The Phantom of Fifth Avenue: The Mysterious Life and Scandalous Death of Heiress Huguette Clark (9 page)

The 1899 Montana Senate race cemented Clark’s reputation as a man willing to do anything—bribe, threaten, risk public ridicule—to get what he wanted. This race was one of several turn-of-the-century election scandals that led to the country’s ratification of the Seventeenth Amendment in 1913, taking away the power of state legislatures to elect senators and mandating a popular vote.

To influence political coverage, Clark bought Montana newspapers (the
Great Falls Tribune
, the
Helena Herald
), gained leverage over others by making investments or purchasing their debts, and sent
emissaries around the state to directly grease the palms of key editors and writers. “The spree of bribery and newspaper buying that accompanied William A. Clark’s push for the Senate made most charges of journalistic prostitution seem plausible,” wrote historian Dennis Swibold in
Copper Chorus: Mining, Politics, and the Montana Press, 1889–1959.

When the Montana State Legislature convened in January 1899, Clark set up his headquarters at the Helena Hotel. Since he did not want to be seen making questionable deals, he brought in his twenty-six-year-old son Charles as a bagman. Charles Clark took on the job with filial enthusiasm, declaring in an oft-repeated but perhaps apocryphal quote, “We’ll send the old man to the Senate or the poor house.” State Senator Fred Whiteside promptly threw a grenade into the race when he plausibly claimed that Clark’s allies had given him $30,000 for his vote and that of two other legislators. Clark claimed that this charge was a setup by Daly.

A Helena grand jury launched an inquiry (finding that the evidence was inconclusive) even as the balloting continued. During the eighteen days that the Montana legislature wavered, Clark’s son and his other allies reputedly offered enticements to Democrats and Republicans for their votes—deeds to valuable real estate, new jobs, debt repayment, and good, old-fashioned bundles of cash.

After Clark finally won the election, he celebrated by giving the citizens of Helena free unlimited champagne at the bars. The newly anointed senator was not scheduled to take office until January 1900, which gave Marcus Daly nearly a year to regroup. Daly filed charges of corruption with the Senate Committee on Elections, which began an investigation.

Witnesses trooped from Montana to Washington to testify in the winter of 1900. With the capital mesmerized by the corruption charges, there was tremendous interest in this eligible widower poised to be the richest man in the Senate. A syndicated story hit the wires on March 19 announcing that Clark would soon be married. “Gossips say Miss Ada La Chappelle, Protegee of Copper King, Will Probably Become His Bride,” trumpeted the
Chicago Daily Tribune
. The
femme fatale was described as “tall, dark and slender, with a typical French face and the great soulful eyes which are associated with artistic temperament.”

The story was rife with errors, including the name of the supposed bride: not only was there no “Ada,” but the background description and accompanying sketch fit Anna La Chapelle’s sister, Amelia, now attending finishing school in Forest Glen, Maryland, and training as a vocalist.

Clark indignantly denied the marital rumor and stressed that he was a father figure to both La Chapelle sisters, insisting, “I would as soon think of marrying one of my own daughters.” But stories about the romance kept appearing with salacious variations. The
Pharos-Tribune
of Logansport, Indiana, wrote, “There has been much gossip about Miss La Chappelle, most of it to the effect that she once began a breach of promise suit against her benefactor.” The newspaper delicately added, “Somewhat different rumors, which are not so flattering to the copper king, are persistently circulated.” The
Davenport Daily Republican
insisted that Clark’s children vehemently disapproved: “Mr. Clark’s daughters have been opposed to his marriage to so young a wife.”

Amelia La Chapelle was so upset that she fled the Washington suburbs to return to Butte. A second round of articles followed, claiming that the feisty Amelia was going to marry former Montana senator Lee Mantle. “This is the first I have heard of it,” Mantle responded, diplomatically adding, “and unfortunately for me there is not a word of truth in it.”

