Queer Places:
303 E San Fernando St, San Jose, CA 95112
Calvary Catholic Cemetery, 2650 Madden Ave, San Jose, CA 95116
Consuelo
"Connie" Urisarri Ford aka Althea Urn (April 25, 1903 - October 20, 2000) was an American writer.[1]
She is best known for her novels, especially The Head of Monsier M. (1961, Crown).[2] Her will established the Lyric Poetry Award.
Kirkus Reviews said of her "(presumably) first novel"[3] Five Miles from Candia (1959, Holt), "The author has a knack for scenic descriptions and a useful collection of facts about the customs and decor surrounding the life of royalty in ancient Crete, but the characters, with their highly predictable emotions and actions, are robots, developed according to the most obvious rules of lust."[4]
Blessed with a haunting, thoroughbred beauty and married in 1918 to an
adoring writer and diplomat, Pierre Combret de
Lanux, Eyre de Lanux
relocated to Paris after her wedding. There, she became known as Eyre—a
striking and androgynous rebranding—and drifted into the heady orbit of the
lesbian heiress and poet
Natalie Clifford Barney, a self-proclaimed Amazon
who embraced her fellow American’s beauty, spirit, and fluid sexuality. “I
not only know the way to you, but the way to bring others to you.…” a
smitten Barney wrote. “A turn of your head, a turn of your soul—I am there.”
Other dalliances followed, with artist Romaine Brooks (who painted her while
also carrying on an affair with Barney), Surrealist poet
Louis Aragon (who
wrote at least one poem about her), novelist Pierre Drieu la Rochelle (he
complained that he couldn’t successfully romance her away from “her impotent
husband, her dykey friends”), and carpet designer
Evelyn Wyld, her business
partner. The amorous daisy chain also included Consuelo Urisarri Ford, a
married American novelist, to whom Eyre wrote impassioned love letters
decorated with nude images of them both.
Consuelo Carmen Brazee y López Palma was born on April 25, 1903, in Manila, Metro Manila, Philippines.
She was the daughter of Albert Brazee and Consuelo Brazee and had the
following siblings: Albert Brazee, Jr.; James Brazee; Helen Murray; Mabel
Palmer; Charlotte Marie Copping; Elizabeth Brazee and Florence Brazee. She
married Byron Ford (died 1957) and had the following children: Edward Byron Ford, Jr.
(born 1926); Henry A. Ford; Consuelo C. Ford; and Stanley J. Ford.
She died on October 20, 2000, in San Jose, Santa Clara County,
California.
Eyre
de Lanux and Consuelo Urisarri Ford by Arnold Genthe
My published books:
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