Wife Erica Brausen, Partner Raoh Schorr, Yorke Kennedy
Queer Places:
Bolton Studios, 17B Gilston Rd, Kensington, London SW10 9SJ, UK
150 Willow St, Brooklyn, NY 11201
103 E 71st St, New York, NY 10021
69 Benedict Rd, South Salem, NY 10590
Clem Haizelden (August 17, 1921 - September 8, 1990) had a marriage of convenience to Erica Brausen; when they married Haizelden was the lover of Brausen's landlord at Bolton Studios, Raoh Schorr. Clem Haizelden, lost touch with his entire family after 1951, his little sister, an artist herself, married the sculptor William Tucker. Clem and Erica continued to see each other in London and they never divorced.
Schorr's own home was in the elegant Chelsea street of Mulberry Walk, where Joe Carstairs and Ruth Baldwin had lived during the Elvira Barney trial. Clem lived there with Schorr in 1946/7, working alongside him at Bolton Studios after his wartime service.
Clem was the love of Schorr's life but in March 1947 Clem left England behind and travelled to Ontario then moved on to Baltimore, Maryland. In 1951, Clem travelled from New York back to London to say goodbye to one of his sisters before she emigrated to New Zealand. He never saw his family again. He stayed with Schorr on this short trip but was home in New York by Christmas, where his family believed him to be running an hotel.
In 1951 he was living at 150 Willow Street, an early nineteenth-century Federal Style building in Brooklyn Heights. Arthur Miller lived right next door at number 151 until he left to marry Marilyn Monroe in June 1956.
In May 1957, Clem applied for and was granted US naturalization. By now he had moved to 103 East 71st Street with a new partner, Yorke Latimer Kennedy (April 25, 1919 - February 27, 2002), a former student at Parson School of Design, with whom he ran a very successful antiques and design company; their rich and glamorous clients included Jackie Kennedy and Barbara Hutton. Clem made an annual visit to London to celebrate Schorr's birthday and returned with ceramics and watercolours from the Schorr studio to sell to American clients. Schorr occasionally travelled over to New York as late as the 1980s to help Clem and Kennedy when they had major commissions to deliver and the three of them took regular holidays together in the Caribbean. They also often holidayed together with Schorr's sister and her family in Switzerland at their hotel on the shores of Lake Lucerne, and the Swiss nieces remained close to Clem and called him Uncle.
Clem died on 8 September 1990 about seventy miles north east of New York in their last home on Benedict Road, South Salem, Westchester County, a pleasant white clapperboard house set in a two-acre garden. The Swiss nieces recall this home as a wonderful barn, not revealing from outside that it was filled with antiques and art. Clem's death was the result of a fall while pruning an apple tree: he had supper with Kennedy after the accident, and did not wake up the next morning. Clem effaced himself entirely from the records of Erica Brausen's life and from his own family.
My published books:
