Empty Mansions
Page 37
37 EIGHT MILLION POUNDS: Clark, Address to the Society of Montana Pioneers (1923).
38 “THIS WAS ONE”: Ibid.
39 HIS BROTHER ROSS SOON FOLLOWED: The first of W.A.’s siblings to move to Los Angeles were his unmarried sisters Anna Belle and Ella, who accompanied his mother, Mary, in 1880. They lived initially at Hill and Spring streets and subsequently in Mary’s spacious but unpretentious Victorian home at 933 South Olive Street. W.A.’s other sisters, Sarah, Elizabeth, and Mary Margaret, followed with their families. Ross and his family arrived in 1892, and he founded Citizens Bank there. Joseph left W.A.’s employ as superintendent of the Butte mines and took up residence in Portland, Oregon.
40 MONTANA RANCH: Portions of the Montana Ranch were developed and sold later, including the Douglas Aircraft factory and residential properties near Long Beach. The remainder was sold to developers after World War II for the creation of the planned city of Lakewood. Rancho Los Alamitos became part of the city of Long Beach.
41 CLARK OUT FRONT AS PRESIDENT: Clark and Harriman remained railroad partners until Harriman died in 1909. Clark sold his railroad interests in 1921.
42 THE CLARKS DONATED: The home in Los Angeles was operated by the YWCA until it was damaged in the 1987 earthquake, but it continues today, beautifully renovated, as housing for low-income residents—and a film location for movies and television shows.
43 “AMONG THE MORE VIVID”: Paul Clark Newell, Sr., “Senator and the Train,” Air California Magazine, May 1977.
44 “THEY’RE MARRIED”: The Anaconda Standard, July 19, 1904.
45 LOUISE AMELIA ANDRÉE CLARK: The place of Andrée’s birth is uncertain. Mangam places it at “a sumptuous villa on Cape Matifou, overlooking the beautiful Bay of Algiers on the Mediterranean” (The Clarks, 97). A Girl Scout publication lists the Bay of Algiers as well. A ship’s registry from 1914 on the SS France via the Statue of Liberty Ellis Island Foundation lists it as San Luca or San Lucia, Spain.
46 “HE LEARNED THAT HIS EARLY AFFECTION”: The Butte Miner, July 13, 1904.
47 “MRS. CLARK DID NOT CARE”: Ibid.
48 “A LINE ONLY”: Katherine’s letter to Will is quoted in Mangam, The Clarks, 101–2.
49 “IT HAS BEEN STATED”: The Butte Miner, July 13, 1904.
50 THERE WAS SPECULATION: A second pregnancy, of a boy who lived but an hour after birth, is described in Mangam, The Clarks, 100.
51 NOT EVERYONE BELIEVED: As to the reality or fiction of the date of the marriage, Mangam (The Clarks, 114–15) wrote that W.A. gave an interview to his own newspaper, The Butte Miner, in June 1901 about his European trip the previous month, and his description of his itinerary didn’t place him anywhere near Marseille.
52 THE CLARK FAMILY BIBLE: In the possession of Paul Newell.
53 “NO RECORD OF SAID MARRIAGE”: 1926 probate transcript.
54 ANNA WAS NOW WRITING LETTERS: HMC papers.
Chapter 4: The U.S. Capitol
1 HE BEGAN A PUBLIC CAMPAIGN: Associated Press, “Clarks and Schwabs Challenge the ’400,’ ” Evening Times (Grand Forks, ND), August 23, 1906.
2 “THIS CARD WILL ADMIT”: This card is in the Metropolitan Museum of Art archives. The Clarks and the newspapers generally gave the address of the mansion as 962 Fifth Avenue, though the entrance was on Seventy-Seventh Street. The address is listed as “1 E. 77th Street” on Clark passport applications and in city building records, but the Fifth Avenue name carried prestige.
