How Do You Solve A Problem Like Camilla? - The Life of the Duchess of Cornwall

She's been called 'The Rottweiler.' Princess Diana famously declared on television that 'there were three of us in this marriage, so it was quite crowded." Prince Charles once declared in a private phone conversation that was heard around the world that her greatest mission in life as been 'to love him' She's been reviled as a homewrecker, pelted with bread rolls, the woman who ruined the fairytale marriage of the century. Was it fate that brought her and Prince Charles together? Who is Camilla Parker Bowles, HRH The Duchess of Cornwall? What is it about this earthy, chain-smoking dame that has enthralled the Prince of Wales for almost forty years?

She was born Camilla Rosemary Shand sixty one years ago today on July 17, 1947, making her a Cancer like her rival Princess Diana. As everyone now knows, her great grandmother was Alice, Mrs. George Keppel, mistress of Edward VII. Contrary to the myth, Camilla did not announce to Prince Charles when they first met that her great-grandmother and his great grandfather got it on, so how about it? Her mother Rosemary was the eldest daughter of Alice's daughter Sonia and Roland Cubitt, 3rd Baron Ashcombe. Her father Major Bruce Shand was the son of Philip Morton Shand, an architectural writer and critic who was a close friend of architects Walter Gropius and Le Corbusier. Shand graduated from Sandhurts and was commissioned in the 12th Lancers. He served heroically during World War II, where he was captured and taken to Greece as a prisoner of War, later being transferred to Spangenberg. One could almost say that it was inevitable that Camilla and Charles should meet and fall in love. Not only is Camilla descended from Charles II's mistress, Louise de Keroualle, Duchess of Portsmouth, but also Arnold Joost van Keppel, particular favorite of William III.


Camilla spent her early youth in Plumpton in East Sussex, across from the racecourse, before the family moved to Dorset. Her father Bruce worked in London for several wine merchants before later becoming Deputy Lieutenant of Sussex. She is extremely close to her younger brother and sister, Annabel Elliott and Mark Shand as well as to her late parents. Camilla attended Queen's Gate school, a tony girls boarding school in South Kensington, whose alumnae included Lynn Redgrave. Queen's Gate was an old fashioned school that prepared the girls for marriage and motherhood as opposed to higher education. Most of the graduates went on to finishing schools or secretarial college until they made a good marriage. 'Milla' as she was known then was even at a young age, a boy magnet. While not as pretty as some of the other girls, she exuded an earthy sexuality that attracted the boys like bees to honey. According to her fellow classmates, she was always a 'man's woman' able to converse with them on the subjects that mattered like sports, fishing, hunting. She exuded confidence, loved to flirt and liked men a great deal.

According to her friends, Camilla reveled in her illustrous ancestor's royal connection (apparently Prince Charles is equally fascinated. He has been on a mission to buy Camilla pieces of jewelry once owned by Alice Keppel, perhaps given to her by Edward VII). She never shied away from talking about Alice Keppel (what she thought about her Scandalous great Aunt Violet Trefusis is unknown). "My great grandmother was lover of the king," she allegedly boasted. "We're practically royalty." (Andersen, page 67). Like Camilla, Alice Keppel was not a great beauty. While she had chestnut hair, blue eyes, and a lush figure, it was her husband George Keppel who was considered the beauty in the family. Sir Harold Acton remarked that one could easily see Keppel waltzing to the Merry Widow waltz. Apparently he inherited the beaux yeux of his ancestor Arnold Joost van Keppel (the current Earl of Albemarle has them as well.) What she did have, and what Camilla seems to have in spades, is an even-tempered personality, the 'gift for happiness' that her daughter Violet wrote about.


Camilla left school after achieving only one 'O' level. After a year at finishing school, Camilla made her London debut as a debutante. She also inherited $1.5MM from a relative. Still, even though, she didn't need the money, Camilla joined the workforce, taking a job at the tony decorating firm of Colefax & Fowler. Moving into a flat, she shared it with friends who went on to marry well, one flatmate even married Camilla's uncle, Lord Ashcombe! Camilla was noted by her friends for being a total slob, she would come home from work and drop her clothes on the floor, leaving a trail to her bedroom. Even later in life when she had servants, her house still looked like more like nouveau pauvre than nouveau riche.


She joined the social swirl of the swinging sixties, spending time at private clubs such as Annabels, owned by Mark Birley, the former husband of Lady Annabel Goldsmith. More than her city life, Camilla loved the country, and all manner of country pursuits including hunting.
She made her debut with a party for 150 guests in 1965. Soon after she met Kevin Burke, the man to whom she lost her virginity. This is significant because it immediately took her out of the running as a potential Princess of Wales. Despite the fact that it was the 'swinging sixties', a future Princess of Wales was still expected to be pristine before her marriage.



In 1966, she met Andrew Park Bowles, her future husband. Like her, Andrew came from a well connected and aristocratic family from Berkshire. His father, Derek, was a great-grandson of the 6th Earl of Macclesfield, and his mother, Anna was the daughter of millionaire Sir Humphrey de Trafford. Twenty-seven at the time they met, he was educated at Sandhurst and was a lieutenant in the Blues and Royals regiment of the Royal Horse Guard. Camilla was instantly smitten with Parker-Bowles camera ready good-looks. On his side, despite the many beautiful woman he squired, there was something about the earthy, bawdy Camilla that intrigued him. For seven years they had an on-again, off-again relationship. From the beginning, Andrew Parker-Bowles was not faithful. "Andrew behaved abominably to Camilla," a friend Lady Caroline Percy said, "But she was desperate to marry him." He had many girlfriends, including at one point, Princess Anne who he squired for a time in 1970. There were even rumors that Princess Anne wanted to marry Parker Bowles. It was this relationship that inadvertantly led to the defining relationship of her life, the Prince of Wales.

The Prince and his future Dutchess met appropriately enough on the polo fields near Windsor Castle in August of 1971. Camilla complimented him on his mount and his prowess on the playing field. They chatted briefly that day but people noticed how at ease they were in each other's company. A few weeks later, one of the Prince's former flames Lucia Santa Cruz, told Prince Charles that she had met the perfect girl for him and introduced him formally to Camilla. For the rest of the evening they were glued to each other's side, echoes of the first meeting of an earlier Prince of Wales (later Edward VII) and Alice Keppel.


Although the Prince had met and dated many beautiful women by this time, he was intrigued by Camilla's down to earth manner, and ease. She didn't seem awed by his presence which was a breath of fresh air for him. Camilla even wondered if perhaps she might be the reincarnation of her great-grandmother. "Strange, but I never felt intimidated in his presence, never," she explained to a friend, "I felt from the beginning that we were two peas in a pod. We talked as if we had always known each other." (Andersen, page 70).


Prince Charles had had a lonely childhood. As a small child, his mother once went off on a six month tour of the current and former British colonies, leaving him alone with nannies. He was required to curtsey to his mother. Sensitive and shy, at school he was bullied by the other children. Sent to Gordonstaun, Prince Philip's alma mater, to toughen him up, he instead felt like it was a prison sentence. When he arrived at Cambridge, he had very few close friends. The one person that he could talk to or count on was his great-uncle, Lord Louis Mountbatten, Earl of Burma, First Sea Lord and the last Viceroy of India. He would spend weekends at his great-uncle's estate Broadlands, where his uncle would introduce him to suitable women, including his own granddaughter Amanda Knatchbull. His great-uncle was the father that Prince Charles would have liked to have. He even gave his seal of approval to the relationship by allowing Charles to use Broadlands for weekends with Camilla. Meanwhile Camilla was the motherly figure that the Queen could never be. That wasn't all that she gave him. Apparently lessons in love-making were also on the cards. According to Tina Brown's biography of Princess Diana, Charles was not a good lover at this time. Camilla helped him to become more relaxed about sex.


The relationship was put on hold when Prince Charles shipped out in early 1973 as part of his duties in the Royal Navy. He had also apparently decided that he wouldn't be getting married before he turned 30, which was not part of Camilla's plans. While he told her that he loved her before he shipped out, he made no commitments. Although they wrote to each other, the Prince pouring his heart out to her, Camilla became engaged to Andrew Parker-Bowles and married him on July 4th 1973 in front of 800 guests. At this point in time, while Camilla was fond of the Prince, it was Andrew that she loved.

Prince Charles was devastated by the news. There were even rumors that he was so distraught over the marriage that he didn't attend, when the reality he was that he'd had a prior engagement in his calendar for months. Over the next several years, he dated a slew of eligible females, both suitable and unsuitable, he also started a relationship with a woman named Jane Jenkins who lived in Canada. But none of them were prepared to be the Princess of Wales, not even Diana's elder sister Sarah, who the Prince dated briefly. He even proposed to his cousin Amanda Knatchbull, who turned him down. And there was Dale, Lady Tryon, a jolly bouncy Australian nicknamed Kanga, who also had a rather motherly relationship with Charles as well as being his lover. Still, he couldn't forget Camilla. It was the death of his great-uncle that brought Camilla back into the Prince's life. He was absolutely shattered. Despite the fact that she was married now, with two children Tom and Laura, Camilla soon took up her old role as the Prince's confidante.

Soon they were seen together all over the place. It was the beginning of their 'second' affair. At the Queen Mother's 80th birthday party, they danced together all night, leading Charle's girlfriend at the time, Anna 'Whiplash' Wallace to cause a scene. "Don't you ever, ever ignore me like that again! No one treats me like that, not even you." At one ball, they were seen making out on the dance floor, leading Andrew Parker-Bowles to comment that "HRH is very fond of my wife, and she appears fond of him." Parker-Bowles had his own extra-marital dalliances so it wasn't as if he could throw stones.

