Empty Mansions

by Bill Dedman

  W.A. had his own smelter smokestack, the tallest in the world, spreading its arsenical debris far from his “smoky city.” Worse for his reputation, he moved to New York, selling most of his Montana mining interests to the Standard Oil men in 1910.

  “The cumulative sentiment here,” said Keith Edgerton, a professor of history at Montana State University who is researching a Clark biography, “is that he made a fortune off of the state’s resources in the freewheeling laissez-faire times of the late nineteenth century, prostituted the political system with his wealth and power, exploited the working class for his own gain, left an environmental wreck behind, and took his millions to other places to benefit a handful of others. And in some ways, the state has never really recovered from it all.”

  Clark never acknowledged any awareness of such resentments. He described himself as one of “those men, those brave pioneers who have come out here and made the wilderness bloom as the rose, and opened up these great mountains and brought their hidden wealth to light.”

  THE GODDAUGHTERS, LEONTINE AND ANN

  WITH ONE DAUGHTER DECEASED and the other occupied with her painting, Anna befriended other children, two goddaughters, who came to her apartment for weekend lunches and chamber music concerts.

  The first goddaughter, Leontine Lyle, was also known as Tina. She was born in 1926, twenty years after Huguette, and was the daughter of the family physician, Dr. Lyle, who had attended to Andrée and W.A. at their deaths.

  The second, Ann Ellis, born in 1928, was the daughter of the family attorney, George Ellis, of Clark, Carr & Ellis, a law firm that had represented the Clarks for many years.

  Anna invited Leontine and Ann, usually one at a time, over for Sunday lunches or private chamber music concerts. The girls would put on their party dresses and shiny black patent leather shoes for an afternoon among the Renoirs. Both goddaughters called Anna “Lani” (LAH-nee), which she fancifully told them meant “godmother” in Hawaiian.

  They ate in the formal dining room, with place cards in silver holders to mark their spots. Water was poured into crystal glasses from a Tiffany pitcher. Bread was served in a double-ended sterling silver barge engraved “W.A.C.” and stamped on the bottom with the Clark crest (the lion, anchor, and Gothic C).

  They loved Anna, both goddaughters recall. She gently corrected their manners, watching the placement of every silver butter knife, being very firm that they were not to drink if they had food in their mouths, and to sip, not gulp.

  The lunches were not about etiquette alone. As the years passed, Anna wanted to soak up every detail of their lives: school, boys, their débuts, dating, marriage. Anna gave Leontine a Cartier gold watch for her debutante season and sent her personal assistant, Adele Marie, known as “Missie,” to Bergdorf Goodman to buy clothes for Leontine’s wedding. “She was to me a completely caring person, beyond belief generous,” Leontine said. “You never felt the generosity had a string attached.”

  She recalled, “One day I can remember clearly, I was almost in tears. I wanted Mummy to let me have a dog, and I was telling Lani all this, at age thirteen or fourteen, very dramatic. And the next thing I knew, three days later, a miniature black poodle arrived at the house, with instructions that it was not to be returned. We called it Parie, like Paris.”

  Both goddaughters remember Anna as stunning, mannered, very French, immaculately dressed, trim, tactful, and not at all nouveau riche. There was no talk of Butte or Jerome, no talk of Butte copper or political scandals. There was no talk of where Anna came from either, no mention of Calumet or Quebec. Her French-accented English sounded Parisian to their ears. “It never occurred to me,” Leontine said, “that she was anything but French.”

  The goddaughters remember Huguette shyly stopping by their little parties with Anna, but only once did she stay for lunch. Ann remembers Huguette sending her gifts, but not to her taste: “horrible, formal dolls.” These weren’t Huguette’s friends, but the very young friends of her mother. They knew nothing of her paintings or art projects. “She was a waif that passed through the room,” Ann said. “A fairy light that came and went.”

  • • •

  Once you were Anna’s friend, you stayed friends. This was a trait Huguette inherited. Anna talked regularly on the phone with Leontine’s mother, the widow of the family doctor, and sent her checks for years. After Anna died, Huguette kept on sending the checks, increasing the amounts.