While gossip columnists feasted on this family drama, Clark was on Capitol Hill, facing his accusers. He was so confident that he would prevail that he purchased “Stewart’s Castle” on Massachusetts Avenue near Dupont Circle, a four-story mansion built by Nevada senator William Stewart. But Clark’s election trophy was snatched away when he was unable to convince the Senate that he had won the election legitimately.
SENATE COMMITTEE AGAINST MR. CLARK
, blared the
New York Times
on April 24, 1900.
DECISION BASED ON BRIBERY. REPORT SAYS CLARK IN HIS TESTIMONY ADMITTED CORRUPT PRACTICES BY HIS AGENTS
.

Clark resigned before he could be thrown out. Then the crafty mogul tried to make an end run. Montana governor Robert Smith was lured to California on a business trip, and Lt. Gov. A. E. Spriggs used his temporary power as Montana’s highest official to appoint Clark to the empty Senate seat. Crying fraud, the outraged governor named his own candidate. The Senate adjourned without acting on either appointment, leaving the Montana Senate seat vacant.

Some humiliated office seekers might have opted for a low profile after such a searing defeat. But William Andrews Clark threw an extravaganza of a wedding in Manhattan on May 28, 1900, for his daughter Katherine to Dr. Lewis Rutherfurd Morris, the scion of a family who traced its lineage back to a Founding Father. Clark invited four thousand guests including President McKinley, Cabinet members, generals, and fellow robber barons J. Pierpont Morgan and E. H. Harriman. (The La Chapelle sisters did not make the cut.) Crowds thronged St. Thomas Church on Fifth Avenue to see the dignitaries. The reception was held at Clark’s apartment at the Navarro Flats on West Fifty-Eighth Street, where the lines for the elevators were so long that many people walked up seven flights. As a Hungarian orchestra played, guests could scarcely make it through the melee to reach the sumptuous buffet tables.

Clark had already decided that his residence at one of New York’s premier buildings—featuring seven-bedroom duplexes with extra-high ceilings and Gothic and Queen Anne architectural details—was not sufficient to display his burgeoning art collection. After purchasing land on Fifth Avenue at Seventy-Seventh Street, he began planning a French-style mansion that would rival the palaces of the Astors and Vanderbilts.

Returning to Butte, Clark plotted another zigzag route to take him back to Washington and a Senate seat. He teamed up with mining mogul Augustus Heinze, and the duo came up with a plan to stack the Montana legislature with like-minded Democrats. They courted the labor vote by announcing that they would grant their miners an eight-hour day. Then Clark went off to Europe to spend two months with Anna. In the November 1900 election, the Clark-Heinze slate of Democrats won the statehouse by a landslide. In January 1901, the
new Montana legislature elected Clark to the Senate seat he had long craved.

The most widely quoted description of the robber baron’s political career came from Mark Twain, a friend of Marcus Daly, and therefore not an entirely objective source. Twain excoriated Clark in 1907 as the epitome of corruption: “He is said to have bought legislatures and judges as other men buy food and raiment… he is as rotten a human being as can ever be found anywhere under the flag; he is a shame to the American nation and no one has helped to send him to the Senate who did not know that his proper place was the penitentiary, with a ball and chain on his legs.”

Rumors spread that the Montana senator would be arriving in the capital with a bride. A new name emerged: Hattie Rose Laube, of Huron, South Dakota, announced that she was engaged to Senator Clark, claiming that they had kissed and that he had written her a letter proposing matrimony. Clark issued a public denial. Even the
Anaconda Standard
, which gleefully trumpeted Clark’s every peccadillo, sided with him, stating that the stunt appeared designed to advertise “her pa’s spiritualism racket…”

Other tales of Clark’s romantic entanglements circulated. The copper mogul had taken under his wing a new Montana protégée, Kathlyn Williams, an acting student at Montana Wesleyan College who had appeared in Butte productions. Another hard-pressed teenager (her father had died), Kathlyn had approached the senator and asked him to pay for her tuition at the Sargent School, now known as the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York. Kathlyn was later described as the senator’s “ward” by the
Washington Post
. She publicly credited Clark for his financial support but was discreet about their relationship. The blonde ingenue would go on to become a silent film star, appearing in dozens of serials and movies such as
Rendezvous at Midnight
,
Everything for Sale
, and
The Politician’s Love Story
.

