Quidenham, George Keppel’s family home, defined Violet’s childhood too. ‘Places have played at least as important a part in my life as people,’ she wrote in her memoirs. In time her relationships with places proved more rewarding than with people. Photographs show the King and his friends at Quidenham shoots, the King seated at the centre, George standing at the party’s edge.
Quidenham was an eighteenth-century, red-brick mansion, in spring its gardens carpeted with daffodils, primroses and bluebells. Lord Albemarle – Uncle Arnold, George’s eldest brother – adorned the house and grounds with sculptures of his own making: bronze drummer boys, model cannon and in the hall a lifesize marble nude which Violet doubted was of her aunt.
In Violet’s room portraits by Sir Peter Lely testified to George’s aristocratic past: William Anne, the second earl, ‘fat and sallow’ and named after his godmother, Queen Anne; Arnold Joost – William III’s lover with curled periwig, robes, garters and red-heeled shoes; Louise de Kerouaille, Duchess of Portsmouth and lover of Charles II – ‘her tapering Lely white fingers play luxuriously with a string of grossly inflated pearls.’
The Keppel Christmas was spent at Crichel. Augusta Alington decreed that ladies be given jewels or Fabergé ornaments as presents and the men be given gold. Violet and Sonia came ‘in the category of extra Christmas luggage’ and there was little for them to do. They lunched with the adults on Christmas day but for the most part stayed upstairs. Sonia described the drawing room as an ‘amphitheatre of sardonic adult laughter’. Twice a day they were exhibited to the guests – after lunch when they shook hands with them all and after tea, wearing dresses with frills and sashes.
Mrs Keppel’s world was glimpsed and admired by her daughters, her approbation courted, her disapproval feared. What she wanted she got and the world was as she ordained. ‘When roused to anger, which was seldom, she cut with a remark.’ ‘You have no charm’ was one of her withering judgements. ‘Persuasion,’ Violet wrote, ‘was Mama’s strong suit. She could have persuaded Florence Nightingale to become a ballet dancer.’ When Sonia as a child said she did not like ham her mother countered ‘but it doesn’t taste like ham’.
Life on the nursery floors of Portman Square was regulated by servants. They provided discipline and instruction, such cradling as there was, and order to the days. There were lessons all morning, walks in the park, visiting and sightseeing, bed at seven and when older at nine. Violet was clever, liked reading, learned languages easily, had a flair for drawing. She described herself as an unsociable child, ‘suspicious, introspective and passionately possessive about the people and things I cared for’. She wept for no reason and was more stormy and temperamental than anyone could understand.
She said she always loathed London. ‘I hated everything about it – streets, climate, smell.’ In her memoirs she derided Portman Square for its lack of mystery or privacy and its occupants for their lack of intellectual stretch. ‘The most outstanding feature of Portman Square,’ she wrote, ‘was a boiler, unaccountably situated in the schoolroom cupboard.’ It gurgled and was a topic for visitors – ‘it could be counted on to create a diversion’.
The household revolved around Mrs Keppel. In her boudoir on the floor below no boilers gurgled. All was scents, velvets, pearls. She breakfasted in bed. (In adult life Violet did too.) Miss Draper wound her watches, ran her bath, scented it with rose geranium salts, put out her underwear in a lace cover, helped her on with her stockings, laced her stays, combed and waved her hair. Mrs Wright then brought a black book inscribed with menus for lunch and dinner. ‘This book Mama would consider carefully, scratching out, writing in. And while she did so Mrs Wright would stand motionless…’
Shopping was a crucial pursuit, a female equivalent to the hunting fields. Miss Draper pinned Alice’s veil, buttoned her gloves, put powder, cigarettes, money into her bag. Violet’s preferred visits were to Bumpus the bookseller or to Joseph Duveen. Sonia favoured the trip across Hyde Park to Albert Gate to Mr Montagu, manager of Westminster Bank. She was given a sovereign and stayed in an anteroom while business was done. Mama’s attractiveness to bank managers was legendary and ‘the one at Albert Gate was as infatuated as the rest’. He met Mrs Keppel at the door and ushered her to private rooms. When she put down her umbrella or parasol and lifted her veil he ‘seemed to catch his breath a little as he beheld her beautiful face.’ He talked, Sonia said, ‘in a reverently low voice as though he was praying in church’.
In Edwardian Daughter Sonia chose a shopping story to show her mother’s munificence. Together they visited Morrell’s toy shop in Oxford Street. In the window was an ‘exquisite’ doll with eyelashes, frilled jacket, swansdown bonnet. Looking at it was a small girl ‘raggedly dressed and dirty’ who remarked on its beauty. Mrs Keppel left Sonia on the pavement, bought the doll, put it into the child’s ‘thin little arms’ and said, ‘Call her Alice.’ Like a Queen to the derelict she offered a glimpse of grace and favour.
Trips to the bank manager and shopping were essential prerequisites to visiting. Mrs Keppel took her girls on the teatime rounds and country house awaydays: to Polesden Lacey, Clovelly Court, Appley Hall and Berkeley Square.
When Violet was ten her
