The Phantom of Fifth Avenue: The Mysterious Life and Scandalous Death of Heiress Huguette Clark (28 page)

Anna Evangelina La Chapelle Clark, the self-invented Montana beauty who rose from the brothel-filled streets of Butte to become the wife of one of the richest men in America, died on October 11, 1963, at the age of eighty-five. Although her death was considered noteworthy enough to make the newspapers, most of the obituaries primarily recited her husband’s accomplishments.
MRS. ANNA CLARK, SENATOR’S
WIDOW; ART PATRON, WHOSE HUSBAND LEFT $250 MILLION, DIES
was the headline of the
New York Times
article, which noted that Mrs. Clark had subsidized the Paganini Quartet plus the Loewenguth Quartet of Brussels. The
Washington Post
emphasized the local angle:
ANNA CLARK, PATRON OF THE CORCORAN GALLERY
—describing the artworks that her husband had given to the museum.

Anna Clark’s will, which she had signed on May 9, 1960, left the bulk of her estate to her daughter. Huguette received her mother’s jewelry, her museum-worthy paintings, antique French furniture, and real estate, which included Bellosguardo, Rancho Alegre, and Anna’s Fifth Avenue co-op. Anna put $500,000 (the equivalent of $3.8 million in current dollars) in trust for her sister, Amelia, with the income and profits flowing to Amelia during her lifetime and the principal reverting upon her death to Huguette. Anna made an identical arrangement for her brother Arthur’s widow, Hanna La Chapelle. Outside of her immediate family, Anna gave the largest bequest to her confidant and social secretary, Adele Marié, who received $100,000 plus the income from another $100,000 trust. Anna’s two goddaughters, Tina Lyle Harrower and Ann Ellis Raynolds, each received $10,000.

Once again, the Corcoran Gallery benefited from the Clark generosity: Anna gave $100,000 to the museum in her husband’s memory as well as her Stradivarius violins and other valuable cellos and violas. But she did not want the historic instruments to sit silently in cases. To keep the music alive, Anna asked the museum to loan the instruments to string quartets and even left $50,000 for the instruments’ upkeep. In other philanthropic bequests, Anna gave $100,000 each to the Girl Scouts (a tribute to her daughter Andrée), the Juilliard School of Music, the American Red Cross, and the United Hospital Fund.

Even though Huguette had known for several years that Anna was seriously ill, losing her mother was wrenching. Huguette had made several painful trips out to the Bronx to Woodlawn Cemetery—her sister and father were buried in the family’s white mausoleum—but now at age fifty-seven, she was the only one left. She clipped and carefully saved her mother’s obituaries in a folder. Etienne wrote Huguette a comforting condolence letter on October 14 to say, “Your news of your mother passing filled me with sadness, but she left us only
temporarily, and she is in a better place now with the angels, Andrée, her parents and God. She is probably happier since her last years were difficult. She will be with you forever, though there is emptiness for you now…” A month later, he wrote again to say, “I hope this note will still find you well, despite the great change that must seem quite sad at times…”

Huguette’s life had always revolved around Anna; as an adult, she had rarely been apart from her mother. Even during the brief nine months when the newlywed Huguette lived with William Gower, her mother was only four floors away. They were unusually close, two women who had lived through two world wars plus the Depression, protected and isolated by their millions. Now aside from her household employees—a housekeeper, maids, a chauffeur—Huguette was on her own.

Time stopped.

Huguette had rarely seen her Clark relatives in recent years. But shortly after Anna Clark died, Huguette’s half sister Katherine Morris invited her to lunch at her home at 1030 Fifth Avenue followed by a Friday concert at Lincoln Center. They were joined by a handful of female family members including Gemma Hall, who was married to Katherine Morris’s grandson Lewis Hall. Gemma Hall later said she came away with the distinct impression that Huguette was unused to modern life. When the women arrived at Lincoln Center, Gemma recalled, “What always came to mind was of someone who had never seen an escalator before, so she [Huguette] was hesitating, shall I take that step… Eventually, courageously, she did… She had a beautiful chiffon dress which was perhaps something that would have been used many years before.”

As far as Huguette was concerned, this was a social outing that she had no desire to repeat. From then on, she turned down invitations from these New York Clark relatives. As Katherine Morris’s great-granddaughter Carla Hall, born in 1952, recalls, “I sat every Sunday with my grandmother and great-grandmother at their table for lunch. My perception as a child growing up about my aunt Huguette is that she was invited to lunch very often for holidays and for a couple of these Sunday lunches. She would call up prior to the lunch and say
that she had a little cold, and that she would be indisposed, and she sends the family greetings.”

Alone now at 907 Fifth Avenue, rambling around the spacious apartments, Huguette had to deal with the business of death—handling her mother’s estate—and find a way to fill the hours that she had previously spent tending to Anna. Huguette gave Rancho Alegre, the Santa Barbara ranch that Anna had purchased during World War II, to the Boy Scouts. She commissioned music in her mother’s honor from her mother’s harp teacher, Marcel Grandjany. As a way to move forward in life, Huguette decided to renovate Anna’s eighth-floor apartment, using the decorating firm French and Company, which her mother had employed for various jobs since 1926. The family firm was now run by Robert Samuels Jr.