  Both goddaughters, born in the decade after the Nineteenth Amendment gave all American women the right to vote, seized on new opportunities. Ann Ellis Raynolds raised four children, then went back to school for a doctorate and became an instructor in psychiatry on the Harvard Medical School faculty and a professor at Boston University. Leontine Lyle Harrower worked on the staff of Senator Prescott Bush of Connecticut, father of a president and grandfather of another. She served on the Republican National Committee and worked in the gubernatorial campaign of Nelson Rockefeller of New York, the grandson of W.A.’s contemporary John D. Rockefeller.

  Anna hosted many musical afternoons at 907 Fifth Avenue, the luxury apartment building at Seventy-Second Street and Central Park. Eventually Huguette had fifteen thousand square feet. (illustration credit6.5)

  The only foray into politics by Anna and Huguette seemed to be in 1940, when they supported the Republican presidential candidate Wendell Willkie, who was urging greater American intervention to stop Germany in Europe. This policy would have appealed to the Francophile Clarks, who each gave $5,000 to Democrats for Willkie—the largest contributions in New York. Anna and Huguette, the wife and daughter of a U.S. senator, never registered to vote.

  Only now, the goddaughters say, have they begun to realize that Anna’s relationship with them was a bit odd. “It seems strange,” Leontine said, “that so much attention was paid to a little girl. In a funny way, I filled a need, like a surrogate daughter. There was a sadness there.”

  These girls were the daughters of the family doctor and lawyer, prominent but not in the same social class as the Clarks. As Ann’s father explained to her, in his legal work for rich families he was merely a servant. But that sort of distinction didn’t seem to matter to Anna. Nevertheless, Leontine said, it was odd that Anna restricted her social circle so tightly to people paid by the family: the family doctor, the family lawyer. Anna made some friends through music and art but seemed not to be comfortable developing relationships unless she was the boss. Perhaps these friendships showed an admirable sort of class neutrality on Anna’s part, but also a kind of self-limiting only to circumstances she could control.

  And then Leontine stopped speculating and said, “It’s too complicated. You can’t know someone’s mind.”

  THE STAFF

  In 1940, there were ten servants in residence at 907 Fifth Avenue to take care of a family of two. Well, actually, a family of three, because an aunt of Anna’s, Pauline De Lobel, had moved in. A few of the servants lived in the two apartments with Anna and Huguette, but most were in the small rooms on the roof. Here are those thirteen residents, as enumerated by the census taker, with their birthplace and education. Notice the countries where the staff hail from, and which country is missing from the list.

  The family:

  Anna E. Clark, 62, widow, Michigan, one year of high school.

  Huguette Clark, 33, divorced, France, four years of high school.

  Pauline De Lobel, 65, widow, Belgium, grade eight.

  And the staff:

  Helen Ives, personal maid, 52, single, England, salary $1,500/ year, grade eight.

  Hilda Carlson, personal maid, 48, single, Sweden, $1,080, grade eight.

  Shyra Golden, cook, 40, widow, Sweden, $1,080, two years of high school.

  James Smith, butler, 38, widower, New York, $1,010, grade eight.

  Anna Flatley, waitress, 36, single, Ireland/Galway, $1,008, one year of high school.

  Joseph Jones, chauffeur, 42, single, New York, $980, grade eight.

  Margaret Duffy, parl
or maid, 39, single, Northern Ireland, $960, grade eight.

  Paula Hauger, cook, 57, single, Norway, $900, grade eight.

  Gurbild Berker, assistant cook, 34, widow, Sweden, $840, one year of high school.

  Anna Erickson, chamber maid, 27, single, Finland, $840, grade eight.

  Which country is missing from the list of the staff? France. The Clarks could keep confidences by speaking and writing in French.

  The Clarks paid wages slightly better than was typical in the building. An annual salary of $1,000 in 1940 would be equal to about $16,400 today, not counting room and board. Their downstairs friend and neighbor, Margaret Price Daly, widow of W.A.’s old antagonist Marcus Daly, made do with a staff of only five.

