Lady Ottoline’s Vanished World

Abstract

The first thing to be said about Lady Ottoline Morrell is that she created something: hers was a creative spirit, even if the creation were something of an Ersatz. She herself would have wished to be a writer; since she had not that gift, she did the next best thing — encouraged, boosted the confidence of, and devotedly boosted, those who were. Hers was a most generous spirit, giving, giving all the time. But she achieved something more. Her own personality and what she created around it were a work of art. Virginia Woolf saw this; Leonard Woolf called Ottoline ‘a very silly woman’: it shows the difference between Virginia and him, between a woman of genius and a mere intellectual.