Editing Lady Ottoline Morrell (section)

==Hospitality==
[[File:Ottoline Morrell 10 Gower Street blue plaque.jpg|thumb|Blue plaque, 10 Gower Street, London]]
The Morrells maintained a townhouse in [[Bedford Square]]<ref>{{openplaque|1089}}</ref> in [[Bloomsbury]] and also owned a country house at Peppard, near [[Henley on Thames]]. Selling the house at Peppard in 1911, they subsequently bought and restored [[Garsington Manor]] near [[Oxford]]. Morrell delighted in opening both as havens for like-minded people. Of Garsington, she said, "it seemed good to gather round us young and enthusiastic pacifists."<ref>{{cite book |last1=Morrell |first1=Ottoline |editor1-last=Gathorne-Hardy |editor1-first=Robert |title=Ottoline at Garsington: Memoirs of Lady Ottoline Morrell, 1915-1918|date=1975 |publisher=Alfred A. Knopf |location=New York |isbn=0-394-49636-1 |page=49}}</ref> 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 (artist)|Mark Gertler]] and [[Dora Carrington]], who were regular visitors to Garsington during the war.<ref>Haycock, David Boyd (2009). ''A Crisis of Brilliance: Five Young British Artists and the Great War''. London: Old Street Publishing.</ref> [[Gilbert Spencer]] lived for a while in a house on the Garsington estate.

During [[World War I]], the Morrells were [[pacifism|pacifists]]. They invited [[conscientious objector]]s 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.

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 manor house and its estate, and move to more modest quarters in [[Gower Street, London]]. In 1928, she was diagnosed with [[cancer]], which resulted in a long hospitalisation and the removal of her lower teeth and part of her jaw.<ref>Curtis, Vanessa (2002). ''Virginia Woolf's Women''. Madison, Wisconsin: University of Wisconsin Press, p. 108. {{ISBN|0-299-18340-8}}</ref>