24 Facts About Violet Trefusis

Violet Trefusis was an English socialite and author.

Violet Trefusis is chiefly remembered for her lengthy affair with the writer Vita Sackville-West that both women continued after their respective marriages.

Violet Trefusis lived her early youth in London, where her family had a house in Portman Square.

Violet Trefusis paid visits to the Keppel household in the afternoon around tea-time on a regular basis until the end of his life in 1910.

Violet Trefusis is best remembered for her love affair with the wealthy Vita Sackville-West.

When Violet Trefusis was 10, she met Vita for the first time.

When Violet Trefusis was 14, she confessed her love to Vita and gave her a ring.

At that time, Violet Trefusis learned that Vita was to be engaged to Harold Nicolson and was involved in an affair with Rosamund Grosvenor.

Violet Trefusis made it clear that she still loved Vita, but became engaged to make Vita jealous.

Violet Trefusis apparently agreed, for on 16 June 1919 they married.

The climax came when Harold told Vita that Violet Trefusis had been unfaithful to her.

Violet Trefusis tried to explain, and assured Vita of her innocence.

Violet Trefusis spent much of 1920 abroad, clinging desperately to Vita via continuous letters.

In January 1921, Vita and Violet Trefusis made a final journey to France, where they spent six weeks together.

Violet Trefusis was sent to Italy; and, from there she wrote her last desperate letters to their mutual friend Pat Dansey, having been forbidden from writing directly to Vita.

Violet Trefusis made many appearances as a pivotal character in other writers' fiction.

Violet Trefusis featured in Cyril Connolly's The Rock Pool, in Harold Acton's The Soul's Gymnasium as Muriel, in several novels by Vita Sackville-West, and in Virginia Woolf's Orlando: A Biography as the ravishing "Princess Sasha".

From 1923 on, Violet Trefusis was one of the many lovers of the Singer sewing machine heiress Winnaretta Singer, daughter of Isaac Singer and wife of the homosexual Prince Edmond de Polignac, who introduced her to the artistic beau-monde in Paris.

Violet Trefusis seemed to prefer the role of the submissive and therefore fitted well with Singer, who, whip in hand, was typically dominant and in control in her relationships.

Denys Violet Trefusis died in 1929, completely estranged from his seemingly unfeeling wife.

Violet Trefusis goes on to discuss how, before Christmas 1971, he went to Florence to visit her as he knew she was in her last months of life: he had dinner with her and Frank Ashton-Gwatkin, who was a senior Foreign Office official at the beginning of the Second World War, at her house in Florence.

Violet Trefusis died at L'Ombrellino on the Bellosguardo on 29 February 1972.

Violet Trefusis died of starvation, the effect of a malabsorption disease.

Violet Trefusis's ashes were placed both in Florence at the Cimitero degli Allori, alongside the remains of her parents; and in Saint-Loup-de-Naud in the monks' refectory near her tower.