Empty Mansions

by Bill Dedman

  TWO WILLS

  CHRIS SATTLER CALLED attorney Bock with disturbing news: “Mrs. Clark’s condition seems to be deteriorating.” It was February 15, 2005, and Huguette’s cold had turned into pneumonia.

  The same day, Hadassah followed up with her own call to Bock, asking about the $5 million “owed on her gift.” She was referring to the $5 million she had not yet gotten from the sale of the Cézanne, the $5 million she was carrying around in an undated check. Huguette told Bock she wanted to give Hadassah the $5 million right away.

  Huguette, at age ninety-eight and with pneumonia, still hadn’t signed a will. This was the opening that her attorneys had been waiting forty years for.

  • • •

  When Huguette was young, she signed two wills, leaving everything to her mother. The last one had been signed in 1929, when she was Mrs. Gower.

  After Anna died, Huguette’s lawyers at Clark, Carr & Ellis, the old railroad firm, made a renewed push. In 1964, they sent over a draft will, leaving Bellosguardo to the Santa Barbara Foundation to support the arts, and $1 million to her friend Etienne de Villermont, among other bequests.

  Every time the lawyers brought this up, she’d say, “Let’s wait until after the holidays.” Her objection seemed to be to the idea of having a will at all, or at least to having one now. Perhaps she found the subject too dark, or was suspicious of signing away her authority, as she refused repeatedly to sign any power of attorney.

  Lawyer after lawyer tried every argument. They explained that she was in such good financial condition because her parents had made sound plans. They explained that her many friends were relying on her generosity and could be left with nothing.

  Her attorneys’ letters show that they assumed they were writing to an educated, intelligent person who knew what she wanted. Huguette was her father’s daughter. The letters are businesslike, detailed, and respectful, leaving decisions to her.

  Don Wallace reminded her that without a will, her money would go to her relatives from her father’s first marriage. “You have never expressed any interest,” he wrote, “in any of them having any part of your inheritance.” She didn’t sign, and she didn’t say why.

  • • •

  By 1985, Don Wallace was fed up with his client. For more than a decade, Wallace had handled her purchases of dolls at auction, had delivered her anonymous gifts, had done all the little things that one didn’t learn in law school. A fellow attorney recalled a meeting with Wallace in the 1980s. Huguette interrupted four times with telephone calls, and each time Wallace’s end of the conversation went something like this: “Yes, Mrs. Clark. Yes, Madame. Yes, I will take care of it, Madame.”

  Wallace had learned to talk her through her quirks. What Wallace couldn’t do was get her to sign a will.

  Wallace summed up his exasperation in a “personal and confidential” letter to Huguette in March 1985. He summoned the names of her previous lawyers who had given her the same advice.

  In the not too far distant future I will have been personally responsible for the handling of your affairs after Mr. Bannerman’s death for almost nine years. While I enjoy being of assistance in connection with your sometimes complex business and personal affairs and I can honestly say that I have never found it dull, at the same time, it has been one of the most frustrating experiences I have ever had.

  You have received and have ignored or avoided advice given to you almost every year from 1942 to date outlining all of the reasons why it is essential that you have a current, up-to-date will. I know as I have been trying with a total lack of success for almost nine years. Based on my personal knowledge, Mr. Bannerman, Mr. Winslow, Mr. Stokes, Mr. Ellis and others all gave you similar advice. All of them, now dead, were equally unsuccessful in persuading you to have a current, up-to-date will. Perhaps their failure should make mine seem less frustrating to me, but it does not.

  If I could have one wish granted this year it would be that you would accept my advice and instruct me to prepare a will expressing your wishes on how your property should be distributed.

  His wish was not granted that year. Nor for the next seventeen years, as he continued to send pleading letters. Nor in his lifetime. When Don Wallace died in 2002 without persuading Huguette to sign a will, he had never met his client of twenty-six years. He had talked with her only on the phone or through a closed door. Wallace’s successor, Wally Bock, had written her with the same wish. “Once again,” he begged in 2000, “I urge you to stop thinking about a Will and do something about it.”

