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

Two weeks before Sonia’s wedding the ‘royal photographer’ Bassano asked to take Mrs Keppel’s photograph:

We have been asked by the Editors of several papers for a new portrait for this purpose and should esteem it a favour if you would give us a complimentary sitting at our studios at an early date …

The camera showed her grand appearance. The following week Sonia had an asthma attack and feared Rolie would get impatient with the smell of camphorated oil and Himrod’s Inhalation Asthma Cure. Her mother filled her bedroom at Grosvenor Street with flowers. Her father brought her Charbonnel & Walker chocolate peppermint creams. Bessie cleaned her room quietly. Janet drew the curtains and made up the fire. Perriat, the cook, dressed in a white tunic, brought her the menu book and recommended the cream of chicken soup. Frances, the kitchenmaid, suggested pommes soufflés with the pheasant. Rolie brought the weekly illustrated papers and magazines and news of who had phoned and called. Nannie packed for the honeymoon.

Dr Bevan told Sonia she would have to wrap up well for the ceremony. Her ‘bachelor girl’ party was cancelled, the afternoon gathering to view the presents, organized by her mother and Violet, took place without her.

Her mother gave her a diamond tiara, an emerald and diamond pendant, an eighteenth-century diamond brooch in the shape of a sheaf of wheat and Nannie, who was now to be her maid. Her father gave her a piano and a Georgian writing table. Sir Ernest Cassel gave her a fat cheque. Mrs Keppel said this was vulgar so, to Sonia’s regret, it was converted into furs. Violet and Denys gave her two crystal and diamond hatpins, Lord and Lady Ashcombe a turquoise and diamond pendant, Uncle Arnold and Aunt Gertie a Georgian sideboard, Uncle Archie and Aunt Ida nineteenth-century gilt candlesticks, Maggie Greville an emerald ring, the Grand Duke Michael and Countess Torbay a Fabergé snuffbox, Marjorie Jessel and eighty girlfriends a Spode china breakfast, dinner and tea service, Rolphe the butler and the servants at Grosvenor Street a silver salver, Nannie two toast racks in silver plate, each strut forming the letters ROLIE and SONIA.

Her wedding dress was silver lamé. Mrs Keppel wore plum velvet and fox furs, Nannie a black plumed hat and white kid gloves. ‘What am I going to do without my Doey?’ her father said to her on the way to the church and Sonia silenced him to keep back tears. Ten bridesmaids and pages held her train and the band of the 3rd Battalion Coldstream Guards played ‘Oh! Perfect Love’ as she and Rolie walked down the aisle.

At Christmas Vita sent Violet a fur coat, but her voice was cold on the phone. In January 1921 Violet and she left for two months together in the south of France, in Hyères and Carcassone. Mrs Keppel thought Violet was meeting Pat Dansey and Joan Campbell in Algiers. Violet went on ahead alone to Nîmes so London society would not know that yet again she was travelling with Vita.

FOURTEEN

It was their last journey together. At Carcassone they rented a house with a garden. ‘Do you remember our garden in Carcassonne with its enormous latch-key?’ They planned to go on to Andorra but were prevented by snow.

Denys packed his possessions, left the Dower House and went home to Devon to be looked after by his mother and sister. In a letter to Harold he said he was seeking legal separation and would have nothing to do with Violet when and if she returned. ‘Damn,’ Harold wrote in his diary, fearing more scandal, more onus on Vita to be responsible for Violet. Lady Sackville was fearful for Ben and Nigel’s sake: ‘I don’t want them to blush when their mother’s name is mentioned.’

Early in February 1921 Harold wired Vita asking a definite date for her return. She wanted ‘to stay on a bit’, she replied and again as in January 1919 said writing to him was indecent when she was with Violet. He compared her to a jellyfish addicted to cocaine and with equivocal insistence told her to return on Friday 25 February:

On Saturday we shall go down together to the cottage. So please take your tickets at once. And please also realise that this is definite. I shall be more angry than I have ever been if you do not come back on that date. Don’t misunderstand me. I shall really cut adrift if you don’t. It is a generous date, it is longer than you promised: but it is a fixed date and you must keep to it.

It was not in his nature to be so stern and he added a rider that if the date was inconvenient, then let him know and he would change it. Vita reassured him that though she felt responsible for Violet, which was why she was away, she only really loved him and that would always be the case. ‘Wild oats are all very well, but not when they grow as high as a jungle.’

There was no breach in her affection for him. She arrived back on 9 March, her twenty-ninth birthday. Harold thought she looked well. They and the children went to Knole reunited as a family. A few of society’s doors, but not many, closed: Mrs Mary Hunt, sister of the lesbian composer Ethel Smyth, asked Lady Sackville not to bring Vita to her house, Hill Hall, because ‘the whole thing horrifies me’. Such social snubs were tiresome but made no impact on their lives.

But Violet was in deep trouble. Wild oats had choked her life. She went alone to the Dower House. Mrs Keppel was wintering on the Riviera and in North Africa. Violet asked if she might join her in Tunis but received no reply. Denys did not answer her letters. Mrs Keppel instructed her brother Archie to supervise Violet. He had a three-hour meeting with her. Violet described it as ‘simply disastrous’. Her mother and George had