Violet Keppel Trefusis

March 1919
I try so hard to imagine your lips on mine. Never was there such a pitiful imagining.

August 1920
I know how terribly alike we are in some ways – the most deplorable ways – but I have nothing but contempt for my shortcomings, and nothing but pity for yours.

25 October 1918
Mitya, you could do anything with me, or rather Julian could. I love Julian, overwhelmingly, devastatingly, possessively, exorbitantly, submissively, incoherently, insatiably, passionately, despairingly. Also coquettishly, flirtatiously, and frivolously.

18 March 1921
I ache with the sense of unfairness. What a triumph and what a proof, that in spite of it all, I still manage to love you above everything!

1919
What will you have to show for your lost youth, your fading beauty, no longer exuberant and magnetic, but hard and austere? You who might have been, who still might be! one of the greatest figures of your century – a Catherine of Russia, a Helen of Troy, Sappho!

13 September 1919
Amor di mia vida, how I long for it all! The sun and the passion of it! I am the world’s most incorrigible vagrant, the world’s worst nomad!

1 May 1919
Why is it that it always seems miraculous when a woman does anything well? Each word is a poem, each glance an intrigue, each gesture a romance!

April 1920
Your eyes were like a primeval forest, dark with some crouching, nameless menace

14 August 1918
You are the grande passion of my life.

16 September 1910
Yesterday a benignant fairy released me from a spell - oh yes! you may think! - which she cast upon me - or rather the part of me usually called one’s memory - in a fit of exasperation about 18 months ago.
Adiós

21 April 1919
I remember your saying the first time I went to C. Malet, ‘We may be separated for a bit, even for a year, but all through our lives we will always come back to each other.'

14 August 1918
You are the grande passion of my life.

25 August 1920
Darling . . . you are the least resourceful person I know.

1919
What will you have to show for your lost youth, your fading beauty, no longer exuberant and magnetic, but hard and austere? You who might have been, who still might be! one of the greatest figures of your century – a Catherine of Russia, a Helen of Troy, Sappho!

8 October 1910
Well, you ask me pointblank why I love you.

1 October 1918
How I wished you could have come to the concert, but you wouldn’t have liked it. I haven’t educated you (musically) quite up to its level.

Easter 1911
My God, my God, how can I snap you out of this detestable Olympian calm which contrasts so dreadfully with my purple and scarlet memories.

18 April 1917
Had you been a man, I should most certainly have married you, as I think I am the only person who loves Knole as much as you do!

21 October 1918
No! Down with your powder and patches, your shilly-shallying, and your half-measures. Tear off your clothes and your finery, and we will meet as equals, as rival candidates for romance and for Liberty!

2 July 1920
I shall love you till I die, whatever you do.

8 July 1919
O mercy, the things I want to write!
You remember the caresses. . . .
It seems I have never wanted you as I do now –
When I think of your mouth. . . .
When I think of . . . other things, all the blood rushes to my head, and I can almost imagine.

21 March 1919
Are you going to stand by and watch me marry this man? It's unheard of, inconceivable. I belong to you, body and soul.

7 May 1920
Because you don’t see things as I see them, because you don’t really understand, you think I am wicked and immoral and selfish – so I am, according to your standards. According to my own, I am singularly pure, uncontaminated, and high principled.

She was always attracted by the opposite of whatever she did. She’d go from the sublime to the ridiculous. Silly things were the only ones she took seriously. She was so contrary that she was only partly satisfied whatever happened.

20 July 1919
If ever anyone was adored and longed for it was you, all my heart and soul cried out for you, Prince of Romance, and most beloved.

17 August 1920
I played Tchaikovsky’s ‘Symphonie Pathetique’ – the one you loved so much – on Pat’s pianola. It is surely the most heartbreaking thing that was ever written! Do you remember how we loved it at Monte Carlo? Afterwards we walked by the sea.

March 1919
I try so hard to imagine your lips on mine. Never was there such a pitiful imagining.

1919
Then the flat, the deserted, unutterably romantic Palais Royal, Julian’s impatience, Julian’s roughness, Julian’s clumsy, fumbling hands. . . . O God! I can’t bear to think of it!

March 1919
You are my lover and I am your mistress, and kingdoms and empires and governments have tottered and succumbed before now to that mighty combination – the most powerful in the world.

1918
What great man was ever constant? What great queen was ever faithful? Novelty is the very essence of genius, and always will be. If I were to die tomorrow think how I should have lived!