Violet was considered the ‘queen’ of ‘The Souls’, a fashionable aristocratic social circle that favoured intellectual pursuits and avant-garde artistic tastes. Drawn together by the death of Right Honourable Laura Lyttelton, Violet and her friends, Lady Brownlow, Lady Elcho and Margot Tennant formed a close group that shared interest in art, literature and all things cultural. They gathered like-minded people to them and were known for a while as ‘The Select’ and ‘The Gang’, until Lord Beresford called them ‘The Souls’ after observing that they sat around talking about each other’s souls.... Amélie Louise Rives (1863–1945) novelist, poet, painter and playwright was born in Virginia, USA. Her troubled and scandalous first marriage to a descendent of the Astor family took her to Europe where she met such literary luminaries as Oscar Wilde and Henry James. Her most famous novel was The Quick or the Dead, but many of her works were officially banned. Rumors of drug use, insanity and infidelity followed the couple wherever they traveled and the marriage was not a happy one. It is probably through her affair with British politician and ‘Souls’ member George Curzon that Amélie met Violet Manners. Four months after her divorce in 1896, Amélie remarried the Russian Prince Pierre Troubetzkoy, an artist and an aristocrat, after Oscar Wilde introduced them in London. [https://artuk.org/discover/stories/violet-manners-aristocrat-and-portraitist-to-the-souls/#]