3 “MY FATHER’S GREAT JOY”: “Clark Family Bewail Refusal,” The Spokesman-Review (Spokane, WA), May 6, 1925. The history of W.A.’s art collection, including the panels of Joan of Arc by Louis-Maurice Boutet de Monvel, is described in several publications from the Corcoran Gallery, including Laura Coyle and Dare Myers Hartwell, Antiquities to Impressionism: The William A. Clark Collection (London: Corcoran Gallery of Art, 2001), and Yellowstone Art Center, The William A. Clark Collection: Treasures of a Copper King (Billings, MT: Yellowstone Art Center, 1989).
4 BUT SUCH DISHES: W.A.’s collection of pottery is described in Wendy M. Watson, Italian Renaissance Maiolica from the William A. Clark Collection (London: Scala Books, 1986).
5 W.A. HAD BEEN INDUCED: W.A.’s hiring of Duveen is described in Meryle Secrest, Duveen (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2004).
6 THE FINEST ORGAN: The organ’s history is told in David Lennox Smith, Murray M. Harris and Organ Building in Los Angeles, 1894–1913 (Richmond, VA: Organ Historical Society, 2005), 77–80. Smith includes the estimate of $120,000, which apparently included the elaborate case and decorations, citing the Clark organist, Arthur Scott Brook: “Senator Clark spared no expense .… Consequently, the effect is the most exquisite ever produced. It is the largest and most wonderful chamber organ in the world, excepting none. It is difficult to say just what it cost, but it must have been about $120,000.” The Clark pipe organ is also described in many news articles of the day, including “W. A. Clark Has Test of $120,000 Organ,” The New York Times, June 10, 1911. The elaborate instrument included a choir organ with twelve stops, a great organ with thirteen, swell organ with nineteen, solo with six, echo with twelve, and pedal organ with ten stops.
7 MORMON TABERNACLE CHOIR: “Mormons at Clark Mansion,” The New York Times, November 9, 1911.
8 THEIR OWN CHURCH ORGANIST: The Clark organist was church musician Arthur Scott Brook, who had helped design the Clark pipe organ.
9 “HE IS SAID TO HAVE BOUGHT”: Mark Twain in Eruption, ed. Bernard De Voto (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1940).
10 MARCUS DALY: Though the Clark-Daly battles are well remembered as part of Montana’s “War of the Copper Kings,” no one has been able to determine how the feud began. It seemed to start as a business feud, but it soon became personal and political. This oft-told tale of political warfare is most vividly explored in Michael P. Malone, The Battle for Butte: Mining and Politics on the Western Frontier, 1864–1906 (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1981).
11 “THE CONSPIRACY”: W. A. Clark to Martin Maginnis, letter, November 19, 1888.
12 “THE MOST ESSENTIAL ELEMENTS”: Edwin Wildman, Famous Leaders of Industry: The Life Stories of Boys Who Have Succeeded (Boston: Page, 1920). W.A. went on to say, “Then there must be unflinching courage to meet and overcome the difficulties that beset one’s pathway.”
13 “OVERTHROWING THE POWER”: W.A.’s testimony is in U.S. Congress, Report of the Committee on Privileges and Elections of the United States Senate Relative to the Right and Title of William A. Clark to a Seat as Senator from the State of Montana, 56th Cong., 1st sess., 3 vols. (Washington, DC, 1900).
14 “NOBODY COULD EXPECT”: Ibid. By “these people,” W.A. was referring not just to Daly but to John D. Rockefeller’s Standard Oil trust, which was trying to buy Daly’s Anaconda Copper Mining Company and consolidate the copper industry under a national trust, squeezing Clark’s purse considerably. That marriage happened the following year, in April 1899, beginning a period of corporate warfare for which the Senate campaign was merely a proxy.
15 “I HAVE NOT THE SLIGHTEST”: Ibid.
