Volume 2, Number 11 · July 9, 1964
Lady Ott
By Noel Annan
Memoirs of Lady Ottoline Morrell
by Lady Ottoline Morrell, edited by Robert Gathorne-Hardy
Knopf, 302 pp., $6.95
A great hostess is at the mercy of her guests: they analyze and dissect her. If her guests are artists she may be pilloried in paint or print, skewered for all time. If she publishes her memoirs, they are likely to be vapid, fluttering, or egotistical and confirm all that her enemies have said. To this Lady Ottoline Morrell is no exception. When she wants to say something important she begins to stammer or drone. Insignificant sentences succeed each other, and one is irritated by the self-pity and incompetence. But on another level she writes remarkably well and you catch something of the spirit that made her circle regard her with hostility and then again with affection, always as something of an enigma.
Review, 1379 words
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