Lady O always dressed as if she were about to be painted.

Lady Ottoline Morrell 

[1873 - 1938, English aristocrat, art patron, Gemini]

I have recently discovered this amazing and inspiring woman, an incurable romantic, eccentric dresser, flamboyantly theatrical yet rather shy English aristo whose peak was at a time of great Art, Science and Literature in the early 1900s, in Bloomsbury, London. An active and generous patron, a society hostess and Bertrand Russell's mistress and life-long confidante. She fascinates me.

Lady Ottoline Morrell of Garsington Manor, Oxfordshire, was a focal point for the "Bloomsbury Group" of intellectuals and artists and a refuge for pacifists during the Great War.  Her salon parties were legendary. Her gifts, encouragement, support and consideration, legendary.
Here are 12+ things you need to know about this intriguing woman who helped shape the course of history:

Lady Otteline Morrell

1. She always dressed as if she were about to be painted
2. She would hold her famous lively salons on/called "Thursdays" inviting artists, intellectuals, liberal politicans and socialites.

3. She had exquisite taste and an incredible sense of design.

4. D.H. Lawrence wrote about her "There is only one Ottoline. And she has moved one's imagination." and went on to parody her in Women in Love.

5. She lived in a world of scented candles, moonlight magic and intricately crafted private myths.

6. She would describe everything in muscial stanzas. (Maybe a bit scary, but quite fascinating that someone could be so ' in the zone'... in her own personal zone and creation.)

7. Her invitations were hand-written in sepia ink on rose-coloured stationery.
8. Born to privilege she felt unsuited to a dull comfortable life and searched for a different life she could not put into words. Not unusual really.
9. She believed that "the only thing that really matters is to create something". And as she knew she was not an artist herself, created a world hospitable to artists, introducing starving painters to rich collectors, buying expensive gifts of jewels and rugs for the writers and thinkers she took under her wing, and opening her home to interesting people.
10. She recorded her honeymoon in a white vellum-covered journal.
11. Philip and Ottoline lived at 44 Bedford Square, London - in Bloomsbury, right in the heart of Virginia Wolf's world.
12. Her husband was to father 7 babies to different mistresses during their marriage yet she kept a poker, gracious face to the public with the rationale "it makes people uncomfortable to see you unhappy."

[Left to Right: Duncan Grant, (Giles) Lytton Strachey, Lady Ottoline Morrell, Philip Morrell, Maria Huxley]

"She wanted a modern husband who would not curtail her freedom and married conventional solicitor Philip Morrell. He spotted her riding a bicycle, flaming red hair, turquoise eyes, tall, regal, horse-like face but striking. They became acquainted over many evenings of long conversations by her fireplace. They married on February 8, 1902 at St. Peter's on Eaton Place followed by a 2-month honeymoon in Italy. She helped him get out of his boring job and a place in politics and the House of Commons. And she was able to cover up his mental illness which today sounds like he was bipolar."
~ "Uncommon Arrangements" by Katie Roiphe. - this book was the source of all this Lady O inspiration. Great read about fabulous 'uncommon arrangements' during the literary circles of the early 1900s

[Left to Right: Geoffrey Nelson, Hon. Dorothy Eugenie Brett, Lady Ottoline Morrell, Mr Blay, Mark Gertler]

AND THEN THEY BIT THE HAND THAT FED THEM.  LOSER USERS. As below...

"The Bokhara Coat" by Mark Gertler 

(Mark Gertler, a Polish jew who was of such an impoverished upbringing in Spitalfields, LDN, he probably didn't know how to appreciate generosity or handle the high society Lady O offered him when he came to develop his incredible drawing skills.)

Fuzzy Photo of Mark Gertler.

And this study of (Lytton) Strachey's face and hands painted by Dora Carrington, the artist who committed suicide in 1932. He is in the above photo. He also died in 1932.

She befriended writers such as Aldous Huxley, Siegfried Sassoon, T.S. Eliot and D.H. Lawrence and artists such as Mark Gertler (above), Dora Carrington (above) and Gilbert Spencer (below). Yet some of these creative conscientious objectors would mock her behind her back which (to me) is a horrid act of ingratitude and leech-like behaviour.

"Melbury Beacon" painted by Gilbert Spencer (top)... famous for English vistas, pipe smoking and Head of Painting at Camberwell School of Arts and Crafts (1950-1957).

But this so often happens when someone so poor and of bad breeding yet genius with talent gets flung into the shiney world of generous patrons. They don't know how to handle it, so they mock, bitch and put their sense of self up by pulling the nice ones down. Or they go into the quagmire hell of drugs or alcohol. Not all are poor of course. Some are of impeccable breeding and brilliant bastards and worse than someone with no money nor breeding. Get help, but don't bite the hand that feeds you. Kiss it. And go off dancing. Send a thank you note. Doesn't take much,.

Lady Ottoline, you gave so much to Modern Literature, Art and Science and for that we salute you (even if some of the recipients of your generosity were egocentric, self-absorbed wankers).