Queen Camilla’s great-grand aunt, Violet Trefusis, had a ‘wild child’ nature that led her into a deeply devoted lesbian affair, resulting in her social exile to Paris. Her life is often glossed over when talking about historical queer figures.

Trefusis was born in 1894 as the illegitimate daughter of Alice Keppel. She was officially regarded as the daughter of Alice Keppel’s legal husband, George Keppel, who was the son of the 7th Earl of Albemarle. However, she was thought to be the biological daughter of William Beckett,  2nd Baron Grimthorpe.

Trefusis grew up in polite British society, though often regarded as a wild child, she was eventually sent to a boarding school. It was there that she met the girl she’d end up entangled with for much of her life, Vita Sackville-West. Sackville-West was a comparatively shyer child, often finding herself isolated from the others because of her self-perceived lack of intelligence. 

Sackville-West had two friends at the boarding school she attended, both of whom she had romantic relationships with: Violet Trefusis and Rosamund Grosvenor. Though Sackville-West and Trefusis’ relationship is the one that extended past boarding school, because it was Trefusis’ wild child nature that intrigued Sackville-West the most. 

At the age of 14, Trefusis pronounced her undying love for Sackville-West. Eventually, the two got married to men, and their married lives were wildly different.

Sackville-West married Harold Nicolson, a young diplomat who himself had same-sex relationships. The two were happily in an open relationship and went on to have two children. Shortly after Nicolson and Sackville-West married, Trefusis was forced by her mother into a marriage with Denys Trefusis, whom she did not care for.

Before marrying, however, Trefusis and Sackville-West fled to Paris, where they stayed for a few months. It was there that Sackville-West made Trefusis declare that she would not have sex with her soon-to-be husband. 

Towards the end of their stay in Paris, Trefusis confessed to her husband that the marriage would only continue if they never had sex, which he agreed to. Over the next few years, Trefusis and Sackville-West continued to meet; however, this is where accounts differ. 

The basic facts of the following event are as follows. Trefusis and Sackville-West left for Sicily and stayed there for longer than either husband felt comfortable with. Both of their partners then travelled to Sicily in a scene out of a romantic drama and confronted them.

There was screaming and crying along with the confession from someone that Trefusis had had sex with her husband. This was enough to prompt Sackville-West to leave with her husband, and the two women stopped talking to each other until the Second World War.

The differences between sources relate to these three facts: why the two men were in Italy, how Sackville-West felt throughout the situation, and who confessed that the Trefusis couple had sex. 

According to the Daily Mail, Sackville-West was unwilling to leave her husband and the life she had built up for Trefusis, citing the possibility of self-isolation and bankruptcy. Due to this unease, Sackville-West had the two husbands stage their arrival to rescue her. 

The Daily Mail does not mention whether there was a confession that the Trefusis couple had sex; however, other sources do mention it.

The Paris Review published two articles, one for each woman. The article on Sackville-West claims Trefusis admitted to having sex with her husband, causing Sackville-West to be launched into a fit of anger. Along with this, it cites both of the women’s mothers as being part of the plot to separate the two in Italy. 

The article on Violet Trefusis also cites the women’s mothers as the main factors for the husbands’ trip to Italy. However, it does not mention any of Sackville-West’s doubts surrounding the relationship or who confessed that the couple had had sex. Some resources cite that Harold was the one who confessed and also threatened to break off his marriage with Sackville-West if the two women continued to meet. 

Either way, the break-up devastated Trefusis, and it was clear that polite British society had no love for the wild child spirit within her. She was shunned from British society and forced to move to Paris as a result of her failing marriage, affair, and unclear lineage.

While in Paris, she started a relationship with Winnaretta Singer. She became a widow while in France, though this did not seem to affect her. 

Strangely, Trefusis’ writing career took off as a result of the heartbreak she experienced from Sackville-West. Sackville-West, a writer as well, wrote Challenge while she was still with Trefusis, but it did not come out until four years later. 

When Sackville-West entered a relationship with Virginia Wolfe, Wolfe wrote Orlando based on the relationships between her and Sackville-West and Sackville-West and Trefusis. To say the portrayal was less than kind would be an understatement. 

In rebuttal, Trefusis wrote Broderie Anglaise, a novel that builds up a ramping tension between three characters: Alexa Quincy, who represents Wolfe, John Shorne, who represents Sackville-West, and Anne, who represents Trefusis. 

A tense jealousy between Alexa and Anne builds as the two of them hear about each other and their fabled beauty. The book climaxes when the two women finally meet and they realise their fabricated images of each other are merely that, fabricated. 

Doomed romance is a recurring theme throughout Trefusis’ following novels, with most ending with none of the characters finding happiness. Emma Garton, who wrote The Paris Review article on Trefusis, calls this a demonstration of how she viewed “romantic love (as) both perilous and chimerical.”

Violet Trefusis died from starvation due to malabsorption disease on February 29, 1972. Though she never had the success that Sackville-West or Wolfe enjoyed, she lived up to her moniker of a wild child throughout her life.