The Phantom of Fifth Avenue: The Mysterious Life and Scandalous Death of Heiress Huguette Clark (15 page)

Andrée’s arrival in Maine was uneventful and she was delighted to be reunited with her mother and her sister. She wrote to her father on July 30:

Clark, who was now in Butte, missed his family and regretted his departure from Maine. He replied to Andrée: “I spent a most
enjoyable month there in which I enjoyed so much
la vie intime
and where I saw more of your dear mother and Huguette than I have in some time. I wish I were there to go with you to the White Mountains as that country is reputed to be interesting and picturesque…”

The senator had promised to return to Maine in time for Andrée’s seventeenth birthday on August 13. Andrée had conflicted feelings about turning seventeen and becoming a grown-up, writing in her diary on August 1 about her concerns, plaintively wishing that she could somehow skip the day. But she put those feelings aside to cheerfully describe, in a letter to her father, how much fun she and Huguette were having together, traveling the countryside in a horse-drawn cart.

What Andrée did not mention in her letter to her father, however, was that she had been feeling wretched for several days. In fact, in her diary on August 1, she had written, “Dinner came and I was not hungry.” Andrée became annoyed when her observant mother expressed concern. But Anna, after consulting a local doctor, became so worried about Andrée’s health that she summoned Dr. William Gordon Lyle from New York. He diagnosed Andrée with spinal meningitis. “My father tried to save their oldest child,” Tina Lyle Harrower says. “He spent day and night. She had not been well handled.”

William Clark received an urgent telegram from his wife, informing him that Andrée was severely ill. Frantic with worry, the senator raced to the Butte station for the next train to the East Coast. While en route he received an unimaginable telegram from Anna:

Desperate to hold on to traces of her eldest, Anna took photographs of her dead daughter and saved a lock of her hair. Andrée’s body was brought to the Fifth Avenue mansion. William Clark had spent a decade building his fantasy palace, but now the large halls echoed with loss. He had created a quarantine room, he had hired bodyguards, he had done everything possible to keep his family safe, all to no avail. He had never had the chance to say good-bye. Andrée’s last letter to him, written on August 7, arrived after her death, an unbearable final token. The family ordered black-bordered condolence cards.

“Thank you very much for the kindly expression of sympathy to Mrs. Clark and myself in this hour of our great distress,” wrote Clark to his lawyer, Walter Bickford. “The funeral service on Monday forenoon, held at the house, and presided over by Dr. Stires of St. Thomas Church, was most beautiful. We had the entire boy choir of the church. We laid the precious body away in the mausoleum in Woodlawn Cemetery. Mrs. Clark is very desirous now of going with me to Montana… Mrs. Clark has wonderful fortitude, and little Huguette is also very courageous.”

The thirteen-year-old put up a good front for her parents’ sake, but she was traumatized. Andrée had been her closest companion, her protector, the big sister who told her bedtime stories and comforted her in the middle of the night. They had shared a room up
until two years earlier. For the rest of her life, Huguette would talk about how much she missed Andrée and reminisce about their adventures together. There was no one else who understood the rhythms of their privileged family life, or who could share the shorthand of sisterly conversation. This loss was such a central fact of Huguette’s existence that she talked about it whenever she met someone new: she needed people to know that she had once had a sister. She did not want Andrée to be forgotten. Andrée’s birthday, August 13, was seared in Huguette’s memory as a day of mourning.

A few days after Andrée’s funeral, the family took their private railcar to Montana. Despite his grief, William Clark went ahead with a planned speech to the Society of Montana Pioneers. His
Who’s Who
entry listed many illustrious organizations, but this unheralded group was the one he really cared about, where he felt at home and appreciated by his peers who had tamed the wilderness.

Clark was not a man who expressed his grief in public, but he did confide in Byron Cooney, the editor of the
Montana American
, who had known Clark since 1888. “A bitter blow to him was the death of his daughter Andrée,” Cooney later wrote in the newspaper. “He liked to talk of her. He seemed to like to have someone to talk to about her. He emphasized her brilliancy and other admirable qualities… Every time he referred to her his eyes filled up with tears which he did not try to conceal. He was also very devoted to his daughter Huguette…”

That fall, William Clark and Anna decided to keep Huguette with them and stay away from New York for a few extra weeks. From Butte, the family went to Long Beach, California, where they stayed at a beachfront resort, the Virginia Hotel. “Mrs. Clark and the little girl are in excellent health,” Clark wrote to Walter Bickford on October 10, noting that they were “now going directly through to New York as Huguette’s time of entrance to Miss Spence’s school is past due.”

