Victoria was not good at retailing, and enlisted the services of her even less suitable daughter Vita, to contribute to the store's stocks.

In 1912 she inherited a large fortune from her lover Sir John Scott, 1st Baronet of Connaught Place (1847–1912), who was involved in establishing the Wallace Collection as a national art museum.

Increasingly intolerant of her husband's infidelities, which were carried out in plain sight at their home at Knole, Lady Sackville removed herself to a house on the clifftop overlooking Brighton, Sussex called White Lodge.

While at White Lodge, she indulged in increasingly eccentric schemes, mostly designed to raise funds for her own benefit given her straitened circumstances.

She had experienced at least a couple of nervous breakdowns earlier in her life and seems to have declined into a state of litigiousness, perhaps from an increasingly pressing sense of persecution owing to her illegitimacy and lack of belonging.