  MADAME CEZANNE

  ONE MIGHT HAVE GUESSED that Anna, as the much younger second wife, would have had little connection with W.A.’s children from his first marriage. Indeed, the terms “gold digger” and “adventuress” were thrown around a bit in some quarters of the family, but quite a few Clarks speak of Anna fondly, remembering her as vivacious, a warm hostess, a lot of fun at a cocktail party, and a bit salty in her humor. Even the closest Clarks, however, never developed a connection with Anna’s daughter Huguette.

  In the years between the world wars, Anna often invited the children of her stepson Charlie Clark over for musical afternoons in Apartment 8W at 907 Fifth Avenue. She enjoyed playing the harp and gossiping about music and musicians with Charlie’s three daughters, Mary, Agnes, and Patsey. They were close to Huguette in age, her half-nieces, though that sort of “half-niece” phrase was not one the family ever used. Raised in California, all three had spent some time in New York with Huguette at Miss Spence’s, and attended debutante parties at Pierre’s. Huguette said later that she was very fond of Agnes and her sisters and that her mother had continued to invite the nieces for short summer visits to Santa Barbara so the girls could stay in touch.

  The next generation, however, never made much of a connection with their great-aunt Huguette. Patsey’s son, Jerry Gray, recalled a time in the early 1940s when a group of them were sitting on the sand or in low chairs near the beach house at Bellosguardo. He was about nine and Huguette was in her thirties. Anna was animated and participated in the conversation, but Huguette, staring silently at him, never said a word. Afterward, Jerry’s father said, “She has never been able to grow up.” And his mother said, “It’s so sad that all she can do is play with dolls.”

  Huguette’s attachment to her dolls was indeed unusual. A photograph survives of a Clark dinner party in a restaurant, with a group including Anna and Huguette, who looks to be about sixteen, so this would be about 1922. Anna is recognizable in her bangs, resting her chin on her white-gloved hand. One of Huguette’s half-nieces, wearing a corsage, is also at the table. The three gentlemen in the photo are dressed in black tie. Seated at the right, next to one of the men, is Huguette, wearing a party dress and a strand of pearls, her eyes fixed on something in the distance. In her lap, she holds a doll with well-coiffed coal-black hair, wearing its own party dress.

  Family members began to say Huguette was “slow” or “emotionally immature.” Her father was too old when she was conceived, they’d say, or she must have been damaged by her sister’s death or her brief marriage. The children in the family heard these stories and accepted them as fact, having little other information to go on. They knew nothing of her life, of her painting. Some in the next generation didn’t even know that Huguette ever had a sister.

  Huguette was well aware of her relatives. She knew the names of the children and grandchildren. When she saw photos, she expressed concern when a relative seemed to appear in failing health.

  After the death, in 2002, of her half-niece Agnes Clark Albert, who had gone to Miss Spence’s with her, Huguette sent a handwritten card to Agnes’s son.

  Dear Paul. Your kind letter regarding your dear mother deeply touched me. Your mother was a very remarkable person and had such great talent as a musician. I admired her greatly and was very fond of her. You had reason to be very proud of her. With my very deepest sympathy, Dear Paul, and much love. Tante Huguette.

  Small acts of generosity were observed but didn’t change the family narrative. Another of Charlie’s grandchildren, Jacqueline Baeyens-Clerté, was about ten when she met Huguette at an afternoon tea at Bellosguardo in 1952. Huguette and Anna were excited to be spending time with these relatives living in France. “Aunt Huguette was very shy,” Jacqueline recalled, “and her mother did all the talking.” Without prompting, however, Huguette gave Jacqueline and her cousin tiny cameras as welcoming gifts.

  For the most part, however, Huguette kept her distance through the decades. She sent flowers to a list of friends every New Year—azaleas or triple amaryllises—but there were no relatives on the list. She called a few relatives at Christmas and Easter. And when relatives called occasionally to invite her out, she would beg off with an excuse that became a running joke in the family. Each time she would say in French, “Je suis enrhumée”—“I have a little cold.”

