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Licensed Clinical Mental Health Counselor

COUNSELING AND PSYCHOTHERAPY

§802§863.2084

. 2 CHURCH STREET, BURLINGTON VT 05401

 

TEENS I ADULTS | INDIVIDUALS I COUPLES

ten-year-old Violet Keppel invit-
ed a new friend, 12-year-old Vita
Sackville-West, to have tea with her.
When Vita was in the hall ready to
leave, Violet gave her a kiss. It was
the beginning of an intense friend-
ship and the prelude to a tempestu-
ous affair that took seventeen years
to play out.
Violet’s parents were Alice
Keppel and Colonel George Keppel.
A dazzling, seductive figure, Alice
was a favorite mistress of King
Edward VII and lived a fashionable
lifestyle in the highest echelons of
society. Her children, Violet and
Sonia, were fascinated and ruled by
her. When King Edward died in
1910- of dissoluteliving mostly —

I In the winter of 1905, in London,

’ the Keppels’ lives changed dramati-

cally. To avoid any unseemliness in
her social circles, Alice took the
girls on a long trip to Asia.

Violet, then sixteen, was
miserable at having to part from
Vita. They went out together just
before the Keppels left. Vita kissed
Violet in Hyde Park and threatened
to kill her if she did not remain

 faithful during her trip, although the

friendship had yet to’ become sexual.
However, while Violet was gone,
Vita enjoyed an affair with another
girl and became engaged to Harold
Nicolson.

Alice, for whom socially
acceptable appearances were para-
mount, wanted Violet to marry soon
and well, as society expected. It did-
n’t matter if the marriage was a ’
cover for being mistress to a king or
lover of another woman. So on their
return, eighteen-year-old Violet was
thrust into the glittering whirl of a
London season. The idea of marriage
repelled Violet completely; to her it
was an intolerable sham. But the
pressure was lifted somewhat when
the World War broke out in 1913
and lasted until 1918.

One day, in April of 1918,
while Violet was visiting her, Vita
put on a pair of trousers for the first
time. She had bought a pair of army-
issue to garden in, but dresses and
skirts were de rigeur and pants-wear-
ing was a new sensation. “I went
into wild spirits,” Vita wrote. They
ate dinner alone together that
evening, and later lay on the sofa as
Violet counted the ways she loved
her on Vita’s fingers. They made
love, probably for the first time
together. They were overwhelmed by
their passion.

That passion soon became
fodder for gossip in London. Alice
liked Vita, but not the gossip, and

 e For Each 0

 

she insisted Violetmarry. She urged
Violet to encourage Denys Trefusis,
a major in the army. “I am so fed up
with lies,” Violet wrote to Vita.
“How right you were when you said
we were made for one another 
You are the grande passion of my ,
life. How gladly would I sacrifice
everything to you — family friends,
fortune, EVERYTHING.” Vita was
as possessive as ever of Violet,
though she thought Violet ‘should go
ahead and marry Trefusis. but with-
out conjugal consummation.
In October of 1918, to

\ Viole_t’s horror, Denys proposed. No
i doubt she understood that her moth-

er would not let her easily slip out of
this engagement. She tumed him
down and begged Vita to run away
to France with her. It was “the only
thing that can save me from an oth-
erwise CERTAIN FATE,” Violet
wrote, threatening that if Vita
refused, she would marry Denys.
They ran away to France.

“I had never felt so free in
my life,” Vita wrote of their months
in France. She wore a suit and went
around as a young man with Violet
as her wife. Violet wrote, “I was
madly insatiably in love with you.”
They went to Monte Carlo where,
“the weather was perfect, Monte
Carlo was perfect, Violet was per-
fect.” In London, their families fran-
tically tried to reach them.

Eventually, missives from
home reached them. Vita’s family
begged her to come home and look
after them. Violet’s mother told her
in no uncertain terms that she would
marry Denys, having already
announced publicly that the nuptials
would take place in June. To Violet
it was a ‘hideous farce,’ but she was
not capable of opposing her moth-
er’s will. “I loathe and abominate
deceit and hypocrisy,” Violet wrote
to Vita. “I belong to you body and
soul. I ache for you all day and all
night. You are my whole exis-
tence—O [Vita] it is so horrible, so
monstrous, so criminal to be with
someone one doesn’t care for when

    

her

 

your whole being cries out for the
person you do love and do‘ belong

 

She was desperate to get
out of the marriage and managed to
persuade Vita to agree to ‘elope’
with her before the wedding. Vita
was wildly jealous at the thought of ' '*
Denys and Violet being intimate, but  5,
as Violet planned their escape, Vita ‘
wrote to Harold in Paris, ‘‘I can’t be
in England or it will never take place ‘ 
.. I shall do something quite irre- “
trievable and mad if I stay in
England.” Three days before the
wedding Vita told Violet that she
would not rescue her, and went to
Paris. ‘

 

As for Denys, Alice had
promised him an income, a cushy
office job, a home — in short a very
nice life afier the horrorsiof thewar.  ‘
On June 16, 1919, Violetand Denys _,
were married and went "straight to’   I

, . - ; ..-1. ":19?

Vita kissed ,., 

1 . . .Vi0'¢t.;.iflii"‘‘

  Hiy'de‘*iPa“r‘k  r

‘ D N ‘ and 4

- threatened

to kill her if 

she did not 

remain 
faithful
during her
trip.

 

Paris for their honeymoon, where
Vita was. There the lovers, sparing
Denys nothing, made clear to him
what their relationship was. Nor
could the marriage be an understands 
ing such as Harold and Vita had . 
(Harold had his ‘own homosexual 
flings), for Violet considered Denys

the reason she and Vita were apait

and was constantly cruel to him.

After a month of marriage, they

were ready to separate, which Alice
would not allow. Everyone was mis- .:
erable. «

 

In February, Violet and
Vita attempted another elopement to 
France. This time Denys and K
Harold, at Vita’s instigation, >>