Travel can offer a distraction from cares and woes, but there is always an inevitable reckoning upon coming home. The Clark mansion on Fifth Avenue was a different place after the death of Andrée. Andrée had been closer to her father, Huguette to her mother. Three people grieving side by side can be islands of isolation, as each mourns
the loss separately. A surviving child is inevitably desperate to make things right at home and comfort her parents but cannot fill the void. Questions like
Why her, why not me?
—
Should I feel lucky? guilty?
—cast a shadow on a vulnerable adolescent.

Huguette dealt with her feelings by putting them on paper. She began keeping a diary on January 1, 1920, mostly in French, with the entries addressed to “Chere Petite Andrée” or “Chere Grande Soeur.” Since she could no longer confide in Andrée about her life, she described to her sister what she was up to every day, from practicing on her Stradivarius to buying a small statue to reluctantly attending the opera (“My, but Hugo is cranky!!!!!!!!!” she wrote in English). Huguette would often draw a heart under her name by way of sending Andrée her love. The diary lasted for only a few months, but it was a release. Modern-day grief therapists sometimes suggest that bereaved patients write a letter to their beloved; Huguette spontaneously figured out for herself a way to ease the pain. She could retreat to her room and privately convey her thoughts to her sister.

During their immediate period of mourning, the Clarks drew inward. When William Clark appeared at the Easter parade in April 1920, this was considered such a notable sighting that a syndicated picture and story went out across the country: “Ex-Copper King Senator Emerges,” noting that he is “seen little in public now” but had “promenaded Fifth Avenue with a silk hat and cane.”

Fearful for Huguette’s safety and their own, the Clarks became phobic about contracting illness. A visitor to their home would later describe an unusual phenomenon: the servants frequently wiped down the doorknobs to protect the family against any germs brought in by visitors. When Huguette went out with a governess, the staffer was instructed to make sure the heiress did not touch surfaces that might have germs.

When summer came around again, Anna took Huguette back to the Virginia Hotel in Long Beach, bringing along tutors so Huguette could continue her studies even during school vacation. Huguette usually took a few dolls with her when she traveled, comforting companions and reminders of home. Huguette wrote her father sweet, descriptive letters once a week, eager to please him by demonstrating
how hard she was working on her lessons. At fourteen, she sounded young for her age, as if she had regressed from the trauma but was determined to sound cheerful. All she wanted now was to make her parents happy. She even made a little joke about going to work for her father.

A week later, she wrote to her father again, stressing that she was practicing the violin so she could perform for him.

With her blonde hair and fair skin, Huguette was in danger from too much sun, but she was so in love with the beach that she paid no attention to that scorched sensation, as she admitted to her father in her next letter.

Now that a year had passed since Andrée’s death, her parents wanted to establish a suitable memorial. Since she had been enamored of the Girl Scouts, William Clark purchased 135 acres in Briarcliff Manor, about 25 miles from Manhattan, and gave it to the Girl Scouts to create Camp Andrée Clark. He brought Huguette to a ceremony in November 1920 to announce the gift, a scene captured by a
photographer. Nearly as tall as her five-foot-seven father, Huguette stands by his side with perfect posture and her head held high, her blonde shoulder-length curls peeking out beneath a fashionable hat. She looked on stoically as her father read out loud portions of Andrée’s diary.

Anna had been very involved in the project, visiting often to comment on the construction of the cabins and kitchen. But rather than join her husband and daughter at the dedication, Anna had gone to the one place where she could find peace, Paris. After more than a year of living with her grief and regrets, she needed time away from the gloomy Fifth Avenue mansion. Anna told her husband that she was only planning to be abroad for a few weeks. But once in Paris, she stretched out her stay and arranged to deliberately miss spending Christmas with her husband and Huguette. Clark mentioned Anna’s change of plans to his lawyer, but he expressed relief that her spirits seemed to be improving. Anna returned in time for New Year’s and spent a few months in Manhattan but then left abruptly for Los Angeles to see her brother, Arthur, who was in poor health.

For Huguette, being left behind on Fifth Avenue, either with her workaholic father or with just the servants, was a way of life. It was lonely, but she was used to keeping herself occupied. She had friends at the Spence School and played violin in what she called “Mrs. Harriman’s orchestra.” The American Orchestral Society, created by the railroad titan’s wife, Mary Harriman, showcased upper-class young talent.