Ottoline at Garsington : Memoirs of Lady Ottoline Morrell, 1915-1918

Lady Ottoline with her husband Phillip Morrell restored Garsington Manor near Oxford. Morrell delighted in opening both as havens for like-minded people. Garsington provided a convenient retreat, near enough to London for many of their friends to join them for weekends. She took a keen interest in the work of young contemporary artists, such as Stanley Spencer, and she was particularly close to Mark Gertler and Dora Carrington, who were regular visitors to Garsington during the war. Gilbert Spencer lived for a while in a house on the Garsington estate. During World War I, the Morrells were pacifists. They invited conscientious objectors such as Duncan Grant, Clive Bell, and Lytton Strachey to take refuge at Garsington. Siegfried Sassoon, recuperating there after an injury, was encouraged to go absent without leave as a protest against the war. Lady Ottoline Violet Anne Morrell (1873 - 1938) was an English aristocrat and society hostess. Her patronage was influential in artistic and intellectual circles, where she befriended writers including Aldous Huxley, Siegfried Sassoon, T. S. Eliot and D. H. Lawrence, and artists including Mark Gertler, Dora Carrington and Gilbert Spencer.