16 SEAL THEM INSIDE: One often-published photograph from the Library of Congress shows thousand-dollar bills sticking out of an envelope bearing the initials “WAC.” This photo does show evidence from the Senate trial, and appears in high school history textbooks in Montana and many popular histories as proof of the complicity of candidate W. A. Clark of Butte, the banker. Yet, as the scheme was designed, it was the recipient of the bribe that wrote the initials. Testimony showed that these were the initials of a different W. A. Clark, of Virginia City, a lawyer and state legislator, the supposed intended recipient. The scheme may have been reckless, but no one was foolish enough to write the candidate’s initials on envelopes full of cash.
17 “THERE SEEMS TO BE NO END”: U.S. Congress, Report of the Committee on Privileges.
18 “EVERY MAN WHO VOTES”: W.A.’s campaign manager, John B. Wellcome, was disbarred. See “Wellcome Is Disbarred,”
The New York Times, December 24, 1899.
19 “A DAMNABLE CONSPIRACY”: The Butte Miner, January 11, 1899.
20 “HIS VINDICATION”: The Butte Miner, January 27, 1899.
21 “THEY SIMPLY FELL”: The Anaconda Standard, January 27, 1898.
22 CAVIAR à LA RUSSE: The menu from W.A.’s dinner party is in the collection of the Montana Historical Society Research Center, http://cdm16013.contentdm.oclc.org/cdm/compoundobject/collection/p267301coll1/id/4518/rec/8. Apparent typos on the menu have been fixed here: “ris de veau” was printed as “ris de vean,” and what appears to be “salade Laitue” was “al ade Isaitue.”
23 “VOICE OF THE PEOPLE”: The Butte Miner, January 29, 1899.
24 “THEY TOOK”: The Anaconda Standard, January 27, 1899.
25 THE EVIDENCE THAT HURT: Details of the changed financial status of these legislators come from U.S. Congress, Report of the Committee on Privileges.
26 WHEN IT CAME HIS TURN: Ibid.
27 “ABOUT EVERY SIX MONTHS”: Ibid.
28 “A MAN DOES NOT FORFEIT”: Ibid.
29 “CANNOT BE OVERLOOKED”: W. A. Clark to John S. M. Neill, letter, April 11, 1900, Montana Historical Society Research Center.
30 “THE FRIENDS OF SENATOR CLARK”: U.S. Congress, Report of the Committee on Privileges.
31 “THE ELECTION TO THE SENATE”: Ibid.
32 “HIS FACE WAS SOMEWHAT FLUSHED”: New-York Tribune, April 11, 1900.
33 “THE MOST DEVILISH”: U.S. Congress, “Resignation Remarks of Senator W. A. Clark,” Congressional Record, 56th Cong., 1st sess., vol. 33, May 15, 1899.
34 A. E. SPRIGGS: Lieutenant Governor Spriggs not only later became governor on his own, but in 1911 he was W.A.’s point man in Guatemala, a poor country that gave Clark’s mining company free rein to use all the country’s public resources.
35 “CLARK RESIGNS; THEN APPOINTED”: “Clark Resigns; Then Appointed; Vacancy Hardly Made When Lieutenant Governor Names Him to Fill It; Daly Caught Napping; His Friend the Governor Leaves the State, and Senator’s Supporter Comes into Power; All a Series of Surprises,” New York Herald, May 16, 1900. See also “Clark Gives Up Seat in Senate; but His Appointment to Post He Resigned Is Announced,” The New York Times, May 16, 1900, and “Trickery in Montana,” The New-York Tribune, May 16, 1900.
36 “CHAS IS WITH ME”: W. A. Clark to W. M. Bickford, letter, October 17, 1908.
37 CHARLIE DARED NOT ENTER: Charlie’s château, at 321 West Broadway, is now the home of the Butte Silver Bow Arts Foundation, which offers tours. As in his father’s mansion, the top floor was devoted to a ballroom.
38 “I HAVE CANVASSED”: W. A. Clark to John S. M. Neill, letter, April 28, 1900. Montana Historical Society Research Center.
