Empty Mansions (60 page)

50
“Y
OU KNOW HOW TO MAKE
”
:
Mark Twain’s Correspondence with Henry Huttleston Rogers, 1893–1909
.

51
“I
AM IN FAVOR OF GIVING TO WOMEN
”
:
Proceedings and Debates of the Constitutional Convention Held in the City of Helena, Montana, July 4th, 1889, August 7th, 1889
(Helena: State Publishing, 1921).

52
“T
RUE OR FALSE
”
:
Victor Hugo,
Les Misérables
(New York: Carleton, 1863), 1.

53
“I
N REARING THE GREAT STRUCTURE
”
:
U.S. Congress, “Resignation Remarks of Senator W. A. Clark.”

54
“M
Y HOUSE IN
N
EW
Y
ORK IS NOW OPEN
”
:
“Society Not Worth While,”
The New York Times
, February 10, 1912.

55
“I
AM NOT LIKELY
”
:
Ibid.

1
A PHOTO OF
A
NDRÉE:
See, for example, “Senator Clark and Family Leave for the Coronation,”
Oakland Tribune
, June 4, 1911.

2
11B
, RUE DES
R
OCHES
N
OIRES:
From a letter addressed to Andrée Clark, HMC papers.

3
“S
OCIALISTS IN
G
ERMANY
”
:
Quoted by Baeyens,
Le sénateur qui aimait la France
.

4
PARADE OF A THOUSAND ANARCHISTS:
“Anarchists Spread Alarm in 5th Ave.,”
The New York Times
, March 22, 1914.

5
THE VIOLIN FOR
H
UGUETTE:
Huguette’s violin teacher was the Parisian master André Touret, a member of the Capet String Quartet, one of the leading chamber groups of the time.

6
THE GIRLS SIGNED
W
ILL’S GUEST BOOK:
The book is in the William Andrews Clark Memorial Library at UCLA.

7
“
TAP ’ER LIGHT
”
:
One can see details of mine operations on underground tours at the World Museum of Mining in Butte,
http://www.​miningmuseum.​org
. Tom Satterthwaite led a tour for Dedman in October 2011.

8
A WALKING STICK:
On display at the World Museum of Mining.

9
F
RANK
L
ITTLE WAS FOUND HANGED:
“I.W.W. Strike Chief Lynched at Butte,”
The New York Times
, August 2, 1917.

10
“M
Y
D
EAREST
L
ITTLE
M
OTHER
”
:
Andrée Clark to Anna Clark, letter, August 27, 1918, HMC papers.

11
“
SHY AND TIMID
”
:
Alma Guy, interview with an unnamed writer for the Girl Scouts, Girl Scout National Historic Preservation Center archives.

12
“
TOO DEMOCRATIC
”
:
Ibid.

13
“I
HAVE MADE EVERYTHING
”
:
Copies of Andrée’s letters are in the Girl Scout National Historic Preservation Center archives.

14
“S
COUTING REALLY MADE
”
:
Guy interview.

15
“
PROBABLY TUBERCULAR MENINGITIS
”
:
Andrée’s death certificate describes the quick course of her illness over four days. Maine death records, 1617–1922, via
Ancestry.​com
.

16
“
WAS MOST BEAUTIFUL
”
:
W. A. Clark to W. M. Bickford, letter, August 13, 1919.

17
“Y
ET NOT TO THINE
”
:
William Cullen Bryant, “Thanatopsis,” in
Thanatopsis and a Forest Hymn
(Boston: Joseph Knight, 1893).

18
“M
RS
. C
LARK HAS
”
:
Clark to Bickford, August 13, 1919.

19
“S
COUTING HAS BEEN A HAND
”
:
Andrée’s diary is quoted in Scouting publications in the Girl Scout National Historic Preservation Center archives and in Leslie Paris,
Children’s Nature: The Rise of the American Summer Camp
(New York: NYU Press, 2008).