  From time to time, the attorneys did get Huguette to revise her list of beneficiaries, reflecting the pecking order of her current friendships. A 2001 list would have left 30 percent of her estate, after specific bequests to employees and friends, to nurse Hadassah, 30 percent to goddaughter Wanda, 15 percent to Etienne’s daughter Marie-Christine, 15 percent to establish the Bellosguardo Foundation for the arts in Santa Barbara, and 10 percent to Madame Pierre. But she signed nothing.

  Often on afternoons in the early 2000s, Bock and Kamsler would gather at Bock’s office. Bock would pour a vodka for Irv and a double Scotch for himself, and they would work on another draft.

  Huguette said she’d be glad to talk about it after the holidays.

  • • •

  Now she had pneumonia. With her health in question, and with Hadassah nagging for the promised $5 million, Huguette finally said she’d sign.

  Bock and Kamsler took a draft to her hospital room on February 28, 2005, two weeks after she first fell ill. But Huguette didn’t want to wait until she died to pay Hadassah the $5 million, so that day she approved putting the Connecticut home on the market. She was ambivalent, however, about selling even a home she had never spent one night in. She changed her mind several times in the following weeks. Huguette even proposed letting Hadassah act as the real estate agent, so she could also pocket the commission, but her advisers said that wasn’t feasible. Then Huguette proposed just giving the Connecticut house to Hadassah, but Kamsler told her that would be “a financial disaster” because of the gift taxes she would have to pay.

  Beth Israel’s administrators heard that a will was in the works. Putting on a full-court press, Dr. Newman visited Huguette three times that month.

  • • •

  On March 7, now recovered from her pneumonia, Huguette signed a will, a simple document of barely three pages. Its main beneficiaries were people who were not named at all: her father’s descendants from his first marriage. The will said she left her estate to her “intestate distributees.” In other words, she left her money to the same people who would inherit it if she didn’t have a will. Under New York law, if she had no children and no siblings and her mother had no other living children, the entire estate would go to her father’s descendants. (Her mother had no other descendants.) So in this regard, the will changed nothing.

  This document did, however, accomplish two goals: First, it left the $5 million to Hadassah, if she had not already received it from sale of the Connecticut property. Second, it named Bock and Kamsler as executors, putting the two men in line for automatic commissions under state law of roughly $3.1 million each. Someone would get the $6.2 million, and now it would be her longtime advisers, which is not unusual.

  If Huguette didn’t want to leave money to her relatives, why did she sign a will that specified just that result? Bock and Kamsler explained later that this will was intended to get the ball rolling, that Huguette asked that it be as uncomplicated as possible so she could rest easily that Hadassah would get the $5 million. She and her advisers agreed that they would return soon for the more difficult task of updating her list of beneficiaries. The first will, Bock said, was a “stepping stone.”

  On March 23, Kamsler sent Huguette a list of possible beneficiaries, based on previous lists, and on April 12 he amended the list in a meeting with her with a check mark or an X changing the future for her friends. Two names from earlier lists were noticeably absent. The first was Madame
Pierre, who had already received $10 million from the Monet. The second was Etienne’s daughter, Marie-Christine, who had corresponded less with Huguette in recent years. Hadassah’s share doubled. Bock sent the draft will to Huguette by courier on April 15. Kamsler says he went to the hospital to read it to her and explain each provision.

  Four days later, on April 19, just six weeks after she’d signed the first will, Huguette signed the second one. Her medical chart, with notes from various nurses and doctors, shows that Huguette’s mind seems to have been clear and sharp throughout this period. The chart shows her conversing cheerfully, reading French magazines, walking easily without assistance, sitting up in a chair soaking her feet in soapy water, writing letters, approving the auction at Sotheby’s of her devotional Book of Hours from the Middle Ages if it could fetch at least $100,000, reminiscing about how much she liked the old Doctors Hospital, writing $90,000 in checks to Hadassah and her family, giving $50,000 more to Dr. Jack Rudick, overdrawing her checking account again and again, enjoying visits with Madame Pierre, even giving herself a haircut.

