Customer Reviews

Mrs. Keppel and Her Daughter

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After having read this book, I can't stop thinking about it and pondering what makes us happy in life. The people in this story, constrained by the morals of their time, sought happiness through influence, fame, wealth, and sexual relationships with varying success. Today, although our society is more open and free, achieving happiness is still a challenging business. As I read about Violet Trefusis' unhappy life, I wondered how different it would have been had Vita Sackville-West eloped with her. What if their times had been more accepting of openly homosexual relationships. What if Violet had been able to live within the lie of her marriage. If this story had played out today, could it have ended with happiness for Violet. Are things so different for us today.

Souhami's version of the affair between Violet and Vita leaves one feeling angry and annoyed at Vita. If Vita had been honest about their relationship, Violet may have learned to accept her life without the possiblity of a long term relationship with Vita. Violet may have healed emotionally and been able to get back on track in life. Instead, Souhamis portrays Violet as a victim and her life damaged by her unrequited passion for Vita. Vita held out false hopes to Violet by waffling and lying to Violet about their relationship, while actually having no intention of ever leaving her marriage. Vita was not very honest and if she had been a man, she would have been called a cad.

I plan on re-reading A Portrait of a Marriage to see if Vita can change my mind. But my first reading of that book several years ago left me unconvinced and Souhamis has written an interesting and convincing portrait of Violet as the victim.

I highly recommend this book. This is a story about human relationships - husband/wife, mother/daughter, lover/loved, not just the lesbian relationship between Violet and Vita. It is about how these people were able to resolve (or not) the many issues in their lives and the kind of happiness they achieved.

Most of us are commoner, middle class and heterosexual. We don't give thought to other worlds until something strange happens--the murder of Versace or the death of Princess Diana. This book lifts up the rug on these two worlds and allows us to glimpse at something quite alien from our own. Beneath the upper crust of society there is a social dictum that allows the rich and the well-connected to be "doing it and excusing it" as long as it's done with discretion. Behind the facade of certain marriages are gay people in hiding--arranged marriages of convenience. It is a social hypocrisy that didn't start with the Edwardian era but it certainly continues through today. Billed as a double bio, this book is more the biography of Violet Trefusis, lesbian daughter of Alice Keppel, King Edward VII's mistress and the great-grandmother of Camilla Parker-Bowles. But to tell the story of Violet, one must understand Alice and the Edwardian social set. This story is a tour through strange worlds indeed, richly told with text from the letters and published works of the main characters. This is biography that gives you the pathos of real people. Diana Souhami tries to balance the scales by telling the story of the famous lesbian affair between Vita Sackville-West and Violet Trefusis from Violet's point of view. One feels sorry for Violet but also annoyed. How long does it take for Violet to accept that Vita isn't willing to commit to their relationship? Violet, the victim, is a self-deceiving at best, dense at worst. Violet hasn't inherited her mother's ability to make the best of whatever social situation she's in. That's the ultimate tragedy of it. The hypocrisy of society will be with us forever. Only the strong learn to use it to their advantage. It's a lesson we all learn, whatever our place in this world.

This is a terrific read. I couldn't put the book down. It doesn't have Violet Keppel Trefusis in the title but it is essentially about her and this is why I bought the book here on Amazon. It is the first book I read beyond Vita Sackville-West's own memoire of her relationship with Violet; this was published in Nigel Nicolson's 'Portrait of a Marriage' in 1973 - shortly after Violet's death in 1972. Like 'Portrait of a Marriage', the book only really comes (startlingly) alive when we get to the affair with Vita that was cut short to avoid public scandal. Violet was ostracised by English high society and would move to Paris in an unhappy marriage with Denys Trefusis to rebuild her life. The affair with Vita is the book's tour de force. The book draws from a wide range of references and Souhami's own valuable research which gives new insights. It includes excellent portraits of the main actors, Violet's extraordinary childhood, the hypocritical Edwardian values and conventions - exemplified by the pragmatic Alice Keppel- that Violet found so offensive. And, Violet and Vita's powerful, beloved, trust fund controlling mothers - Alice Keppel and Victoria Sackville.

The book firmly sides with Violet and balances the negativity of the Nicolson view of Violet as a dangerous and even evil seductress. Souhami makes Violet's tragedy painfully palpable. Vita on the other hand is not treated sympathetically. There are two sides to every story and this is Souhami's defense of Violet.

Souhami rushes through Violet's later life (in Paris and Florence) offering selected vignettes of Violet as a troubled, perhaps deluded woman who was 'unaware of the figure she cut'. She says 'Her messiness, her chaos, her constant painting of her face, seemed to signal inner distress.' How far Violet might have been damaged by the consequences of her relationship with Vita, her isolation and alienation (she was different in many ways and could not 'fit in'), and her sometimes violent marriage with Denys is unknown. Souhami provides no analysis but she provides information; readers have to make their own judgement.

After the near public disaster of her failed relationship with Vita, it couldn't have been easy to 'be' Violet; her armoured bombastic,'camp' public personality purposely hid too much of the sensitivity of her true self. She would never put herself at emotional risk again. What was left was a too colourful, too strident, too clever (very well read and multi-lingual but not, being born in 1894, University educated), self-indulgent take me or leave me woman; she drew strong reactions. She regained the love of her mother. She lived in the sensation of the moment because it was too painful to look back. She played at romance but would never totally commit herself again. She was a talented writer but never fulfilled her potential. She was generous, witty, mischievous and fun-loving. She was fantastical and wrapped herself up in half truths. She was happiest, away from the strictures and demands of Parisian and Florentine high society, in the enclosed freedom of her tower at St. Loup with her intimate friends. Vita visited and felt very much that she was in a 'spiritual home'.

Despite the different sadnesses that haunt this book, Souhami also has a good eye for comedy and the absurd and I laughed out loud on a few occasions. When I finished the book, I missed Violet and went on to find out more about her - some of which I reflect here. This is a compliment to Souhami as well as to Violet who I admire despite her flaws. Violet had a great sense of humour and an infectious joie de vivre, she was before her time and classless in many ways. Self analytical, she acknowledged her flaws and failures. She had a keen, sometimes scornful, ironic eye and a keen, sometimes scornful, sense of the irony of her own life. Vita would describe Violet as dangerous but worthy to her son Ben just before he was about to meet her; even Vita could be tongue tied when describing her! Some of the other reviews here are critical of Violet; I find her fascinating in a good way.

This is the best record of Violet's life. I would recommend that it be read alongside 'Violet to Vita' (her letters) and her memoire 'Don't Look Around' from which the reader can judge for themselves the big gap between her early private and later public persona. 'Violet Trefusis' by Philippe Jullian and John Phillips, the Eve section of Vita Sackville-West's 'Challenge' and Violet's novels 'Broderie Anglaise' and 'Hunt the Slipper' are also valuable references. All are available on Amazon USA and UK at good prices.

I have mixed feelings about this book. On the one hand, it is compulsively readable --- it has a sort of breathless, gossipy quality, perhaps due to the erratic punctuation (i.e. lack of a lot of commas that should have been there :). And it certainly conveys the flavor of the times. So in that sense I'm not disappointed.

But, on the other hand, I got the distinct feeling that these people didn't really deserve to have a 360-odd page book written about them. They were immoral, shallow, greedy --- a spoiled bunch of rich people who lived through two World Wars without worrying about anything other than whether Paris was accessible for shopping or not. After several hundred pages of reading about how these people went on endless holidays and cruises and squandered money and attended parties in their English country houses and Paris hotels and Italian villas... well, I felt I'd had enough. You won't get any idea of the suffering the two World Wars inflicted by reading this book. The titled lady who indignantly tells a government officer to stop sending her manservants off to the war (because she can't manage without gardeners or butlers) is a fine example of what I mean.

Take Alice Keppel, King Edward VII's mistress, for example. Unlike some royal mistresses who would deserve a biography in their own right (one thinks of Mary Robinson, actress and poet, or even the irrepressible, saucy Nell Gwyn, together with a bunch of others), Mrs Keppel had no intellectual aspirations or interests of any kind. All she cared about was money --- she was acquisitive, luxury-loving, and couldn't have cared less that the money came from her illicit relationship with a married man. I felt she wasn't just cold-hearted and hypocritical --- she just wasn't very interesting to begin with.