In a strange twist of fate, it was also the death of his great-uncle that led to his relationship with Diana. When they met again, she was terribly sympathetic to the pain he had gone through. She seemed like the perfect girl. Sweet, and more importantly totally innocent. While she had a few boyfriends, she had been "keeping herself neat and tidy for what lay ahead."

Ironically it was Camilla who encouraged Prince Charle's relationship with Lady Diana Spencer, mistakenly thinking that she would be a malleable presence in the Prince's life. It was a mistake that she would learn to regret. Still, in the initial days of the Prince's relationship with Diana, Camilla tried to befriend her. Her former brother-in-law, Richard Parker Bowles told Tina Brown that "she initially encouraged the relationship between Charles and Diana because she thought Diana was gormless. She never saw Diana as a threat, she thought that Diana was someone she could manipulate." At the time, she was more threatened by Charle's relationship with Kanga Tryon than she was by Diana.



Diana, however, was not that stupid and quickly sussed out that Camilla had ulterior motives, although it took awhile before she realized the real role that Camilla played in Prince Charles's life. After her wedding, Diana found a pair of cufflinks that Camilla had given Prince Charles with the initials C. Allegedly Prince Charles valet, Stephan Barry who was jealous of Diana, put the cufflinks out so that Diana could see them. But even before the wedding, Diana was suspicious. There was the story in the paper about Prince Charles and a blonde woman on the Royal Train before the engagement. Diana always said that it wasn't her on the train. Was it perhaps Camilla? Than there was the gift of a bracelet that Charles gave Camilla with the card from Fred to Gladys (their pet names for each other). He told Diana that it was just a gift from one friend to another, but Diana didn't believe him. She also found photographs of the two of them together in a book. Diana was so jealous that although she could do nothing about Camilla being invited to the wedding, she made sure that she was not invited to the reception afterwards.

It is unclear exactly when Prince Charles and Camilla renewed their sexual relationship. In his famous interview with Jonathan Dimbley, Prince Charles stated that their relationship was platonic until his marriage had 'irretrievably broken down' which some authors point as to around 1987. Other states that Prince Charles and Camilla renewed their relationship even soon, perhaps as early as 1983 or 1984. Whenever it was, it soon became clear that the Prince and Princess of Wales were fundamentally incompatible. Despite their age difference, they had little in common. Prince Charles preferred country pursuits, Diana the city, Charles liked opera, blood sports and his establishment friends, Diana loved pop stars and glamour. The only things they did have in common were feeling damaged from their childhoods, raging insecurities, and an interest in alternative medicine and therapy. The more popular Diana became, the worse their marriage. Prince Charles wasn't used to be overshadowed, and Diana did nothing really to reassure him, just he did not to reassure her that she was doing a good job. The emotional hole they both suffered from couldn't be filled by the other.

The pair were soon trysting secretly at the homes of their friends. Prince Charles effectively moved to his country house at Highgrove, while Diana remained at Kensington Palace in London. For awhile it seemed everyone was living some kind of French farce. The Parker-Bowles had moved from Bolehyde Manor to Middlewick which was conveniently located 15 minutes from Highgrove. Camilla would serve as hostess for Charles at Highgrove, but all traces of her would have to be removed before Diana arrived at the weekend. Even when Diana did deign to spend time at Highgrove, Prince Charles would sneak out and tryst with his lover in the bushes, leaving his valet having to come up with creative ways to remove grass stains.

At the 40th birthday party for Camilla's sister Annabel Elliott, Diana confronted her rival, telling her that she knew what was going on. Ugly rows ensued between the Prince and Princess of Wales. The Prince once told the Princess angrily that he would not be the only Prince of Wales to not have a mistress! Unlike Princess Alexandra, Diana was not about to sit by and allow another woman to steal her husband. She tried vainly to rekindle whatever spark had been between her and the Prince in the beginning. Soon she gave up and turned to her own extramarital affairs including James Hewitt and possibly Barry Manakee, her protection officer. While the Prince was dallying with Camilla, Andrew Parker-Bowles had his own extramarital dalliances (shades of George Keppel). The first hint that the public learned of their relationship was when Charles and Camilla took a painting holiday together in Italy without their spouses. Then there were the revelations in Andrew Morton's book: Diana, Her True Story (written with the full cooperation of the Princess).


Things would probably have gone on as they had been for years if it hadn't been for the release of the Camillagate tapes. The breathless declarations of Prince Charles wishing that he could be Camilla's tampon, plus the lover's sex talk of needing each other several times a day, which were recorded on prehistoric mobile phones in 1989 and published first in Australia in the early party of 1993, both titillated and repulsed the nation. Suspicion on who taped the Prince and his mistress fell at first on the Security Services, but it was probably a amateur ham radio operator who recorded the calls. Once Andrew Parker-Bowles became known as the most famous cuckold in history, it was only a matter of time before the two divorced after 22 years of marriage.


Meanwhile, the Queen had had enough, after Diana gave her famous interview to Martin Bashir, she urged the couple to divorce, paving the way for Prince Charles and Camilla to finally go public with their relationship. In 1996, Prince Charles hired Mark Bolland to rehabilitate Camilla's image, a slow process that started with Camilla visiting the US on behalf of the National Osteoprosis Foundation. In July of 1997, Prince Charles even felt comfortable throwing a 50th birthday party for his love at Highgrove. Then in August of 1997, Princess Diana was killed in a car crash with her new lover Dod al-Fayed. Overnight, the tide turned against Prince Charles and particularly against Camilla. She was literally trapped in her home. If she dared to venture out to do some shopping, she was pelted with bread rolls or cursed at. The harrassment got so bad, that Prince Charles had a protection officer assigned to her. Any hope that they had of the nation finally accepting their relationship seemed to have ended.



And there were other obstacles as well. The Queen asked Prince Charles to publicly make a statement that he was giving up his relationship with Camilla. Charles refused, as far as he was concerned, Camilla was non-negotiable. In the spring of 1998, he even took the first step of finally introducing Camilla to Prince William. Camilla, of course, was understandably nervous. However, the meeting seemed to go well, although she did ask for a large Vodka tonic afterwards. The next step, at least as far as Camilla was concerned was to get rid of Tiggy Legg-Bourke, the nanny to the young princes. It was the one thing that Camilla and Diana had in common, their suspicion that the young woman was more than just a nanny to the boys. In Diana's case, it was her jealously of her boys having a surrogate mother. For Camilla, it was the idea that she might be replaced with a younger, prettier, more acceptable model.


Another obstacle, besides public opinion, was the Queen Mother. Her grandson's relationship with Camilla was a little too reminiscent of the Duke of Windsor's with Wallis Warfield Simpson. The former Edward VIII put love before duty to the nation, leaving his younger brother ill-prepared for his role as King. The strain of the job, and the second World War sent the king to an early grave, or so it seemed to his widow. Bertie and Elizabeth had given up their dream of a normal life to take on the role of King and Queen, despite their personal feelings. The Queen Mum was appalled that her grandson, not to mention the late Princess had put their own feelings before their duty to the crown. She refused to meet Camilla or even to have her name mentioned in her prescence. As long as she was alive, Prince Charles would never have taken the chance at losing his grandmother's respect by marrying Camilla. The Queen followed suit.


It was not until the Queen Mum's death at the age of 101 in 2002, that relations between the House of Windsor and Camilla began to thaw. Camilla slowly began to appear in public again. At first, the photo ops were carefully staged, Camilla and Charles sharing a kiss on the cheek, Camilla and Charles taking a trip to Italy together, Camilla being invited to the 50th Anniversary celebration of the Queen's coronation, attending a pop concert at Wembley stadium with the family (albeit seated 2 rows behind). She even managed to get along with William and Harry, becoming their friend, and not trying to step in as a mother substitute.


Finally after years of speculation, the Palace announced in February of 2005 that the Prince and Camilla Parker Bowles would be married in April of 2005. What finally provoked the Prince to pop the question. The wedding of Edward van Cutsem to Lady Tamara Grosvenor. While both Prince Charles and Camilla were invited, they were not going to be seated together. The Prince was tired of not having Camilla treated as his companion, the woman in his life. He declined to attend the wedding. The time had come to make Camilla his wife. There was a sense of relief in the establishment that the thing was finally going to be done. It cleared up Camilla's rather ambiguous role in the Prince's life, (they were already living together at Clarence House and at Highgrove although Camilla also maintained for awhile her own country house) and there was also the matter that the Prince was supporting her to the tune of $250,000 year for clothes, grooming, botox protection officers, some of which came from tax-payer money. Camilla had her teeth whitened to the tune of $10,000 (it costs a lot to get rid of those tobacco stains!), botox to smooth her wrinkles and fine lines, chemical peels, her hair professionally dyed (Camilla, like Diana, was more of a mousy blonde), designer clothes replaced her mumsy outfits, all befitting her new role as consort to the Prince. She even took over the redecorating of Clarence House after the Queen Mum's death, although Charles paid for the changes to her suite out of his own pocket, costing him around $2MM.

