The Phantom of Fifth Avenue: The Mysterious Life and Scandalous Death of Heiress Huguette Clark (21 page)

Constance’s saucy past would have been well-known to Huguette’s mother, since they moved in the same social circles in Paris, prior to 1914. Constance was more than twenty years older than Bill Gower, and in fact, two of her three children were older than Gower. Newly divorced from her third husband, Evelyn Toulmin, Constance split her time between Paris and America.

Had Gower been a junior bank clerk, she would not have seen him as a serious suitor. But thanks to Huguette’s dowry, he was a wealthy man. While some of Constance’s luster had dimmed with age, she more than compensated by offering social entrée. Her well-connected parents entertained in style at their Southampton estate, and the family boasted new publishing connections, since her twenty-year-old niece, Leslie, had just become the second wife of fifty-five-year-old Condé Nast.

Huguette appeared to be sad and subdued after her marriage ended, pained by feelings of rejection. Gordon Lyle Jr. says, “I’m guessing it had a very negative effect on Huguette.” The carefree, naïve young woman had learned a sobering lesson about the ways of the world.

Since Anna believed in the healing balm of a change of scenery, mother and daughter headed west for several months, spending time in Santa Barbara followed by Hawaii (where Huguette was listed on the
Malolo
’s ship manifest as Huguette Gower) and then back to Santa Barbara for the remainder of the summer. The vacation seems to have lifted Huguette’s spirits, and she found solace in painting, judging by her letter to Tadé Styka, written in French on August 8 from Bellosguardo.

In October, Tadé Styka moved from Paris to live in Manhattan full-time, renting an apartment with a studio on Central Park South. Huguette wrote a note to him from Santa Barbara, expressing her enthusiasm.

In December 1929, Walter Winchell mentioned the artist in his newspaper column, writing, “Tadé Styka, who charges them 10 G’s for their portraits, is here from Paree looking for chumps.” That was a plug since the chumps, of course, were the rich and famous regularly featured in Winchell’s column. Tadé had shown his work at a
Chicago gallery in January and the Clarks sent him a telegram from California: “With all of our best wishes for a huge success in Chicago, Anna and Huguette Clark.”

The Chicago art critics ran out of adjectives in enthusing about his work at the branch of the Knoedler Gallery. “It is a very rare exhibit that leaves you wordless,” wrote Eleanor Jewett of the
Chicago Daily Tribune
. “It is astonishingly and astoundingly fine. The sweep of it rushes you from your feet… if there is genius in the world today, Styka is possessed of it.”

But with the onset of the Great Depression, fewer wealthy patrons could afford to splurge on a portrait, even by a “genius.” So Tadé had the free time and financial motive to resume his two-hour, four-times-per-week painting lessons with Huguette once she returned to Manhattan. (The market crash did not daunt Huguette, who dropped $2,700 in January 1930 at Cartier on a diamond, onyx, and emerald brooch, and also bought Monet’s painting
Nympheas
from the Durand-Ruel Galleries.)

Bill Gower had been fond of his mother-in-law, and a year after he and Huguette separated, he wrote an apologetic note to Anna on March 19, 1930.

A month later, Huguette and her mother made the trip to Reno for the required three-month residency to get a divorce. In 1930, divorce was still a novelty: census records show that 196,000 divorced that
year. New York State’s unforgiving laws required proof of infidelity and a yearlong wait, but in wide-open Nevada, a spouse could list such grounds as desertion, neglect, or habitual drunkenness. Reno had become the nation’s divorce capital, with dude ranches opening up to accommodate the flow of soon-to-be single women, a world chronicled in Clare Boothe Luce’s 1936 catfight of a play,
The Women
. In petitioning for divorce, Huguette claimed that Gower had deserted her. The
New York Times
tried unsuccessfully to reach William Gower for comment, stating “he is understood to be in New York.”

