Virginia Woolf's Women

by Vanessa Curtis

  Alone and afraid, Ottoline threw herself into religion for comfort, giving up food, pretty clothes and any book that wasn’t Christian in content. Her own health plummeted; the Duke and Duchess of Welbeck were appalled by her tired appearance and took her around London for a long season of parties and society events. This failed to have any positive effect, and eventually Ottoline and her mother went to recuperate in Italy. However, they both fell ill and Ottoline was sent to stay with her Aunt Louise in Florence. Here, Ottoline’s lifelong love affair with Italian architecture began, but it was rudely interrupted when she was forced to return to London with her ailing mother.

  At nineteen years old, Ottoline sat helplessly and watched her mother die over the following two months. With both parents now dead, she was taken back to the family home at Welbeck Abbey and immediately began a desperate search for a surrogate father figure, starting with the Archbishop of York and moving on to a disastrous love affair with Axel Munthe, a rich doctor in his forties. Eventually, and by now showing signs of her great and unusual beauty, Ottoline gave herself a strict talking-to and took herself off to Oxford, where she became an out-student at Somerville College, studying history and political economy.

  One day, cycling to college dressed all in white with her red hair blazing, she caught the eye of Philip Morrell, a solicitor. They struck up a vague friendship, but Ottoline was still determined to find her father figure, and this solicitor, however charming and friendly, seemed too young. Philip pursued Ottoline for a further two years and proposed twice, but her hesitant letters to him (strongly resembling Virginia Woolf’s own to Leonard after she had accepted his proposal) reveal that she had grave doubts about the physical side of their relationship. She worried, on paper, that platonic love would not be enough to keep Philip happy, and admitted that she did want to share a life with him – but one based on affection and trust rather than passion. Unexpectedly, the roles were reversed immediately after their honeymoon; Philip suddenly admitted that he found it hard to be sexually attracted to her. This was a shock to Ottoline, but it did not affect the immense loyalty that they both had to the marriage, which stood the test of time and was strong enough to survive their considerably involved love affairs with other people.

  In August 1905, Ottoline discovered, without much joy, that she was pregnant. She was somewhat cheered by the task of finding a new house, eventually settling upon 44 Bedford Square, Bloomsbury (a few streets away from 46 Gordon Square, where Vanessa and Virginia Stephen were hosting their ‘Thursday Evenings’). Ottoline was not yet, at this stage of her life, interested in the arts or in being surrounded by literary people, but instead with designing a large and pretty house in London for herself, Philip and the expected first child. On 18 May 1906, Ottoline in fact became the mother of twins, but after two days, the little boy died of a brain haemorrhage. Ottoline was operated on in a nursing home shortly afterwards, and returned home to cope with her one remaining baby, daughter Julian. Mother and child did not bond well, and the little girl endured an upbringing mainly at the hands of various nurses and governesses while her mother and later her father embarked upon love affairs that took up most of their time.

  In December 1908, Virginia Stephen mentioned to Violet that Lady Ottoline Morrell was coming for tea at Fitzroy Square. Little other mention is made of Ottoline until January 1909, when Virginia wrote to Ottoline in a style markedly different from that of her easy, familiar letters to Violet. Her one-paragraph letter to Ottoline gushes with false pleasure, begging Ottoline to become her new friend and citing ‘shyness’ as her reason for not going into further, flattering detail. Teasingly, egotistically, Virginia then taunted Violet Dickinson with the news that Ottoline was becoming very fond of her and that it was extremely pleasant to receive Ottoline’s adoration, which she compared to sitting under a huge lily, absorbing pollen like a seduced bee. Vanessa Bell always believed Ottoline to be bisexual, and Morrell did indeed seem entranced by Virginia:

  This strange, lovely, furtive creature never seemed to me to be made of common flesh and blood. She comes and goes, she folds her cloak around her and vanishes, having shot into her victim’s heart a quiverful of teasing arrows.

