early in February 1921 Harold wired Vita asking a definite date for her return. She wanted ‘to stay on a bit’, she replied and again as in January 1919 said writing to him was indecent when she was with Violet. He compared her to a jellyfish addicted to cocaine and with equivocal insistence told her to return on Friday 25 February:

  On Saturday we shall go down together to the cottage. So please take your tickets at once. And please also realise that this is definite. I shall be more angry than I have ever been if you do not come back on that date. Don’t misunderstand me. I shall really cut adrift if you don’t. It is a generous date, it is longer than you promised: but it is a fixed date and you must keep to it.

  It was not in his nature to be so
stern and he added a rider that if the date was inconvenient, then let him know and he would change it. Vita reassured him that though she felt responsible for Violet, which was why she was away, she only really loved him and that would always be the case. ‘Wild oats are all very well, but not when they grow as high as a jungle.’

  There was no breach in her affection for him. She arrived back on 9 March, her twenty-ninth birthday. Harold thought she looked well. They and the children went to Knole reunited as a family. A few of society’s doors, but not many, closed: Mrs Mary Hunt, sister of the lesbian composer Ethel Smyth, asked Lady Sackville not to bring Vita to her house, Hill Hall, because ‘the whole thing horrifies me’. Such social snubs were tiresome but made no impact on their lives.

  But Violet was in deep trouble. Wild oats had choked her life. She went alone to the Dower House. Mrs Keppel was wintering on the Riviera and in North Africa. Violet asked if she might join her in Tunis but received no reply. Denys did not answer her letters. Mrs Keppel instructed her brother Archie to supervise Violet. He had a three-hour meeting with her. Violet described it as ‘simply disastrous’. Her mother and George had said they wished to ‘disown’ her. Moiselle her governess since childhood, then maid, was to ‘act as a sort of gaoler’. Violet was to see no one. All letters from Vita were to be destroyed. Moiselle was to intercept Violet’s post and to report back to Mrs Keppel on her every move:

  M’elle never leaves me for one instant. She knows exactly when I go out, when I come in; in fact she nearly always goes out and comes in with me – when I write a letter, when I go upstairs. I might be a criminal … I can’t have five unspied on minutes even in my own house.

  Denys spoke freely in social circles of having left Violet. The Cubitts were said to be furious. Sonia was expecting her first baby in August. Mrs Keppel apprised Violet of the disgrace she had brought to her family. ‘Another letter from Men Chinday that simply breaks my heart,’ Violet wrote to Vita.

  You are the only thing that stands between me and dissolution. How lucky you are to be with somebody who cares for you and is anxious to spare you and shelter you as much as possible.

  Socially her position was now impossible. On 11 March she tried to see Denys to see if they could work out some modus vivendi. She went by train with Moiselle to Exeter. They hired a car to take them across Dartmoor. It was late, the road was crude, the night dark. A mile from the Trefusises’ house, Mitty, Denys’s mother, ‘with a red lantern, suddenly sprang up from nowhere, barring the road’. She said she had been warned by telegram of the time of Violet’s arrival and told the driver to take her back to wherever she had come from. Denys, she said, would have nothing whatsoever to do with her. The driver sniggered, Violet felt humiliated and hit Moiselle who, she felt, goaded her. She believed Vita had sent the telegram. ‘You see you were the only person who knew.’ If so, it was another of Vita’s curiously cruel games.

  Denys applied for legal separation. Violet heard from a ‘disinterested third person’ that he disliked her, that nothing would induce him to set eyes on her, he would not read any communication from her, it was entirely because of her involvement with Vita that he had left her. He said he had the Nicolsons, Keppels and Sackvilles all ‘in his power and that if he wanted to he could ruin all our lives’.

  On 17 March, at her uncle’s insistence, Violet saw a lawyer. He said if he was to act for her she must not communicate with Vita. Vita he had been assured wanted nothing more to do with her. She had returned to family life. Even without Denys’s legal proceedings she wanted the relationship to end. It was Violet who made this difficult with her phone calls and letters. These must stop.

  Violet panicked at the news, felt faint in the taxi home, was stunned and disbelieving. On 18 March Mrs Keppel travelled back reluctantly from the Riviera to sort out this latest scandal. Violet was remorseful:

  My poor mother … I would far rather she hadn’t come, as at least she would have been spared a little by being abroad. It will break her heart … I expect she will want to sell the house and all my things. Of course I shall let her if she wants to sell them.

  For a week Violet went on writing to Vita, despite the lawyer’s caution: letters of anger that her own life was blighted and Vita’s not. ‘You have all you want – a lovely place to live in, love, affection, understanding. How can I help feeling bitter?’ And it was true. Vita’s life was intrinsically intact. She had Harold, Long Barn, her children, animals, possessions. ‘And what should I have?’ Violet wrote:

  NOTHING.