Huguette’s arrival in Reno created a stir. She had brought along a large entourage including her dogs, a cook, a butler, several maids, a chauffeur, and a social secretary. Her uncle Arthur La Chapelle had arranged for Huguette to lease an entire floor at the Riverside Hotel, a redbrick luxury property, at the cost of $2,000 per month. In a syndicated feature that ran on June 28, 1930—
WHY AMERICA’S $50,000,000 HEIRESS CAST OFF HER $30-A-WEEK PRINCE CHARMING
—Huguette was criticized for violating the social mores of divorce land. “Extravagance and exclusiveness may be all right for Park Avenue, but they’re out of place in Reno,” the article huffed. “The majority of even the wealthiest divorce hunters have been satisfied with a suite at the most. It was recalled that Cornelius Vanderbilt was content with a single room… while even Mary Pickford selected an unostentatious home.”

Avoiding other would-be divorcées, Huguette remained cloistered with her mother and the servants. Her vulnerability is palpable in a poignant letter that she wrote in French on hotel stationery on July 4, 1930, to Tadé, in which she expresses the desperate hope that she can count on him:

When she did not hear back from him, Huguette was so upset that she sent him a needy telegram on July 26, 1930, which was uncharacteristically written in English.

She received her decree on August 11, which stated that she had been “granted an absolute divorce on the ground that the defendant has willfully deserted plaintiff for a period of more than one year, and the bonds of matrimony now and heretofore… dissolved.” Given legal permission to return to her maiden name, Huguette nonetheless held on to the honorific “Mrs.,” identifying herself for the rest of her life as Mrs. Clark.

Within hours of receiving her decree, Huguette and her mother left for Santa Barbara. Five days later, they sailed from San Francisco to Hawaii. Some newspapers used an unflattering photo of Huguette that had been taken by the Associated Press while she was on her honeymoon. She is wearing a fur coat, cloche hat, pearls, and two diamond Cartier Art Deco bracelets. She looks much older than her age and her expression is unbearably sad. This was the last public photograph of Huguette.

A
t the end of January 1931, Edward FitzGerald, the seventh Duke of Leinster, sailed for America on the ocean liner
Europa
. His fellow passengers included movie producer Samuel Goldwyn and heavyweight boxing champ Max Schmeling. The duke had a dinner date scheduled with Huguette’s mother, Anna, and her aunt Amelia for the day after he arrived in New York.

Long on pedigree but short on funds, the duke was what wags of that era would call a “no-account count.” Dating back to the fourteenth century, the FitzGeralds had been among Ireland’s wealthiest dynasties, amassing multiple glossy titles—the Dukedom of Leinster, Marquess of Kildare, Earl of Kildare, Baron of Offaly, Viscount Leinster—and building massive castles and Georgian mansions. Edward’s older brother Maurice FitzGerald, the sixth Duke of Leinster, came into his title in 1893 as a six-year-old after both of his parents died. As the eldest of three sons, Maurice inherited a huge family fortune plus the 1,100-acre family estate, Carton.

Edward FitzGerald grew up with all the affectations of great wealth, but as the third son in a country built on primogeniture, he was entitled to a mere fraction of his family’s riches. At age twenty-one, this ne’er-do-well fell in love with showgirl May Etheridge, known as the “sweet little pajama girl” for her preferred onstage attire (presumably, offstage she wore less). To break up the match, the FitzGerald family kidnapped Edward and spirited him out of London. Promising to end
the romance, he was set free—and promptly returned to England and married the actress in 1913. The couple had a baby boy but separated in 1923 and finally divorced in 1930.

During World War I, Edward’s middle brother, Desmond, a major in the Irish Guards, accidentally set off a bomb in his tent in France that killed him. Edward had a good war and came away physically unscathed. But unaccustomed to living within his means, he gambled and racked up huge debts, filing for bankruptcy in 1918. Described by the British newspapers as a “daredevil sportsman” who liked fast cars and fast yachts, Edward was in constant need of cash.

Assuming that he would never inherit, Edward sold his life interest in the family’s $50 million estate to Harry Mallaby-Deeley, a financier and Conservative member of Parliament. Edward FitzGerald received approximately $365,000 and the guarantee of a $5,000 yearly payment for life. It was a decision that Edward would quickly regret.

