The Phantom of Fifth Avenue: The Mysterious Life and Scandalous Death of Heiress Huguette Clark (18 page)

The writer noticed that the copper mogul showed up at the local barber shop in the sleepy resort town “in a limousine with a chauffeur and armed bodyguard, followed by another limousine with a chauffeur and another bodyguard.” William Clark had survived the boisterous mining camps of Colorado, the outbreak of World War I, dangerous brain surgery, and a car accident, but as an octogenarian he was obsessed about his safety and that of his wife and daughter.

That August, Tadé Styka joined the Clarks in Santa Barbara to complete a series of portraits of the familly. “Eight times I have painted former United States Senator Clark’s picture,” he told the
Los Angeles Examiner
. “I also have painted Miss Huguette Clark, his beautiful daughter. Now I have been asked to come to California to paint Mrs. Clark.”

Tadé, who had developed a handsome physique similar to Charles Atlas, was now making as many headlines for his romantic life as his art. Tadé’s sensual portrait of film star Pola Negri, in a nearly backless gown, created a sensation, especially after newspapers reported that the duo had been a couple but the femme fatale had dumped Styka for Charlie Chaplin. The
Los Angeles Times
reporter Antony Anderson interviewed the artist and pronounced himself impressed, writing, “I found him as modest as anybody and quite unspoiled. Which says much for his strength of character… When you’re a Polish aristocrat and a genius, at one and the same time, and the haut-monde tries to make a pet of you, look out!”

As a man who loved art, music, and the beach, Tadé fit in well with the Clark household in Santa Barbara, admired by Huguette and her parents. But for Huguette, the idyll had to end with the start of the school year. She returned to Manhattan for her senior year at Spence, traveling home with a chaperone. Anna sent her daughter a telegram on September 24: “Dearest Huguette, We both send our dear love. Without you the house is as gay as a bell without a sound. Styka is at work on your portrait all afternoon. Love to all, Mother.” Tadé painted one portrait of Huguette playing the harp, plus another of Huguette wearing a pink dress and pearls.

Anna liked the speed of Western Union, sending Huguette another telegram a few days later: “I wish you all good luck in your senior year. All well here your father the same.” She also told Huguette that she was about to have family houseguests: Katherine Clark Morris and her physician husband, Lewis Morris; plus Charles and Celia Clark, who had separated but were showing up together in a temporary display of unity. Aware of Clark’s advancing age, his children were especially attentive.

To update her parents on her New York life, Huguette wrote to her father on October 5, 1924, listing her classes—including nineteenth-century literature, Bible literature, botany—and reassuring him that she was seeing a lot of her relatives. “The Clark girls are here in New York and have a nice apartment which I think is much nicer for them than staying at a hotel all winter as they have home cooking,” she wrote. Her mother’s sister, Amelia, who had recently married the retired mining engineer Bryce Turner, was in Manhattan watching out for Huguette, too. “Tante Amelia took me out to the theatre tonight and I had a lovely time,” Huguette wrote to her father. “The rooms here at the hotel are lovely and very comfortable… My bedroom is perfectly lovely. The sun pours in in the morning and I think it is most cheerful.”

William and Anna Clark had planned to return to New York by Thanksgiving, but he had unexpected business to attend to in Los Angeles, so Anna sent a telegram apologizing for the delay to “Dearest Hugo.” But the Clarks were back in time for Christmas, reopening their showplace of a home.

In early January Tadé Styka, who had lingered in California after a successful exhibit of his paintings at the Cannell and Chaffin gallery in Los Angeles, sent flowers to Huguette along with a teasing and affectionate letter, in French.

That was quite a flirtatious letter to send to an impressionable eighteen-year-old.

On February 28, 1925, Clark’s oldest daughter, Mary, married her handsome third husband, Marius de Brabant, who had worked his way up from a lowly clerk to become a Los Angeles traffic manager for the Union Pacific Railroad. As a wedding gift, Mary gave him $500,000. The wedding was held at a secret location, and family members refused to give the press any information about the guests or last-minute ceremony.