20
H
UGUETTE STOOD GRIMLY:
Photographs of the presentation of the deed are in the Girl Scout National Historic Preservation Center archives.

21
C
AMP
A
NDRÉE:
The history of this camp is told in Paris,
Children’s Nature: The Rise of the American Summer Camp
, and in “The Story of Camp Andrée,” an updated, unsigned narrative in the Girl Scout National Historic Preservation Center archives.

22
A
GNES HAD BEEN TOLD:
Karine McCall interview with Dedman, July 6, 2012, and McCall deposition.

23
C
LASSES AT
M
ISS
S
PENCE’S:
The school’s story is told in Mary Dillon Edmondson,
Profiles in Leadership: A History of The Spence School, 1892–1992
(West Kennebunk, ME: Phoenix, 1991).

24
“I
BEG YOU TO CULTIVATE
”
:
Ibid.

25
“M
ISS
H
UGUETTE
C
LARK
”
:
“Social Notes,”
The New York Times
, May 4, 1922.

26
L
OUISE
W
ATT:
Her niece, Natalie Dejoux, was interviewed by Dedman, May 24, 2013.

27
D
OROTHY
W
ARREN:
Her recollections were relayed to Dedman by her friend Andrew Alpern.

28
“T
HEY TAKE GREAT DELIGHT
”
:
W. A. Clark to W. M. Bickford, letter, August 26, 1921. In her conversations with Paul Newell, Huguette described two trips to Hawaii with her parents, in 1915 and 1921.

29
UP TO FIVE MILES:
W.A. described his daily walks in a letter to W. M. Bickford, August 16, 1921.

30
SMOKING HIS CIGARS:
In a letter to W. M. Bickford dated December 29, 1921, W.A. thanked Bickford for a gift of cigars to go along with his Pennsylvania rye. He wrote, “You know I am very fond of the weed.”

31
LAID ROSES AT:
Huguette had a photograph of W.A. at the Arc de Triomphe (HMC papers), which was published in Baeyens,
Le sénateur qui aimait la France
.

32
“E
X
-S
ENATOR
C
LARK
”
:
“Ex-Senator Clark, Pioneer in Copper, Dies of Pneumonia: Taken with a Cold a Few Days Ago, He Succumbs Suddenly Here at 86; Family at His Bedside; He Had Been Actively Directing His Business Affairs Until He Became Ill; His Career Picturesque; Went to Montana with Ox Team and Acquired One of Biggest Fortunes in America,”
New York Times
, March 3, 1925.
The New York Sun
on the same day offered a hopeful view of his legacy: “Ex-Senator Clark will be remembered not for his stormy political record or the other events of his later life, but as one of the foremost figures in the development of the West.”

33
M
ORE THAN THREE HUNDRED:
“Clark Rites amid His Art Treasures,”
The New York Times
, March 7, 1925.

34
W
.A.’S WILL LEFT:
Last will and testament of W. A. Clark, Surrogate’s Court of the State of New York County, County of New York; available online at
NBCNews.​com
,
http://​msnbcmedia.​msn.​com/​i/​msnbc/​Sections/​NEWS/​William_​Clark_​Will.​pdf
.

35
E
VEN
C
LARK’S
Hope Venus:
W.A.’s sculpture is now described by the Corcoran Gallery as “after Antonio Canova,” a copy executed by an English artist after Canova’s death. It appears in David Finn,
Sculpture at the Corcoran: Photographs by David Finn
, with Susan Joy Slack (Washington, DC: Ruder Finn Press, 2002), 33–37. This book also includes other pieces from the Clark Collection mentioned here:
Eve
, by Rodin, 76–79;
Prometheus Attacked by the Eagle
, by Charles-Alexander Renaud, 32; and
Odysseus Bending His Bow
(or
Soldier Drawing His Bow
), by or after Jacques Bousseau, 24–27.