  No one who loves me and lives with me, no possessions, no reputation, no hope, nothing.

  I ache with the sense of the appalling unfairness … what a proof, that in spite of it all, I still manage to love you above everything!

  Nor could she again exact from Vita the promise that it was hope deferred and that some day they might again be together:

  If only you would map out some sort of existence for me, with some sort of reward at the end – something to pin my hope to. One cannot live without hope. You said: ‘None for the present’ – but is there any in the future? That’s what I want to know …

  The answer was that there was not. For a time Vita continued to send letters – for Violet to collect at the Connaught Hotel. But if she still felt involved, she could no longer show it. The price was now impossibly high. Violet needed help, a context for her life, a channel for her feelings. Denys’s defection spoiled the balance. Mrs Keppel was furious with him as well as with her daughter. The social graces, charm and concealment she held so dear were all flaunted in her face.

  She battled on for Sonia, the Cubitts, the unborn baby. The family name must not be tarnished more. Violet could no longer live in England. Her mother said she would take her abroad until after the birth of Sonia’s child and after that she could live in Paris or some other foreign city. She told her to make an inventory of what she wanted from the Dower House. Violet took with her two photographs of Vita, a Persian painting of a fish, some Egyptian beads, the head of Medusa Vita had given her. Her paintings, rugs, writing desk she put in store. Mrs Keppel sold the rest for £200 which she kept ‘to pay for the carpet’. Violet claimed she had herself spent £3000 on the place.

  All contact with Vita was forbidden. Violet was to receive no calls, no letters from her. At Grosvenor Street Rolphe the butler checked her mail. Nor was she to see Pat Dansey – Mrs Keppel feared they would scheme. On 26 March Violet wrote her last direct letter to Vita. Her battle for love was lost: ‘You have chosen my darling; you had to choose between me and your family and you have chosen them.’

  Vita tried to conceal her unhappiness from Harold. Two days later she wrote a postscript to her account of her affair with Violet:

  It is possible that I may never see Violet again, or that I may see her once again before we are parted, or that we may meet in future years as strangers; it is also possible that she may not choose to live; in any case it has come about indirectly owing to me, while I remain safe, secure and undamaged save in my heart. The injustice and misfortune of the whole thing oppresses me hourly.

  She went to see Pat Dansey who counselled her to make a complete break – ‘no writing no communication’. It had to end, she said, for both their families’ sake. Vita should make no promises and exact none from Violet. If she kept in touch Violet would hope that they would go away together. ‘It would be far wiser and better for you both not to prolong the misery.’

  * * *

  Vita went sailing with Harold on her father’s yacht, saw the publication of The Dragon in Shallow Waters which she dedicated to ‘L’ and which sold well, cultivated her garden and sowed the seeds of a new affair – with Dorothy Wellesley whose marriage to Gerald, Violet’s former admirer, was going wrong. Dorothy Wellesley was, said Vita, a born romantic and a natural rebel, with fragile build, ‘blazing blue eyes, fair hair, transparently white skin’. Her poetry was admired by Yeats. She lived in Sherfield Court, a moated Georgian mansion near Basingstoke,
with furniture inlaid with lapis lazuli and paintings by Caravaggio.

  Harold welcomed the signs of transference. The Nicolson children and the Wellesleys’ son Valerian could play together. Vita and Dorothy went to Tintagel in Cornwall, played tennis and stayed with Lord Berners at Faringdon Hall in Berkshire. Harold did not object: ‘Tell Dottie she is an angel and very good for us both.’ Lady Sackville had her doubts: ‘I don’t like at all that friendship either,’ she wrote in her diary.

  Mrs Keppel kept Violet on an emotional leash. In April she took her to Pisa to ‘a sort of mediaeval fortress flanked by four towers’. It was quiet and Violet would like to have recuperated there, but her mother preferred Florence. Violet was wry at being taken to Florence to have her character reformed. She spoke Italian, French and German, her mother did not. The rich cosmopolitan set of Florentine villa life, the expatriates and aristocrats, were, she said, ‘the most corrupt I have ever run across’.

  She lost weight, was lonely, unhappy and adrift. Her mother ignored her socially, said her affection for her was dead and cut her allowance. Violet sent letters to Pat Dansey intended for Vita. She asked that Julian write to her Poste Restante, but he did not do so. She took stock of her life:

  It seems so odd to have lost V and D, my freedom, my home, my money, all at one fell swoop. I begin to think the sort of reckless, exorbitant love I gave is the one unjustifiable crime in this world. One should love prudently, reasonably, comfortably; not dash one’s glove in the face of the world …

  Mama made me cry and cry last night. She said if she had been me she would have killed herself long ago! Will you tell — he can telegraph anything he likes in Italian if he signs himself Scovello?