  She had no medical problem other than worsening hearing. On March 21 and 25, she refused a hearing aid, but she was still able to listen to programs on the radio. The visiting doctors, who were not otherwise involved in her treatment and who didn’t benefit from either will, said later that she seemed mentally competent, answering their questions appropriately, but she willfully refused the hearing aid. Her eyes were worse now, and she used a magnifying glass to sign cards and checks. (She had started printing Hadassah’s name on gift checks as “H. Peri.”) On March 28, her weight was recorded as eighty-five pounds, including her hospital gown, slippers, and six layers of cashmere sweaters.

  On April 12, the hospital’s Catholic chaplain tried to visit on his rounds. Huguette had received prayer cards from friends, and she would say the Lord’s Prayer before bedtime—in Spanish if one of the Latina cleaning ladies was there. But she refused to see the priest.

  • • •

  A nurse on the hall in the 10 Linsky section at Beth Israel was on his way to help a patient with a tracheotomy tube when Hadassah Peri called him into Room 4. He was needed for just a minute to witness the signing of a document. It was April 19, 2005, and the copper king’s daughter was about to sign her last will and testament.

  If one were teaching a law school class in estates and trusts, demonstrating how not to handle the signing of a will for an elderly client with hundreds of millions of dollars, this ceremony would be Exhibit A.

  Along with the nurse from the hall, the other witness was attorney Bock’s secretary. The entire event took five minutes at most. Huguette sat on the side of the bed. Another lawyer from Bock’s firm presided, asking Huguette to confirm that she intended this to be her last will and testament. Bock’s secretary recalled that Hadassah helped Huguette hold the pen to direct where to sign but said there was no sign of any distress or coercion. Other witnesses said they didn’t recall Hadassah helping her hold the pen.

  This was a more complete document than the earlier one, encompassing seven pages. The key paragraph was this: “I intentionally make no provision in this my Last Will [and] Testament for any members of my family, whether on my paternal or maternal side, having had minimal contacts with them over the years. The persons and institutions named herein as beneficiaries of my Estate are the true objects of my bounty.”

  The will directed that a Bellosguardo Foundation be created as a charity “for the primary purpose of fostering and promoting the Arts.” This foundation would receive her estate in Santa Barbara, as her attorneys had suggested for decades and as Santa Barbara’s mayor Sheila Lodge had proposed to her in 1993 and 1997. To the foundation, she also left all but one of her paintings, including her own works and the masterworks she still owned, and her books and musical instruments. As foundation trustees, the document named her executors, again Bock and Kamsler, and a third trustee, her California attorney, Jim Hurley. These men would have the sole authority to pay themselves fees in perpetuity.

  Next came the specific bequests to the people closest to her: $100,000 to her doctor, Henry Singman; $500,000 to her personal assistant, Chris Sattler; two years’ pay to the manager at Bellosguardo, John Douglas; one year’s pay to the caretaker at Le Beau Château, Tony Ruggiero; $25,000 to her handyman at Fifth Avenue, Martin Gonzalez (who would die before her); $500,000 to accountant Kamsler; $500,000 to attorney Bock (he would have to give 80 percent to his law firm under his partnership agreement); and all her dolls and dollhouses to Hadassah Peri, “my nurse, friend and loyal companion.”

  The Corcoran Gallery received a single painting, the Monet from the Water Lilies series, the one Huguette had bought just before her divorce. Though the painting was not one of Monet’s monumental murals, it has been appraised for $25 million.

  Of whatever remained, Huguette left 60 percent to Hadassah, 25 percent to Wanda Styka, and 15 percent to the Bellosguardo Foundation.

  Huguette initialed every page with her felt-tip pen and signed the last page in a cursive immediately recognizable as belonging to the same girl who had signed the address book at her half-brother Will’s Mowitza Lodge in 1916, only a bit shakier.

  To Beth Israel, despite all its efforts and high hopes for tens or hundreds of millions, the will left only $1 million. Within two months, she lost her room with a view and was forced to move to the third floor. Hospital officials have said they had no idea whether Beth Israel was in Huguette’s will and made the switch only because her floor was being renovated.

