The Phantom of Fifth Avenue: The Mysterious Life and Scandalous Death of Heiress Huguette Clark (14 page)

With Europe off-limits due to the war, the Clarks sought domestic vacation spots: a summer at Greenwich, Connecticut (where William Clark and Andrée humored Huguette by posing for pictures on the lawn with her and her dolls), a trip to Yosemite, and frequent summer vacations in Montana. It was important to Clark that his first and second families get along, and Anna acquiesced, agreeing to spend time with his older children and grandchildren. They often joined Will Clark Jr., his second wife, Alice, and son William Andrews Clark III (Tertius) at the family fishing camp in Salmon Lake, Montana. The senator enjoyed watching the athletic exploits of his grandson Tertius while Anna and the girls, used to the cloistered environs of Paris and Manhattan, reveled in hiking, biking, swimming, and the great outdoors.

Unlike her dreamy and obedient younger sister, Huguette, Andrée had become rebellious as a teenager, battling with their mother. A family Montana summer vacation in 1918 ended with a mother-daughter spat and a painful parting. Andrée left to accompany her father to Butte but wrote a conciliatory letter to her mother. Anna cherished her daughter’s words so much that she saved the note.

In the spring of 1918, reports began to spread from overseas about a deadly strain of Spanish influenza. The epidemic hit America with a vengeance that fall, setting off panic as it spread from city to city. Public events were canceled, people were urged to wear face masks, and the sick were quarantined. More than 20 million people worldwide would perish from the flu. The Spence School delayed the start of the school year in September 1918 to protect the students. Huguette and Andrée stayed safely at home. But their father continued to travel the country in his private train car, sending reports to his lawyer. “We are quarantined here, which I hope may have good results,” he wrote from Butte in early October. A few days later, Clark worried about his Arizona mine, writing, “In Jerome, Arizona, the town is quarantined and no trains are allowed to run and the disease is very malignant; about thirty persons have already died, including several nurses.”

Clark was en route to California to spend time with his son Will Jr., whose second wife, Alice, was seriously ill from an unspecified ailment. Shortly after William Clark’s visit, his daughter-in-law died, in December 1918. For Huguette and Andrée, who had gotten to know their aunt Alice on Montana vacations, this was a loss and a reminder of the fragility of life. Even though their elderly father was vigorous, they knew that he would not be around forever. This fear shadowed their adolescence.

On January 1, 1918, Andrée began keeping a diary that displayed her interest in current events. “Here in this little book I open my diary in the first year of peace, after four long years of horrible war. How thankful we all must be that at last Alsace-Lorraine is liberated… I begin, then, this little memorandum of my daily life and I wonder what feelings will prompt my pen… the mission of a young girl in this world is to render everybody around her happy and fill the home with love and peace… and so, New Year, I do not dread you.”

In precise and thoughtful prose, Andrée chronicled her daily life with such entries as “a walk with Daddy Dear on Fifth Avenue” and “We are preparing a surprise for Mother’s Birthday—Huguette is learning a piece on the violin.” Their concerned parents wanted to insure their continued health, and Andrée noted, using her sister’s nickname, that “Hugo and I were vaccinated for typhoid.”

The sisters usually got along well but Andrée would occasionally confide in her diary about her preteen sister’s pranks. “Huguette played a mean trick on me,” she wrote on January 5. “Miss Vidal was coming for her Spanish lesson and I asked Hugo if I could go out with them. She promised to wait for me and ran away!!! But I read a book and played with Tommy.” Tommy was the family dog.

Andrée described how Huguette had rebelled against her lessons. “Huguette was rude, stubborn and disagreeable with Miss Vidal yesterday. She was worse today. The poor little Spanish teacher was nearly driven to tears!” Yet Andrée also conveyed affection and concern for her sister (“Huguette had a little cold, she did not go to school.”) and mentioned that she wished Huguette had come along on an outing to see an art exhibit at Columbia.

Anna Clark had hired yet another well-qualified specialist to work
with Andrée, who suffered from a bad back. Alma Guy, the niece of a prominent New York judge, had trained as a dance instructor but lost her sight as a young woman. She had become a pioneering gym teacher at the Lighthouse for the Blind, an inspiring figure who encouraged blind children to test their limits. Guy had become a darling of the New York social set for organizing play groups for “poor little rich girls,” as one newspaper feature put it. This was the Suffragette era, with the country on the verge of opening up new opportunities for women; President Wilson gave a speech to Congress on September 30, 1918, supporting the right of women to vote, although the Nineteenth Amendment would not be ratified for two more years. Anna Clark brought the free-thinking Alma Guy into her home to help Andrée with back exercises. The teacher would wake Andrée up at 6:45 a.m. on school days for the stretching routine—much to Andrée’s dismay according to her diary, since the teenager preferred to sleep in. But Alma Guy quickly developed bigger ideas after spending time in the gargantuan Fifth Avenue mansion.

