Hospitality
The Morrells maintained a townhouse in Bedford Square, in the Central London neighbourhood known as Bloomsbury, and restored Garsington Manor near Oxford. Ottoline delighted in opening both as havens for like-minded people. 44 Bedford Square served as her London salon, while 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, whilst Gilbert Spencer lived for a while in a house on the Garsington estate.
During World War I, the Morrells were notable pacifists, not a popular position then. 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 in a protest against the war.
The hospitality offered by the Morrells was such that most of their guests had no suspicion that they were in financial difficulties. Many of them assumed that Ottoline was a wealthy woman. This was far from being the case and during 1927, the Morrells were compelled to sell the manorhouse and its estate, and move to more modest quarters in Gower Street. In 1928 she was diagnosed with cancer, which resulted in a long hospitalization and the removal of her lower teeth and part of her jaw.
Read more about this topic: Lady Ottoline Morrell
Famous quotes containing the word hospitality:
“But hospitality must be for service, and not for show, or it pulls down the host. The brave soul rates itself too high to value itself by the splendor of its table and draperies. It gives what it hath, and all it hath, but its own majesty can lend a better grace to bannocks and fair water than belong to city feasts.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“He was one whose glory was an inner glory, one who placed culture above prosperity, fairness above profit, generosity above possessions, hospitality above comfort, courtesy above triumph, courage above safety, kindness above personal welfare, honor above success.”
—Sarah Patton Boyle, U.S. civil rights activist and author. The Desegregated Heart, part 1, ch. 1 (1962)
“The mind is not a hermit’s cell, but a place of hospitality and intercourse.”
—Charles Horton Cooley (1864–1929)