 Her mother was a friend of soprano Adelina Patti.Violet became a pupil of the country's leading piano teacher, Oscar Beringer, a German émigré, and by the age of sixteen she was one of his most promising pupils.Violet's maternal grandfather, Royal Navy officer and merchant William Purvis (1796–1854) from Dalgety Bay, Scotland, married Cornelia Louisa Intveld (1808–1857) in 1822.