Mrs. Keppel and Her Daughter by Diana Souhami (recommended books to read TXT) 📕

evening Violet pleaded a headache and said she must sleep. In bed, she wrote – as ever – to Vita. Denys saw the light, put his head round the door and accused her of lying. She said what she did was no business of his:

He yelled: ‘I hate you. I hate you! I’m going to get even with you for all your deceit. I’m going to make you as unhappy as you’ve made me. I’m going to ruin your life as you’ve ruined mine!’

He could not cope with this chaos. Without telling Violet he wired to Mrs Keppel. Five days later when they arrived at Toulon she was there. She had travelled with George from St Moritz and now she held hectic interviews with them both.

Both told her they wanted an annulment. That was out of the question, she said. A façade of marriage must be kept intact. They must go away together, she would pay for it all. They could go round the world for a year, or to Jamaica, or Ragusa, or she would arrange for them to stay in Tangier with the painter Sir John Lavery (who had been at the Knebworth house party with Harold and Vita in 1918). Violet, she said, could stay only a fortnight with Pat Dansey, who was at the Villa Primavera at Bordighera with her partner Joan Campbell. Then she must travel with Denys.

Denys persisted. He felt he had been tricked and he wanted divorce. His terms, he said, would be an unconsummated marriage and the ‘undue influence’ of Vita – terms likely to cause a social hum. Mrs Keppel passed responsibility to him. She warned that if he separated from Violet she would give her an allowance of £600 a year and have nothing else to do with her emotionally or financially. She was going to write to Vita but would not say what about. She would call her lawyer in England. Violet would need a medical examination to prove she was a virgin. (Given her history with Vita it is unclear what such scrutiny would have shown.)

Next day, 25 February, Mrs Keppel was more determined, less concessional. She saw Denys alone. If he insisted on annulment she would not speak to Violet again, or let her inside the Grosvenor Street house, or give her any money at all. Denys had no money of his own and was to leave the army at the beginning of April. At first he insisted he wanted an annulment whatever the consequences. Under pressure he capitulated and said he would take Violet away rather than see her punished so entirely.

He must, her mother said, take her to Tangier for two months while gossip cooled. It was arranged with Sir John Lavery. After that he could return to England with her only if they lived in a house out of town. She then saw Violet who told her that she loathed Denys. Mrs Keppel conceded the marriage had been a ‘hideous mistake’, but it was done, it was an agreement, it was binding and necessary.

*   *   *

Things were done much better in her day. Her main concern was to keep Violet married, out of England and away from scandal while Sonia’s marriage plans were sealed. Despite the engagement, Lord and Lady Ashcombe, were still dismayed about their son’s choice of wife. They hated the marriage ‘because of Little Mrs George and all that’. They were, said Vita, ‘very old-fashioned and apt to cut up rusty at any provocation’. This latest débâcle would, Mrs Keppel feared, spoil Sonia’s chances.

Maggie Greville, Sonia’s godmother, had already intervened. Friend to royalty, statesmen, foreign ambassadors and all true aristocrats, she went uninvited to Denbies, the Cubitt estate, two miles from Polesden Lacey. Formally dressed and in her Rolls-Royce with footman and chauffeur, she asked to speak to Ashcombe but refused to go into the house. When he came out she said, ‘I only called to tell you that I do not consider that your son is good enough for my goddaughter.’

Ashcombe asked for a meeting with George Keppel to discuss the marriage settlement. He arrived at Grosvenor Street to find Mrs Keppel alone. Unused to financial acumen in women – he gave his wife ‘pin money’ and paid all household expenses himself – he was off guard. Mrs Keppel said, ‘If we give Sonia a certain figure, will you give Roland the same?’ Stung by the amount she proposed, he said he hoped this expensive marriage would last. ‘My dear Lord Ashcombe, neither you nor I can legislate for eternity,’ Mrs Keppel replied.

But she could legislate for the present. Her instructions given to Violet and Denys, she returned to St Moritz and the bridge tables. ‘She can’t ever have been in love herself or she wouldn’t treat me like that,’ Violet wrote to Vita.

Alone with Denys, Violet made as if to jump out of a window but he restrained her. He saw that she was no more than her mother’s child, felt sorry for her and the mess she was in. He apologized for having summoned her mother and for not annulling the marriage. He said he had agreed to her mother’s demands for Sonia’s sake. He felt he had betrayed Violet and he wrote her a note:

I know that just lately I have not deserved your trust. I will not undeserve it again.

Don’t take that away too. Even if you must hate me, try just now to be a little generous and give me back the last vestige that remained to me of anything I cared for.

I will not fail you again in that way. I will try and earn your trust again anyway – even if it comes with your hatred.

I know there is nothing immediately that I can do for you. But if you feel that in future you can at least trust me – it may help a tiny bit.

He would, like George Keppel, have been a complaisant husband had Violet done things in her mother’s style. But