Violet Valerie French

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valerie_Violet_French

Violet Valerie French Brougham Kindersley, Lady Brougham and Vaux (13 February 1909 – 18 July 1997) was an English socialite. She and her sister Essex Leila Hilary French were known as the French Sisters and included in The Book of Beauty by Cecil Beaton.

Biography

Violet Valerie French was born on 13 February 1909, at Pietermaritzburg, Natal, South Africa, the daughter of English cricketer Lt Col Hon Edward Gerald Fleming French DSO, Deputy Governor of Dartmoor Prison and Governor of Newcastle Prison (1883–1970) and Leila Elizabeth Fyfe King (d. 1959), daughter of Robert King, of Natal, South Africa. Her grandfather was John French, 1st Earl of Ypres.

In 1933 she was included, together with her sister, in The Book of Beauty by Cecil Beaton, which documented the "Bright Young Things" socialites of the 1920s. Beaton wrote: "Valerie, pink and white like sugar-coated almonds, with slow, brown eyes and pale corn-coloured hair, has the more flawless face. Her nose is perfection."

In 1926 she was engaged to Henry Bradley Martin, a Manhattan socialite. In 1929 she rushed to the United States to assist him after he was injured in an automobile accident in Colorado. The engagement was subsequently broken.

On 21 April 1931 she married Victor Brougham, 4th Baron Brougham and Vaux. They had one son, Julian Henry Peter Brougham (1932–1952), who was killed while on active service in Malaya in 1952, at the age of 19. They divorced 1934.

On 26 November 1936 she married Captain Hon. Philip Leyland Kindersley (1907–1995), 4th son of Robert Kindersley, 1st Baron Kindersley and Gladys Margaret Beadle. They had three children: Nicoletta Leila Kindersley (b. 1939), Virginia Alexandra de L'Estang Kindersley (b. 1943) and Christian Philip Kindersley (b. 1950).

She died on 18 July 1997, in Swindon, Wiltshire, England.