Mrs. Keppel and Her Daughter by Diana Souhami (people reading books .txt) 📗

an English diplomat. They made their home at Arcachon in south-west France, though Lionel travelled widely. They produced five children but did not marry. Pepita was Catholic and constrained from divorcing her husband and dancing teacher Juan Antonio de Oliva.

When Victoria was nine Pepita died. She and her two sisters were sent to a convent in Paris. The place was cold, the regime strict, at night in her prayers she asked the Virgin Mary to warm her bed. Chatter was punished. If she complained of feeling unwell she was sent to an extra church service, if she fainted she was given extra lessons. Holidays were trips with the nuns to Bercq near Boulogne. She was told not to mention that her mother had been a dancer called Pepita.

She was at the convent seven years and assumed her future would be as a governess. But in 1880 a Mrs Mulhall, sent by Lionel, arrived at the convent to take his daughters to England. On the boat she told Victoria and her sisters they were illegitimate.

In England, Lord Sackville of Knole and Lord de la Warr of Buckhurst were revealed as uncles and the Duchess of Bedford and Countess of Derby as aunts. The Duchess of Bedford refused to associate with this illegitimate brood. Lady Derby – Aunt Mary – was kind, but drew the line at inviting them to tea with visitors.

In 1881 Lionel was appointed British Minister in Washington. Victoria went with him as lady of the house. Unusual, exotic, French-speaking, unpredictable, she was a fascination and a success. In her diary she listed her offers of marriage from politicians and diplomats – the President of the United States, Sir Cecil Spring-Rice who himself became British Ambassador in America, Sir Charles Hardinge who became head of the Foreign Office and wrote Bertie’s speeches, and half a dozen more.

She was in Washington seven years. In 1888 there was a presidential election. Lionel gave his views on who he would prefer as president, the indiscretion was publicized and he was asked to leave. Three weeks later his brother Mortimer, the 1st Baron Sackville, died and Lionel inherited Knole. Victoria, aged twenty-six, was to return with him to manage the estate.

On the way home they stopped at the French Riviera. Bertie was there. The company was dashing, smart and fast. ‘All the fast women respect me because I never go anywhere without Papa,’ Victoria wrote in her diary. Bertie wooed and teased her but she was not as yielding as Little Mrs George ten years later. ‘I was horribly shy, terriblement intimidée, the first time I met him.’ After dinner he sent for her to go to the smoking room. ‘I refused to smoke but I was obliged to go there … He asked for my photograph which I shall delay sending him as long as possible.’

She did not understand his jokes but assumed they were funny because everyone laughed. He told her she brought him luck at baccarat:

He made me sit at his right hand, and indeed he won. He gave me a big gold piece of 100 francs as a mascot with his name and the date engraved on it.

When she went to talk to someone else he looked for her ‘all over the place’. ‘He put me at his right hand at supper.’ They went to his club and he danced the ‘quadrille d’honneur’ with her. ‘He is amiability itself toward me.’

With convent primness she thought herself too popular and resolved to stop wearing her pink tulle frock trimmed with silver leaves. A French marquis whom Bertie said was a very good fellow wanted to marry her, but she worried he was not a Catholic. Life was dazzling. She reflected on the vanity of money, ‘mais pourtant j’aimerais bien avoir un petit million à moi’.

Then came Knole and her little million. She gave the servants orders, wore the family jewels, marvelled at the paintings, tapestries and treasures with which the place was stuffed and to herself repeated the refrain, ‘Quel roman de ma vie’. Her father, diffident and eccentric, took no notice of her or Knole. He whittled paper knives from the lids of cigar boxes, read Gibbon’s Decline and Fall, walked in the garden followed by two pet cranes and refused to speak to visitors. Given the chance he went to London for the day to avoid them.

Her cousin – also called Lionel – visited. Heir to the Sackville title and to Knole, he was twenty-two, five years her junior, gentle and quiet. They played draughts in the library and he thought her exotic. ‘I wonder whether I shall ever marry Lionel?’ she wrote in her diary. ‘How much people admire Knole! I should be very lacking in ambition were I to renounce it, but one’s personal happiness should come before ambition.’

She prayed for guidance, worried about the French marquis and on 17 June 1890 married ambition, happiness and her cousin in the chapel at Knole. Bertie sent her a diamond and pearl brooch as a wedding present. The marriage caused jealousy and consternation among her brothers, sisters, uncles and aunts – the blood tie, the illegitimacy, her Catholicism, the huge inheritance.

At first she loved her husband, though she thought him unfathomable and took no notice of his work. In her diary she recorded how, when and where they had sex: in the library, on the sofa, in the bath, in the park. She called him Tio and his penis Baby. ‘Baby very naughty this morning while I was pretending to sleep … Tio is getting more passionate every day … Tio was perfectly mad tonight … He really is a stallion – 4 times … Delirium. Afterwards Tio said, “Was it nice Vicky?”’

For a while sex and organizing Knole concealed their incompatibility. She enjoyed installing electric lights, bathrooms and modern conveniences. ‘Everybody says that I made Knole the most comfortable large house in England, uniting the beauties of Windsor Castle and the Ritz.’

Lionel, like his uncle, took no interest in running the estate.