The announcement that Camilla would be known not as the Princess of Wales, which automatically became her title on her marriage to Prince Charles but as HRH The Duchess of Cornwall did a great to deal to make the idea of the marriage palatable to the general public. Still there were many people who were not happy about the marriage, including several prominent clergymen. But the general public at large seemed finally to accept that this was the woman the Prince loved and wanted to share the rest of his life with. The approval of the two Princes also went along way to smoothing things over. Once again, the Prince declined to have his future wife sign a pre-nuptial agreement, preferring to go on faith that the marriage will last. He also set up a $20MM trust fund for Camilla, which gives her an income of $600,000 a year. In the event of her death, the money returns to the Prince's family.

The wedding took place on Saturday April 9, 2005 (postponed by a day so that the Prince could attend Pope John Paul II's funeral) at the registry office in Windsor, followed by a blessing at St. George's Chapel Windsor. The press speculation leading up the wedding made it appear as if the whole thing were falling apart, the Daily Mail being the most awful in their press coverage. Instead the wedding went off without a hitch, although for a moment it looked as if Camilla's headdress would blow off her head. During the blessing the Prince and his new bride were obliged to read an act of contrition as it were for their previous behavior. While the Queen didn't attend the civil ceremony, she was at the blessing and gave a gracious toast to the newlyweds at the reception.

Although it can be hard to get past the fact that their relationship caused a great deal of pain to a lot of people, least of all themselves, one can't help admiring the fact that after almost forty years, they still love one another and they make each other happy. While she may not have the movie star good looks or the common touch that Diana possessed, Camilla has proven to be a hard working member of the Royal family undertaking hundreds of engagements a year. Everyone who comes into contact with her remarks upon her warmth, her wit, and her compassion. She also doesn't overshadow the Prince. Like Prince Philip, she knows her place is to support Prince Charles. It is easy to speculate on what might have been if Charles and Camilla had married when they first fell in love, but they didn't. There would be no William or Harry, no Tom and Laura Parker Bowles.


Comparisons have been made between Camilla and the Duchess of Windsor. While Wallis Simpson was denied the honor of HRH, Camilla was given the title by the Queen. The differences come down to the fact that while Wallis was a twice divorced American who seemed grasping, and ambitious, Camilla came from the British aristocracy, one of "them" so to speak and she never sought to be the wife of the Prince of Wales. She was content to love the Prince behind the scenes as it were, while it was Prince Charles who was more adamant that Camilla be accepted.

Will Camilla ever be Queen? More to the point will Charles ever become King? He turns 60 this year, and the Queen at 82 shows no signs of slowing down or turning over the reigns to her son. It is entirely possible that if the monarchy survives that either Charles will become King when he is elderly and who will care at that point if Camilla is Queen. Any rate, as his wife, she automatically becomes Queen.


Sources include:
Charles and Camilla: Portrait of a Love Affair - Gyles Brandreth
After Diana: William, Harry, Charles and the Royal House of Windsor - Christopher Andersen
The Diana Chronicles - Tina Brown
Diana: Her True Story - Andrew Morton
The Firm - Penny Junor
The Windsor Knot - Christopher Wilson
Royal Affairs - Leslie Carroll
Sex with Kings: Eleanor Herman

Excellent Blogs

I just found out that Scandalous Women was just given an "Excellent Blog Award" by World of Royalty and Reading the Past (7/14). Wow! Thank you so much.

The blog meme was started by the Mommy Project.

Now it is my turn to pass the award on to some blogs I find excellent. It’s hard to choose because there are so many good blogs out there, but here are 10 that I think deserve an Excellent Blog Award:

Edwardian Promenade

Chicago History

Georgiana's Gossip Guide

History Undressed

Nineteen Teen

Bad Girl Blog

Historical Boys

Risky Regencies

Tudor History

Zenobia, Empress of the East

Red Spy Queen - the story of Elizabeth Bentley

In 1945, a 37 year old matronly woman walked into the FBI offices in Connecticut with a fantastical story of being a handler for a spy ring for the Soviets during World War II. Her name was Elizabeth Bentley. When her story checked out, the FBI was faced with the hard truth that this woman had run not one but two spy rings that had sent damaging information about US war time activities to the Soviets. It forced the US Government to take a hard look at their security procedures and the rise of the Communist party in America.

What made this woman whose family put the W in WASP turn against her country to the point of spying for the Soviets? Was she naive, under the influence of a powerful man, or was she a genuine 'traveler'?

Elizabeth Turrill (also spelled Terrill) Bentley was born on January 1, 1908 in New Milford, CT. Her maternal ancestors had lived in New Milford since the 1632. Her father Charles Prentiss Bentley managed several dry-goods establishments, and her mother May Turrill had been a schoolteacher. Elizabeth's parents were in their late thirties when she was born, and she was their only child. Her parents were die-hard New Englanders with roots all the way back to the Revolutionary War. As a child, Elizabeth's parents frequently moved as Charles Bentley changed jobs, moving from one department store to another, trying to succeed. "It seemed that everything he tried failed," Elizabeth said later in life. The moves disoriented Elizabeth, who grew up a lonely and withdrawn child with very few friends. While some children become more outgoing, taking on new roles as they move, Elizabeth withdrew into a fantasy world, spending her time reading. Her parents finally settled in Rochester, NY where Elizabeth graduated from high school. Her parents were both socially active, her father ran a temperance newspaper, and her mother generously gave food to the hungry.

Elizabeth attended Vassar College on scholarship where she didn't make a mark, not even smudge, during her four years at college. In fact, one of her fellow classmates described her as a 'sad sack.' However she was exposed for the first time to radical thinkers including Hallie Flanagan who later became head of the Federal Theater project. By the time she was 25, both of her parents had passed away, leaving Elizabeth with no family. After college, Elizabeth taught at Foxcrofts, a tony private school in Virginia before applying to Columbia University for graduate school. While studying in Florence, Elizabeth first made the acquaintance with fascism. She also came into her own as an individual, smoking, drinking, and generally indulging in promiscuity. While she deplored what she saw of Mussolini and facism, she joined the facist party to take advantage of the perks that were allowed to students. On her return to Columbia, however, she wrote several papers denouncing the facist government in Italy, joining the American Anti-Facist League.

She also returned to a country that was in the grips of the great depression. Elizabeth found it hard to make ends meet while studying at Columbia. She also claimed to have lost a potential grant because of her involvement with facism while studying abroad. It was not only the poor that were hurting during the depression, the middle class was hurting as well. Teachers were finding it hard to find jobs. Elizabeth's experiences counted for nothing in the workplace. Instead, she was forced to take secretarial courses in order to find any work at all. While living in Morningside Heights, she made the acquaintance of a woman named Lee Fuhr living in her building who introduced her to the communist party. Elizabeth had found a new home. She responded wholeheartedly to the comraderie of the members, although it took a while for her to actually join the party, which she finally did but under a pseudonymn. Soon Elizabeth was attending meetings two or three times a week, volunteering to write for the newspaper, working as the party secretary for her unit. Her life now revolved around her communist activities, as did her love life. The communist party became the family that she had lost.

Elizabeth soon met a woman named Juliet Glazer who claimed that she was doing research on Italian facism and hired Bentley to work as a translator. Bentley jumped at the chance not only to earn some money but also to put her Italian language skills. The work never materialized and Glazer shocked Bentley by trying to recruit her to go to Europe to sleep with men to get information. When Bentley refused, Glazer called her a Trostkyite (the worst insult she could call her) and threatened to kill her.

Juliet Glazer turned out to be Juliet Stuart Poyntz, an American born, Moscow trained member of the Soviet secret police. Bentley had been targeted as a potential recruit for espionage work. Through Columbia, Bentley found a job at the Italian Information Library. Bentley was appalled to find that the Library was a front for fascist propoganda. It was while working at the library that Elizabeth first dipped her toe into espionage. She went to the head of her cell and proposed that she spy on the library for the party. For a year Bentley used her position at the library to collect and pass on information on pro-Fascist activity being fronted by the library. Elizabeth was eventually fired when the Library discovered anti-facist papers she had written while a student at Columbia.

In 1938 Bentley began working with Jacob Golos, an émigré from Lithuania who was an American citizen. Also a member of the Communist Party, Golos worked for World Tourists, a company that was a front for Soviet industrial espionage. He was also the handler of Harry Gold, one of the Venona spies. At first, Bentley didn't know who Golos was, she only knew him by his alias, Tim, but before long she learned that his name was Jacob Golos. Through him she met Earl Browder who was the head of the American Communist party.

After she lost her job at the library, Bentley began doing low-level espionage work for Golos, and the two became romantically involved, despite the fact that Golos already had a mistress in New York, and a common-law wife and child back in Russia. Golos trained her well, instructing her in the ways of espionage, everything from making sure to use a payphone whenever possible, to how to lose a possible tail. She took an apartment in Greenwich Village, chiefly because it had a fireplace that she used to burn any documents that could be traced back to her. Through his passionate commitment to his work, Elizabeth began to believe that she was helping to change the world. She was also deeply in love for the first time in her life. Golos was her mentor, her lover, her father, he was everything to her. Going underground meant that Elizabeth lost her communist family, she only had Golos now.

At Golos's instigation, Bentley took a secretarial job assisting Richard Waldo, a conservative businessman, and spied on his contacts, conversations, and movements, reporting the details to Golos. Bentley also began doing other espionage work for Golos. She carried information, including copies of U.S. government documents, to other agents and couriers, and she entertained men on his recommendations in order to spy on them. The work was hard, there were times that Elizabeth suffered from headaches, and exhaustion but she also felt more alive than she had in years. She felt a part of something, as if in some way, she was changing the course of history. For once, she mattered, she was important, not just to Jacob but also to the Soviets.



