Empty Mansions (18 page)

H
UGUETTE
’
S UPBRINGING
was already artistically strong, with music lessons, painting lessons, and a family home that was essentially a public art gallery. Her sense of imagination was enhanced by her high school education in the 1920s at Miss Spence’s Boarding and Day School for Girls.

Miss Spence’s was one of the favorite schools in Manhattan for the daughters of the elite. Admission was a patent of American nobility. The same year that Huguette enrolled as a day student at the school, three of her half-nieces, her peers in age, enrolled as well. These were the daughters of Huguette’s half-brother Charlie. Karine McCall, the daughter of one of those nieces, Agnes Clark Albert, said that
Agnes had been told by her mother to keep an eye on Huguette, to watch out for her, as though Huguette needed protection. Her protector, Andrée, was gone.

Classes at Miss Spence’s met in a converted brownstone residence on West Fifty-Fifth Street, where the chauffeurs of the Carnegies, Fricks, and Clarks lined up at the curb.

The school’s lively, artistic tone was set by its founder, Clara Spence, a Scottish actress who loved to read Shakespeare aloud and could be talked into dancing the Highland fling. Miss Spence emphasized standards of scholarship, for this was the highest education most of her young ladies would receive. Of the fifty-six students in Huguette’s class of 1925, only fourteen were aiming for college. The rest, including Huguette, were on the marriage track. Within a few years after Huguette’s class of 1925, that ratio would reverse, with most Spence girls headed to college. Along with elocution and Latin, Huguette and her classmates studied sewing and practical math, needed to manage a home budget. The sewing class, in which the girls made baby clothes to be pinned into a scrapbook, was a Spence tradition.

The teaching was warm and the curriculum innovative, with options such as fencing lessons. The art classes appealed particularly to Huguette. She recalled that one of her dance teachers was Isadora Duncan,
known for her modern choreography, her outspokenness about political and sexual matters, and her flowing silk scarves, including the one that killed her when it became caught in the wheel of an automobile.

Miss Spence’s motto for her school was the Latin “
Non scholae sed vitae discimus,”
meaning “Not for school but for life we learn.” She urged her ladies to emphasize more than just book knowledge, more than reason:

Decorum, morals, and good judgment were expected. The girls wore simple skirts extending at least three inches below the knee. Parents were urged to send their girls to school without extravagances: no jewelry except a simple ring and a simple pin, no perfume, no scented face powder, no lipstick. Church attendance was mandatory. Spence girls curtsied to their elders. One student who received an overly affectionate telegram from her beau was surprised to learn that she had two choices, either leave school or announce her engagement.

Each spring the girls took turns playing host at a round of teas for their classmates. Huguette threw other parties as well. “
Miss Huguette Clark, daughter of Mr. and Mrs. William Andrews Clark of 962 Fifth Avenue entertained a party of girlfriends yesterday at Sherry’s,” the popular restaurant,
The New York Times
reported in May 1922, when Huguette was nearly sixteen.

At commencement, as the entire school filed in to Mozart’s “March of
the Priests” from
The Magic Flute
, the youngest led the procession. Huguette’s commencement was held at the old Waldorf-Astoria, where in five years would rise a new structure, the Empire State Building. In a photo, the girls are dressed all in white, holding flowers. Everyone has the newly fashionable short hairstyle. Huguette would become the last surviving member of the Spence class of 1925, but we do have a few memories of her from classmates, secondhand.

Eighteen-year-old Huguette, middle front, with her 1925 graduating class at Miss Spence’s Boarding and Day School for Girls. Even at the most exclusive school in New York, she was far wealthier than nearly all of her classmates
. (
illustration credit5.1
)

Louise Watt, a banker’s daughter, recalled having good times with her, including a clandestine visit to a speakeasy—the proper Spence girls exploring the city during Prohibition, when whom should they see at a table but Jimmy Walker, the mayor of New York. Louise described Huguette as her best friend.

A different portrait came from
Dorothy Warren, a classmate from an old Yankee family and a year older than Huguette though in the same grade. She described her as always polite and gracious but often not socializing with the other girls. Most of the Spence girls had visited one another’s houses, but none had been to the Clark home. Warren said that
Huguette was something of an odd bird, and the girls who knew her only casually were flummoxed by her. Was she too proud of her family, which was so much richer and better traveled than most of the other families? Was she embarrassed about her father’s wealth or his failed campaign for social standing? The other girls couldn’t quite figure her out.

WITHOUT POMP OR CEREMONY
 

O
NE OF THE PHOTOGRAPHS
in Huguette’s album, one she particularly liked to share in her later years, shows her in an American Indian costume and feathered headdress, sitting beside her father. She looks about seven years old, which would make him about seventy-four. The family was on a sojourn in Greenwich, Connecticut, known for its art colony. Huguette had taken a fall while playing in the yard and had cried a bit before the photo was taken. Her eyes are puffy, but she’s smiling, and her arm is draped across the old man’s shoulder. W.A. looks dapper in his black sport coat, white pants, and white nubuck shoes, his gray hair billowing as he hugs her proudly.

Given Huguette’s shyness, in contrast to her outgoing father, it’s not surprising that there were Clark family stories claiming that W.A. wasn’t keen on her, even that he wasn’t actually her father, but these tales are belied by his warm mentions of her in his correspondence. In 1921, for example, W.A. wrote to a friend while he, Anna, and Huguette were on a Hawaiian vacation, describing with enthusiasm how mother and daughter sunned and rode surfboards at Waikiki Beach:
“They take great delight in swimming and the beach at the Moana Hotel is very good. The board riding is particularly interesting to them.” Later he wrote, “They enjoy the swimming very much and go in generally twice a day.” In this letter, he refers to his daughter affectionately as Huguetty.

Huguette hugs her dapper father on a family weekend in Connecticut about 1912. He showed great affection for his youngest child, whom he called Huguetty. She called him Papa.
(
illustration credit5.2
)

W.A.’s wife and children showed him great affection as well. A relative recalled Anna snuggling up to the old man and tugging on his whiskers playfully, with frolicsome affection.