Alice Keppel - Later Life

Later Life

In November 1910, Keppel and her husband abandoned London for the solitude of the continent. She claimed that it was for her daughters' education, but in reality, it was to escape the sudden reversal of her life. The family spent two years travelling in the Far East and Ceylon. On their return to Britain they bought a new house at 16 Grosvenor Street in London. However, they soon moved to Italy, where they bought Villa dell' Ombrellino near Florence, and lived there for the rest of their lives. The villa had been at various times the home of the scientist Galileo, the poet Foscolo and the scholar C. E. Norton. Keppel commissioned the architect Cecil Pinsent to lay out the villa terrace with bisecting paths, which she named a 'Union Jack garden'; and after her death her daughter, Violet Trefusis, maintained the villa and its garden.

On 11 December 1936, Edward VII's grandson, Edward VIII, abdicated the throne to marry Wallis Simpson, a divorcée. Keppel, dining at the Ritz, was heard to declare: "Things were done much better in my day."