39 “THE APPOINTMENT BY THE GOVERNOR”: W. A. Clark to John S. M. Neill, letter, May 17, 1900. Montana Historical Society Research Center. The letter was written on U.S. Senate stationery.
40 “CONTEMPTIBLE TRICKERY”: “Gov. Smith Talks,” The New York Times, May 17, 1900.
41 “THIS MAN, CLARK”: The Helena Independent, May 16, 1900.
42 LONG-LASTING EFFECTS: In 2012, more than a century after the Clark case, the U.S. Supreme Court loosened restrictions on campaign donations, allowing individuals and corporations to once again spend millions of dollars on elections, often without reporting the source of these funds. The Court’s ruling overturned a Montana law passed in 1912 to rein in the role of money in politics. That law, the Corrupt Practices Act, banned contributions by corporations in elections. Personal contributions were limited to $1,000. Exactly one hundred years later, Supreme Court justices affirmed, by a ruling of 5 to 4, that limits on campaign spending are limits on free speech, a violation of the First Amendment. In response to that ruling, Montana attorney general Steve Bullock lamented, “The integrity of our system and the voices of Montanans, whatever their political views, are too important to be drowned out by modern-day copper kings.” Steve Bullock, “Montana—Big Sky, Clean Politics,” Los Angeles Times, op-ed, June 15, 2012.
43 SEVENTEENTH AMENDMENT: The weaknesses and unintended consequences of the Seventeenth Amendment are discussed in Jay S. Bybee, “Ulysses at the Mast: Democracy, Federalism, and the Sirens’ Song of the Seventeenth Amendment,” Northwestern University Law Review 91, no. 2 (Winter 1997), available at http://scholars.law.unlv.edu/facpub/350. Paradoxically, this amendment may also have increased the role of money in elections. Scholars have described this amendment as giving more power to corporations and the wealthiest citizens. How could that be? To be elected to the Senate, candidates now had to persuade thousands or millions of people across an entire state to vote for them, making elections more expensive, especially in the television age. As a result, only those with great personal wealth or access to corporate money could expect to reach the Senate. Today, as in Clark’s day, the U.S. Senate remains a club for millionaires. No longer checked by “instructions” from state legislatures, senators are also more likely to serve for life than they were before passage of the amendment. “It is as difficult for a poor man to enter the Senate of the United States as for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven,” Representative John Corliss of Michigan said in 1898. The newspaper Roll Call found in 2010 that fifty-four of the one hundred senators reported a net worth over $1 million. Jennifer Yachnin, “Senate Procures Influx of Millionaires,” Roll Call, October 28, 2010.
44 “LIFE WAS GOOD”: Malone, The Battle for Butte, 200.
45 “MY CLOSEST AND MOST VALUABLE”: Autobiography of Mark Twain, ed. Harriet Elinor Smith et al. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2010), 1:192.
46 “AS FINE A PIRATE”: Ida M. Tarbell, All in the Day’s Work (New York: Macmillan, 1939), 10.
47 ONE OF THE GREAT STOCK SWINDLES: The Amalgamated stock scam is described in Thomas W. Lawson, Frenzied Finance: The Crime of Amalgamated (New York: Ridgway-Thayer, 1905).
48 “FOR A WEEK NOW”: Mark Twain’s Correspondence with Henry Huttleston Rogers, 1893–1909, ed. Lewis Leary (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1969).
49 THE MAN WHO HATCHED THE PLAN: Lawson, Frenzied Finance.
50 “YOU KNOW HOW TO MAKE”: Mark Twain’s Correspondence with Henry Huttleston Rogers, 1893–1909.
51 “I AM IN FAVOR OF GIVING TO WOMEN”: Proceedings and Debates of the Constitutional Convention Held in the City of Helena, Montana, July 4th, 1889, August 7th, 1889 (Helena: State Publishing, 1921).