Jacob Golos was under suspicion by the FBI as well as the KGB. They were interested in wresting control of the spy rings from him. But Golos was worried that the Soviets wouldn't know how to handle the Americans who spied for him. After he was forced to register as an agent of the Soviet government, Bentley came to work for him as a vice president at the United States Service and Shipping Corporation, which replaced World Tourists as the soviet front. As a Vice President, Bentley now was earning a good salary of $800 a month.

As his health declined (he suffered a heart attack), Bentley took over more and more of the work. She began making trips down to Washington every two weeks and then eventually every week, meeting with her contacts, ferrying documents back and forth. She began carrying a large knitting bag with her as a cover. Eventually, Elizabeth was running two different groups, Silvermaster and Perlos. Perlos in particular had been dormant until Golos decided to revive it. Eventually both groups were made up of about thirty contacts. Elizabeth was working so hard, not only with her work at USSIS but also with her work as a handler that she sometimes fell asleep on the train. Her job was not just to ferry documents but also to soothe the worries of the contacts under her care, listen to their problems, advise them, and to keep them in the fold.

On Thanksgiving 1943, Elizabeth's world changed when her lover Jacob Golos died on her living room couch. As a good Soviet agent, Elizabeth called the appropriate people and made sure to burn all documents before calling the ambulance and the police. She was devastated, for 5 years, Jacob Golos had been her world. Now after his death, the Soviets decided to wrest control from Elizabeth of the two spy rings that she handled. While they appreciated all the work that she had done for them, they thought that the Americans were sloppy in the way that they handled their contacts, becoming friends with them. It was not the Soviet way. While Elizabeth fought having to relinquish her duties, eventually there was nothing that she could do, and she hated working for the Soviets. They seemed too polish and slick compared to Jacob Golos. The last straw was when they attempted to pay her off. She became depressed and started to drink heavily, eventually ending up in an affair with man who she picked up in the bar at the hotel she had moved to in Brooklyn.

Two things served to make Elizabeth decide to come in from the cold. She suspected that the Soviets were planning to kill her, and the recent defection of another Soviet spy in Canada threatened to reveal her own role. She decided that rather than waiting for the FBI to arrest her, it would be better to go to them. She chose Connecticut because she feared that the Soviets would discover what she was up to if she went to the offices in either New York or Washington.

On November 7, 1945, just after lunch Elizabeth Bentley walked into the FBI offices in New Haven, CT and proceeded to change the course of history. The agents in the office didn't know what hit them when this rather mumsy woman walked in, but before the end of the day they knew that they had hit the mother lode. Elizabeth not only named names (the list eventually ran to almost 150 people) but she gave such extensive detail that the eventual report ran to 107 pages with an index. She had almost total recall, probably honed from the time when she had to memorize huge chunks of information in her work as a Soviet spy. The only flaw was the lack of documentation. Elizabeth had done her job too well by eliminating all reports, and paperwork that could have betrayed her if she had been caught.

For the next two years, Elizabeth was interviewed and reinterviewed as the FBI checked out the details in her story. They ordered wiretaps on the contacts that she had named, sent field agents to follow them, up to 200 agents were eventually involved. Some of the names she gave them included Lachlan Currie, Harry Dexter White (a senior U.S. Treasury Department official), William Walter Remington (worked for the War Production Board), Nathan Gregory Silvermaster, Victor Perlo, among others. Some of the people Elizabeth named had also been named by Whittaker Chambers and Igor Gouzenko. The plan now was to use Elizabeth Bentley has a counter intelligence agent, a plan which excited her after being dormant for almost two years.



The FBI became stymied in their investigation when unbeknownst to them, the KGB knew that Elizabeth had defected. Information had been intercepted by Kim Philby, a Soviet spy who had been recruited during his Cambridge days. Philby worked in British Intelligence and had intercepted cables sent by the US to the British detailing the investigation. The Soviets ceased all covert operations and recalled their agents back to Moscow. The FBI would now not be able to use Elizabeth as a double agent. There was one result of Elizabeth's confession, it made the US aware of how lax their security had been. Background checks on all new employees were ordered, and a loyalty oath was a requirement.

Hoover however was not about to let a coup like this slip out of his fingers. When the Venona cables were decrypted, they had more evidence that Elizabeth Bentley was telling the truth. She was mentioned many times in the cables as Clever Girl, along with a host of other agents. The only problem was, the government was afraid that if the information in the Venona cables was released, the Soviets would know that the Americans had broken one of their toughest codes. If he couldn't arrest any of the operatives that Elizabeth had named, then he would get a grand jury involved. The grand jury sessions were closed to the public, which meant that the testimony was secret. However, all the people Elizabeth had named either denied her charges or pleaded the 5th Amendment. Several of them even claimed that she was paranoid. The most the grand jury could do was to indict the Communist party of America for inciting espionage.



Meanwhile Elizabeth was upset. After three years, all her hard work was about to be forgotten. Her boss at USISS had decided to close the agency, leaving Elizabeth without a job. With pressure from the FBI, the company was persuaded to give Elizabeth a year's salary as severance pay. But that wasn't enough for her. She went to the press with her story, meeting with a reporter from the New York Journal-American. The FBI pressured the newspaper to wait until after the case before the grand jury ended before publishing the articles. In July of 1948, a seriers of articles appeared describing Elizabeth as a shapley blonde femme-fatale. Elizabeth now took the line that she was a naive, innocent woman who has been corrupted by her liberal professors at college and by Golos.



The Republicans hoped to use Elizabeth's confession to their advantage to prove that Truman was soft on Communism, and to sweep the party back into office. After almost 18 years of Democratic rule, they were sick of what they saw. Roosevelt's New Deal smacked of the worst liberal thinking. Elizabeth was going to be their star witness and their tool, the only problem was coorboration. They found it in Whittaker Chambers. Chambers had been pretty much forgotten after his initial testimony before the HUAC in 1938. He had gone on to work at Time Magazine as a writer. While Chambers testimony did cooborate some of Elizabeth's story, it lead them to an even bigger prize, Alger Hiss.



But Elizabeth was still important to the process. She was proof that communists looked just like everyone else. If an Upper Middle Class woman could be duped into spying for the Commies, who knew who else had been lured into their lair? It was the beginning of the nation's paranoia of a communist around every corner. Elizabeth fed into this by insisting that the Communist party's mandate was for their members to spy for the Soviet Union. During her time testifying, she spoke without notes and without a lawyer present, impressing everyone with her poise and her ability to never waver from her story. She often seemed more capable and intelligent than the people interviewing her. She came across as cool and unflappable, unlike Whittaker Chambers who could drowned in his own sweat whenever he appeared.



While Elizabeth reveled in her new position as the anti-communist spokeswoman, the fall-out started. While some newspapers and the right wing of the country praised her for coming forward, others attacked her and her character, particularly the fact that Elizabeth had no cooboration for her story. She also symphathized with the very people that she had named. They called her at traitor to her country who was getting off scott free. While Whittaker Chambers had kept confidential papers to prove his story (as a safety net just in case the Soviets tried to eliminate him), Elizabeth had done her job too well. She got into a huge amount of trouble when she repeated her accusation against William Remington on the radio version of Meet The Press. Remington decided to sue Elizabeth, NBC, and the show for libel.



While the case raged on, Elizabeth quietly became a Catholic after taking instruction from Bishop Fulton Sheen (the man from whom actor Martin Sheen took his last name). Religion now filled the void that communism had filled, and like any athiest who had found religion, Elizabeth now became a zealot. Having quietly resigned her position as a teacher at a Catholic women's college in Chicago, Elizabeth now lectured across the country, warning the nation about the Red Threat.


The case with Remington was settled out of court, despite the fact that Bentley's lawyer had investigators digging up dirt against Remington. The network decided that the cost of the investigation outweighed the cost of the case, and they settled with Remington for $9,000 (Remington's lawyers had asked for $100,000 in damages). Elizabeth and her lawyer was furious. However, they turned over the information they had dug up to the HUAC and the FBI who eventually proved that Elizabeth had been right all along about Remington, but damage had been done to her credibility (Remington had earlier been cleared of charges by a review board).



Despite this, she was still called to testify in the Rosenberg trial (her statement had led the FBI to Harry Gold who had been a courier for David Greenglass). Elizabeth testified that Golos had met a tall, thin man with glasses one night who was named Julius. While she was not sure that the Julius was Julius Rosenberg, her testimony along with that of Greenglass (Ethel Rosenberg's brother) and Harry Gold sent the Rosenberg's to the electric chair.



Hurting for money, the government only paid her travel expenses when she testified, Elizabeth agreed to write her autobiography, entitled Out of Bondage. Unfortunately, instead of reflecting on her life and the why she had become a communist, Elizabeth turned out a melodramatic story, portraying herself as the innocent, naive victim duped by forces larger than herself. While the book was serialized in McCalls to great effect, the book sold below expectations. Once again, Elizabeth was running out of money. Although she was now in her forties, she had never learned to budget, save or manage her money. She loved restaurants, hotels, nice clothes. She depended on the FBI for money, often running to them when she encountered problems. They had replaced the communists as her erstwhile family.


