Relationships
She met Wyndham Lewis in 1913. Robin Ody, a close friend and the executor of her will (in which all the beneficiaries were women), summed her up as "the Edwardian phenomenon of the new woman". She maintained a studio in the King's Road, Chelsea, London, as well as taking frequent trips to France. She also essayed into sexual freedom. Ody considered that she did not have a physical relationship with Lewis, one of the main reasons being her inclination towards her own gender. According to one of Lewis's lovers, Kate Lechmere, Dismorr had a difficult love affair with Wyndham Lewis, and was, along with fellow artist Helen Saunders, one of the "little lapdogs who wanted to be Lewis’s slaves and do everything for him". Lechmere gives this as the reason for Dismorr stripping naked in the middle of Oxford Street on one occasion.
In fact Saunders had twice turned down proposals from Walter Sickert, and in later life said that she thought it was not to the woman's advantage when two artists married, as she would inevitably relegate her own artistic needs below those of her husband's.
It must also be borne in mind that Lechmere's relationship with Lewis had ended bitterly, and she carried out a legal struggle to recover money owed her by him. Lechmere had provided all the funds to pay for the Rebel Art Centre, where the Vorticists first met in 1914—a fact which Lewis had to admit to Christopher Nevinson who had not wanted "any of these damned women" in the group.
Read more about this topic: Jessica Dismorr