VIOLET TREFUSIS

'Violet Trefusis', (nee Keppel) London, 6 june 1894 – 29 february 1972 was a British writer.
Anticonformist,brilliant with a clever sense of humour and a quick eye for characters, she was the daughter of the beautiful Alice Keppel, King Edward VII 's "la favorita".
Since her childhood Violet was a gifted mind, a really enfant prodige: she loved music, literature, art, travelling and painting (she attended the prestigiuos Slade School in London); she perfectly spoke four languages and later in her brilliant life several of the most famous artists and intellectuals will look up to her talent. Rebecca West defined her: "a pure literary talent, a superb linguist".
In the fifties in Florence her villa dell'Ombrellino, on Bellosguardo hill, became the meeting-place of the international aristocracy (Princesse de Polignac; the Queen of Roumania, the Princess Marthe Bibesco...) and famous people such as: the Sitwells, Francois Mitterrand but Violet was in her elements in Paris where she came to know much of the artistic and mondaine life of the city. Her friends included Anna de Noailles, Colette, Cocteau, Paul Valèry, Paul Morand, the Serts and her favourite musician, F.Poulenc. Max Jacob is said to have proposed marriage.
Even Marcel Proust admired Violet's personality. During a dinner given by Walter Berry, he inquired if she knew les environs de Paris and he suggested that she had to visit Saint Loup de Naud, a little town near Provins where she could have found a a Medieval tower that should have matched with her inner romantic (sturm und drang) spirit. Violet was obviously familiar with its name because of the character in Proust's book (A la recherche...). Violet basked in the magic atmosphere of the place and it was a real coup de foudre.
Vita Sackville-West, Violet's beloved friend, fell terribly in love with her so much that she was ready to give up everything to elope with her on a Mediterranean island:'Violet is extraordinary' Vita wrote on her diary. Violet was her inspiration for Eve, the protagonist of "Challenge" a book that Vita wrote in 1920 during her stay in Monte Carlo with Violet. "Eve was very charming. When she was not sulky, could be very amusing. Julian observed the warm roundness of her throat and arms, the little mouche at the corner of her mouth, her little graceful hands...the pervading sensouousness that glowed from her like the warnth of a slumbering fire. A dusky voice, a gipsy among voices!the purple ripeness of a plum; the curve of a Southern cheek; the heart of red wine..." In 1928 Virginia Woolf wrote "Orlando" and put Violet in fictional form as Sacha, the Russian princess with whom Orlando falls in love: "The extraordinary seductiveness which issued from the whole person...the stranger's name, he found, was the Princess Marousha Stanilovska Dagmar Natasha Iliana Romanovitch. For as he looked the thickness of his blood melted; the ice turned to wine in his veins; he heard the waters flowing and the birds singing.Sasha, as he called her for short, and because it was the name of a white Russian fox that he had had as boy, a creature soft as snow, but with teeth of steel..." In 1935 Violet replied to Woolf's novel with a brilliant novel "Broderie Anglaise" and she put Virginia in fictional form as Alexa. Violet Trefusis style is remarkable, unique, ironic never boring. Even her letters to Vita are pieces of literature written with passion, intensity and sparkling style just her personality: "We're gipsies in a world of landed gentry".Of Violet's Letters to Vita, James-Lees-Milne wrote: "Love letters usually make boring reading. But not Violet's. They are stupendous...For sheer ruthless, persistant passion I have not come upon their equal. They remind me of those flaming yellow bulldozers which one meets tearing up road verges, hedgerows, concrete walls, asphalt roads and any and every obstacle
that lies in their path."
Trefusis'literary career is interesting and hooking.In 1929 she wrote her first novel "Sortie de secours" then the others followed successfully: "Prelude to misadventure"; "Echo"; "Tandem";"Les causes perdue"; "Pirates at play"; "Don't look round"; "Hunt the slipper"; "Memoirs of an armchair";"Dictionnaire du snobisme" with Cecil Beaton. Violet also wrote poetry, literary essays, articles and reviews; she collaborated with Cyrill Connolly for his literary magazine Horizon.
During the Second War World she had broadcasted for BBC FRANCE to support "France Libre" and in 1951 she received the Légion d'Honneur. In 1953, she got the Médaille d'Argent de la Ville de Paris and in 1960 Violet has been confered the high honour of Commendatore della Repubblica Italianafor literary merits.
As Violet wrote to Vita: "Give me great glaring vices and great glaring virtues but preserve us from the neat little neutral faintly pink or faintly mauve ambiguities".