Elizabeth was now caught in the positions of having sought out publicity, but now that she had it, she realized just how quickly the tide could turn, how open to criticism she would be. While some reviewers praised her book, others were more scathing, pointing out the differences between her sworn testimony and the book. Elizabeth admitted that she had changed some names, inflated some incidents, all for dramatic purposes (a charge that most memoirists have dealt with over the years). While Harry Dexter Smith had died of a heart attack soon after being accused of spying, William Remington was stabbed to death in prison. Elizabeth bore the brunt of her own guilt and the outrage of their defenders.



Throughout the 50's, Elizabeth was the go-to-girl for the government anytime new information was discovered. While Elizabeth was happy to help, it took a toll on her. For seven years, she lived a double life, now she was forced to constantly relive it. She suffered severely from depression, became paranoid, convinced that the communists were out to get her, particularly when the IRS came after her for back taxes. She had finally settled down and bought a house in Connecticut, but she eventually had to sell it to pay her bills. She bounced from one teaching job to another, having to leave either when irate parents found out about her, or from various scandals that seemed to keep cropping up.



The most serious was when another former communist turned informer, Harvey Matusow, after converting to the Mormon religion, accused her both in print and before the government of admitting to him that she had run out of things to testify about, and was going to have to "find" additional information, implying that she was making things up. He also claimed that he had been encouraged to lie by McCarthy and Roy Cohn about members of the American communist party. Elizabeth was appalled. She swore that she had never said anything of the kind, and the FBI was eventually able to find witnesses to back her up. The upshot was that Matusow ended up spending 5 years in prison for perjury.



Finally in 1955, Elizabeth had had enough. She had gone back to school to get another master's degree in education at Trinity College. One night while walking across campus, she blacked out, whether from stress, or alcoholism. Whatever the cause, she told the FBI that she would no longer be available to testify or to help. The FBI tried to change her mind, she finally agreed that in cases of national importance, they could come to her but she stuck to her guns.



Elizabeth found a job teaching at a school for wayward girls. She loved teaching and felt that it was the one thing that she was truly good at. Working at the Long Lane School was something that both her parents could be proud of. While Elizabeth was considered a good teacher, she never got personally involved with her students, keeping a distance from them. She had no friends and rarely went out. From time to time she would check in with the FBI agents in New Haven. She also occasionally wrote letters to Hoover.



In the fall of 1963, Elizabeth finally went to the doctor to see about the constant pains in her stomach. She was admitted for exploratory surgergy, where they discovered that she was riddled with cancer, and it was too advanced. Before they could reveal the diagnosis, Elizabeth died from complications from the surgery. She was 55 years old. She was buried near her relatives in New Milford. The funeral was sparsely attended and the obituaries were small. Soon she was just a footnote in the period we call the McCarthy era.



But she was much more than. Elizabeth Bentley's life was a bundle of contradictions. She was both a fervent communist and an anti-communist. She was both a weak woman, and fighter. She was a pawn of the FBI and the right wing tear down the New Deal and the Truman Administration, but yet she was quite capable of using them when she needed something. She was an emotionally distant woman, but capable of deep passionate feeling when she finally fell in love with Jacob Golos. She was both a traitor and a heroine.



She was a woman ahead of her time. While her contemporaries were bobbing their hair, and drinking bathtub gin, part of the lost generation, Elizabeth was prim and shy. She had no desire for domestic life or settling down. Most of her life was spent rootless, moving from place to place, job to job. She lived in a domestic arrangement with more than one man. She was promiscuous at a time when most women were virgins until marriage, a good girl gone bad. While she was an independent woman, she was not a feminist.



She was a soviet spy, proving that a woman was more than capable of running a spy network, that you didn't have to be Mata Hari or a femme fatale. Her later testimony led the US government to Alger Hiss, and the Rosenbergs, shut down the Soviet spy network in the US for a number of years, convinced the government to pay more attention to the communist threat. She opened the door to the McCarthy era, although even she couldn't have imagined the excesses and abuse of power that went with it.



Lauren Kessler said it best, when she wrote that Elizabeth Bentley was for better or for worse the author of her own conflicted life.


Sources: Wikipedia (for all the links.)


Clever Girl - Lauren Kessler


Red Spy Queen - Kathryn S. Olmsted


A Treasury of Foolishly Forgotten Americans - Michael Farquhar

Scandalous Love - The Life of Violet Trefusis

"Across my life only one word will be written: "waste" - waste of love, waste of talent, waste of enterprise." Violet Trefusis

She was the daughter of the mistress of the King of England but for a few short years, she caused a scandal the likes that England had never seen before, and almost caused the break-up of two marriages. Nowadays she is just a footnote in the larger lives of Vita Sackville-West and Mrs. Keppel. Her name was Violet Trefusis.

She was born Violet Keppel on June 6th 1894. At the time of Violet's birth, Mrs. Keppel was four years away from meeting the Prince of Wales. Although his name was on her birth certificate, in all probability, George Keppel, was not her biological father. It is speculated that he was in actuality William Becket, MP for Whitby. From the time of her marriage, Mrs. Keppel had cultivated the company of wealthy powerful men. Her husband, the Honorable George Keppel, the third son of the 7th Earl of Albemarle, after resigning his commission in the Gordon Highlanders, joined the Norfolk Artillery, the year she was born. As a third son and a soldier, he had very little money to keep Alice in the style to which she was accustomed. Each of Mrs. Keppel's lovers brought her higher and higher on the social ladder and finally into the future Edward VIII's orbit. Violet once wrote about her mother "I wonder if I shall ever squeeze as much romance into my life as she had in hers."


Violet and her younger sister Sonia from an early age were in awe of their mother. Mrs. Keppel was known for being discreet and extremely charming. George Keppel was a rather shadowy figure in their lives, willing to step aside for his wife's relationship with the Prince of Wales. The King would come to visit Mrs. Keppel at her house in Portman Square every day at tea time. When Violet's sister Sonia was born in 1900, there was speculation that her father was the King himself. The girls would be paraded out for a brief visit, they came to regard the Prince as a sort of grandfatherly figure who used to allow them to race buttered toast down his immaculate trouser legs.

At first they were unaware of the exact nature of their mother's relationship with the monarch, but they soon were aware of the rumors. Violet was brought up by a series of governesses while her mother attended house parties with the King and traveled abroad on holidays with him. From an early age, Violet was revolted by the hypocrisy of her mother's life, and determined that her life would be different. At the same time, she also saw it as wonderfully romantic.

At the age of ten, she met the love of her life, Vita Sackville-West, a party. Vita was two years older, they bonded over their mutual love of books and horses. Like Violet, Vita was the daughter of an exotic and charismatic mother, Victoria Sackville-West. Vita's mother was the illegitimate daughter of the 2nd Baron Sackville and a spanish dancer named Pepita who he never married (Pepita was already married to another dancer). Victoria married her first cousin Lionel who became the 3rd Baron Sackville. After giving birth to her only child Vita, her mother determined never to go through the sordid business again. She eventually banned her husband from her bed, sending him into the arms of other women while she pursued a platonic relationship with a rich Scotsman, Sir John Seery, who lavished money and gifts on her. Vita grew up at Knole in Kent, the biggest heartbreak of her life was that she wasn't born a man and couldn't inherit Knole.

The two young girls wrote each other intermittently over the next several years and met occasionally. Violet, from the beginning was the pursuer. She wrote ardent letters to Vita sevearl times a week, while Vita's letters were shorter, filled with her life of books, horses, and Knole. When Violet was 14 and Vita 16 they spent time together in Italy, where Violet had been sent to perfect her Italian. Violet declared her love to Vita and gave her a ring with the head of a doge.

After the death of Edward VIII in 1910, the Edwardian Age was over and with it Mrs. Keppel's reign as La Favorita. The new King and his Queen ushered in a more conservative age with a less glittering court at which Mrs. Keppel was not welcome. For the next two years, she spent increasing time abroad as sort of 'discretionary' leave before re-establishing themselves in British society. Violet spent time in Germany, Italy and France, developing her fluency for languages, and a life long love of France. After two years abroad, the Keppels moved to another address in London, this time in Grosvenor Street.

By the time Violet returned to London, Vita was engaged to Harold Nicolson and also having a love affair with Rosalind Grosvenor. Violet made it clear to Vita that she still loved her, she flirted with men outrageously at parties trying to make Vita jealous, she even got engagedtwice to Gerald Wellesley and Osbert Sitwell. Despite this, Vita married Harold Nicolson in October of 1913 and settled down to the life of a country matron, giving birth to two boys Benedict and Nigel (another son was still born). Violet was distraught although she sarcastically agreed to be Benedict's godmother. After her marriage, Vita discovered that Harold had contacted a sexually transmitted disease from a man he had had a brief affair with at a country house party. While Vita was shocked, she and Harold came to an understanding that they would both be allowed to pursue outside affairs as long as their own bond was paramount.

That agreement was tested in 1918. Violet came to stay with Vita at Long Barn, the Nicolson's home in the country while Harold was spending the night at his club. Violet once again declared her love, counting off on her fingers all the reasons why, but this time Vita reciprocated. In her diary which her son later published as Portrait of A Marriage, she paints Violet as a seductress that she couldn't resist as if Violet were the elder of the two with endless experience. The reality was that Violet had been pretty much under lock and key with Mrs. Keppel. She was in love but had no idea what to do about it until Vita.