  Ottoline, thirty-six years old in 1909, began to entertain Virginia and her friends at Bedford Square or, occasionally, Peppard Cottage, the Morrells’ weekend retreat in the country. The Bloomsbury Group presented a challenge to this eccentric woman, and she to them with her colourful clothes, strange singsong voice and strong religious faith. The group fell upon her with glee, most of them proclaiming her to be dual-natured for professing religious devotion whilst simultaneously admitting to her indiscreet love affairs. However Virginia, present at many of these evenings, was far guiltier of duplicity of nature than Ottoline; she kept up a bizarre, flattering courtship in her letters to Ott, until the latter mistakenly believed herself to have acquired a true friend. Meanwhile, in other letters to Vanessa, Lytton and her cousin Madge Vaughan, Virginia slated Ottoline, whom she declared had the ‘head of a Medusa’ but was ‘simple and innocent’ in spite of this unfortunate physical handicap.

  Not all of the ‘Bloomsberries’ were so critical of Ottoline: Roger Fry, who had accepted a large sum of money from her towards help for his mentally ill wife, was grateful to and began to fall in love with Ott, although she hardly seemed to notice. Lytton Strachey also, fell under her spell, and he lived for a while at Peppard Cottage, jealously sharing Ottoline’s time with her new lover, Henry Lamb. Duncan Grant, the only member of the group unable to be malicious, saw past Ottoline’s unusual appearance to the good-natured soul beneath and became her dear and trusted friend for over thirty years. But something within Virginia made it impossible for her, during the first twenty years of knowing Ottoline, to be either at ease or entirely natural in her company. Although Virginia was always keen to make friends with members of the aristocracy, something about Ottoline’s physical appearance disturbed her. This curious mixture of attraction and revulsion resulted in a rollercoaster of emotions, displayed in letters in such a way as to show their author in an unattractive light. Ottoline, despite her grand background and constant stream of willing takers for her generous hospitality, was lonely for genuine friendship and offered it to Virginia, only to be left with this memory of a hurtful rejection:

  She seemed to feel certain of her own eminence. It is true, but it is rather crushing, for I feel she is very contemptuous of other people. When I stretched out a hand to feel another woman, I found only a very lovely, clear intellect.

  With the physical side of her marriage to Philip in decay, and the fluctuating emotions of the Bloomsbury Group to contend with, Ottoline looked elsewhere for comfort and attention. She did not have to look far – in September 1909, Logan Pearsall-Smith, a keen liberal who was involved in the forthcoming general election, brought his brother-in-law, Bertrand Russell, to meet the Morrells. Bertie Russell was already trapped in a marriage to a woman, Alys, whom he no longer much desired; his predicament was therefore similar to Ottoline’s. Although not physically attractive, Russell, small, dark and with a twinkle in his eye, charmed Ottoline with his ‘great wit and humour’. These two unique characters were to meet again shortly afterwards, at a dinner party, where Bertie suddenly turned to Ottoline and told her all about his troubled marriage. The timing was not right, however, since Ottoline was by now involved with the complex, highly emotional artist, Henry Lamb.

  Lamb was everything, at least physically, that Russell was not. He was an Adonis, with curly blond hair, a slim figure and a unique way of dressing in old-fashioned silk or velvet garments. He sported a gold earring and had a playful sense of humour. When he was in a good mood he proved an enchanting and alluring companion for Ottoline, but when he was depressed and bad-tempered, it took all of her natural patience and love to see them both through these difficult periods. Ottoline, always fascinated by artistic people, fell deeply in love with Lamb to the point where her feelings bordered on obsession. He, in turn, bec
ame moody and churlish if she did not give him all of her time and attention. Ottoline moved him into Peppard Cottage, along with her devoted Lytton, who was also under the Lamb spell. There was no privacy, and hordes of guests streamed down by train every weekend, expecting to be entertained. Ottoline’s enjoyment of her country cottage began to decrease, and she eventually asked Roger Fry to help her find another, larger home.

