Note: The Kirkus review at the top of the page is unfair.
All the hoardings of my imagination I have laid bare to you. Throughout her childhood Trefusis was witness to her mother's numerous lovers, all prominent powerful men of the day… I am losing every atom of self-respect I ever possessed. Violet Trefusis Violet Keppel, the elder daughter of Alice Keppel, was born at 2 Wilton Crescent, London, on 6th June 1894. Chinday had previously told all her friends I was engaged so I was congratulated by everyone I knew there. Souhami, Cavafy and Nicolson are available via Amazon. I could have screamed aloud. When she returned to him, it certainly did. Darling, whatever it may cost us, my mother won't be cross with you any more. It may seem that I should have missed Harold more. Sometimes I am flooded by an agony of physical longing for you... a craving for your nearness and your touch. Rosamund wrote to Vita: "Promise not to sit next to me tomorrow. Souhami's biography draws from 'Don't Look Round' and remains the best and truest record of Violet Trefusis. I have surrendered my whole individuality, the very essence of my being to you. A peach might have envied her complexion. Violet did not destroy their physical union; she simply provided the alternative for which Vita was unconsciously seeking at the moment when her physical passion for Harold, and his for her, had begun to cool.
I try so hard to imagine your lips on mine. Lady Sackville noted in her diary, "Vita intends to be very platonic with Harold, who accepts it like a lamb.' I admit everything, to my shame, but I have never pretended to have anything other than a base and despicable character. Of course she knew that "such a thing existed", but she did not give it a name, and felt no guilt about it. I have clung to you and caressed you and slept with you and I would like to tell the whole world I clamour for you.... You are my lover and I am your mistress, and kingdoms and empires and governments have tottered and succumbed before now to that mighty combination - the most powerful in the world.She (Vita) didn't know how strong and dangerous such passion could be, until Violet replaced Rosamund. As a side-note it might appear not so surprising that, notwithstanding some general changes in social context by that time, the inherent unresolved tensions of all three models (Violet's, Mrs Keppel's and Vita's) - including mothers taking sides in view of a socially acceptable solution - reappeared in the The two former lovers met again in 1940 after the war had forced Violet to come back to There have been extensive writings on the affair, many reflecting what is believed to have been the mistreatment of Trefusis by Sackville-West. The knobs and knuckles had all disappeared. At the time of her marriage she may have been ignorant that men could feel for other men as she had felt for Rosamund, but when she had made this discovery in Harold himself, it did not come as a great shock to her, for she had the romantic notion that it was natural and salutary for "people" to love each other, and the desire to kiss and touch was simply the physical expression of affection, and it made no difference whether it was affection between people of the same sex or the opposite.It was fortunate that both were made that way. Violet Trefusis is best remembered today for her love affair with the wealthy This was not the only account of this love affair, which appears in reality to have been very much more strenuous than Woolf's enchanting account: both in fiction (And then there are still the surviving letters and diaries written by the partakers in the plot (apart from those of the two central players also those from Probably the most conclusive overview of the whole story can be found in A few years, and some postludes, later it becomes increasingly clear that Violet's concepts of An essential difference between Mrs Keppel and Vita seems to be that Mrs Keppel made a trade of never distressing her lovers (and their marriages), thus advancing her family socially and financially, while Vita caused broken hearts more than once: for her marriage was rather the refuge she could always come back to after periods of abandonment. 0 Mitya, what have you done to me? It is not that I don't love you being near me, but that I cannot give my attention to the questions, I am - otherwise engrossed." I seem to be incapable of fidelity, as much then as now. Tiziana Masucci has curated several exhibitions, and created the thematic event Violet Trefusis a Firenze\Violet in Florence. When he was left stranded in Paris, he once confessed to Vita that he was "spending his time with rather low people, the demi-monde", and this could have meant young men. Her marriage to Denys, which was sometimes civil, sometimes contentious, but generally empty, had ended with his death in 1929. Round her revolved several enamoured young men.I hate writing this, but I must, I must. There isn't a recess in my brain into which you haven't penetrated. And on the other hand stands my perverted nature, which loved and tyrannized over Rosamund and ended by deserting her without one heart-pang, and which now is linked irremediably with Violet. I suppose this ridiculous engagement will set her mind at rest....Nothing and no one in the world could kill the love I have for you.