But Huguette insisted on one provision that reflected her reclusive state of mind: she refused to meet with him. Samuels orchestrated work on her apartment periodically for the next thirty years, but Huguette would never see him face-to-face. “He’d tell us stories at the dinner table, how she’d hide behind a door and slip him notes,” says Ann Fabrizio, the decorator’s oldest daughter. Her younger sister, Margaret Hoag, recalls, “My father talked to her through the door. She would never open the door. After her mother died, she started to stay hidden.”

Huguette never explained her behavior.

She spent more than $78,000 in 1964 fixing up her mother’s co-op, replacing the floor with reproduction parquet de Versailles and renovating the new kitchen with a black Garland gas stove and a Kelvinator refrigerator. “Everything is proceeding nicely although the apartment is in shambles at the moment,” Robert Samuels wrote to Huguette on September 4, 1964. The eighth floor had two apartments, and her mother had lived in 8W, facing Central Park. When the unit next door, 8E, became available, Huguette bought it to insure her privacy, although she never furnished it. Now she had forty-two rooms at 907 Fifth Avenue. But she was a voracious reader who constantly ordered new books, her doll collection kept increasing, and she never threw out any piece of paper that entered the house. Consequently, some rooms became cluttered with stuff. Radiator leaks in the aging
building were a constant problem. Huguette primarily lived on the twelfth floor for at least fifteen more years before switching to sleeping downstairs in 8W.

For Huguette, her daily mail deliveries provided an infusion of life from the outside world. One of her frequent correspondents during the 1960s was a man who had once been dear to her: her ex-husband, William Gower. He had retired from his Paris-based job as the European head of the American publishing firm Cowles Media and was now splitting his time between a villa in Antibes and vacation lodging on the island of Antigua. His second wife, Constance, had died in 1951. He had been very discreet about his first marriage. Gower’s niece Jan Perry, now eighty-three, was unaware that he had previously been married to Huguette Clark, saying, “He never talked about her.”

But the former spouses were now frequently in touch, sending each other telegraphs and letters. Huguette mailed him checks as well as her photographs with witty captions, and he replied with amused sentiments.

The former magazine publisher followed up with another letter commending her pictures.

The old flames made plans to meet when Bill Gower came to Manhattan in 1964. Huguette sent him a telegram on February 15, asking: “When are you thinking of coming to the states STOP Be sure to let me know in advance so I will be in New York. STOP. With affection, Huguette.” After she received his reply, she wrote again on February 21 to confirm their plans: “Will call Union Club on 3rd or 4th of March STOP Bon Voyage, Affectionately, Huguette.” Her ex-husband sent her a telegram on Feb. 28: “Will telephone you on arrival scheduled Sunday afternoon. Affectionately, Bill.”

Judging by the available correspondence, that may have been the only time the two former spouses saw each other during this period. Whatever had gone wrong in their brief marriage, they had nonetheless become friends again. But friends separated by an ocean, content in their separate worlds. Huguette sent Bill a telegraph in April, conveying her sympathies over the death of his dog, Snoopy. “Having had dogs I know what the heartbreak is. STOP. All my best wishes for a good Easter under the circumstances.”

In August, Huguette wrote a wistful telegram to her ex-husband.

She often wrote chatty notes to him about current events and her extended family including her aunt Amelia, and Amelia’s third husband, lawyer Thomas Darrington Semple. On September 26, 1968, Huguette wrote a draft of a letter that she planned to send to Bill, talking about the political unrest in France and the bitter New York City school strike. “From what I hear, France is back to normal again and there is no more talk of strikes for which I am thankful. Here there seems to be no hint of a settlement for the teacher’s strike. During my school days such happenings were unheard of (no such luck). Although I am a very poor correspondent you are very often in my thoughts dearest Bill. Do write me soon and in the meantime, all my love.”

In the first few years after her mother’s death, Huguette still cared about her appearance, sending her maids out to buy false eyelashes, nail polish, and copies of
Vogue
. She had yet another gentleman caller who split his time between New York and California: novelist and screenwriter Polan Banks. Born in 1906, the same year as Huguette, the well-born Virginia native published his first historical novel at the age of twenty and parlayed that into a successful career as a novelist and Hollywood writer. (One of his novels became the 1941 hit
The Great Lie
starring Bette Davis and Mary Astor; another was turned into
My Forbidden Past
in 1951, starring Ava Gardner and Robert Mitchum.) His first wife, Amalie, was the niece of financier Bernard Baruch.

The novelist and Huguette had friends in common, which was likely how they met. Polan Banks and Etienne de Villermont were both close to Russian prince Alexis Droutzkoy, serving as usher and best man at the prince’s 1944 New York wedding party and joining him at other society watering spots such as Saratoga Springs.

Polan Banks sent Huguette a jaunty note in March 1966 from his Wilshire Boulevard office in Los Angeles, written as if in the voice of his dog.

But as much as Huguette wanted to trust people, she inevitably worried about being used. Her friendship with Banks unraveled years later when the writer mentioned that he might want to base a character on Huguette in one of his novels. She was so upset that she responded by having her lawyer warn him off. Remembering her mother, whose life had been fictionalized in
The Sisters
, Huguette did not want to be an
unwitting star on best-seller lists. Banks wrote back to apologize. His letter indicates that Huguette may have helped him out financially.