WOOLF, Virginia (1882-1941). A collection of unpublished letters comprising: Six autograph letters signed ('V' and 'Virginia'), one autograph letter and three typed letters signed, including autograph amendments and a postscript, to Lady Ottoline Morrell ('Dearest Ottoline'), 52 Tavistock Square, 12 June 1931 and 'Tuesday 18th [October 1932]' - 'Sunday night [4 December 1933]', 13 pages, 8vo, and 4 pages, 4to, in autograph (some on blue paper) and 8 pages, 8vo, and 5 pages, 4to , typed, 9 autograph envelopes 'GREAT MEN BORE ME TO DEATH': '[W]hat I wanted to ask ... was how on earth does Ottoline suck enough nourishment out of the solitary male. I was thinking of your tea parties & I thought of Stephen Spender talking about himself & of old Tom Eliot also enlarging on the same theme, & then in comes shall we say Siegfried [Sassoon] & it all begins again. Now in human intercourse I like the light to strike on more angles than one. And all clever men become frozen stalactites. And I hate being a passive bucket ... . In short great men bore me to death'. A delightfully entertaining series of letters including reflections and generally waspish comments on members of the Bloomsbury set and the (sometimes ungrateful) beneficiaries of Lady Ottoline's legendary hospitality, also giving advice on her writing, appreciating her kindnesses and proposing more 'owlish meetings'. D.H. Lawrence, who cruelly caricatured Lady Ottoline in Women in Love ('the act of a little guttersnipe lad'), is singled out for a particular thrust: 'I was so angry I could hardly finish his letters [published 1932]. There you were, sending him Shelley, Beef tea, lending him cottages, taking his photograph on the steps at Garsington - oft stuffing gold into his pocket - off he goes, has out his fountain pen & - well, as I say I haven't read it'. The composer Ethel Smyth 'came in looking like a vast yet shabby tom cat'; the painter Henry Lamb's last letter is 'disgusting', in 'its malice, its spite, its pettiness'; the marriage service of [Lord] David [Cecil] 'seemed to me merely fit for savages about to dine off human flesh'. Encouraging Ottoline to continue her 'very remarkable and beautiful' memoirs, Woolf urges her to be 'freer & deeper & wider & less concerned with ridiculous trifles like grammar & the accurate use of language', nor to care for 'what is called "other people's feelings"'. One letter defends the objectivity of women: 'I can think of a dozen straight off who seem to me to think of life and art ... as impersonally as I do', and shows incomprehension of 'the maternal attitude to grown up people ... And I loathe being taught and inspired'. Other subjects include her own fragile health and oversensitivity ('Even a yellow brocade sometimes blazes in my eyes till I almost faint'), the exhaustion of writing, and of parties inevitably leading to 'seeing people'. Virginia Woolf's friendship with Lady Ottoline was rekindled when in 1928 the Morrells left Garsington Manor (where she had found the hospitality 'too orderly for her taste' [M.Seymour. Ottoline Morrell , 1992, p.232]) for Gower Street, a short distance from Tavistock Square in Bloomsbury. By the period of the present letters they were close, and Virginia deeply appreciative of Ottoline's loyalty and kindness to those whose creative talents she admired. (10)
WOOLF, Virginia (1882-1941). A collection of unpublished letters comprising: Six autograph letters signed ('V' and 'Virginia'), one autograph letter and three typed letters signed, including autograph amendments and a postscript, to Lady Ottoline Morrell ('Dearest Ottoline'), 52 Tavistock Square, 12 June 1931 and 'Tuesday 18th [October 1932]' - 'Sunday night [4 December 1933]', 13 pages, 8vo, and 4 pages, 4to, in autograph (some on blue paper) and 8 pages, 8vo, and 5 pages, 4to , typed, 9 autograph envelopes 'GREAT MEN BORE ME TO DEATH': '[W]hat I wanted to ask ... was how on earth does Ottoline suck enough nourishment out of the solitary male. I was thinking of your tea parties & I thought of Stephen Spender talking about himself & of old Tom Eliot also enlarging on the same theme, & then in comes shall we say Siegfried [Sassoon] & it all begins again. Now in human intercourse I like the light to strike on more angles than one. And all clever men become frozen stalactites. And I hate being a passive bucket ... . In short great men bore me to death'. A delightfully entertaining series of letters including reflections and generally waspish comments on members of the Bloomsbury set and the (sometimes ungrateful) beneficiaries of Lady Ottoline's legendary hospitality, also giving advice on her writing, appreciating her kindnesses and proposing more 'owlish meetings'. D.H. Lawrence, who cruelly caricatured Lady Ottoline in Women in Love ('the act of a little guttersnipe lad'), is singled out for a particular thrust: 'I was so angry I could hardly finish his letters [published 1932]. There you were, sending him Shelley, Beef tea, lending him cottages, taking his photograph on the steps at Garsington - oft stuffing gold into his pocket - off he goes, has out his fountain pen & - well, as I say I haven't read it'. The composer Ethel Smyth 'came in looking like a vast yet shabby tom cat'; the painter Henry Lamb's last letter is 'disgusting', in 'its malice, its spite, its pettiness'; the marriage service of [Lord] David [Cecil] 'seemed to me merely fit for savages about to dine off human flesh'. Encouraging Ottoline to continue her 'very remarkable and beautiful' memoirs, Woolf urges her to be 'freer & deeper & wider & less concerned with ridiculous trifles like grammar & the accurate use of language', nor to care for 'what is called "other people's feelings"'. One letter defends the objectivity of women: 'I can think of a dozen straight off who seem to me to think of life and art ... as impersonally as I do', and shows incomprehension of 'the maternal attitude to grown up people ... And I loathe being taught and inspired'. Other subjects include her own fragile health and oversensitivity ('Even a yellow brocade sometimes blazes in my eyes till I almost faint'), the exhaustion of writing, and of parties inevitably leading to 'seeing people'. Virginia Woolf's friendship with Lady Ottoline was rekindled when in 1928 the Morrells left Garsington Manor (where she had found the hospitality 'too orderly for her taste' [M.Seymour. Ottoline Morrell , 1992, p.232]) for Gower Street, a short distance from Tavistock Square in Bloomsbury. By the period of the present letters they were close, and Virginia deeply appreciative of Ottoline's loyalty and kindness to those whose creative talents she admired. (10)
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.jpg "Source: Christie's")
.jpg "Source: Christie's")