While homosexuality between men had been criminalized (which would have been career suicide for Harold Nicolson if he had ever been caught), lesbianism was not. In fact, Queen Victoria had struck out all references to women in the bill that criminalized the male homosexuality. Still, the very idea that two women could be involved that way was something that most people couldn't wrap their minds around. If good women were still seen as having no sexual desires for men, how could they possible have desires for their own sex?

The two women became lovers, going off on holiday together to Hugh Walpole's cottage in Cornwall. Violet wrote at this time, "Sometimes we loved each so much that we came inarticulate, content only to probe each other's eyes for the secret that was secret no longer." They pretended to be gypsies, called each other Mitya and Lushka.

The two women spent increasing time together much to the dismay of Vita's husband Harold and Violet's mother Mrs. Keppel. It was soon fairly clear that the two women weren't just good friends. In the autumn of 1918, Vita and Violet began work on Vita's novel Challenge in which she depicted herself and Violet as the lovers Julian and Eve. Vita took to wearing corduroy trousers, with her short hair, she looked like a man. They went out together, Vita in her man's garb with Violet as Eve. Harold was incensed at the idea of Vita going off without him. Vita wrote him a letter, uncomplimentary towards Violet, telling him that she needed new experiences and horizons but it didn't dim her love for him.

Vita and Violet went abroad to France for several months. Gossip about the two women wormed its way into all the smart drawing rooms in London. In the meantime, Mrs. Keppel determined that it was time that Violet got married a soon as the war was over. Society dictated that no matter what one's proclivities were, one married, particularly in the case of upper class women who depended on marriage to support them. Violet had no skills in order to support herself independently, her only income was derived by the allowance that Mrs. Keppel gave her. No marriage, no allowance.

Enter Denys Trefusis, the poor sap who found himself in a situation that was completely over his head. He was 28, attractive with reddish gold hair and blue eyes, the son of an old aristocratic family. He was an officer in the Royal Horse Guards who had served heroically during the war. He was also unusual in that he had lived in Russia for several years before the Revolution, teaching the children of an aristocratic family. He had learned to speak Russian fluently and longed to go back. He was awarded the military cross for his services during the war. He was kind and intelligent, and suffering from post traumatic stress syndrome. Violet wrote lively chatty letters to him while he was at the front, seducing him by post.

Violet and Vita's relationship continued. Vita was now obsessed with Violet. She told Violet that she loved her, that they had been made for one another. She promised not to sleep with Harold and took of her wedding ring as a symbol of fidelity. Violet was equally obsessed, spending her days in agony until the next time that she could see Vita or receive a letter from her. She and her mother fought, when Mrs. Keppel caught her writing to Vita. "I hate lies," she wrote to Vita. "I'm so fed up with lies." Violet's dream was for Vita to leave Harold and go off to France with her to live openly as a couple.


But the dream kept being deferred. Denys Trefusis was now involved. Despite his lock of money, Mrs. Keppel wanted him to make her daughter respectable. Violet wanted him only to get her mother off her back and to provoke Vita to leave Harold. Vita, however, hoped that Violet would gain more liberty by marrying, as long as the marriage didn't preclude fidelity to her. "Violet is mine," she wrote in her confession. Mrs. Keppel tried to still the gossip by taking Violet away until Denys was back in London. Harold Nicolson, trying to be a good husband and reasonable, suggested that Vita buy a little weekend cottage in Cornwall where she could do whatever she wanted, he wouldn't ask questions. This was exactly the type of life that Violet abhorred and wanted nothing to do with, but circumstances were spiraling out of control.

Vita continued her dual life, writing long passionate letters to Harold, at the same time pursuing her relationship with Violet. Denys proposed to Violet but she put him off. Instead, she and Vita went off to France. Ironically, Harold Nicolson helped to arrange the permits that they needed. Since he was busy with the Paris Peace Conference, he told her that he didn't mind if she went. Mrs. Keppel agreed soley because Denys would be in France. In Paris, they scandalized everyone by dancing together at a the dansant. They were gone for four months finally returning to London the next year, 1919 in March.

Mrs. Keppel sprang into action, demanding that Violet stop dithering around and marry Denys Trefusis. The engagement was announced, Violet in a quandary. Her life was about to become the very thing that she loathed. She wrote to Vita, "Are you going to stand by and let me marry this man. It's unheard of, inconceivable..." Poor Denys was completely clueless as to what was going on with his fiancee. He believed that Violet was in love with him, she had accepted his marriage proposal. But in reality it was Mrs. Keppel pulling the puppet strings, offering him an income, an undemanding office job, travel, her daughter was the prize, his reward for the awfulness of war.

Soon after the engagement was announced, Denys agreed that the marriage would be platonic. He viewed women as pure and less corruptible than men. After Denys insisted that Violet could come and go as she pleased, and that he would be happy to only spend 3 months of the year with her, Violet eventually gave in and married Denys on the 16th of June 1919. On the day of her wedding, she wrote to Vita, "You have broken my heart, goodbye." Vita went off to Paris with Harold to keep herself from stopping the wedding. Violet had learned a hard truth, that society would never condone the love that she shared with Vita, it led to social ostracism, and self-loathing. One of Violet's flaws was that she found it impossible to care for anyone else once she had given her heart to Vita.

The marriage was doomed from the beginning. Denys and Violet went to Paris for their honeymoon and guess who was there? Vita and Harold. While Harold was at the Peace Conference, Vita met Violet at the Ritz where they resumed their relationship. "I treated her savagely. I had her. I didn't care, I only wanted to hurt Denys," Vita wrote later. She promised Violet that in the autumn they would go away together. The next day, the two women confronted Denys and told him the truth about their relationship. The poor man was heartbroken and shocked. He had been used and tricked in the worst possible way. Leaving Violet to deal with the wreckage of her marriage, Vita went off to Geneva with Harold.

Back in London, Denys and Violet tried to end their marriage but Mrs. Keppel was adamant that the marriage continue. Denys meanwhile was starting to show signs of tuberculosis and needed nursing. Violet didn't want to go but it would have looked bad if she had abandoned a sick husband. Meanwhile, Violet's sister Sonia (grandmother of Camilla Parker Bowles) was in love and wanted to marry. Her future husband was Roland Cubitt, heir to the title of Lord Ashcombe and to a huge building fortune. The Cubitts had built much of Belgravia, Pimlico and Eaton Square and rebuilt Buckingham Palance. Marrying Roland Cubitt was a coup that Mrs. Keppel was not about to let slip out of her daughter's fingers. The Cubitt's were already against the relationship because of Mrs. Keppel's relationship with the late King. A scandal with Violet would ruin everything.

She kept a close eye on Violet to make sure that she was not sneaking off to meet Vita or writing to her. Vita couldn't make up her mind what she wanted, leaving Violet in a painful limbo. Harold, had affairs with other men including the couturier Edward Molyneux, hoping to make Vita jealous. The marriage between Violet and Denys continued to disintergrate as Violet heaped emotional abuse on the poor man, declaring that she would never care for him. In October, Vita and Violet went off together again for two months, playing their familiar roles of Julian and Eve. Back in London, people gossiped about the two women. Harold Nicolson was furious and threatened divorce while Mrs. Keppel demanded that Denys act like a man and bring his wife back.

This train wreck was heading down a fast track to nowheresville. Vita again told Violet that she would elope with her in February of 1920, that she would leave her old life behind. But to Harold, she wrote that although she found it impossible to have sex with him, she loved him so much and so deeply that it couldn't be uprooted. Finally the day came for the two women to leave. The night before she left Denys, they engaged in some kind of sexual exchange that neither would explain. Although she tried to tell Vita, she didn't want to hear it. While Violet went ahead to France, Vita sent frantic telegrams to everyone to rescue her.

Denys arrived first and he and Vita crossed the channel together. Violet refused to return with Denys so humiliated once again, he went to Paris. Vita and Violet stayed in Amiens while Vita waited for rescue. It came in the form of Harold Nicolson who told Vita that Violet may not have been as faithful to her as she said. This was the excuse that Vita needed to break things off. She told Violet that she couldn't see her for two months.

Denys and Violet again begged for annulment and Mrs. Keppel again said no way. Violet was not going to disgrace the family anymore than she already had. Sonia needed to be married off, Violet was not going to ruin her sister's happiness with her selfishness. More to the point, although she would give Violet 600 pounds a year allowance, she would have nothing to do with her emotionally or financially if she and Denys split up. Colonel Keppel, Violet's father had had enough though. He refused to speak to his daughter and left the room if she entered it. Even Sonia refused to speak to her. Violet was beginning to have a taste of her life as a pariah.

So Violet and Denys struggled on in a marriage of inconvenience complete with scenes and recriminations. He began seeking solace from other women all the while tormenting Violet by burning her letters from Vita and checking her alibis whenever she went out. Vita and Violet went on one finally journey together for two months, but the handwriting was on the wall for Violet. She realized finally that Vita was never going to leave her life in England for good to be with her.

While Vita was everything to Violet, Vita had a life independent of her with Harold, their sons, her garden and her writing. Her life was full and there was only ever going to be around 20% available for Violet. Violet would need to find a new life that didn't include Vita. She and Denys settled in France, where they lead seperate lives until his death in 1929. By the time of his death, they were completely estranged. However, he did do one good thing for Violet, he introduced her to the Princess de Polignac. Born Winaretta Singer, one of a multitude of children of Isaac Singer, whose fortune was made in sewing machines, she had married the much older Prince Edmond de Polignac who was a discreet homosexual.