36
P
EOPLE WROTE TO THE
M
ET:
Letters are in the files of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. One writer, Julius Meyer, suggested, “Could not the Museum buy the Clark mansion, call it the Clark Annex, accept the collection, leave it where it is and, by thus keeping it all together, get around all the difficulties arising from stipulations of the will?” If the Met had followed that advice, the Clark mansion might still be open for public tours today. Another letter writer, Edward N. Perkins, deplored “the practice of seeking to employ generosity or public spirit as the vehicle of vanity.”

37
THE
M
ET SAID NO:
“Clark Art Rejected by Metropolitan Because of Terms,”
The New York Times
, April 21, 1925. In an editorial, the
Times
applauded the Met, saying, “In refusing Senator Clark’s art treasures the Metropolitan Museum suffers a great and in many ways an irreparable loss, but maintains its dignity and its integrity” (“Not a Necropolis,” April 22, 1925).

38
T
HE
C
ORCORAN QUICKLY:
The path that W.A.’s art took to the Corcoran Gallery is described in Coyle and Hartwell,
Antiquities to Impressionism
.

39
C
OOLIDGE OPENED THE
W. A. C
LARK
C
OLLECTION:
The Clark Wing, with its dark English paneling, wide marble staircase, and rotunda dome reminiscent of the Clark mansion, is still open today. It holds W.A.’s statue of Eve by Rodin, Fortuny’s
The Choice of a Model
, William Merritt Chase’s portrait of Clark, the
Hope Venus
(listed as “after Canova”), and rooms full of majolica, lace, and rugs. The Corcoran in 2013 sold a single Clark Persian carpet for $30 million.

40
H
UGUETTE AND HER HALF-SIBLINGS:
The fate of the Clark mansion was covered extensively in the newspapers. See, for example, “Clark Home Sold Under $3,000,000,”
The New York Times
, February 2, 1927.

41
MANY MANSIONS YIELDED:
Some of the Fifth Avenue mansions from this era survive, including homes owned by Henry Frick at Seventieth Street, James B. Duke at Seventy-Eighth, Payne Whitney at Seventy-Ninth, and Andrew Carnegie at Ninety-First.

42
A
T AUCTION, THE
C
LARK HEIRS:
“$70,721 in Two Sales of Senator Clark
Art,”
The New York Times
, January 12, 1926. See also “Rug Brings $16,000 at Clark Art Sale,”
The New York Times
, January 13, 1926, and “$9,600 Tapestry Sold at Clark Auction; Day’s Sale at Ex-Senator’s House Brings in $53,469—Total to Date Is $446,410,”
The New York Times
, January 14, 1926.

43
B
EFORE THE PINCH BARS:
The tours were described in “View Clark Home, Due to Be Wrecked,”
The New York Times
, February 23, 1927.

44
N
O ONE THOUGHT:
The fate of the Clark pipe organ was described in “Sad Fate of Famous Organ,”
The New York-Tribune
, June 26, 1932, and in Harris,
Organ Building in Los Angeles
, 79–80.

1
NEIGHBORS INCLUDED
W. C. D
URANT:
“ ‘Upstairs, Downstairs,’ Apartment Style,” Christopher Gray,
The New York Times
, April 5, 2012.

2
S
O SHE WENT SHOPPING:
Receipts for Anna’s furniture purchases, HMC papers.

3
A SECOND APARTMENT:
There has been uncertainty about which apartments the Clarks held at which times in 907 Fifth Avenue. What seems clear from documents and witnesses is that mother and daughter moved into the twelfth floor in late 1925, that Anna moved to the eighth floor sometime after, and that Huguette took that eighth-floor apartment after her mother died, while keeping 12W. Best evidence: A letter to Huguette from her attorney Frederick Stokes in late 1955, when she purchased 12W after the building became a co-op, says she had been occupying that apartment under a lease. Building records show Huguette bought 8W in 1956 and 8E in 1963. In 1964, a letter to Huguette from her decorator shows that she was fixing up her “new apartment” on the eighth floor. Both of Anna’s goddaughters, who visited in the 1930s and 1940s, refer in interviews to Huguette being upstairs. We don’t know what apartment the Gowers took or planned to take after the wedding, or when Anna moved from 12 to 8, or when Huguette acquired 8E. All mysteries.

4
C
HER
M
AÎTRE
: Huguette addressed Styka with this salutation in her letters, HMC papers.

5
C
ZECH
-P
OLISH FAMILY OF PAINTERS:
Tadé’s father, the painter Jan Styka (1858–1925), was known for his enormous paintings, particularly those with religious themes, including
Golgotha
and
Crucifixion
. Born in Poland, the son of a Czech officer, he ended up in France. Pronounce the family name however you like. It started in Czechoslovakia and Poland as STEEK-uh, but the family changed it in France and America to STICK-uh, before some in the family relented to the Americanized STYK-uh. Jan’s son Adam (1890–1959)
was known for vivid scenes of the people of Morocco and the Sahara. Tadé (1889–1954) favored more traditional portraits of prominent men and women.

6
G
YPSY
R
OSE
L
EE:
She described the episode in her biography,
Gypsy: Memoirs of America’s Most Celebrated Stripper
(Berkeley, CA: Frog Books, 1957), p. 258.

7
H
ARRY
T
RUMAN SAT:
The Harry S. Truman Library and Museum includes correspondence documenting Styka’s painting of the president’s portrait, which White House staff considered a way to curry favor with Polish American voters.

8
W
OMEN AT THE TIME:
Professor Marice Rose at Fairfield University helped assess Huguette’s painting style in relation to that of other women artists of the time.

9
H
ER PAINTINGS, OFTEN LIFE-SIZE:
The authors viewed many of Huguette’s paintings.

10
H
UGUETTE’S SHELVES WERE STACKED:
Photographs, HMC papers.

11
“
YOUNG LADY OF A GOOD FAMILY
”
:
HMC papers. Several letters from artists in Japan show Huguette’s search for appropriate names for the women in her paintings.

12
“
SORROW AND JOY
”
:
Translation by postdoctoral teaching fellow Ive Covaci of Fairfield University.

13
SEVEN OF HER PAINTINGS:
“Exhibition of a Group of Paintings by Huguette Clark,” Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., April 28, 1929, through May 12, 1929.

14
“H
ER PAINTINGS RECEIVED
”
:
Associated Press, news brief,
Evening Tribune
(San Diego), September 4, 1931.

15
PRINTED AS HOLIDAY CARDS:
Copies of Christmas cards with Huguette’s paintings are in HMC papers and were an exhibit to the testimony of Celia Tobin Gray Cummings, September 12 and 14, 2012, Depositions.

16
T
HE DELICATE BAREFOOT GEISHA:
Bill Dedman purchased the painting on eBay in 2010.

17
H
UGUETTE’S MOST AFFECTING PAINTING:
This painting was published when Huguette’s apartments went on sale in 2012 (“Selling the Hideaways of a Reclusive Heiress,”
The New York Times
, March 11, 2012).

18
T
HIS VIEW DISAPPEARED:
The bricked windows in Huguette’s apartments can be seen today. The 1959 date of construction of 900 Fifth Avenue is from “New Respect for White Brick Buildings,”
The New York Times
, May 25, 2008.

19
A
NEWSPAPER CARTOON IMAGINED:
The undated cartoon has this caption for four panels: “A Day in the Life of Little Huguette Clark. This Drawing Shows Her Having Breakfast in Bed. Here She Steps into Her Limousine, Bound for a Shopping Tour, to Spend Some of Her $333 a Day. In the Evening
She Dons Gorgeous Clothes and Sets Out for the Opera, or—She Attends a Debutante’s Dance Where, Because of Her Wealth and Beauty, She Is the Center of Attention.”

20
G
OWER HAD PRESENTED A PAPER:
William B. Gower, “Depletion of Mines in Relation to Invested Capital” (paper presented at Conference on Mine Taxation, Annual Convention of the American Mining Congress, Denver, November 16, 1920).