The reason for the secrecy became clear a few days later: William Andrews Clark was dying. He had contracted a cold that had turned into pneumonia and was raging through his body. At his Fifth Avenue mansion, Anna, Huguette, and the copper king’s two older daughters gathered at his bedside, holding a vigil during the final few hours as he lay there unconscious. Clark died on the evening of March 2. He was eighty-six years old, and his life had spanned the era from the stagecoach to the invention of the airplane, from a frontier country with only twenty-six states to a star-spangled flag with forty-eight stars. The contents of his wallet included the totems of his life: a copper penny, a newspaper clipping of the hymn “Abide with Me,” a
photo of himself with Anna, his newly renewed January 9 pistol permit, a ticket to the Metropolitan Museum, membership cards to the National Democratic Club and the Freemasons, and a business card for Tadé Styka.

Huguette had grown up worrying about her elderly father’s health, but he had always seemed indomitable. Their four-unit family was now down to her and her mother, and she felt very much alone.

Headlines coast-to-coast marked Clark’s death, and thousands of flowery words were typed on deadline to convey his only-in-America ascension from farm boy to copper Croesus.
SENATOR CLARK’S VIVID LIFE: HE WON FORTUNE IN WESTERN INDUSTRY, ACHIEVED POWER IN POLITICS AND ROSE TO FAME AS AN ART COLLECTOR
, summed up the
New York Times
headline. The most revealing accounts appeared in the Montana newspapers, where the pioneer’s passing was treated as the end of an era. In Butte, the city government ordered the flags to fly at half-staff.
FROM ALL SIDES COME TRIBUTES TO BELOVED MAN
, gushed the
Butte Daily Post.
Byron Cooney of the
Montana American
wrote a personal reminiscence, noting that Clark’s favorite song was “The Star Spangled Banner,” and that “he would stand on a chair, leading the chorus; at times he even stood on a table.”

There was a run on New York florists as more than four hundred arrangements were sent to Clark’s Fifth Avenue mansion, including President Coolidge’s offering of orchids and lilies of the valley. The service began with the hymn “Abide with Me.” Clark had planned his funeral to mimic that of his daughter Andrée, with the same minister presiding, Dr. Ernest Stires of St. Thomas Church, and the reading of his favorite poem, William Cullen Bryant’s “Thanatopsis,” a comforting paen about recalling the glories of nature on one’s deathbed, including such lines as: “The golden sun, the planets, all the infinite host of heaven, are shining on the sad abodes of death.” Montana senator Burton Wheeler attended along with the president of the Anaconda Company. But only the immediate family went up to Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx for the interment. Clark had put in writing that he wanted to be buried “without undue pomp or ceremony.”

What many mourners undoubtedly were wondering was: how would the Clark millions be divided up? The answer came in early April when Clark’s will, which he had signed on May 29, 1922, was filed in Butte for probate. The same flinty-eyed instincts that helped William Andrews Clark accumulate his fortune—gouging on the price of eggs, giving miners ruinous terms on bank loans—had returned with a vengeance in his dotage, and he had punctuated his will with hurtful clauses.

Clark’s last will and testament bluntly gave Anna and Huguette an eviction notice from the Fifth Avenue mansion and even decreed a precise date for vacating. By June 10, 1928, the day after Huguette’s twenty-second birthday, they needed to be out of the home in which they had lived since 1911. Clark then wanted the house to be sold—along with virtually all of the possessions other than the art—with the proceeds divided among his five children. If Anna and Huguette wanted any of the objects that they treasured, they could bid for them at auction just like everyone else. His motivation may have been fairness to both of his families, but the tone and arbitrary date were cruel. The senator had put aside $600,000 to pay for Anna’s and Huguette’s expenses while they were in the house, but if they did not use all of the money, it was to be parceled out equally to all of his children.

His estate was underestimated for tax purposes in Montana as being worth $48 million, although unverified estimates have put it as high as $250 million, about $3.3 billion today. New York authorities mounted a court challenge to probate the will in New York to impose local taxes but lost, thanks to Clark’s meticulous record keeping of his time out of state.