Violet modified her behavior but not her sexuality, becoming more socially acceptable. Mrs. Keppel approved of the relationship, it more closely mimicked her own with the King. Violet wrote books in both French and English, while they sold well enough, the critics agreed that they were not great literature. Violet's life increasingly became a pale copy of her mother's. She threw dinner parties, told witty stories, was charming in an increasingly brittle way. She even began telling people that her father was King Edward VII. Completely incapable of taking care of herself, Violet would lose money constantly or trip and fall down the stairs. After her parents death, Violet inherited Ombrellino in Florence, where she spent most of her time. She and Vita reconnected briefly during the war, after Violet fled the Nazi invasion. Violet passed away in 1972, ten years after Vita.

Although their affair had ended, it continued to have a lasting influence on both women. Although Vita continued to have affairs with other women, no one ever came close again to affecting her so deeply. She and Harold continued to live together, their bond growing deeper as the years passed. Virginia Woof based the character of Sasha, the slavic princess on Violet in Orlando. Violet wrote her own account of their love affair in Broderie Anglaise, mainly as a reaction to Orlando. In both cases, the love affair was written as heterosexual.

If Violet had a fatal flaw, it was her inability to see anyone else's point of view but her own. She had no concept of her husband's feelings or understanding of the bond that Vita had with Harold Nicolson. Once she had made her mind up that Vita was the love of her life, nothing would stand in her way. She gave no thought at all to the damage that she caused her parents, her sister, or particularly Denys. She never once realized how much she had wronged him or hurt him, or even apologized for what she did to him. In her romantic fantasy, love should have conquered all. But there was the reality fo real life. The life that she envisioned for herself, a life without hypocrisy, she never achieved. The world wasn't quite ready for that. Nor really was Violet. As much as she deplored the hypocrisy of her mother's life and her aristocratic set, she also longed to emulate her mother and please her.

Sources include:

Mrs. Keppel and her daughter - Diana Souhami
Portrait of a Marriage - Nigel Nicolson
World's Wickedest Women - Margaret Nicholas

There is a splendid TV movie starring Janet McTeer, David Haig and Cathryn Harrison based on Portrait of a Marriage.

The Scandalous Life of Elizabeth Chudleigh

'Bigamy, it seems, is a greater crime than simple fornication or fashionable adultery,' The Times of London in June 1788.



Gossip has been around for centuries, but it wasn't until the 18th century with the rise of the printed media, like newspapers and magazines that gossip reached a mass audience. It seemed that everyone loved to read the titillating tidbits about the aristocracy. New magazines like Town and Country, printed a monthly article on certain aristocrats and their mistresses. The trial of Elizabeth Chudleigh, Duchess of Kingston for bigamy provided the lower classes with confirmation that the ruling class of England was made up of a group of degenerates, and revealed a secret that the aristocracy had known for years.



The Duchess of Kingston was born plain Elizabeth Chudleigh on March 8, 1721. She was the only daughter of Thomas Chudleigh, who was the administrator of the Royal Hospital in Chelsea at the time of his death in 1726, at the relatively young age of 38, when Elizabeth was five. The Chudleigh's were an old Devonshire family, whose ancestors had fought on both sides of the English Civil War. Thomas Chudleigh's mother Lady Mary Chudleigh, had been a writer of some note. Her most famous work was The Ladies Defence, a satire on marriage. Some scholars believe that Lady Mary must have been married to an overbearing husband to have written The Ladies Defence, but biographers believe the marriage was relatively happy, if only because her husband allowed her to publish at all.


He married his first cousin Henrietta, after making his way as a soldier, rising to the rank of Colonel of his regiment. After several babies died soon after birth, they were finally blessed with a son, Thomas in 1718. Three years later, Elizabeth was born, completing their little family. Although the Chudleigh's owned property in Devon, they were not rich. Thomas Chudleigh had invested one thousand pounds in the South Sea Company, only to see the bubble burst on the investment.

After her husband's death, Elizabeth's mother was forced to remove the family to the edge of a newer section of London, called May Fair (named after a local fair that was held there every May) which had only recently been developed as a residential area. Soon the area was flooded with arisocrats fleeing the crowded areas of Soho and Covent Garden. Like most aristocratic women who were left in genteel poverty, she could hardly go out to work for a living, she took in a lady lodger. The location was also convenient because it was close to her brother and his family, which included several children, to be playmates for Elizabeth and Thomas.


Tne next several years of Elizabeth's life remain a blank until she arrives at court. No letters survive and there is little in the public record. Her later biographers managed to embroider fanciful tales of Elizabeth coming down with smallpox but escaping without a single mark, that she grew up like a mini-savage in the wilds of Devon. One can assume that she spent most of her time traveling amongst the homes of various relatives around the country, spending weeks or months at a time, until she moved onto the next. She probably also spent time at the little country manor that her family still owned in Devon. Her education was probably minimal at best, since there wasn't much money to hire tutors or governesses. Her mother probably taught her a little needlework, given her books to improve her mind, a little dancing instruction, if she was lucky, she might have been able to sit in on classes with her more well off cousins, while staying with them. Apparently she also managed to learn enough French to speak it tolerably well.


The years were not quite kind to the Chudleigh family as one by one the men in the family began to die off, including Elizabeth's brother Thomas, who died in 1741 at Aix-la-Chapelle during the war of the Austrian succession. Her mother Henriette turned to a friend of her husband, William Pulteney, 1st Earl of Bath, who managed to find Elizabeth a position as a maid of honour to Augusta, Princess of Wales in 1743 when Elizabeth was 22. The position paid two hundred pounds a year, but it required Elizabeth to have a wardrobe suitable for the position. Fortunately for Elizabeth, court dress hadn't changed much since the late 17th century, necessitating dresses that required less fabric than the more fashionable sacque dresses that had come into vogue.


Elizabeth was considering to be very pretty, with a ready wit, and the ability to tell a story that captivated audiences. She didn't lack for admirers, from among the aristocratic gentleman at court. Elizabeth met the man she eventually married, Augustus John Hervey, the future 3rd Earl of Bristol while at the races down in Winchester. It was a whirlwind courtship, the young couple barely knew each other before Hervey proposed. Her aunt, Mrs. Hamner tried to persuade the couple to wait, until Hervey returned from a 2 year tour of duty in the navy, to see if they would still feel the same. But the young couple was impetuous and in love (or highly infatuated) and insisted on marrying before he left. It was a rash decision, Hervey only had fifty pounds a year to his name, hardly enough to support a wife and a home. There was also the possibility that his grandfather would object to the union, thereby cutting him out of the will and the succession. His prospects at the moment were slim, his older brother while suffering from ill-health, might live for many years, meaning that Hervey would not inherit the earldom and the money for a good while. Divorce, if the marriage turned bad, was not really an option. Divorce was expensive and required a private act of Parliament. They were stuck with each other for life. Elizabeth would have to leave her position as a Maid of Honor (as a married woman she would no longer be a Maid) and her two hundred pounds a year.

They were married on August 4th 1744, in private at Lainston, near Winchester. Their union was kept secret to enable Elizabeth to retain her post at court, while Hervey, who was a naval officer, rejoined his ship. The old saying, 'marry in haste, repent at leisure' could be applied to Elizabeth and Hervey. While Hervey was gone, Elizabeth led an active social life, being eventually courted by James, the 6th Duke of Hamilton, among others. Due to her secret marriage, of course, she had to turn any offers of marriage down. Hervey, when he returned to England in 1746, was appalled to hear rumors of his wife's flirtatious manner while he had been abroad. He was also upset to discover that his wife was not so eager to see him. It was three months after his return before Elizabeth finally agreed to meet with him. They immediately quarrelled, Hervey was pissed that she wouldn't come to him, and Elizabeth was pissed because he didn't immediately run to her in the country. It was pretty clear that the two were hopelessly incompatible. Still, Hervey was willing to give the marriage ago, but Elizabeth was more reluctant. However, she wasn't reluctant to take his money to pay her debts which were considerable, life at court not being cheap.


The situation got stickier when Elizabeth found herself pregnant in the summer of 1747. She retired to Chelsea (which was a country retreat at the time) to await her confinement and to hide the pregnancy. She gave birth sometime in late October to Augustus-Henry Hervey, but the baby didn't live long, dying a few months later in January of 1748. Elizabeth was distraught but relieved. A child would have tied her to Hervey for life. The marriage limped along for another year, before they finally agreed to seperate in 1749. This wasn't a formal seperation since the marriage was still basically a secret. Elizabeth was now in a quandary, now that her marriage was over, she couldn't count on Hervey to continue to support her.


The time had come to find a protector. Elizabeth was now almost 28 years old, long past the time most women of her station were married. She had already rejected the Duke of Hamilton, and the Duke of Ancaster as husbands which must have caused comment, and her removal to Chelsea in the summer of 1747 hadn't gone without notice. She caused a stir at a subscription masquerade ball at the King's Theater in the Haymarket during the King's Jubilee Celebration. Costumed as Iphigenia, her dress caused one guest to remark that it left her 'so naked ye high Priest might easily inspect ye Entrails of ye Victim.' The other Maids of Honor, many of whom were no better than they ought to be, were highly shocked at Elizabeth's costume, so much so that they refused to speak to her.