21
BRIDESMAID FOR HER HALF-NIECE:
“Miss Morris to Wed J. H. Hall, Jr.,”
New York Evening Post
, January 9, 1924.

22
“W
HY
A
MERICA’S
$50,000,000”: This syndicated feature was published in many newspapers, including
The Hamilton
(Ohio)
Evening Journal
, June 28, 1930.

23
“H
UGUETTE REFUSED
”
:
William D. Mangam,
The Clarks: An American Phenomenon
(New York: Silver Bow Press, 1941).

24
“I
T DIDN’T STAY LONG
”
:
Hadassah Peri testimony, August 13, 14, 15, and 17, 2012, Depositions.

25
“R
ENO
A
GOG
”
:
The full headline in the
Los Angeles Times
, April 17, 1930, was “RENO AGOG OVER CLARK KIN’S MOVE: Wife and Daughter of Late Senator Take Floor of Hotel for Summer.”

26
T
HE DEED WAS DONE:
Reno, Nevada, Second Judicial District Court, divorce decree, William Gower and Huguette M. Clark Gower, August 11, 1930.

27
H
UGUETTE SAILED AGAIN:
Passenger records via
Ancestry.​com
show that Huguette and Anna sailed to Hawaii from San Francisco on the SS
Malolo
on August 26, 1939.

28
“D
ADDY
C
LARK
”
:
Will’s letters to George Palé were provided by Palé’s grandson, Stephen Gruse. Letters are also available from the Montana Historical Society Research Center,
http://​mhs.​mt.​gov/​research/​default.​asp
.

29
“M
R
. C
LARK TOLD ME
”
:
George John Palé described Will Clark and the adoption plan in an affidavit in regard to the estate of W. A. Clark, Jr., County of Los Angeles on August 27, 1935, a year after Will died. Montana Historical Society Research Center,
http://​mhs.​mt.​gov/​research/​default.​asp
.

30
R
EMEDIATION OF THE WATERSHED:
The environmental devastation and halting cleanup of the Clark Fork is described in Brad Tyer,
Opportunity, Montana: Big Copper, Bad Water, and the Burial of an American Landscape
(Boston: Beacon Press, 2013).

31
“T
HE CUMULATIVE SENTIMENT HERE
”
:
Keith Edgerton to Dedman, February 26, 2010.

32
“
THOSE MEN, THOSE BRAVE PIONEERS
”
:
Proceedings and Debates of the Constitutional Convention Held in the City of Helena, Montana, July 4th, 1889, August 17th, 1889
(Helena: State Publishing, 1921), 476. As chairman of the convention, W.A. was speaking against taxation on mines. The full quotation
is as follows: “So I say to you, gentlemen, to whom it may seem an unfair and unjust discrimination in favor of this industry, that if you will study it as we have done, that you can arrive at no other conclusion than that it is the only method whereby the state can secure from this species of property a reasonable and just revenue, and at the same time protect those men, those brave pioneers, who have come out here and have made the wilderness blossom as the rose, and opened up these great mountains and brought their hidden wealth to light; yea, I say it is the duty of the members of this convention to throw such safeguards around this industry as are proper and just; this great industry that is the foundation of almost all the prosperity of this country; this industry that has made possible the building of railroads into this country; that has made this city of Helena, of which all Montanans are proud; that has built up the city of Butte and has made all the valleys and mountains of Montana productive.”

33
A
NNA BEFRIENDED OTHER CHILDREN:
This section is based on Tina Lyle Harrower and Ann Ellis Raynolds interviews with Dedman, beginning April 2012.

34
CALLED
A
NNA “LANI
”
:
Lani actually means “heavens” or “heavenly,” and sometimes “sacred chief” or “noble person.” It may have been a word Anna picked up on her visits to Hawaii.

35
D
EMOCRATS FOR
W
ILLKIE
: Associated Press, “Republicans Show Fund of $2,993,991,”
The New York Times
, November 2, 1940.

