The Phantom of Fifth Avenue: The Mysterious Life and Scandalous Death of Heiress Huguette Clark (20 page)

The new year of 1928 entered with a cold snap and brought with
it a round of celebrations for Huguette and her fiancé. Carolyn and Anne Storrs were so happy about the engagements in their social set that they gave a dinner for four couples, including Huguette and Bill, at the Ritz-Carlton, then took their guests to a performance of
Rosalie
at the New Amsterdam Theatre. The Gershwin musical featured an airy merengue of a plot about a princess who comes to America and falls in love with a West Point lieutenant, with a score including, “How Long Has This Been Going On?”

Huguette was given a formal engagement party by Lewis Latham Clarke and his wife, the parents of her Spence classmate Florence Kip Clarke. A descendant of Emperor Charlemagne via his father and one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence via his mother, the pedigreed Clarke was the president of the American Exchange National Bank. This was as upper-crust Manhattan as one could get. An orchestra played for eighty guests at the Clarke home at 998 Fifth Avenue. The popular songs that season included “Someone to Watch Over Me.” Huguette had never enjoyed being the center of attention, but this was her moment to take a whirl on the dance floor. Despite her father’s dire warnings—that no one would love her for herself; her money was the draw—she believed she had found the man of her dreams.

That March, Huguette, her fiancé, and her mother went to Washington for the Corcoran Gallery’s official opening ceremony for the newly built William Andrews Clark annex. President Calvin Coolidge, who arrived at 9:10 p.m., gave his arm to Anna Clark, and they led a procession to the entrance of the new wing. Silent Cal cut the cord, and the crowd applauded; news reports noted that Coolidge responded with a broad smile. Designed by architect Charles Platt, known for creating the Freer Gallery in Washington, the pink granite building included seven rooms to display the former senator’s artworks, including a special room for the Salon Doré. For Huguette this evening was a chance to show her husband-to-be the treasures that had surrounded her as a child.

The
Washington Post
gushed about Clark’s gifts in a grateful editorial, noting, “Some of these rarities are beyond price, notably the Gothic rugs and thirteenth century windows…” But the
New York Times
art
critic Elisabeth L. Cary took a more acerbic view of the Corcoran’s new offerings. She bluntly stated that as a collector, Clark was the victim of his own taste: “He bought only what pleased him, and if, as not infrequently happened, he was deceived in the quality of his purchases he accepted disclosure philosophically and shouldered the blame.”

Huguette’s engagement had been announced in December, but she and her mother were coy about setting a wedding date. Anna arranged to rent and decorate an eighth-floor apartment in the same building, 907 Fifth Avenue, for herself, so that her daughter and Bill Gower could begin married life on the twelfth floor. Huguette had been a bridesmaid and a guest at the weddings of many friends, and it was expected that Huguette would reciprocate with a large wedding at her family’s usual religious locale, St. Thomas Church on Fifth Avenue.

So New York society was taken aback when Huguette opted for a small wedding at Bellosguardo on August 17, 1928. “The wedding will be extremely quiet, with only members of the family present and there will be no attendants,” according to an item in the local Santa Barbara newspaper. A wedding photo shows the bride and groom with Anna Clark; William and Helen Gower; Anna’s sister, Amelia, and her husband, retired mining engineer Bryce Turner; Anna’s brother, Arthur La Chapelle, and his wife, Hanna; and Dr. and Mrs. William Gordon Lyle and their impish, blonde, four-year-old daughter, Tina.

Despite the understated ambience, Huguette wore an elaborate white wedding gown with a veil and a train that stretched out six feet, and she carried an enormous bouquet of flowers. Just a week earlier, she and Bill had happily joined in the annual Santa Barbara fiesta celebration, featuring polo matches and garden parties. But now in the group wedding portrait, Huguette seemed nervous and downcast. In a formal photograph given to the newspapers, the newlyweds look more serious than joyous.

For Bill Gower, marrying Huguette elevated his social status by several notches. In the discussions leading up to the wedding, Anna and Huguette had agreed to give the groom a large dowry estimated at around $1 million. William Andrews Clark had settled money on Anna La Chapelle when they married. Perhaps Anna saw this as a way
to try to start off her daughter’s marriage on a more equitable footing. But to put it bluntly, William Gower was being paid to marry Huguette. “They were so mismatched,” says Gordon Lyle Jr. “I don’t know why she married him, whether she got pushed into it or lured into it.”

From the groom’s perspective, the substantial sum quieted any qualms he might have felt about embarking on matrimony with his sheltered and unworldly bride. He could not lose: he would either be rich and happy with Huguette, or he could move on with his finances assured for life.

The couple honeymooned in San Francisco: their wedding night was a disaster. Huguette could never bring herself to reveal the full details. But later in life, when her friend Suzanne Pierre and her nurses asked why her marriage did not last, Huguette always referred to how unprepared she had been for the shock of sex. She used phrases like, “It hurt, I didn’t like it.” As Kati Despretz Cruz says, “Huguette told my grandmother [Suzanne Pierre] that the marriage was never consummated.”

Many years later, Huguette’s assistant, Chris Sattler, was organizing the thousands of books in her apartment when he came across a poignant find: a dozen how-to sex manuals. “They were all from the 1930s, after her marriage,” says Chris. “They were very clinical, unhelpful, written by doctors. But she was interested in knowing about it.”

Despite their apparent sexual incompatibility, the newlyweds did not immediately separate. A month after their marriage, a syndicated article analyzed the financial inequities in the marriage and concluded that the couple would not last together.
A $30-A-WEEK HUSBAND FOR THE $50,000,000 HEIRESS: THE NEWEST MONEY ROMANCE-DOMESTIC PROBLEMS OF THE POOR LITTLE RICH GIRL CLARK AND HER DAILY $333
was the headline of the article in the
Salt Lake Tribune
. “The average young man refuses to live on his wife’s money,” wrote society writer Eleanor Town. “He thinks it is a disgrace. And of course, that is the manly and proper way for him to feel.” The author added that for the couple to try to live on Gower’s meager income would be equally disastrous: “Who pays the club dues? Is Mr. Gower’s
income sufficient to enable him to travel with her friends? If not, what happens?”

In keeping with the national obsession with Huguette, on October 28, 1928, an item appeared in the
Salt Lake Tribune
reporting that she and her husband would be passing through Salt Lake on the Union Pacific at 9:30 p.m. “The young couple are returning from a honeymoon spent in Los Angeles,” the newspaper said. “Gower is to enter Columbia upon his return and begin the study of law.”

William Gower moved into Huguette’s apartment at 907 Fifth Avenue. The overly blushing bride marked her return to Manhattan by treating herself to jewelry. On October 31, 1928, the new Mrs. William MacDonald Gower went to Cartier and splurged on $15,500 earrings combining emeralds, pearls, and diamonds, a $2,640 diamond wristwatch, and a $3,125 diamond bracelet. In January, she returned to the store to purchase a $320 gold cigarette case. The Gowers continued to appear in public as a couple with their whereabouts charted in the society columns, such as attending a wedding anniversary party for friends at the ever popular Sherry’s. On April 8, Mrs. Gower bought herself a Steinway piano, but as always she remained more passionate about painting than music.

That dedication was rewarded in a way not normally available to fledgling artists—with a show in a major museum. The Corcoran Gallery freed up wall space from April 28 to May 19 for a showing of seven paintings by Huguette Clark, who used her maiden name for the exhibit. The museum’s gratitude to the Clarks shone through the catalogue, yet the curator went beyond boilerplate politeness, announcing that the twenty-two-year-old heiress was creating impressive work:

“From the day of her birth Huguette Clark has lived in an artistic atmosphere. She has been surrounded by many treasures of various Schools and Periods, contained in the notable art collection bequeathed to this gallery by her father, the late William Andrews Clark. She has had the benefit of extensive European travel; and added to these advantages, she is endowed with unusual natural talent.”

Huguette included two scenes of Central Park as viewed from her Fifth Avenue home, one of the sparkling oasis at night and the other a
pristine wintry scene after a snowstorm. The show also included two intricate portraits of her dolls, a party scene, a study of hydrangeas, and a work entitled “Portrait of Myself.”

A self-portrait by Huguette, included many years later in a Christie’s catalogue, might have been the one shown at the Corcoran. In the painting, the artist is standing in front of a canvas holding a brightly-hued palette of paint, and turning to look over her shoulder. She wears a flowing rose-colored painting jacket, her wavy, blonde hair shines, and her mouth is a lipsticked red bow. She looks serene, an artist deeply involved with her work, taking a momentary break. The painting is striking and well-executed.

The Corcoran exhibit was a triumph for Huguette. Her painting teacher, Tadé Styka, was in Paris but returned to the United States to see the show. A few weeks later, Huguette, her husband, and her mother attended a dinner and concert on May 9 at the home of Huguette’s half sister Mary de Brabant. The guests that night included Huguette’s other half sister, Katherine Morris, and her husband, Lewis Morris, plus Dr. William Gordon Lyle and his wife, Leontine. The grand de Brabant stone mansion at 7 East Fifty-First Street, on a block then known as Millionaire’s Row, would later be occupied by the jewelry store Harry Winston. This was a festive family evening, with no apparent sign that trouble was bubbling just below the surface.

The bombshell dropped five days later in the Cholly Knickerbocker column in the
New York American
. “The distressing task of reporting, exclusively, that Huguette after nine short months of married life is about to divorce ‘Bill’ Gower comes to my lot,” Knickerbocker wrote. “The possession of untold wealth, all the luxuries vast wealth will provide and enviable social position failed to make the union a success and about a week hence, Mrs. Clark and Huguette will start westward to spend the summer at their palatial estate in Santa Barbara, formerly the home of Mrs. William Miller Graham. From Santa Barbara, Huguette will go to Reno to establish residence and seek a divorce. The above is certain to cause a sensation in society for the Gowers were supposed to be happy and there have been no rumors of an estrangement.”

Even though her marriage was over, Huguette did not actually go to Reno for another year. But she did immediately sign a new will, leaving everything to her mother. As Christie Merrill, a San Franciscan whose mother, Aileen Tobin, attended Spence with Huguette, recalls, “My mother told me that the family paid him a million to marry Huguette, and after he got the money, he ran off.” Cholly Knickerbocker would later write in a follow-up column about Huguette that at the time of her marriage, she had given “her none-too-well dowered bridesgroom a cool million dollars so he would ‘feel free.’ He felt so ‘free’ Huguette had to divorce him and resume use of her maiden name.”

That was an inside reference to Gower’s romantic life. Within months of separating from Huguette, William Gower began squiring around a new woman who would never have wedding-night jitters: Constance Baxter Tevis McKee Toulmin.

Gower’s new love collected wealthy husbands the way some women add charms to their bracelets. The daughter of rancher George Baxter, who served as the territorial governor of Wyoming, and his Southern belle wife, Constance (sometimes known as Cornelia) had been shipped to convent school in Paris. It didn’t take. At age eighteen, she jilted her wealthy Denver fiancé to wed forty-year-old San Francisco widower Hugh Tevis. On their honeymoon to Japan in 1901, Hugh Tevis died suddenly in Yokohoma. Constance returned a pregnant widow and claimed her husband’s million-dollar fortune.

But a million dollars only goes so far. Four years later, she befriended Pittsburgh playboy Hart McKee Jr., whose deceased father had made $20 million as a glass manufacturer. McKee was in the middle of divorcing his wife for a married woman. But as soon as his divorce came through, he dumped his paramour and married Constance in a quickie ceremony in 1905. The couple moved to Paris and she gave birth to a second son, but the marriage dissolved in spectacular fashion. The couple’s 1908 divorce was a publicly covered brawl. She claimed that he stole her jewels and beat her, and that thirty-five maids quit one after another, fleeing McKee’s sexual advances. McKee charged that Constance had conducted a flagrant affair with an Italian marquis. The scorching testimony produced such
headlines as
BEAUTY WILL TELL STORY OF GROSS CRUELTY
followed by
NOT SO INNOCENT AS SHE PRETENDS
. She won custody of her son with McKee, but the French judge issued an order excoriating both parties for bad behavior.