  A visitor who was welcome, despite the fact that she still mocked Ottoline behind her back in letters, was Virginia Stephen, and she stayed for a weekend in December 1910. This time, Ottoline recorded in her diary that she had enjoyed Virginia’s company more than on previous occasions, perhaps this was because Virginia, who had endured another spell in a nursing home earlier in the year, was humbler and less abrasive than usual during this period of recuperation. The two women had much in-depth conversation of the sort that Ottoline enjoyed most:

  She feels artists are ‘rather brutes’, that literature and poetry are much finer. I thought Virginia wonderful, and much more natural and full-blooded and human than when I saw her last. Her lovely intellectual imagination is like a bird – a swallow flying over life with sword-like wings.

  But, tellingly, Ottoline cannot resist bemoaning ‘how hard it is to accept people as they are, not as one wants them to be’.

  She continued to try and accept Henry Lamb for who he was until March 1911, when after an innocent note from Bertrand Russell informing Ottoline that he intended to call in on her at Bedford Square, Ottoline found herself catapulted into the most important and passionate affair of her life. Philip was away, and Ethel Sands and Ralph Hawtrey, the only other guests, had left early. Ottoline and Bertie sat up all of that night pouring out their hearts to one another, avoiding physical contact but finding enough in common for Bertie to voice immediately the wish that neither of them were married to other people.

  Their affair, which lasted for the next five years, was beset with problems and imbalances from the start. Ottoline still allowed Philip to make love to her on the rare occasions he wanted to do so; he was being indiscreet with a number of young girls anyway (among them, members of the Morrells’ own household). Bertie, on his frequent trips abroad, met and slept with other women, but some invisible attachment to Ottoline was to bring him back time after time. It was always Ottoline who threatened to end the relationship, and so they would get stuck in patterns of enforced silences and absences, which would be broken by a miserable Bertrand begging to see her, professing undying love. Their letters flew back and forth and knew no restraint. Bertie eventually left Alys, his wife, after a bitter and nasty feud, but Ottoline would not even contemplate leaving Philip. Her marriage meant too much to her, and Philip had started suffering from periods of mental instability, which meant that he had a greater need for his wife’s love and support.

  There were changes afoot in Ottoline’s other friendships during the period 1911–1912. Roger Fry, until now her devoted and appreciated friend, angrily and unfairly accused her of spreading rumours abroad concerning his love for her. Shocked and confused, Ottoline found herself cut off by the majority of the Bloomsbury Group, although Virginia wrote to her in June 1912 to report details of her forthcoming marriage to Leonard Woolf, and Lytton continued to visit her using her as a crutch for his emotional problems and self-doubts. The rift with Roger was not healed until 1928 and it saddened Ottoline greatly to have lost his trust and friendship. In addition to these distressing events, Ottoline’s daughter Julian developed tuberculosis and had to attend a clinic in Switzerland, and Philip was starting to suffer from more disturbing episodes of ‘nervous illness’, the term that doctors used in those days to refer to any sort of mental imbalance.

  A picture of Ottoline painted during 1913 by her dear friend Duncan Grant makes a striking contrast compared with Simon Bussy’s wicked caricature of her. Although Grant cannot resist playing up the plumage in her hat, the sharpness of her jutting chin, and her brightly coloured hat, he manages to convey subduedness in the darkness of Ottoline’s dress; something in her demeanour portrays great melancholy, and her eyes have a worried expression. It is a sympathetic and mature portrait by a man who was always quick to leap to Ottoline’s defence. Ottoline was beset with doubts about her own worth at around the time of Grant’s portrait; she wrote to Virginia expressing admiration for the younger woman’s beauty and genius, admitting that she felt, in comparison, ‘utterly tedious’ and ‘old, antiquated and heavy’.

  In 1914, Ottoline was introduced to the shy young artist Dora Carrington, and to the writer D.H. Lawrence, who had just published a book of short stories. Lawrence, in turn, introduced Ottoline to the writer Katherine Mansfield. These new friendships soon found the perfect venue to develop, for in 1915, Ottoline and Philip took Garsington Manor in Oxford, as their country home. Ottoline was attracted by the garden’s formal Italianate design, and only one month after moving in, the Morrells had already gone a significant way towards creating the magnificent gardens that still remain today. Here, in a long series of weekend visits, the Bloomsbury Group mixed (or tried not to) with other writers, artists, politicians and intellectuals.

