Violet Trefusis
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Violet Trefusis (June 6, 1894 – March 9 1972) was an English writer and socialite. Most of her fame derives however from her lesbian affair with Vita Sackville-West, which under disguise featured in Virginia Woolf's Orlando.
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Youth
She was the daughter of Alice Keppel, a mistress of King Edward VII of the United Kingdom. Although she bore this surname until she married, it was all but certain that George Keppel was not her biological father. A banker by the name of William Becket seems the more probable choice.
Violet lived her early youth in London, where the Keppel family had a house in Portman Square. When she was four years old, a new figure appeared in her life: Albert Edward (Bertie), the Prince of Wales, who became King Edward VII on January 22, 1901. From their first encounter, Mrs Keppel had become Bertie's exclusive favorite. He paid visits to the Keppel household in the afternoon around tea-time (while her husband was conveniently absent), on a regular basis till the end of his life in 1910. Discretion was a hallmark of Alice Keppel.
In 1900 Violet's sister, Sonia, was born (this time in all probability a real Keppel).
From early in the new century on, Easter holidays were spent in Biarritz in "Kingy"'s train.
Her affair with Vita Sackville-West
Probably hardly anybody would still remember Violet Trefusis today if her love affair with Vita Sackville-West had not figured in Virginia Woolf's novel Orlando. A romanticised biography of Vita, Violet appears in it as the Slavic Princess Sasha, under a seducive layer of fantasy and irony. This was not the only account of this love affair, which appears in reality to have been very much more strenuous than Virginia's enchanting account: both in fiction (Challenge by Vita and Violet, Broderie Anglaise a roman à clef in French by Violet) as in non-fiction (Portrait of a Marriage by Vita with extensive "clarifications" added by her son Nigel Nicolson) further parts of the story appeared in print. And then there are still the surviving letters and diaries written by the partakers in the plot (apart from those of the two central players also those from Alice Keppel, Victoria Sackville-West, Harold Nicolson, Denys Trefusis, Pat Dansey,...).
The probably most conclusive overview of the whole story can be found in Diana Souhami's Mrs Keppel and her Daughter (1996), ISBN 0-312-15594-8. In headlines:
- When she was 10, Violet met Vita (who was two years older) for the first time. After that they went to the same school for several years, and fell in love.
- In 1910, after the death of the King, Mrs Keppel made her family observe a "discretion" leave of about two years, before re-establishing themselves in British society: upon returning the Keppels moved to another address (Grosvernor Street).
- By the time Violet returned to London, Vita was about to be engaged to Harold Nicolson and frequented Rosalind Grosvernor. Vita still demanded exclusivity from Violet, which corresponded with what Violet felt for Vita. But Violet wanted to get rid of hypocrisy, especially the hypocrisy of marriage (and all that went with it in those days). This didn't stop Vita from marrying Harold (October 1913), who, in his turn, didn't stop his homosexual adventures for marriage.
- April 1918 Violet and Vita refreshed and intensified their bond. Vita had two sons by now, but these were left in the care of others when Vita and Violet left for a holiday in Cornwall. Meanwhile Mrs Keppel was busy arranging a marriage for Violet with Denys Trefusis. A few days after armistice Vita and Violet went away to France for several months. Because of Vita's exclusivity claim, and her own loathing of marriage, Violet made Denys promise never to have sex with her, as a condition for marriage. So, just before summer of 1919 they married. The end of that year Violet and Vita made a new two-month excursion to France: ordered to do so by his mother in law, Denys got Violet back from the south of France when new gossip about Vita's and Violet's loose behaviour began to reach London.
- The next time they left, in 1920, was seen by Violet as a final elopement, but Vita had called for rescue, which was provided by Denys and Harold arriving in a two-seater airplane. An insinuation by Harold that Denys and Violet might have had sex just before leaving for France, provided Vita the excuse she needed to leave Violet where she was, because this meant that Violet had broken Vita's exclusivity claims.
- As Mrs Keppel desperately tried to keep scandal away from London, where Violet's sister, Sonia, was about to be married (paving her way to become, together with Roland Cubitt, a grandparent to Camilla Parker Bowles), the final stage of the affair also starts in France, still in 1920, where Violet seeks refuge at Pat Dansey, a mutual friend of her and Vita. Vita soon arrives, but wins Pat for her side (which is: begins an affair with her), reducing Violet even further to a nuisance.
Beaten, Violet returns to her mother, and a life with Denys which at first she experiences as claustrophobic.
A few years, and some postludes, later it becomes increasingly clear that Violet's concepts of romantic love lived to the fullest in an accepting social context were not to come true. The more traditional concept of an upfront marriage with hidden extra-marital adventures to complete it - as it had been lived by Mrs Keppel, and would continue to be lived by Vita and Harold - proved immensely stronger for many years to come. Though an essential difference between Mrs Keppel and Vita seems to be that Mrs Keppel made a trade of never distressing her lovers (and their marriages), thus advancing her family socially and financially, while Vita caused broken hearts more than once: for her marriage was rather the refuge she could always come back to after periods of abandonment.
As a side-note it might appear not so surprising that, notwithstanding some general changes in social context by that time, the inherent unresolved tensions of all three models (Violet's, Mrs Keppel's and Vita's) - including mothers taking sides in view of a socially acceptable solution - reappeared in the Diana - Camilla - Charles triangle - surely not so exceptional in this respect.
By 1922 the affair had drawn to a close, although later encounters between the two former lovers (most of these after the publication of Virginia's Orlando in 1928) still had the power to chase ghusts of panic through the Nicolson household.
... still half a century to go
From 1923 on Violet became one of the many lovers of the Singer sewing machine heiress Winnaretta, daughter of Isaac Singer and wife of the Prince Edmond de Polignac, who introduced her to the artistic beau-monde in Paris - Violet conceding more and more to her mother's model.
In 1924 Mrs Keppel bought L'Ombrellino, a large villa overlooking Florence, where once Galileo Galilei had lived. Eventually, after her parent's death in 1947, Violet would become the chatelaine of L'Ombrellino, till the end of her life.
In 1929, Denys Trefusis died, quite estranged from his seemingly unfeeling wife. After his death, Violet published several novels, some in English, some in French, that she had written in her medieval "Tour" in Saint-Loup-de-Naud in the Seine-et-Marne department in France - a gift from Winnaretta.
During the Second World War, in London, Violet participated in the broadcastings of La France Libre (http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/France_libre), which earned her a Légion d'Honneur after the war.
Other links:
biographical notes and list of her most important books (http://andrejkoymasky.com/liv/fam/biot2/tref1.html)