In 1922, his oldest brother Maurice FitzGerald died suddenly while locked up in what the newspapers called a “lunatic asylum.” Edward assumed the title of the Duke of Leinster, but Mallaby-Deeley continued to live in the family’s historic homes and receive the income from the duke’s estates. The profligate duke filed for bankruptcy again in 1922, with creditors claiming that he owed more than $1.5 million. The following year, the duke was briefly jailed in London for borrowing money without alerting gullible lenders that he was bankrupt.

Even before his 1930 divorce, the Duke of Leinster had begun prospecting for an American heiress to save him from his creditors. It was a transatlantic tradition: riches in exchange for a title. A handsome man with a raffish charm, Edward began his search during trips to New York in the late 1920s. The duke would later admit that he lived “at an extravagant rate,” entertaining lavishly to give the right aristocratic impression as he attempted to “marry somebody rich.” Edward FitzGerald set his sights on two women who could afford to keep him in style: the name of the first heiress remains shrouded in mystery, but his second prospect was Huguette Clark. As he later described it in distinctly unromantic terms, he then began negotiations.

While he was en route to New York on the
Europa
to close the
deal, the duke’s plans became public in a series of front-page stories in America. “His Grace, the Duke of Leinster, first Duke of Ireland, whose arrival in New York City is said to portend wedding bells with himself and Mrs. Huguette Clark Gower, as principal figures,” reported the syndicated item. “Mrs. Gower is a daughter of the late Senator William A. Clark.” Huguette’s debutante photo and a picture of the duke looking dapper in his fedora ran side by side.

Besieged by reporters when the
Europa
docked in New York, the panicked duke denied any talk of an engagement to Huguette. Edward insisted that he was “not going to be married to anyone” during his American holiday.
DUKE DENIES PLANS TO WED
was the
New York Times
headline, stressing that he was refuting rumors that he had marital intentions toward Huguette. The duke still attended the scheduled dinner with Huguette’s mother and aunt at the Fifth Avenue home of mutual friends Mr. and Mrs. Irving Hogue. It must have been an awkward evening.

Was Huguette ever interested in this Irish bounder? Perhaps fleetingly. She was enough of a woman of her era to be flattered by the notion of a European title. And with his wild Irish hair and daredevil smile, the Duke of Leinster was undeniably handsome. But the European fortune hunter was not artistic, he did not share any of Huguette’s interests, and he was nakedly avaricious.

For Huguette, still recovering from the humiliation of being forced to state that she had been deserted by William Gower, it was an unpleasant jolt to see her name dragged through the press with the implication that she had been rejected by a man yet again. Five years later, the duke would admit that Huguette and her mother had walked away from his marriage proposal. But that was not the impression that he fostered at the time. Later in life, Huguette acted as if this embarrassing chapter of her life had never occurred. She would often discuss the men who had mattered to her, but she never mentioned the Duke of Leinster.

Nonetheless, the tale dogged her for years. In 1932, when the duke married an American, Agnes Raffaela Kennedy Van Neck, the ex-wife of a bandleader, articles stressed his near miss with Huguette. In 1936 when the duke filed for bankruptcy for the third time, he told
a courtroom of creditors about his search for a rich American bride. Huguette was portrayed as a savvy woman who had broken off the ill-suited romance. As the
Boston Globe
put it, “Mrs. Gower, as wise as her father the late Senator Clark, scoffed as ridiculous all rumors and reports that she was to enter into any matrimonial alliance with the Premier Duke of Ireland. Indeed, the Clark millions were not to be exchanged for a title and a lot of debt-burdened castles.” Those Clark millions were an inescapable part of Huguette’s public identity. A woman who prided herself on being an artist, time and again she was portrayed as a walking dollar sign.

As a newly minted divorcée, Huguette developed a distinct rhythm to her life: winters in her twelfth-floor New York apartment with her mother four floors below, summers with Anna in Santa Barbara, with an occasional side trip to Hawaii. Huguette’s days in Manhattan revolved around her painting lessons four days a week with Tadé Styka. Even though she was a divorced woman, she still brought along her mother’s overbearing and protective social secretary, Adele Marié, known as Missy, who would sit in another room and wait for her twenty-five-year-old charge.