  Ottoline transformed the rooms inside Garsington into a rich panoply of colour and comfort. The Red Room had gold-edged panelling, the entrance hall was full of soft Persian rugs, and the guest bedrooms were tastefully furnished with books, desks and marble washstands. During the First World War, Garsington became a refuge for a variety of visitors, all of whom expected Ottoline somehow to exceed her meagre food allowance in order to keep them well fed and warm. Between the years 1915 and 1928, those who passed through Garsington’s beautiful front entrance included Aldous Huxley, Clive Bell, Leonard and Virginia Woolf, Katherine Mansfield, Dorothy Brett, Dora Carrington, Lytton Strachey, D.H. Lawrence, G. Lowes Dickinson, T.S. Eliot, Thomas Hardy, E.M. Forster, Siegfried Sassoon, W.B. Yeats and many others. Among the list of distinguished politicians, dignitaries, royalty, aristocrats and economists can be found the names of H.H. Asquith, Maynard Keynes, Bertrand Russell, the Duke of York (later George VI), Vita Sackville-West and Harold Nicolson.

  In April 1917, Ottoline again tentatively held out the hand of friendship towards Virginia, whom she had not seen since the Woolfs’ marriage in 1912. The breakdown of relations with Roger Fry had caused a rift and cessation of correspondence, but Virginia seemed genuinely pleased to hear from Ottoline, and accepted an invitation to tea at Bedford Square. On this occasion, an admiring Ottoline recounted the following impression of her friend:

  She entered with such energy and vitality and seemed to me far the most imaginative and masterly intellect that I had met for many years.

  As usual, the illusion was shattered soon afterwards, when Virginia paid her first visit to Garsington, where she ‘sat on a throne and took it for granted that we should worship’. Ottoline much preferred the company of Lytton, whom she decided was more ‘rational’ and ‘real’ than Virginia.

  Despite Ottoline’s reservations, Virginia seemed to enjoy her first and subsequent visits to Garsington, if her effusive letters of thanks are to be believed. Much of the best evidence for this is preserved not in letters, but in the photographs that Ottoline took of Virginia in conversation with Lytton Strachey, Philip, and G. Lowes Dickinson. They are among the most interesting and revealing photographs ever taken of Virginia ‘in flight’; Ottoline has perfectly captured the writer in animated conversation, hands clasped together, eyes thrown heavenward, or caught her gossiping with great enjoyment whilst the trademark cigarette dangles from her lip. In one photograph, Virginia is seen in thoughtful profile, head bent over a book, spectacles perched on her aquiline nose. In these pictures, she is shown at the peak of her personal and professional life. Around her ‘throne’, famous literary figures sit at her feet in rapt attention and devotion, watching as she spirals into one of her imaginary, witty, flights of fancy. There is no doubt that Virginia enjoyed her visits to Garsington greatly and felt ‘in her element’ amongst the other
guests. Sadly, there is also much evidence to suggest that Ottoline was not only irritated, but also disappointed and bewildered by Virginia’s obvious arrogance upon these occasions.

  Although their reunion in 1917 had got off to a shaky start, Virginia and Ottoline finally began to grow closer. Virginia was now thirty-five, had recently recovered from her longest period of breakdown yet (1913–1915), and was entering a productive, happy period of her life. Ottoline needed and appreciated the renewed friendship with Virginia, because Philip was becoming increasingly unwell (a plight that Virginia, no stranger to mental illness, showed much sympathy for). Also, Ott’s affair with Bertrand Russell had finally come to an end. Russell never underestimated the positive effect that the affair with Ottoline had had on him; in his autobiography he noted that ‘she cured me of the belief that I was seething with appalling wickedness’ and admitted that she had made him ‘less self-centred and self-righteous’. Although Ottoline occupies a scant four pages of his memoirs and is, in one part, said to have had a face resembling a horse, Russell does pay tribute to the ‘deep sympathy between us which never ceased as long as she lived’. His descriptions of Ottoline’s appearance would have hurt her, though, had she lived long enough to read the autobiography. However, even Russell’s insensitivity would have paled in comparison to the semi-fictional portraits of Ottoline that were about to be painted by two young men whom she had counted among her most intimate friends.