52 “TRUE OR FALSE”: Victor Hugo, Les Misérables (New York: Carleton, 1863), 1.
53 “IN REARING THE GREAT STRUCTURE”: U.S. Congress, “Resignation Remarks of Senator W. A. Clark.”
54 “MY HOUSE IN NEW YORK IS NOW OPEN”: “Society Not Worth While,” The New York Times, February 10, 1912.
55 “I AM NOT LIKELY”: Ibid.
Chapter 5: The Clark Mansion, Part Two
1 A PHOTO OF ANDRÉE: See, for example, “Senator Clark and Family Leave for the Coronation,” Oakland Tribune, June 4, 1911.
2 11B, RUE DES ROCHES NOIRES: From a letter addressed to Andrée Clark, HMC papers.
3 “SOCIALISTS IN GERMANY”: Quoted by Baeyens, Le sénateur qui aimait la France.
4 PARADE OF A THOUSAND ANARCHISTS: “Anarchists Spread Alarm in 5th Ave.,” The New York Times, March 22, 1914.
5 THE VIOLIN FOR HUGUETTE: Huguette’s violin teacher was the Parisian master André Touret, a member of the Capet String Quartet, one of the leading chamber groups of the time.
6 THE GIRLS SIGNED WILL’S GUEST BOOK: The book is in the William Andrews Clark Memorial Library at UCLA.
7 “TAP ’ER LIGHT”: One can see details of mine operations on underground tours at the World Museum of Mining in Butte, http://www.miningmuseum.org. Tom Satterthwaite led a tour for Dedman in October 2011.
8 A WALKING STICK: On display at the World Museum of Mining.
9 FRANK LITTLE WAS FOUND HANGED: “I.W.W. Strike Chief Lynched at Butte,” The
New York Times, August 2, 1917.
10 “MY DEAREST LITTLE MOTHER”: Andrée Clark to Anna Clark, letter, August 27, 1918, HMC papers.
11 “SHY AND TIMID”: Alma Guy, interview with an unnamed writer for the Girl Scouts, Girl Scout National Historic Preservation Center archives.
12 “TOO DEMOCRATIC”: Ibid.
13 “I HAVE MADE EVERYTHING”: Copies of Andrée’s letters are in the Girl Scout National Historic Preservation Center archives.
14 “SCOUTING REALLY MADE”: Guy interview.
15 “PROBABLY TUBERCULAR MENINGITIS”: Andrée’s death certificate describes the quick course of her illness over four days. Maine death records, 1617–1922, via Ancestry.com.
16 “WAS MOST BEAUTIFUL”: W. A. Clark to W. M. Bickford, letter, August 13, 1919.
17 “YET NOT TO THINE”: William Cullen Bryant, “Thanatopsis,” in Thanatopsis and a Forest Hymn (Boston: Joseph Knight, 1893).
18 “MRS. CLARK HAS”: Clark to Bickford, August 13, 1919.
19 “SCOUTING HAS BEEN A HAND”: Andrée’s diary is quoted in Scouting publications in the Girl Scout National Historic Preservation Center archives and in Leslie Paris, Children’s Nature: The Rise of the American Summer Camp (New York: NYU Press, 2008).
20 HUGUETTE STOOD GRIMLY: Photographs of the presentation of the deed are in the Girl Scout National Historic Preservation Center archives.
21 CAMP ANDRÉE: The history of this camp is told in Paris, Children’s Nature: The Rise of the American Summer Camp, and in “The Story of Camp Andrée,” an updated, unsigned narrative in the Girl Scout National Historic Preservation Center archives.
22 AGNES HAD BEEN TOLD: Karine McCall interview with Dedman, July 6, 2012, and McCall deposition.
23 CLASSES AT MISS SPENCE’S: The school’s story is told in Mary Dillon Edmondson, Profiles in Leadership: A History of The Spence School, 1892–1992 (West Kennebunk, ME: Phoenix, 1991).