  • • •

  The most detailed family memory of a visit to 907 Fifth Avenue was told by Huguette’s niece Agnes, and is relayed by her daughter Karine. It’s a story of a valuable painting and of rare musical instruments, and it reveals something of the family dynamic between Huguette and her mother. In one afternoon shopping trip, Anna made it easier for her daughter to spend more time with her, and she founded one of the noted chamber music groups of the twentieth century.

  Anna was mad about chamber music, quite an unusual avocation for someone with only an eighth-grade education. She sang choral music with her low contralto voice as a member of the Oratorio Society of New York. She was a dedicated student of the harp, taking afternoon lessons at her Fifth Avenue apartment, precisely at four o’clock, from Marcel Grandjany, a Frenchman who taught at the Juilliard School in New York. Grandjany was an influential composer and teacher on a difficult and little understood instrument and may be the third-best-known harpist of all time, after King David and Harpo Marx. He dedicated many works to his patron, Anna, and later to her daughter Huguette, including a suite based on “La Belle au Bois Dormant,” or “Sleeping Beauty.”

  For years, nothing prevented Anna from going out to hear chamber music—not for the society, not to be seen, but for Haydn and Brahms and Debussy. On one occasion, a musician recalled, she attended a three P.M. matinee at the Town Hall in New York, stayed in her seat awaiting the five-thirty twilight concert, and was back for the evening recital at eight-thirty.

  But as Anna moved into her sixties, her hearing grew dismal. She used the latest newfangled hearing aid, an electronic box that she held out to pick up sound, with a wire attached to her ear. Anna began to take her music only at home, inviting musicians to play at 907 Fifth Avenue. Huguette sometimes came downstairs to her mother’s apartment for the music, but rarely for the conversation.

  One of the musicians who encountered Huguette on these musical afternoons was violinist Henri Temianka, who offered a memory of meeting her. He said Huguette “was strangely withdrawn and had the curious habit of maneuvering backward while engaged in conversation.” As they spoke in one of the large rooms in Anna’s apartment, Huguette stepped back, and the violinist stepped forward, continuing the conversation, “executing a series of mincing steps that ultimately landed her and her partner in conversation at the opposite end of the room.”

  One afternoon in December 1945, just after the end of the Second World War, Anna had a few guests over to 907 Fifth Avenue for one of her home concerts. But the events of that afternoon were most unusual, as Anna found a clever way to solve two problems with a single excursion.

  The first problem was Madame Cézanne.

  “You see Cézanne’s portrait of Madame Cézanne?” Anna told her guests. “My daughter Huguette won’t come in here because she hates the painting so much.”

  Anna had bought Madame Cézanne in a Red Dress, one of Paul Cézanne’s
portraits of his longtime mistress and eventual wife, many years earlier from a Paris dealer. Apparently, Cézanne didn’t have much understanding of women, and his wife didn’t much care for his paintings of her. One can see why. In this depiction, she is an awkward subject with disfigured hands and a confused or worried look in her eyes. Still, there is something tender or vulnerable in her affect, which is not nearly as angry as in the well-known Woman in a Green Hat or as grotesque as in Madame Cézanne with Unbound Hair. Yet, as Karine tells the story, something in Madame Cézanne’s look bothered Huguette, who came downstairs to visit her mother less often than Anna would have liked.

  The second problem was how to outfit a new string quartet with proper instruments.

  Anna and Huguette had long sponsored musicians, including the well-regarded Loewenguth String Quartet in Paris, for whom Huguette wrote a check to buy four instruments made by the renowned Amati family. Word of the Clark patronage got around, and it was not unusual for musicians to play at Anna’s apartment.

  Because this portrait of a stern Madame Césanne was off-putting to Huguette, Anna found a clever use for it. (illustration credit6.6)

  Anna had been introduced to a cellist in need of a quartet, a cellist who she had thought was dead. Robert Maas was well known for his Pro Arte Quartet of Brussels, which Anna had followed closely. Maas had been reported as killed soon after the Germans invaded Belgium in 1940, but he was only wounded. Stranded in his native country, he was ordered by the Nazis to form a quartet with German musicians. He refused and spent the war playing for meal money in a café in Brussels, while his Pro Arte colleagues escaped to Wisconsin.