Her daughter Violet, for her part, was an incredibly selfish woman. Author Souhami goes to great lengths to point out the difference between them --- the mother's hypocrisy and flawed morals, as opposed to Violet's willingness to openly live her passion. But she never satisfactorily explains Violet's shabby treatment of the man she married. Violet married Denys Trefusis ---a man who was clearly suffering from post-traumatic stress syndrome from his horrible experiences in WW1 and who only wanted a kind wife and the chance to build a family--- in the full force of her lesbian relationship with Vita Sackville-West (she actually planned to marry Denys and elope with Vita on the following day, and was only prevented by Vita's reluctance to leave her own marriage). After marrying, she constantly humiliated and mistreated her husband, and flaunted her lesbian affairs before him. I think the real dychotomy (if there is one) would not in any case be between Mrs Keppel's discretion and Violet's flamboyance, but between Mrs Keppel's relatively 'acceptable' treatment of her husband (at least by the standards of her class) and Violet's complete disregard for hers, including her refusal to care for him in his last illness. It is even possible that Violet's unforgivable behavior may have contributed to her husband's early death, aged 39. I felt this issue was insufficiently addressed (although it is quite clear from Souhami's recounting of events).

I was also annoyed by the repeated references to Camilla Parker-Bowles (admittedly a descendant of Mrs Keppel) and Prince Charles. The comparison between both women's role as royal mistresses was, I felt, cheap, and of no more than anecdotal value at best. The two cases have more differences than similarities between them.

(Another troubling issue, in relation to Mrs Keppel, was the lack of reference to Edward VII's other, simultaneous mistresses. I've read that the King's mistress in his last years was one Agnes Keyser, but she's not even mentioned in this book. Surely a reference to other women competing with Mrs Keppel for the King's attentions would have been in order.)

After so much frivolity and shallowness, Virginia Woolf's appearance was refreshing. Woolf's letters, diary entries and general insights on the Violet-Vita relationship brought an altogether deeper dimension to these people's lives. Amidst all the two-faced socialites and their endless rounds of gossiping and high-life double-dealing, Woolf's wisdom and intelligence were a relief, as were the extracts from the three women's books about their affairs.

All in all, a sometimes engaging read about fascinating times and not very interesting people.

If you like this period of English history, this book is simply delicious. It covers the period from the late 1800 when Victoria's long reign was coming to an end. Her son Bertie (later Edward VII) had from childhood rebelled against his "Victorian" upbringing. To the horror of his parents from a young age he loved pleasure - food, wine and women. Victoria always blamed him for the premature death of Prince Albert and even when he was middle aged she would not let him have any power or even read state papers. He compensated with endless parties and mistresses. His favorite over the last decade and a half of his life was Mrs. Alice Keppel. She held his attention and was discrete to a fault. Once he became king her place was unparalleled. As was the custom, her pliant husband cooperated and they reaped great wealth. This book focuses on Mrs. Keppel and her daughter Violet Keppel Trefusis - polar opposites. Violet rebelled against the kind of deceit her mother's relationship with the king represented. She wanted honesty. Unfortunately, the lesbian love she developed for Vita Sackville-West was totally taboo in Edwardian England. The conflicts that ensued are of soap opera proportions and the bulk of the book is on that almost psychotic relationship. It is intriguing and difficult to put the book down. The scholarship and details in the book are impressive and the insights into the characters involved are spellbinding: Edward VII and his wife and mistresses; Virginia Wolfe and many others.

History has a way of repeating itself as Bertie Prince of Wales (later in his middle age Edward VII) is the great great grandfather of Charles, the current Prince of Wales. And Mrs. Keppel's great granddaughter is Camilla Parker-Bowles, the second wife of Charles. They did it differently in those days - all discretion, no public airing of marital conflict!

One little technicality confuses me. The author (whose writing and scholarship are very impressive) refers to Charles as the great grandson of Bertie. No matter how many times I try to calculate it, I come up with the great great grandson - but I may well be wrong. It doesn't change the power of the story.

If you love this period of English history or English royalty in general, you don't want to miss this book.

The title of this book is a little misleading, as this is really the story of "Mrs. Keppel's Daughter and Her Lesbian Love Affair". Although Mrs. Keppel's life, particularly her time as mistress to King Edward VII, is summarized at the start of the book, the focus quickly shifts to her daughter, Violet Keppel Trefusis, and her ill-fated love for her childhood friend, Vita Sackville-West. As the author sees it, Mrs. Keppel carried on her extramarital affairs with the King, various bank managers, and others who could help her advance economically and socially, and got away with it because she operated within the social boundaries of the day. This included a husband who was often away on business, but tacitly seems to have acquiesced to his wife's ambitions and activities, and got along with her pretty well (at least as presented to the book) when the King and bankers and such weren't around. By contrast, her daughter Violet sought to throw away all convention and live openly, albeit outside of England, with her female lover, Vita Sackville-West, who dressed as a man and wrote bestselling novels. Vita reciprocated Violet's affections, but also had a strong emotional bond to her husband, Harold Nicolson, who wasn't above allowing Vita to carry on extramaritally with women as he did with men - discreetly, and so as not to interfere with the couple's social standing, his diplomatic career or the running of their large country house. Harold drew the line at his wife running off to live with Violet, and Vita eventually agreed with Harold, and the two of them went on to raise several children and have a pretty nice life. According to the author, Violet's life was wrecked by Vita's choice. The author's premise is that Mrs. Keppel benefitted greatly from being what amounted to a discreet high-class hooker, while Violet, for daring to be honest about her passionate feelings, went down the drain.