In the fall of 1901, Anna La Chapelle was seen in Washington, staying at the Arlington Hotel and being entertained by the senator’s friends, including the sister of his first wife. Then Anna moved to Butte temporarily, sharing an apartment with her sister, Amelia, within easy walking distance of Clark’s Granite Street mansion.

Anna had now been involved with the copper mogul in some fashion for eight years. Whether on purpose or by accident she became pregnant. On February 6, 1902, she was accompanied by Amelia on a ship to France, and then she headed south to a villa near the Bay of Algiers with the ever-loyal Madame de Cervellon. In August 1902, Anna gave birth to Louise Amelia Andrée Clark, known as Andrée. The news was kept so quiet that not even a hint of a new Clark descendant was heard back in America. In fact, the
San Francisco Chronicle
ran an article that month announcing: “Rumor is persistent that Senator W. A. Clark of Montana will marry during the coming autumn or winter either the widow of a well-known New Yorker of distinguished lineage or the recently divorced wife of a Missouri Congressman.” The story drily commented that the senator had a “partiality” for the ladies and “is constantly credited with being about to marry this or that prominent woman in whose company he may have been seen.”

His fortune made him attractive, and the senator knew how to charm women. He was able to knowledgeably discuss art and literature—he collected rare books—as well as business. But he was deeply in love with Anna, a bond that would only become stronger through the years. Two decades later, he would still be writing impassioned letters to his “Darling Wife” and “Sweetheart Cherie” and “Ma Chere Anna,” signing them “fondest love.”

Even as Anna was giving birth to her first child, Andrée, Clark’s children from his first marriage were preparing their own engraved birth announcements. (These children were the grandparents and great-grandparents of the Clark relations who, a century later, would express interest in Tante Huguette.) Clark’s oldest daughter, Mary, had given birth several years earlier to a daughter. Now his second daughter, Katherine Clark Morris, was pregnant; plus his son and namesake Will Jr., a University of Virginia law school graduate, and his new wife, Mabel Foster, were also expecting.

Senator Clark took sibling rivalry to new heights by promising $1 million to his first male grandchild. Katherine gave birth to a girl, but a month later, Mabel produced William Andrews Clark III, nicknamed Tertius. Will Jr. jubilantly wired his father: “I claim the
million!” But the celebration was short-lived. Mabel became ill with blood poisoning and died a month later.

Although William Andrews Clark had been obsessed with winning entry to the world’s most exclusive club, as the Senate was known, once the prize was attained he was more interested in enlarging his financial empire than bothering with the details of crafting legislation. Constantly traveling, he went to Russia to look at potential mining acquisitions; visited Paris to see Anna and purchase paintings, tapestries, and antique lace; headed to Los Angeles to check on his widowed mother and meet with his brother Ross to inspect their new sugar beet farms; and traveled to Arizona and Montana to look in on his mining operations. He spent many hours hammering out the settlement of a long-running fight with E. H. Harriman over constructing a railroad from Salt Lake City to Los Angeles. Clark chose a dusty Nevada outpost as a railroad refueling stop, which was incorporated as Las Vegas. Grateful Nevada citizens christened the area Clark County. The
Los Angeles Times
gushed in a headline:
W.A. CLARK THE BUSIEST MAN IN THE SWIM
.

His triumphant march through the business pages hit a snag, however, with the eruption in April 1903 of a long-brewing scandal. Mary McNellis, the New Yorker whom he had wined and dined back in 1896 at the Chicago convention, went public with the details of her $150,000 breach-of-promise lawsuit against him. McNellis complained that her lawsuit, filed many years earlier, had been unfairly dismissed in secret proceedings and demanded a new trial. An irate Clark announced, “I would rather stand publicity than give up money when I am innocent.” In McNellis’s version, Clark had been a frequent caller at her Forty-Second Street apartment, helped her with her German lessons, and sent her notes signed “Votre ami.” Clark admitted that he’d met McNellis four times and had been fond of her but was offended when he began receiving letters from her lawyer “trying to induce me to pay money. I would not submit to the demands and I will not do so now.” Clark prevailed and the lawsuit was thrown out.