Faithfull in Her Fashion

Novelists have often used public figures as models for their characters, sometimes thinly veiled, other times more disguised. The record-holding model in literature is probably Lady Ottoline Morrell, who was caricatured, often unkindly and unfairly, by D.H. Lawrence, Aldous Huxley, Graham Greene and Alan Bennett, among others. Although she managed to withstand her unflattering caricatures with grace, others have not found it so easy. Arnold Schoenberg was so mortified by the character of Adrian Leverkühn in Thomas Mann’s Doctor Faustus that he accosted a mutual acquaintance of his and Mann’s in their local supermarket to protest that he never had syphilis.

Ottoline Morrell’s larger-than-life qualities—her six-foot stature, flamboyant apparel, amply stocked stable of lovers including Bertrand Russell and Augustus John, her high-powered salons, combined with her...