Anna received a bequest of only $2.5 million, although her husband indicated in his will that he had previously provided for her needs. Clark gave her the belongings from their Paris apartment at No. 56 Victor Hugo, which included silverware, rugs, hangings, and furniture. Bellosguardo was not specifically mentioned in Clark’s will, but he had made prior arrangements to give the estate to Anna. The senator included one clause in his will that appeared to be designed to protect Anna from any efforts by his older children to seize her
extraordinary collection of diamonds, emeralds, pearls, and rubies. Clark pointedly noted that if Anna had anything stored in a safe deposit box, no one could “hamper or hinder” her access.

He named Anna and his older four children as executors, but Anna promptly resigned, unwilling to tangle with her stepchildren. They had all tolerated one another while the senator was alive, but she still remembered their cool reaction when she initially joined the family and their unsubtle hints that she was an adventuress. Even though she would have received a fee as an executor, she preferred not to be in the awkward position of discussing money with her Clark relations. She had the security of a trusted adviser in place: her husband’s controller, William B. Gower, was an administrator of the estate.

Since Huguette was under twenty-one years old, her father put in special provisions including a sliding scale allowance: $5,000 per month at age nineteen, rising to $7,500 per month at age twenty. To protect her from fortune hunters, Clark decided to make the rest of her inheritance available in bits and pieces as she grew older. When Huguette reached the age of twenty-six in 1932, she would receive one-third of what she was due, and the remaining one-third portions would be paid when she turned thirty and then thirty-three. If she died before reaching age thirty-three and did not yet have children, the money would go to her half siblings. Anna was named Huguette’s guardian, with a backup of Clark’s oldest daughter, the serial monogamist Mary Culver Kling de Brabant.

Clark’s other four children initially received an estimated $15 million each—inflation adjusted, that’s $200 million today—in addition to previous gifts they had been given such as Clark’s stock in the Union Pacific Railroad. Clark was penurious in the rest of his bequests. He gave his three surviving sisters $25,000 each. His loyal butler, Frederick Dean, and his Butte housekeeper for more than twenty years, Annie Harrington, each received $2,500.

The surprising twist in Clark’s will was his plans for his art collection. Fancying himself a brilliant collector with impeccable taste, he wanted that legacy to be admired by future generations in the most prestigious museum in the country. Executives at the Metropolitan Museum were startled to learn that the copper king had bequeathed
the museum more than two hundred paintings plus statues by Donatello and Canova, tapestries, seventeenth-century rugs, antique lace, and Grecian and Etruscan antiquities.

But the gift came with a catch: Clark had insisted on conditions designed to infuriate the Metropolitan’s trustees, a group that included financier J. P. Morgan and artist Daniel Chester French, best known for his sculpture of Abraham Lincoln at the Lincoln Memorial. Clark demanded that the museum accept his entire collection and create a special gallery in which to display it. This was an all-or-nothing offer, a display of egomania of the first order and an attempt to impose his will from the grave.

Metropolitan Museum president Robert de Forest, a blue blood who had inherited his board seat from his wealthy father-in-law, acted as if he was offended by the bequest. He immediately announced that the trustees might turn down the art because of the onerous conditions. Telling reporters that he did not want to “tie the hands” of future administrators by forcing them to showcase the entire Clark collection, de Forest added that the museum lacked the gallery space to house the artworks. This contemptuous view was echoed in the newspapers. “Not all of the items are worthy of a place in the Museum,” sniffed the
New York Times
, adding that if the museum gave in to Clark’s wishes, the Met was in danger of becoming a “mausoleum to enshrine the fame of American collectors.”

In a unanimous vote, the Met trustees turned down the Clark bequest. His children were outraged. “Any city in Europe would have accepted it without question,” complained Katherine Morris, Clark’s daughter. The senator had foreseen this outcome, shrewdly designating the Corcoran Gallery as an alternate recipient. He had a long history with the museum, serving as a trustee, loaning paintings, and donating thousands of dollars for art prizes. After the women in the Clark family—Anna, Huguette, and Clark’s daughters from his first marriage, Mary de Brabant and Katherine Morris—eventually agreed to contribute $700,000 to fund a museum expansion, the Corcoran accepted the art.