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

of the most sunny things that ever happened’. As for Vita he supposed it was ‘a sort of George Sand stunt’, or a ‘scarlet adventure’, or perhaps she was a bit deranged like the rest of her family.

On 1 October Vita wrote him a love letter before he left for Italy. She told him she loved him ‘unalterably’, with a love that would survive passing passion. Their love, she said, after five years had ‘long strong roots’. With him and no one else she had a sense of belonging, ‘a sense of “He is MINE” – I don’t think that often happens.’

Violet received similar avowals and the claim “She is MINE”. The following week they went to Scheherazade – twice. ‘Marvellous.’ At Ebury Street Vita changed into men’s clothes, browned her face, put a khaki bandage round her head, walked down Piccadilly smoking a cigarette, bought a newspaper from a boy who called her sir, went with Violet to Charing Cross station, then by train to Orpington.

She was Julian, Violet was Eve. ‘This is the best adventure,’ Vita wrote, ‘The extraordinary thing was how natural it all was for me … I had wondered about my voice, but found I could sink it sufficiently.’ They booked in at a lodging house as husband and wife. The following day they ‘went to Knole which I think was brave. Here I slipped into the stables and emerged as myself.’ ‘Leave Julian at Knole,’ she wrote in her diary and that night dreamed a wish-fulfilment dream of the escapade.

Gossip swelled. Ozzie Dickinson told Lady Sackville that Violet wanted to separate Vita and Harold. Violet told her she intended to marry Denys who had not got a penny, that Harold was stifling Vita’s writing career, that Vita was not in love with him. Vita told her Harold was too sleepy and quick to be a good lover. Harold told her Violet was trying to destroy his home life by constantly ridiculing it. Lady Sackville told Harold that Violet was pernicious and amoral. Vita made Violet promise not to have any sexual exchange with Denys. And Violet told Vita how she loved her overwhelmingly, devastatingly, possessively, exorbitantly, submissively, incoherently and insatiably.

The war moved to an end. Mrs Keppel was concerned as to how George would fill his time. Vita suggested talking to her uncle Charles (who became the 4th Lord Sackville) to see if there was room at Knole on the staff. Mrs Keppel said George was too senior. She went into battle with Violet, whose behaviour made fissures in the structure of her world more damaging than war. There were ‘hideous rows’ when Violet tried to meet alone with Vita. She would not let her go to Long Barn unless Denys went with her. In London Violet felt incarcerated at Grosvenor Street:

It does seem unfair that you aren’t limited and supervised like me – that you can be in the country in a lovely place and day in day out I am made to stay in the place I hate most of any place on earth.

When separated from Vita, Violet was so miserable Denys suggested they both go and talk to Vita about it. Violet said she wanted to marry Denys in a registry office to get away from home. She asked Vita to be a witness.

In October Mrs Keppel took her daughter to Bideford to a house party of statesmen and their wives. On the train down she berated her for the embarrassment she caused. Violet felt the tough side of ‘Chinday’ her beloved mother, whose life was unparalleled romance:

Chinday was at her worst, at her snobbiest, at her unholiest coming down here – the things she said hurt so much, that after a time I ceased to feel them … Then an awful thought struck me: perhaps she didn’t love me after all, how was it possible to love someone and yet say such things to them? How was it possible to be so nearly related yet so utterly apart?… God, how I longed for you, Mitya … I was so completely unhappy … It’s impossible, it’s intolerable, and always the note of slight condescension that obtrudes itself on everything she says to me, as though I were her social, moral and intellectual inferior. I may be the first two but I swear I’m not the last.

In London on Saturday 26 October, Denys returned to his regiment. He proposed to Violet at Grosvenor Street before he left but she was equivocal in her reply. Mrs Keppel was away for the weekend. Vita stayed the night then bolted round in a taxi to Harold’s parents at Cadogan Gardens before she got back. On 31 October Mrs Keppel took Violet to be photographed professionally so Denys might have a permanent image of his mascot. The appointment foiled Violet’s plan to see Vita who had the flu. She sent gardenias and an apology. She told Vita that going abroad with her was ‘the only thing that can save me from an otherwise CERTAIN FATE’.

She applied that same day to a Mr Sidney Russell Cooke for permits and visas for her and Vita to go to Paris. He told her she must first obtain passports from the Foreign Office and Harold was the logical person to arrange this:

As Mrs Nicolson could no doubt get a medical certificate advising her to go to the South of France after her flu & as she would no doubt require a ‘companion’ I think it would be possible to arrange the matter of the permits, but I doubt it could be done under a fortnight from the time you get the passport as there is rather a congestion of traffic.

Violet asked Harold and he helped. It was not his nature to obstruct their plans. To Vita he said he was so busy with the prospective Paris Peace Conference he would not ‘mind much’ if she went. Mrs Keppel was agreeable as Denys would be in Paris and the ostensible point of the trip was