This rings a little bit untrue given that Violet didn't exactly lay down and die after she more or less broke up with Vita, but soon escaped from her forced, loveless marriage to an emotionally unstable war veteran, and went on to have other love affairs including a long-term relationship with a heiress-turned-princess. She also wrote several novels, maintained two estates in Europe, and partied a lot. All of this is somewhat rushed in the book compared to the Violet-and-Vita story, for which the author's approach is perhaps too detailed. Indeed, during the time of Violet and Vita's affair, the author seems to recount every house, villa, island, cottage, pension, hotel, city, country the pair and their concerned family members visited, and who got a letter from whom while they were there, punctuated by an occasional climactic scene, such as a screaming row in a restaurant, or Vita's failure to come "rescue" Violet from her unwanted wedding. I would have appreciated a little less soap-operatic minute detail, and a little more insight into the motivations of the folks involved. Vita clearly led Violet on and encouraged her to "act out" while Vita retreated into her safe haven of life with gay Harold. Was this because Vita enjoyed having power over Violet, or enjoyed being the object of as many people's desire as possible, or looked to Violet to express all the rage and repression that she herself could not, or simply didn't know how to handle the volatile situation? Similarly, why does Violet constantly look for someone - Vita, other lovers, even her mother - to "rescue" her from unpleasant situations in life? Why wasn't Violet able to contain herself just for the length of time it would take to get her homelier younger sister married off to the wealthy, conservative beau of her dreams? In the end, Violet comes across less like a martyr to lesbian love and more like one of those annoying drama-llama endless-teenage-rebellion types, going from breakup to makeup to various intrigues, in a way that makes you wish she would just shut up and go get a job or something. (The fact that several of the other characters actually managed to write bestselling books, handle major diplomatic matters like the Paris Peace Talks, or generally accomplish anything in the midst of their endless social and sexual travels was pretty mind-blowing to me.)

I wish the author had explored Violet's relationship with her mother a little more deeply. Did Violet really see her mother as the epitome of romance, when Violet herself also noticed that the King was kind of a boring guy with a smelly little dog, and that her mother was bound by many social conventions? Surely at some point she must have realized that her mother's romantic life, on some level, was work that kept not only herself but her daughter in luxuries. Violet also rages against her mother's strictures but, like an aging teenager, seems unable to fully break away unless she is carried off by some stronger lover such as Vita. At times Violet is described as mesmerized by her mother or kept in line by the mere threat of Mother's disapproval. I couldn't figure out whether this bond to Mother was due to Mother's holding the strings to the purse of money that Violet apparently couldn't give up, or whether there was some deeper emotional issue at play, especially given that Violet ends up the mistress of a rich, protective older woman (i.e. a sort of mother figure). The author never really addresses these issues.

If, like me, you also enjoy reading books about the customs of England during the Edwardian period through WWI, you may be disappointed once you get past the Mrs. Keppel story, as not only does the author skimp on details of the social functions attended by Violet and company, but many of their adventures also take place outside England, on the Continent. There are just enough pictures and descriptions given to tantalize the reader, but not enough to satisfy.

Overall, I thought this was interesting from the standpoint of getting another view of the Violet-Vita relationship besides that presented in well-known books like "Portrait of a Marriage" (the story from Vita's perspective) or Virginia Woolf's "Orlando" (a fictionalized biography of Vita, with Violet portrayed as a Russian princess). But in terms of being a fun read, the fun stopped with Mrs. Keppel, and I'm not sure it's that complete of a Portrait of Violet Trefusis either.

A lot of people know about Mrs. Alice Keppel, but not as many people know about her daughter Violet. So Diana Souhami tries to set that right with the double biography "Mrs. Keppel and Her Daughter" -- which is somewhat misnamed because it seems far more interested in Violet Keppel Trefusis than her royal mistress mama. Fortunately, Violet lived up to that interest: a young woman whose passions burned her out.

