Pepita Sackville-west, born 1830
spanish dancer
This life story of her grandmother Pepita was written by Vita Sackville-West in 1937. It tells the extraordinary story of Josefa (Pepita), the half-gypsy daughter of an old-clothes pedlar from Malaga, who makes her fortune as a dancer in Madrid; soon she is the toast of all Europe. Her affair with a young English attache then sets the scene for a most bizarre family history. After her early death, her daughter Victoria is condemned to an austere convent until the age of eighteen. Socially ostracized without knowing why, she is suddenly whisked off to become mistress of her diplomat father’s Washington household. Eventually this illegitimate half-Spanish waif finds herself the volatile and wayward mistress of Knole, one of the grandest houses in England.
Click below to view her life story: