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

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 –