Eliot Ottoline Morrell (1 results)

Paper. Condition: Very Good. First Edition. An Original Very Important Dictated Handwritten and Signed Letter by Writer T S Eliot to Philip Morrell Regarding the Death of His Wife and Friend of Eliot Lady Ottoline Morrell. Dated 1938. A dictated letter in an unidentified hand, 46 Earls Court Square, SW5, 22 April 1938, to Philip Morrell, on the death of his wife Ottoline, 'I was so very sorry to hear today of the death of Lady Ottoline, and thought I should like to send you a little note that is full of sympathy. It will always be in my memory how very kind Lady Ottoline was to me. With my sincere sympathy, yours as ever, Tom', one page in blue ink in an unidentified hand. She was a lover of Bertrand Russell, who introduced her to Eliot in 1916, and her many friends included Lytton Strachey, D. H. Lawrence, Aldous Huxley, Siegfried Sassoon and the Woolfs. It was at Garsington that Clive Bell distributed a dozen or so copies of 'Prufrock', which Katherine Mansfield duly read to a Bloomsbury assembly. Eliot went himself, accompanying Russell, in the spring of 1916. An admirer of Eliot's poetry, Ottoline 'found him dull, dull, dull', resorting to French in her efforts to rouse him from monotony. Such early impressions are of a piece with Eliot's Garsington caricature - 'the undertaker'. But the Eliots returned together in spring or summer on a frequent basis, a ritual they observed until 1928, when the house was sold. As personalities - as conversationalists - Vivien and Eliot impressed. Not long after a trip to Garsington, Eliot wrote to his brother Henry, explaining his formula for the country weekend: 'The only thing required (on a short visit) is to be as brilliant as possible in the evenings - which does necessarily imply intellectual.'At Garsington, and latterly in London, their hostess proved a generous friend, ready with invitations, gifts and advice, significantly in matters of health. It was Ottoline who recommended to Eliot Dr Roger Vittoz, the Swiss psychiatrist at whose Lausanne clinic Eliot recovered from his nervous breakdown; the clinic where, in the winter of 1921, lodged in the room where Ottoline herself had stayed, Eliot wrote 'What the Thunder Said', the final part of The Waste Land. A few years later she suggested another of her doctors, Dr Marten, but his regime of starvation proved disastrous. Following Eliot's breakdown, Ottoline was one of a number of friends who pledged funds in order to release him from banking. With Virginia Woolf, among others, she coordinated the Eliot Fellowship Fund, a scheme complementary to Ezra Pound's Bel Esprit.Day to day, her influence was of greater moment. To Vivien, as to Eliot, she was a regular visitor, companion and correspondent, adding Vivien in 1919 to the list of women she liked best. She became a mainstay through Vivien's increasingly severe and prolonged stretches of ill-health. During Eliot's year in America, the year of his separation from Vivien, Ottoline was one of a number of friends relied upon for intelligence. She corresponded with Eliot, advising him that Vivien might be better alone; and she continued to correspond, intermittently, with Vivien, even after she had accused Ottoline of being Eliot's mistress.A rapid and mysterious decline led, in April 1938, to a sudden, untimely death. Among the very last signatures in Ottoline's 10 Gower Street visitors' book was 'T. S. Eliot', who on her death was moved to write, 'It is very difficult to think of anyone who meant so much to me.' With Virginia Woolf, Eliot helped to compose an inscription for her memorial-tablet, ending -A brave spirit, unbroken, Delighting in beauty and goodness, And the love of her friends. Size is 180mm x 115mm. Condition is good. Light folding crease. Ref19334.