Violet Trefusis - Her Affair With Vita Sackville-West

Her Affair With Vita Sackville-West

Trefusis is best remembered today for her love affair with the wealthy Vita Sackville-West, which Virginia Woolf limned in her novel Orlando. In this romanticized biography of Vita, Trefusis appears as the Russian princess Sasha.

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 (Challenge by Sackville-West and Broderie Anglaise a roman à clef in French by Trefusis) and in non-fiction (Portrait of a Marriage, which mingles Sackville-West's letters and extensive "clarifications" by her son Nigel Nicolson) further parts of the story appeared in print.

There are still the surviving letters and diaries written by the participants. Apart from those of the two central players, there are records from Alice Keppel, Victoria Sackville-West, Harold Nicolson, Denys Trefusis and Pat Dansey. The Yale University Library contains correspondence, writings and other materials by or related to Violet Trefusis. The correspondence consists of approximately 500 letters from Trefusis to John Phillips written in the 1960s. Also included are letters to Trefusis from her mother, Alice Keppel, her sister, Sonia Keppel, and several governmental departments in France and England concerning Trefusis's re-entry into France after World War II, and her nomination to the Légion d'honneur. Writings include holograph and typescript drafts of Trefusis' memoirs, novels, plays, etc. Other materials include a miniature case portrait of Trefusis as a child, and an album containing photographs of friends of the Keppels, taken by George Keppel between 1924-1939 at the family's Villa dell'Ombrellino in Florence, including many members of European nobility and royalty.