George II was not shocked, he was delighted at her costume, and asked Elizabeth if he might touch her breast. Elizabeth replied that she knew something softer to the touch, and placed his hand on his head! Far from being offended by her remark, the King appeared infatuated. Although Elizabeth contemplated the pros and cons of being a royal mistress, she decided against that avenue. Royal lovers were notorious for being cheap, or at least the Hanoverians were. At the most she would have gained a title, perhaps some jewelry, but her bills would not have been paid. Until she came up with another plan, she took comfort in the fact that she was one of the few people welcome at both the court of the King and the court of the Prince of Wales (George II notoriously hated his son and heir and ridiculed him at every opportunity).

Elizabeth found her protector and the love of her life in Evelyn Pierrepont, the 2nd Duke of Kingston-upon-Hull. The Duke's grandfather, also named Evelyn had served as Lord Privy Seal and Lord President of the Council. He married twice, one of his daughters was the noted playwright, Lady Mary Wortley-Montagu, who later spent time in Turkey where her husband was appointed Ambassador at Istanbul, and who fought to bring inoculation for small pox to London. Evelyn's cousin was Lord Bute, who became Prime Minister under George III. Evelyn was shy and retiring, but he was considered one of the handsomest men in England, he was also interested in fishing and cricket, in fact the Duke was the subject of the first extant reference to the game of cricket in Nottinghamshire. It is not certain exactly when the Duke and Elizabeth made their acquaintance but by 1752, there were references to the relationship in letters from various courtiers.

Elizabeth, now that she was settled as the Duke's mistress and had no more money worries, began to spend lavishly, buying property in London and in the country. She had a house built in London which she named Chudleigh House (after her marriage, it was renamed Kingston House). She also began to entertain, planning lavish parties for her royal friends. She was still one of the Princess of Wale's Maids of Honor, and her mother had now moved to Windsor as the Royal Housekeeper. Still there were people who were not happy at Elizabeth's good fortune. Lady Mary Coke, the wife of Viscount Coke, wrote virulently and maliciously about Elizabeth over the years. Perhaps motivated by jealously, her own marriage had been particularly strained and after her husband's death she had been infatuated with Prince Edward, the Duke of Albany, she seemed to revel in Elizabeth's later misfortunes.

Despite this, the Duke and Elizabeth were happy together, content to spend time on his country estates fishing (yes I said fishing, apparently Elizabeth's passion for the sport was as great as the Duke's). Over their years together, Elizabeth even travelled abroad by herself, which was unusual at the time when women rarely travelled although it was common for men to take a grand tour of Europe in their twenties (she wasn't really alone, having brought along her servants), spending time in Saxony where she became a particular friend of the Electress. The only fly in the ointment was her marriage to Hervey. Over the years, Elizabeth had been able to put the unfortunate relationship out of her mind. However in 1759, Elizabeth did a curious thing, she had her marriage to Hervey registered in the parish church at Lainton and sealed. Why did she do this? Probably as a safety measure, if the Duke should abandon her, and her husband should succeed to the title of Earl of Bristol, she would at least have the satisfaction of being a Countess.

Hervey had other plans, now settled back in England, decided that he wanted a divorce. Elizabeth decided to turn the tables and took the matter to the eccleseastical court, stating that the marriage had never taken place, therefore there could be no divorce. Why didn't she want a divorce which would have freed her once and for all? Well there was the publicity aspect, and if she were free, the Duke wouldn't have been willing to marry a divorcee. It was now incumbent on Hervey to prove that the marriage existed. Witnesses were provided, including several servants who had worked for Hervey, and the maid of Elizabeth's late Aunt, Mrs. Hamner, testified that the marriage had taken place, although they had only heard about it, they hadn't witnessed the actual marriage. Mrs. Hamner's maid Anne Craddock testified that the marriage hadn't taken place. Elizabeth, although she had qualms, swore that she was unmarried, and the consistory court in February 1769 pronounced her a spinster. Within a month she married Kingston on her 48th birthday.



Elizabeth found a curious thing. Society which had been eager to make her acquaintance, now turned its back her. Apart from a few old friends, no women came to call once she became a Duchess. Adultery, murder, bankruptcy, these could all be forgiven, bigamy however was another story. Despite the findings of the ecclesiastical court, everyone knew that Elizabeth and Hervey were still married. The Royal family still received her, she had been a good friend to the Dowager Princess of Wales, and the old King had found her delightful. The Duke and Duchess removed themselves to their country estates, and rarely came to town. However, it was the same story in country circles. Apart from a few old friends, the new Duchess was shunned. Still, she had married her best friend and the love of her life, so Elizabeth was content to spend most of her time in the Duke's company.

Their happiness was short lived because the Duke died four years later after a series of strokes, leaving her all his property on condition that she remained a widow. It would be only after her death, that his relatives would inherit. His family was outraged, despite the fact that the Duke had made his feelings clear about his relatives long before his death, he disliked them all. What incensed them even more was that the properties would be inherited by his sister's second son, and not the eldest, cutting him out entirely apart from a small sum of 800 pounds.

During her mourning period, Elizabeth travelled abroad, and visiting Rome the Duchess was received with honor by Pope Clement XIV. Meanwhile, in March 1775, her first husband's brother died and Hervey became Earl of Bristol. Elizabeth's marriage to Hervey was a legitimate one, despite her denials, and she was therefore legally Countess of Bristol. The Duchess was forced to return to England to defend herself against a charge of bigamy, which had been preferred against her by Kingston's nephew, Evelyn Meadows. She tried desperately to get the case seen in the House of Lords, but to no avail. She even wrote to George III hoping that he would look favorably on her but it was a difficult time for the King, what with the American colonies rebelling and all. She attempted to have the charge set aside in December 1775 by reason of the previous judgement in her favour, but this failed and she was tried as a peer in Westminster Hall.



The Duchess was portrayed as a coarse and licentious woman as Kitty Crocodile in a play A Trip to Calais, by the comedian Samuel Foote, which ridiculed her. However, he was denied a license and was not allowed to produce the play. Foote was incensed and took his case to the press. The Duchess wrote to him protesting his treatment of her, to which Foote then had the letter reprinted in the press along with his response which didn't do the Duchess any good, although the public lapped it up. Not even her lawyer telling the press that the playwright had offered to suppress the play for two thousand pounds helped her cause.



Elizabeth was just barely able to escape being incacerated in the Tower of London during her trial. However, her ill health meant that she was allowed to live at home for the duration under the custody of the Black Rod, in a nutshell, she was under house arrest. The trial was attended daily by the fashionable of London society, with their food and drink (even a heavily pregnant Queen Charlotte attended a session, sitting in the Duke of Newcastle's private area), tickets to the court case were hard to get, while the case received ample amounts of press in all the newspapers, most of them not favorable to Elizabeth. She was seen as a gold digger who had searched for the richest Duke in England and tricked him into a bigamous marriage. Stories were planted about what sort of punishment the Duchess should expect if she should be found guilty. Much was made of the fact that war with the colonies meant that she wouldn't be deported to a penal colony.



Many of Elizabeth's friends who were called as witnesses tried to get out of testifying in court. One peer fled to France rather than testify. Not only did Anne Craddock testify this time that she had actually witnessed the initial marriage, but the doctor who delivered Elizabeth's son testified, as well as the witnesses to Elizabeth's 1759 actions. Elizabeth's protestations of innocence in court held no wait, although she talked for 45 minutes. Unfortunately for Elizabeth, the verdict went against her, and she was found guilty. Only a few members of the House of Lords declined to vote.




However, she retained her fortune, although the Meadows family then brought in a suit in Chancery, to have the will overturned claiming that Elizabeth had unduly influenced the Duke when he made out his will. Elizabeth was assured by her lawyers that the case would drag on for years (anyone who has read Bleak House by Dickens knows this to be true). She lived for a time in Calais, spent time in Saxony although she left when the Elector would not receive her, not wishing to piss off George III, and then made her way to Vienna where she hoped to be received at the court of Maria Theresa and her son Joseph II. However she found that in that conservative court, the British ambassador made it known that she would not be recieved and certainly not as the Duchess of Kingston.




Elizabeth decided to visit Saint Petersburg, where she hoped to be received as the dowager Duchess, feeling that Catherine the Great's court would more lenient towards a bigamous Countess/Duchess. Near which city she bought an estate which she named "Chudleigh". Meanwhile back in England, Hervey did manage to eventually gain legal recognition in 1777 that his marriage to Elizabeth was legitimate, but he did not pursue divorce proceedings before his death. Elizabeth continued to style herself Duchess of Kingston, resided in Paris, Rome, and elsewhere, and died in Paris on 26 August 1788, still legally Countess of Bristol. Before her body was cold, her possessions were being divied up, Evelyn Meadows made off with whatever he could take with him, and her attendents divided up her clothing. When the news reached London, it revived the old interest in her court case. Many column inches were devoted to her, and pamphlets flew off the printing press. Even in death, Elizabeth was big news.

In these years of easy divorce, it might be hard to sympathize with Elizabeth's actions. Women in society were dependent on men. She was a classic illustration of how the law could keep a woman imprisoned in an unhappy situation. Of course, Elizabeth made her situation worse by first denying the marriage to Hervey for years, and then trying to suppress the evidence. But in her mind, since they never really lived as husband and wife, the marriage didn't exist. Elizabeth could be vain and snobbish, but she could also be quite generous. She settled an amount of two hundred pounds a year on Evelyn Crawford, even though his family had sued her for years. She believed not only in espousing forgiveness but also practicing it. She never lost her zest for life or her adventurous spirit, despite the curves that life threw her.


Source:


Elizabeth, The Scandalous Life of an 18th Century Duchess - Claire Gervat