As is pretty well known, Alice Keppel was a famous London socialite and one of the favorite mistresses of the British king Edward VII.

But Souhami quickly turns attention to Violet, who showed her intense romanticism at an early age -- she became passionately attached to Vita Sackville-West (whose first love was her childhood home, Knole). Sackville-West married Harold Nicolson and entered into a comfortable, loving open marriage with him, but the marriage was splintered by her affair with Violet.

In short, Violet threw her heart, body and soul into her affair with Vita, and even tried to blackmail her by marrying a nice young solder named Denys Trefusis (but neglecting to mention her obsession with another woman to him). She craved a life together where they would live openly and freely for each other -- and when Vita turned away from her, her fixations on love and romance caused her life to crash and burn.

It's not hard to see why Diana Souhami is way more interested in Violet than in her mom -- Violet lived a life straight out of a soap opera, complete with heartache, steamy sex, illicit affairs, lives ruined, mass scandal, marriages under fire, the lesbian underground of Paris, and romantic dreams that could never realistically come true. Actually, soap operas wouldn't dare to write in stuff this juicy.

Souhami starts off on Alice Keppel, her genteely adulterous lifestyle and her distant relationships with her daughters. But as soon as a prepubescent Violet starts crushing on her future lover, the focus swings sharply to follow Violet alone. And Souhami's writing style is a delight in itself -- lush detailed portraits of Edwardian England, between-wars Paris, and the gorgeous but shallow world occupied by the wealthy and aristocratic.

As portrayed, Violet is a rather sad figure -- she believed that her love and passions should be freely and openly expressed, unlike her discreet mother. It's rather sad to see a romantic person who literally gave everything for love, and ended up burning out her own spirit. On the flipside, she also comes across as a horribly selfish person who didn't care who she hurt (like her poor husband) as long as she got to pursue Troo Wuv.

A more mysterious figure in this is Vita, who later went on to have an affair with Virginia Woolf and inspired the gender-bendign classic "Orlando." Souhami's never quite able to grab Vita's elusive motivations -- we're never sure how much she loved Violet or whether she was consciously dangling her on a string.

Though it has the title of "Mrs. Keppel and Her Daughter," Diana Souhami's lush, intricate double biography is mostly focused on Violet -- selfish, scandalous, and tragic.

Alice, Mrs.George Keppel, known in Court circles as "Little Mrs.George", was the mistress of Edward the 7th for many years, until his death. It's a well known story that Queen Alexandra sent for her to attend the death bed of her husband, but what I hadn't known before is that Edward had sent Alice a letter, years before, expressing his wish that she might be allowed to say goodbye in the event of his approaching death. She'd kept this letter which she sent to the Queen, virtually forcing her to accede to his wishes. With this same determination and strength, she proved herself to be the perfect mistress for Edward, always ready and willing to satisfy his appetites and, at the same time, using his influence to acquire enormous wealth and social prestige. At that time in the beginning of the 20th century, the position of Royal Mistress was still held to be a position of social esteem, providing, and this was a BIG proviso, that the affair was handled with absolute privacy and tact, and with no hint of scandal. Alice's daughter, Violet, whose parentage was uncertain, was another matter. In her teenage and early years, she conducted a violently passionate love affair with Vita Sackville-West which lasted for some years until her possessiveness proved too much for Vita. This book will be fascinating for history buffs as it gives a wonderful insight into the morals and mores of Edwardian times, which Violet found to be hypocritical but which allowed people who were often married for convenience and to propagate family lines, to live their lives with a semblance of normality. Violet was a supremely self absorbed woman and, like many of her class at that time, idle and self indulgent through a lack of purpose, except her own pleasure. I found it to be a marvellous read.

Another study of English bedroom antics, though this time including lesbianism and how it was on one hand hidden and the other out in the open. Royals always have been known for double standards regarding sexual activities. The story revolves around Mrs. Keppel and her daughter Violet.

The book was very well written, never dry and actually based on memoirs, diaries and letters. We get our voyeuristic tendencies gratified but you also feel the deep emotions that a mother and daughter go through no matter what the era.

I had read other books regarding Mrs. Keppel, her daughter Violet, but never one on Violet's lover Anita Sackville-West. This additional entry of West almost caused a upper crust cat fight between mother, daughter and the daughters lover. Aside from all of that, the book kept my interest with true insight into Edwardian social values being threatened by an out of the closet event.

A most enjoyable, well written and enlightening book.