Dolores

Biography

Norine Fournier Lattimore (née Schofield; 11 March 1894 – 8 August 1934), known as Dolores, was an artists' model who was a fixture on London's bohemian scene between the First and Second World Wars. She posed for Jacob Epstein, for whom she played the role of "the High Priestess of Beauty" and who called her "the Phryne of modern times". The Hearst Press in America, who sensationally serialised her life story, called her The "Fatal Woman' of the London Studios". She was a contemporary of Betty May, Euphemia Lamb and Lilian Shelley.

== Early life ==

Norine Schofield was born at 23 Doughty Street, London, on 11 March 1894. In the British census of 31 March 1901, Norine is shown as aged 8 and living at 73 St Paul's Road, Islington with her father George E. Schofield (aged 37, described as a "vocalist"), her mother Maria (37, a French subject), her half-brother Leopole Kershaw (19), half-sister Melfredine Kershaw (actress, 17), half-sister Yvonne Kershaw (11) and her sister Mabel Schofield (3). According to the census, all of Norine's half-siblings were born in Rochdale, Lancashire, Mabel was born in London and her father was born in Ashton-under-Lyne. Norine's father, George Edwin Schofield, had a career as a professional dancer, had sung at the opera and was said to have provided the finance for several stage productions. By the time of Norine's death he had become the Reverend Schofield. Her mother was Vicomtesse Marie Honorine Melfredine de Fournier who was half French and half Spanish, Norine being the diminutive of Honorine. Norine would later claim to be the granddaughter of General Count Fournier. Norine attended Tiller's Dancing School at the same time as Gaby Deslys and appeared in several Tiller productions as a junior.

== Paris and Brussels == Some time after leaving the Tiller School, Norine travelled to Paris where she joined the company of L'Opéra Comique run by the ballet mistress Madame Mariquita and it may be around that time that she began to use the name Dolores. She met Sarah Bernhardt and appeared in the Folies Bergère for impresario André Charlot. She appeared with Adolph Bolm at the Théâtre Royal de la Monnaie in Brussels and the Alhambra and danced in front of the German Kaiser Wilhelm II for which he gave her a gold powder-box. She also danced with Anna Pavlova, and sang in opera and appeared in Ivan the Terrible. Despite her success on the continent, however, Dolores does not seem to have become well known in England until she later became a model for Jacob Epstein.

== Frank Amsden ==

In 1915, Dolores married Second Lieutenant William Frank Amsden of the Rangers at St Pancras Church, Ipswich, in which town he was stationed. They later divorced but she returned to him after her second marriage ended. He subsequently killed himself.

== Harry Sadler == In 1918, Dolores married her second husband, Captain Richard Harry Farwell Peckover Sadler in Kensington. According to details that were given in court during their divorce proceedings (1924), Sadler met Dolores while he was a cadet in the military and he married her while on leave. After he was demobilised, Sadler discovered that she had been living with Amsden but he forgave her. Later he left her and subsequently discovered that she was living with an older man (probably Jacob Epstein). After that, probably in a staged discovery to facilitate a divorce, he went to a house in Cranley Gardens with a solicitor's clerk at which he found Dolores in a bedroom with a man called Edward Bonneymead. Sadler's petition for divorce was not defended and he was granted decree nisi.

== Bohemian London ==