Like fidelity, homosexuality and suffrage, socialism was not a concept of which Bertie approved. She asked questions about privilege, power, merit and excessive wealth and why it was that his set should have the upper hand. None of it appealed to him. This was dissent. ‘Those who revealed unpleasant things were not liked the better for it,’ she wrote of him. ‘Only a sincere democrat desires to know the uncomfortable things of life…’. So it was timely when, in 1898, Mrs Keppel talked to the Prince the whole evening on the top landing of Lady Howe’s house and an understanding arose overnight of how they might meet each other’s needs and desires. For she knew a woman’s place, was glittering, witty, curvaceous, discreet and had no socialist leanings or desire to discomfort herself or her lover with the uncomfortable things of life.
FIVE
In an unpublished autobiographical piece Violet wrote of her childhood confusion over Bertie’s presence at the Keppel house at 30 Portman Square:
Once upon a time there was a little girl who was usually exhibited when coffee was served. Her interest was centred mainly in the canards, those lumps of sugar grown-ups would dip into their coffee for her, a favour she used to ask of a fat, bald gentleman who smelt of cigars and eau-de-Portugal, whose fingers were covered in rings and to whom one curtsied endlessly. One day she took advantage of a lull in the conversation to inquire, ‘Mama, why do we call Grandpapa “Majesty”?’ A glacial silence ensued in which you could have heard a pin drop: ‘No more canards darling, you don’t look terribly well. Alfred, take Mademoiselle upstairs.’ Aware that she had uttered an enormity, the little girl let the footman lead her off to the nursery. Not Grandpapa – but who? What?
Further questions were not encouraged nor the mystery explained. The little girl was left to work it out. Grandpapa suggested family. And this particular grandpapa was wooed, revered, served, far more than Papa who inspired no curtsies or special ceremony. In time, Mama’s sexual flair set a standard to emulate: ‘I adore the unparalleled romance of her life,’ was Violet’s refrain. ‘I wonder if I shall ever squeeze as much romance into my life.’
The who and what of Papa was never clear either. He was not perhaps Papa. His significance to Mama was less than Grandpapa’s, round whom her world revolved. And if His Majesty was not Grandpapa and Papa was not Papa, then who and what of the little girl exhibited when coffee was served?
Mrs Keppel’s photograph was frequently requested by magazine editors. Captions referred to her as the Prince of Wales’s friend, commended her looks and clothes, noted her presence at regal functions. In September 1899 a portrait of her with Violet by Alice Hughes was printed on the cover of Country Life. Dressed by Worth in yards of lace with flowers at her bosom, her hair waved, pearls in her ears, she gazes with devotion at the little barefoot girl on her knee. The intimacy is contrived. Such clothes were never meant for cuddling a child. She is about to put her down and pack her off with nanny.1
Violet’s quarters at Portman Square were on the top two floors; ‘the fortress floors’ she called them. She shared them with her sister Sonia, Nana, who wore a starched uniform and a false hairpiece and had gout, a maid and, until she was ten, a governess, Miss Ainslie, who lost her fiancé in the Boer War.
Sonia was born in 1900 when Violet was six, Queen Victoria ailing and Bertie soon to be King. Violet disliked the intrusion of her sister into her nursery world. She perceived her looks as plain, her teeth protruding and for ten years refused to talk to her. ‘With one terrifying exception I cannot recall one spoken word during that decade of time,’ Sonia wrote in Edwardian Daughter.
Sonia was almost certainly George’s daughter for she had the Keppel nose. She adored her father, sided with him, and intimated her mother’s treatment of him was less than kind. As mistress to the Prince of Wales Mrs Keppel perhaps did not intend to have a child with her husband. Perhaps she placated George for his displacement. But eight months after Sonia’s birth Bertie was crowned and Alice elevated to the rank of Official Mistress to the King. It was not entirely appropriate for her to be mothering a baby.
Margaret Greville of Polesden Lacey, a Regency mansion at Great Bookham, Surrey, was a close friend, had no children of her own, and offered to adopt Sonia. Mrs Keppel refused. ‘When Mamma had refused to let me go always she remained near enough at hand to be a delightfully indulgent godmother,’ Sonia wrote. Mrs Greville was the daughter of a millionaire Scottish brewer. Assertive and outspoken ‘her standard of luxury was of the highest’. Sir Osbert Sitwell called her ‘very ugly and spiteful but excellent company’. Sir Henry Channon wrote, ‘there is no one on earth quite so skilfully malicious as old Maggie.’ Gerald Berners liked to tell the story of when she gave Bacon, her drunk butler, a note one evening at dinner, ‘You are drunk. Leave the room.’ The butler put it on a silver salver and handed it to Sir Robert Horne, advocate, MP and third Lord