As Guy later told an interviewer for the Girl Scouts, she found Andrée Clark to be “shy, timid and afraid to call her soul her own. Her parents were so occupied with other things that they really did not know what was happening to their daughter in the hands of maids and governesses.” Guy encouraged Andrée to join the Scouts. Founded in 1912 by Juliette Gordon Low, a wealthy and artistically inclined widow, the Scouts encouraged girls to be self-reliant and consider careers outside the home, then a revolutionary notion. “Her mother was not sure that she wanted Andrée to be a Girl Scout, because it was too democratic for the daughter of a senator,” Guy said in an interview with a representative of the Girl Scouts. But Anna ultimately gave her blessing, allowing Andrée to join the Sun Flower Troop and thus break out of her rich-child bubble.

Andrée learned Morse code, how to build a fire in the woods, and bandage rolling for the Red Cross, during the Tuesday meetings at 99 Park Avenue, a town house built by a railroad mogul. Andrée wrote a triumphant letter to a friend on February 22, 1919, announcing, “I have now attended ten meetings of the Girl Scouts and I love it!! I am a Tenderfoot. I was ‘Sworn In’ last week. It is the most
impressive ceremony you ever beheld!” She confided to her diary: “Thanks to scouting, I have become what I am. I have changed from a moody and somewhat careless child to a scout who tries her best to be worthwhile, to follow the great noble and deep ideals. It is very hard sometimes… Scouting has been like a hand in the dark, has taught me how to climb, how to ‘be prepared.’ Scouting has been my guide.”

Huguette was not interested in trailing along in her sister’s wake. In fact, the athletic Miss Guy had been unimpressed with Huguette, saying in her Girl Scout interview that the thirteen-year-old “was always inclined towards social things and was quite a different type. She was bored with school and Scouting.” The gym teacher was apparently unaware that Huguette was pursuing a passion that consumed her free time: she had become serious about the violin. Her teacher, André Tourret, had returned to France during the war to volunteer his services and had remained in his native country after the World War I armistice. On the eve of heading off on summer vacation, Huguette wrote to him, in French, about her musical dreams.

That summer, Huguette accompanied her parents to the rural resort town of Rangeley Lake, Maine. The usual Clark entourage came along: Anna’s sister-in-law, Hanna La Chapelle, and daughter, Anna; Anna’s social secretary, Adele Marié; plus tutors Margarita and Jaquita
Vidal. Anna had been ill that winter, and the senator arranged to take a longer vacation than usual to spend time with her.

Separate arrangements had been made for sixteen-year-old Andrée, who went off early in the summer to Morris Manor in Oneonta to spend a month with her aunt and uncle, Katherine Clark Morris and husband Dr. Lewis Morris, and their teenage daughter, Katherine. Their large working farm estate had sheep, cows, chickens, and horses, but Katherine Clark Morris ran a formal household. (“She had finger bowls at the farm,” recalls Erika Hall, who married into the family and visited many years later. “She wanted everyone to behave.”)

Andrée wrote in her diary that she was sorry to miss Huguette’s birthday: “It is too bad I cannot be near her today.” It was a busy time for the Clark family: Andrée was scheduled to take a houseboat trip to Canada with her relatives and then join her mother and Huguette in Maine. William Clark was slated to spend August in Butte, joining his two sons for a civil trial over a business dispute.

This was a family built on independent relationships: Andrée wrote chatty letters that summer to “Dearest Daddy,” although her parents were together. The senator sent back affectionate replies, while Anna often sent brief but loving telegrams to her daughters. Andrée rhapsodized to her father on June 7 about the rural life at the Morris estate, writing, “The farm is just the same as when I left it, in the stalls, the dear old horses, Diek, Major Niger, Ethel and many others. The dogs recognized us and jumped up and barked wildly when we went to see them. How is New York? Just as hot and dusty as ever?” Once his vacation began, the senator wrote Andrée to tell her that all was well.

A week later, the ever-indulgent father wrote to tell Andrée that he was mailing her comic strips—
Bringing Up Father
and
Mutt and Jeff
—and
that he was spending his days playing golf “none too brilliantly” and croquet. He rhapsodized about the unspoiled landscape. “The evenings are calm and lovely and the declining sun casts a narrow streak of golden light… and this narrow streak extends for miles across the lake. I am sure that you will enjoy your visit later on…”

The senator stopped off in New York on July 13, en route to Butte, writing to Andrée, “The house seems very lonely with only me.” He wanted to reassure his daughter that “I left all in excellent health. I do believe your dear mother has improved quite a good deal… Huguette is growing very fast… Altogether it is a fine place and I am sure you will like it.”

Huguette was eager for her sister to turn up, anticipating her arrival in a letter that she wrote to her traveling father.