Of the many interesting women artists who discovered New Mexico in the early 20th century, the Honorable Lady Dorothy Brett, born in 1883 in London, stands out as a unique oddity.

Her father, Viscount Esher, served as an adviser to King Edward VII and had the means to see that Dorothy from an early age received instruction in art, which was her lifelong passion.

In her childhood, the girl attended the touring Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show. She was thrilled to view a stagecoach chased around the arena by an Indian war party dressed in feathered head gear.

Her fascination with American Indians, beginning that day, never left her.

In the early 1920s, Dorothy Brett ran into literary lion D. H. Lawrence and his German wife, Frieda Lawrence, in a trendy London cafe. He was loudly holding forth on the evils of modern society and drumming up enlistments for a commune of free spirits he proposed to establish in far-off Taos.

Not long before, the Lawrences paid a visit to Taos at the invitation of the town's grand doyenne, Mabel Sterne. D.H. Lawrence at once fell under the New Mexico spell. Later, he would say that there he had the greatest experience of his life. "It certainly changed me forever," he wrote.

As it turned out, Dorothy Brett was the only Londoner who responded to his call to join in founding the commune in remote America. It is tempting to regard the red-bearded, painfully gaunt D.H. Lawrence as a forerunner of the fantasy-driven gurus who ushered in the Taos Valley's epoch of hippy kingdoms during the 1960s.

Anyway, "the Brett," (or sometimes just Brett) as the Lawrences called her, came to New Mexico in 1924 and stayed the better part of her remaining life.

In her memoirs, Frieda Lawrence declared that the Brett "adored Lawrence and slaved for him. Her hero-worship was touching." But Frieda was also jealous of Brett.

As a young adult, Brett had slowly lost most of her hearing. To Taos she had brought with her an old-fashioned tin ear trumpet, having named it Toby.

Frieda reported that when visitors were on hand, "I yelled down the ear trumpet, her Toby, so that she would not feel left out of it."

Mabel Sterne Luhan, the former New York socialite who had married Taos Indian Tony Luhan, offered to give the Lawrences a small ranch in the mountains north of Taos to serve as their retreat.

D.H. Lawrence refused, saying: "We can't accept such a present from anybody." His wife spoke up and told him that the original manuscript of Lawrence's celebrated novel, Sons and Lovers, had arrived in the mail from England. "We'll give Mabel the manuscript [as payment] for the ranch." And that is exactly what was done.

Brett was there with them in the mountains, exercising exceptionally handyman skills, including carpentry. She and D.H. Lawrence worked well together.

The three women — Frieda, Mabel and Brett — competed for D.H. Lawrence's attention. The rivals often got along fairly well with one another, but sometimes not.

In the last years of his life, D.H. Lawrence suffered from tuberculosis. Failing, he and Frieda made a trip to Europe, where he died in 1930.

Brett remained alone on the ranch before moving into Taos. There she lived in poverty for several years, in one case obliged to share an outhouse in winter with neighbor and author Frank Waters.

She managed to survive by selling her paintings of Pueblo Indians, cranked out for the tourist market at give-away prices. In time, though, her art took on a mystical quality and began to be snapped up by museums around the country.

Brett's final years were spent in relative comfort, as something of an icon left over from the D.H. Lawrence era. She had survived both Frieda and Mabel.

The Lady Dorothy Brett died quietly in the Taos hospital, Aug. 27, 1977, just short of 94 years old.

Historian Marc Simmons is author of numerous books on New Mexico and the Southwest. His column appears Saturdays.