Lady ottoline morrell

A century and eight years ago, an aristocrat and her middle class husband moved into number 44 Bedford Square. Lady Ottoline Morrell was what modern jargon would call a facilitator, and the Edwardians called a patroness. In Bedford Square, and at her country house in Oxfordshire, lady ottoline morrell, she hosted artists of many kinds — introducing them to each other, giving them presents, and offering her friendship.

Ottoline was educated at her home at Welbeck Abbey. Her biographer, Miranda Seymour , has argued: "Her romantic love of history was stimulated by helping her mother to unpack the Welbeck treasures; these included a magnificent set of Gobelin tapestries and paintings which were stacked, without frames, three deep around the walls of the empty staterooms when they arrived. The following year her mother was granted the title, Baroness Bolsover. According to Vanessa Curtis : "They moved into a charming house, St Anne's Hill in Chertsey, but the relationship between mother and daughter began to go sour. Lady Bolsover became an obsessive invalid, terrified of being left alone, and her daughter, now aged sixteen, was expected to spend every night sleeping in the same room.

Lady ottoline morrell

Her patronage was influential in artistic and intellectual circles, where she befriended writers including Aldous Huxley , Siegfried Sassoon , T. Eliot and D. Lady Ottoline's great-great-uncle through her paternal grandmother, Lady Charles Bentinck was the 1st Duke of Wellington. Through her father, Arthur, she was a first cousin once removed of Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother , and thus a first cousin twice removed of Queen Elizabeth II , both of whom descended from Arthur's brother Charles Cavendish-Bentinck. Ottoline was granted the rank of a daughter of a duke with the courtesy title of "Lady" soon after her half-brother William succeeded to the Dukedom of Portland in , [2] [3] at which time the family moved into Welbeck Abbey in Nottinghamshire. The dukedom was a title which belonged to the head of the Cavendish-Bentinck family and which passed to Lady Ottoline's branch upon the death of their cousin, the 5th Duke of Portland , in December In , Ottoline began studying political economy and Roman history as an out-student at Somerville College, Oxford. Morrell was known to have had many lovers. Her first love affair was with an older man, the physician and writer Axel Munthe , [5] but she rejected his impulsive proposal of marriage because her spiritual beliefs were incompatible with his atheism. In February , she married the MP Philip Morrell , [6] with whom she shared a passion for art and a strong interest in Liberal politics.

Morrell wrote two volumes of memoirs, but these were edited and revised after her death. With her courage, her dragonfly yellows and kingfisher greens, Ottoline was never a mere fashion victim.

Adolf de Meyer American, born France. Not on view. Adolph de Meyer's portrait of Lady Ottoline Morrell, eccentric hostess to Bloomsbury, is a stunning summation of the character of this aristocratic lady who aspired to live "on the same plane as poetry and as music. Yeats, D. Lawrence, T. Tall, wearing fantastic, scented, vaguely Elizabethan clothes, Lady Ottoline made an unforgettable impression.

Name variations: Lady Ottoline Morrell. May 18, , Hugh died three days later. Successfully campaigned on behalf of husband Philip Morrell for Parliament ; held salon on Bedford Square, London —15 ; began affair with Augustus John ; began affair with Henry Lamb ; met Lytton Strachey ; began affair with Bertrand Russell ; bought Garsington Manor ; met D. Lady Ottoline Morrell was indeed a lady, a titled English aristocrat who spurned her illustrious lineage to become a patron of budding literary and artistic talents of the early 20th century. She was eccentric, flamboyant, possessive, generous, and unconventional, a tall, imposing figure dressed in gaudy, rather disheveled, ornate costumes that drew curious stares even on the streets of London. A descendant of two old, eminent noble families, the Cavendishs and the Bentincks, Ottoline's father was in line to become duke of Portland, to inherit vast estates in England and Scotland, as well as the family manor of Welbeck. However, he died unexpectedly in , when Ottoline was four years old, and her half-brother Arthur assumed the title.

Lady ottoline morrell

A century and eight years ago, an aristocrat and her middle class husband moved into number 44 Bedford Square. Lady Ottoline Morrell was what modern jargon would call a facilitator, and the Edwardians called a patroness. In Bedford Square, and at her country house in Oxfordshire, she hosted artists of many kinds — introducing them to each other, giving them presents, and offering her friendship. Moore, John Singer Sergeant, G.

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They worked on the property's farm as a way of escaping prosecution. She described Spencer as looking like a "healthy, red-faced farm labourer". I was dismal enough about Mark and then suddenly without any warning Philip Morrell after dinner asked me to walk round the pond with him and started without any preface, to say, how disappointed he had been to hear I was a virgin! Retrieved 1 March What emerges from the collection is an indication that Ottoline Morrell was glamorous, idiosyncratic and elegant: not the mad, rather grungy eccentric we have been led to believe. So while she enjoyed creating an image, she was also deeply frustrated - that she was not a writer, artist, philosopher or politician, a person without a vote for more than half a lifetime. And all clever men become frozen stalactites. Years later when Morrell was praised as a patron of the arts, an elderly noble-woman responded, "but she has betrayed our Order" the English patrician class. His and Carrington's introduction to the Bloomsbury group involved Marsh. Yeats, D.

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In the Morrells rented a second home, Peppard Cottage. She frankly regarded this development as "an assault upon her person, a burden, the breaking into her existence by an unknown foreigner. December She provided medical care for Vivienne Eliot who died insane , offered solace to Russell's cast-off mistresses, and remained close to Virginia Woolf whose mental instability ended in her suicide. Despite the advantages of wealth and social status, Ottoline was a lonely child. Born in , she was the youngest child and only daughter of General Arthur Cavendish-Bentinck, heir to the mysterious fifth Duke of Portland. National Portrait Gallery. Other problems beset the lovers; Russell's wife Alys threatened to create a public scandal and his brother-in-law informed Philip of Ottoline's infidelity in the most graphic sexual terms. She spoke in a weird, nasal, cooing, sing-song drawl. There was great excitement as the children explored the place, but what appeared to have the greatest influence on Ottoline was the discovery of family portraits. Philip employed them as farm laborers. The upper-middle class Morrells were well placed in local society.