  Her new neighborhood was called 3 Karpas, a depressing stretch of hallway normally used for patients undergoing physical rehabilitation. Then she was moved again, within that section. Her last regular hospital room, 3K01, was at the end of the corridor, next to the janitor’s closet and the emergency exit. It was a double room, twenty-two feet by fourteen feet, made for two patients but occupied by only Huguette.

  With all the potential views in the world at her disposal, from Paris to the Pacific, she now had a view without a single tree. She could see no sky at all, only in the background the gray-and-tan brick walls of the neighboring wing of the hospital, and in the foreground a maze of industrial compressors and valves, a grim twenty-first-century landscape of air-conditioning units.

  You could say that it no longer mattered: In her second century, her eyesight was failing, and she insisted that a special shade be installed, a blackout shade so no daylight could creep in. But it mattered to her. Huguette often mentioned to her staff how much nicer the view had been at Doctors Hospital, with the river and the mayor’s mansion below.

  After the will was signed, as Bock’s secretary tells the story, they went down the block to a restaurant, where Bock and Kamsler had a drink to success.

  CHERE TANTE HUGUETTE

  MARCH 1968. That’s the last time any Clarks recall seeing their dear Tante Huguette.

  In front of the golden altarpiece of St. Thomas Church on Fifth Avenue, sixty-one-year-old Huguette walked up after the funeral Mass to offer her condolences. This was the same church where her sister Andrée’s funeral had been held in 1919. Today’s deceased was their half-niece, Katherine Morris Hall, for whom Huguette had been a bridesmaid at this altar in 1924. After a respectful moment, Huguette quietly left the church, without being introduced to the younger relatives.

  That’s the last time, that is to say, any Clarks saw Huguette while she was awake.

  It was more than forty years later, in 2009, when two of Huguette’s relatives showed up unannounced at her hospital room. They had discovered something their 102-year-old aunt didn’t know: Her accountant was a felon.

  As the relatives started to do more research, they had good reason to suspect that Huguette’s money was being stolen, and even to doubt whether she was alive.

  • • •

  The family’s first hint of a problem came from the Corcoran Gallery of Art, the museum that holds her father’s art collection and where Huguette exh
ibited her own work in 1929. Huguette had been a regular donor of $50,000 to $100,000 a year, stepping up to support Clark-related projects. She gave $200,000 for the seventy-fifth anniversary of the W. A. Clark Collection and major support for the $1 million restoration of the Salon Doré, the gilded French room from her childhood home, the Clark mansion at 962 Fifth Avenue.

  The first grand art gallery in Washington, the privately supported Corcoran was perpetually in straitened circumstances, dwarfed by the Smithsonian Institution’s nineteen museums and galleries, which allowed free admission and received millions in federal support. The Corcoran stepped on its reputation in 1989 with Robert Mapplethorpe’s The Perfect Moment, an exhibit by the late photographer including homoerotic and sadomasochistic content. Artists canceled exhibitions, and donors pulled back. Over the next ten years, the museum regularly ran deficits.

  In 1999, the Corcoran announced a bold plan to reverse its decline. It would raise money for a $200 million addition designed by the noted architect Frank Gehry, whose well-known projects had raised the profile of institutions such as Spain’s Guggenheim Museum Bilbao. Gehry proposed to update the Corcoran’s image with an annex featuring flowing metal panels, like enormous billowing sails or ribbons of silver. This addition would adorn the Corcoran’s 1897 Beaux Arts building, which faces across Seventeenth Street toward the South Lawn of the White House and the Ellipse, where the National Christmas Tree is decorated. Gehry’s design would radically change the look of the neighborhood. The museum sought a major donation from Huguette, suggesting $10 million. She sent nothing.

  A few years later, in 2003, Corcoran leaders were shocked to read in the newspapers that Huguette had sold Renoir’s In the Roses for $23.5 million. In talking with Huguette’s aide, Chris Sattler, the Corcoran staff learned that Huguette had considerable expenses and had sold the painting because she needed the cash. Why would Huguette Clark be broke?