36
“S
HE HAS NEVER BEEN ABLE
”
:
Jerry Gray described his visit to Bellosguardo and his parents’ comments in his testimony on November 13, 2012, Depositions.

37
A
PHOTOGRAPH SURVIVES:
A copy of this restaurant photograph was an exhibit to the testimony of André Baeyens, October 8 and 9, 2012, Depositions.

38
S
HE KNEW THE NAMES:
See, for example, the testimony of Erika Hall, mother of Carla Hall Friedman, October 3, 2012, Depositions: “She would ask about every child. She would ask about the story that I told in my Christmas letter. She knew every child by name. She knew—she would ask how the children are, what they were doing.”

39
“D
EAR
P
AUL
. Y
OUR KIND LETTER
”
:
Huguette’s condolence card was an exhibit to the testimony of Paul Albert, November 13 and 14, 2012, Depositions.

40
“A
UNT
H
UGUETTE WAS VERY SHY
”
:
Jacqueline Baeyens-Clerté, testimony, October 9, 2012, Depositions.

41
S
HE SENT FLOWERS:
Receipts for Huguette’s flower purchases, HMC papers.

42
TAKING AFTERNOON LESSONS:
The Clark connections to Marcel Grandjany were described by Grandjany’s protégée, Kathleen Bride, a harp professor at the Eastman School of Music, and by Grandjany’s son, Bernard, in
interviews with Dedman, July 2010. Bride provided copies of unpublished and unrecorded works that Grandjany dedicated to the Clarks.

43
M
ARCEL
G
RANDJANY:
Grandjany was a former student of Anna’s first teacher in Paris, Alphonse Hasselmans.

44
“
WAS STRANGELY WITHDRAWN
”
:
Anna’s concertgoing and his introduction to Huguette are described by Henri Temianka in
Facing the Music: An Inside View of the Real Concert World
(Sherman Oaks, CA: Alfred, 1980).

45
“Y
OU SEE
C
ÉZANNE’S PORTRAIT
”
:
The incident with the portrait of Madame Cézanne was described by Karine McCall in her interview with Dedman, and she wrote a brief unpublished essay about that afternoon. The painting
Madame Cézanne in a Red Dress
is described in John Rewald,
The Paintings of Paul Cézanne: A Catalogue Raisonné
, with Walter Feilchenfeldt and Jayne Warman, 2 vols. (London: Thames and Hudson, 1996, 1997), and in the online catalog of the Museu de Arte, São Paulo, Brazil.

46
A
NNA AND
H
UGUETTE HAD LONG SPONSORED:
Anna’s sponsorship of the Loewenguth String Quartet is described in HMC papers and in letters from Artine Courbalk to Félix Lorioux. Courbalk’s correspondence about the Clarks to Lorioux was supplied by Lorioux’s son, Jean-Loup Brusson, and grandson, Fabrice Brusson.

47
“
DEEP INTO THE STRINGS
”
:
Temianka,
Facing the Music
.

48
“R
OBERT,”
A
NNA SAID:
McCall essay.

49
FOUR REMARKABLE INSTRUMENTS:
Temianka describes the history of the Paganini Strads in
Facing the Music
. Anna’s will left the instruments to the Corcoran Gallery. The Corcoran held the instruments until 1994, when, citing “extreme” financial pressures, it sought Huguette’s permission to sell the quartet. Again she chose the generous course, approving the sale. Japan’s Nippon Music Foundation paid a record $15 million, tripling the Corcoran’s endowment in one stroke. The Paganini Strads were played for the next nineteen years by the Tokyo String Quartet, which ended its run in 2013, leaving the Strads to find new players.

50
SOLD
M
ADAME
C
ÉZANNE:
Anna’s brooding portrait of Madame Cézanne ended up in the São Paulo Museum of Art in Brazil.

51
“N
OW
, R
OBERT
”
:
McCall essay.