Seventeen years older than Huguette, Styka was a courtly man, Old World in his ways, a man who painted while wearing a suit. As his daughter Wanda says, “My father was used to traveling in rarified circles and his family was of nobility. In Europe, he had many friends who were counts and baronesses. In his manner, he was very reserved with people he didn’t know well. If he knew someone well, he was vivacious and warm.”

The art magazine
Apollo
, in a lengthy feature on the artist, wrote, “On personal contact with Tadé Styka, one was bound, sooner or later, to experience the feeling that he was the spiritual exile of another and a greater age. Beneath his large, warm kindness, which was of the heart, there was a melancholy of the spirit, a shade of impatient, unresigned indignation—never expressed—as of a banished monarch or a caged lion.”

Each year, Huguette and her painting teacher, who spent his summers in Europe, were separated for several months either by a
continent or by an ocean. For all her girlish warmth and enthusiasm, in Huguette’s many letters to Tadé there is a sense that the watchful Anna Clark or her social secretary was monitoring the correspondence. Her chatty letters have an undertone of unrequited passion, but she seems reluctant to express herself for fear of rejection. Huguette comes across as cheerful and independent, with bubbly descriptions of her activities. On July 18, 1931, she sent him a four-page missive, in French, on monogrammed stationery from Bellosguardo.

Painting gave her a sense of purpose. An Associated Press story on September 6, 1931, updated readers on Huguette’s postdivorce life with a favorable mention of her talent. “Huguette Clark, who inherited millions from her father, William A. Clark, copper magnate and senator, has won considerable recognition as an artist. Her paintings received high praise at the Corcoran Galleries in Washington last year and now she’s planning an exhibition in Paris. She is an accomplished musician.” Huguette’s lush painting of a blue night-blooming flower was featured in the prestigious 1932 Winter Exhibit of the National Academy of Design in Manhattan. She was beginning to make a name for herself.

Tadé was also making news. A syndicated item noted: “The talk of Paris being ‘gay’ is rot and drivel, so far as Tadé Styka, Polish portrait
painter, has been able to observe. New York is more wicked than Paris and Harlem is much ‘hotter’ than anything gay Paree has to apologize for.” Tadé presumably had gone up to the Cotton Club in Harlem to see the uninhibited scene—jazz greats, gangsters, movie stars, ample alcohol despite Prohibition—but there is no evidence that he ever brought his devoted pupil along.

As the nation plunged deeper into the Depression, Anna and Huguette felt the stirrings of philanthropy. They helped friends: Dr. William Gordon Lyle’s finances had taken a hit from the market crash; the Clarks underwrote tuition for his son Gordon at St. Paul’s School in New Hampshire. Anna sent a $250 check to the Fund for Relief of the Unemployed in the fall of 1931. Huguette, who read the
New York Times
religiously, was touched by the heartrending stories featured in the Christmas fund-raising effort for New York’s Neediest Cases. For two years in a row—1930 and 1931—Huguette wrote the largest checks received by the newspaper charity, $2,500 each year, the equivalent of more than $34,000 in current dollars. Throughout her life, Huguette was moved by individual appeals rather than organized charity.

The crime broke the nation’s heart: on March 1, 1932, Charles Lindbergh’s two-year-old son was snatched from the second-floor nursery of his parents’ New Jersey home. The police fielded thousands of tips as they hunted for the baby, and the aviator eventually paid a $50,000 ransom. Two months later, the baby’s body was found less than a mile from his home. After a marked bill from the ransom turned up in the possession of German immigrant Bruno Hauptmann, he was charged and convicted of the crime. Still protesting his innocence, he died in the electric chair in 1936.

At the time of the kidnapping, Huguette Clark was an adult, but the crime obsessed her and panicked Anna. Beyond imagining the agony of the Lindbergh parents, mother and daughter worried that the extensive publicity about Huguette’s inheritance might make her a ransom target. If an innocent baby’s life could be bartered for a $50,000 ransom, what were the odds of threats to an heiress said by the newspapers to be worth $50 million?