Euphemia by Romilly Turton

Euphemia Lamb’s story is the extraordinary history of a woman born in 1887 into a family without money, education or status, yet she managed to break through class barriers by the sheer force of her charisma and beauty. Her iconoclastic, trailblazing life was a quixotic adventure of courage and bravado; carpe diem was the maxim she lived by. With a sequence of lovers and husbands, and a gregarious appetite for living, the choices Euphemia made were a sustained, authentic and ultimately profoundly moving rejection of the strictures and constraints others sought to impose on her. Euphemia was one of the most famous artists’ models of the early 1900s. She was a muse to Augustus John, Jacob Epstein, and James Dickson Innes. In Paris she became the lover of Henri-Pierre Roché, the author of Jules et Jim, and she was the inspiration for Catherine, the woman at the centre of the passionate menage à trois depicted in both the novel and Francois Truffaut’s film. Romilly Turton is Euphemia's grandson. This biography is based on archival research and uses unpublished private papers.