Empty Mansions (58 page)

1
D
R
. H
ENRY
S
INGMAN:
Dr. Singman described his visit to 907 Fifth Avenue on March 26, 1991, in a note in Huguette Clark’s medical chart on April 30, 1996. This note was filed with his affidavit in Surrogate’s Court, May 24, 2012.

1
“O
N
29 N
OVEMBER
2001”: Photograph, HMC papers.

2
A
RMSTRONG FILLED THE QUIET AFTERNOONS
: Walter Armstrong’s bagpipe playing was remembered by Barry Hoelscher, son of the estate manager, in an interview with Dedman, February 27, 2012.

3
H
UGUETTE PAID HIM HIS FULL SALARY:
HMC papers.

4
TWO OF THE AUTOMOBILES:
Photographs, HMC papers.

1
ARRIVED IN
N
EW
Y
ORK HARBOR:
See, for example,
The Anaconda Standard
, “Former Senator Clark and His Daughters,” July 6, 1910, and
Grand
Rapids Press
(Michigan), “Children Speak No English: Former Senator Clark Had Them Educated in France,” July 28, 1910.

2
BORN IN
P
ARIS
: Huguette was born in the elegant sixteenth arrondissement of Paris, an area known as Passy.

3
F
RANCE’S BELOVED NOVELIST:
All of Paris had turned out for Hugo’s funeral in 1885.

4
“L
ET ME THINK IT OVER
”
:
Coffey deposition.

5
HIS
N
EW
Y
ORK APARTMENT:
The Clark apartment was in the Navarro Flats, the Spanish-themed apartment buildings at 175 West Fifty-Eighth Street.

6
“W
HEN THIS MODERN PALACE
”
:
Progress on the construction of the Clark mansion was reported regularly in newspapers and magazines around the world. See, for example, “The Most Remarkable House in the World,”
The Straits Times
(Singapore), May 19, 1906; “The Astonishing Story and First Photographs of America’s Costliest Palace,”
The World Magazine
, September 24, 1905; “New York’s Most Expensive Private Mansion,”
The New York Times
, May 31, 1908; “Costly Furnishings of an American Palace,”
Michigan Artisan
, June 10, 1908; and “$125,000 Pipe Organ to Soothe Former Senator Clark,”
The San Francisco Call
, June 11, 1911. W.A. had bought the corner lot in 1895; see “Senator Clark’s New Home Causes a Suit,”
The New York Times
, December 11, 1901, which describes a disagreement over architects’ fees. Construction had begun by February 1899; see “W. A. Clark’s New House,”
The New York Times
, February 6, 1899.

7
THEY WENT COASTING:
Photos and letters, HMC papers.

8
R
EPORTERS WHO TOURED THE HOME:
Details of the home are drawn from photographs and many newspaper and magazine articles. See, for example, “Senator Clark’s Home,”
The New York Times
, February 28, 1904.

9
LITTLE-KNOWN FIRM:
The first architects on the Clark mansion were from the firm of Lord, Hewlett & Hull.

10
T
O HURRY ALONG THE WORK:
“Senator Clark’s New Home Causes a Suit,”
The New York Times
, December 11, 1901.

11
“I
AM NOT MUCH OF A CHURCHMAN
”
:
W. A. Clark to W. M. Bickford, letter, March 13, 1915. He was being asked to donate to another church building. “I have, I think, helped to build every church in Butte and a number of others in the state. As you well know, I am not much of a churchman, and I think the superabundance of churches results in an unjust burden upon the resources of the community in maintenance thereof.”

12
J
OAN OF
A
RC
: The son of artist Louis-Maurice Boutet de Monvel described how the planned paintings for Domrémy became a Clark commission, in “Maurice Boutet de Monvel,” by Bernard Boutet de Monvel, introduced by Stéphane-Jacques Addade, Part 3; available online at
http://​www.​stephane-​jacques-​addade.​com/​en/​maurice-​boutet-​de-​monvel-​3/​by-​bernard-​boutet-​de-​monvel-​part-​3
.

13
S
ALON
D
ORÉ:
The room was decorated with mirror-paneled doors, garlands, and “trophy panels,” vertical decorations derived from the practice of hanging captured weapons from a tree or standard on a battlefield. The original panels represented victory, love, music, and the arts and sciences, and W.A. added panels for theater and sports. Overhead, a canvas ceiling was painted with putti, the clever, chubby figures of winged male children, frolicking amid stately figures representing the seasons and the arts.

14
VAINGLORIOUS
F
RENCH NOBLEMAN:
The comte d’Orsay, with designs by the architect of the Arc de Triomphe.

15
“A
S THE
S
ENATOR AND
M
RS
. C
LARK
”
:
“New York’s Most Expensive Private Mansion: For the First Time a Detailed Description Is Given of Senator Clark’s Fifth Avenue Palace, a Residence Remarkable Among American Homes,”
The New York Times
, May 31, 1908.

16
T
HE FAMILY OF FOUR:
U.S. Census, New York City, 1920.

17
SET OF CHINA, COSTING
$100,000: “$100,000 Dinner Service,”
The New York Times
, December 6, 1901.

18
D
ICKENS AND
C
ONAN
D
OYLE:
The books from W.A.’s library are detailed in an auction catalog for a sale on January 29, 1926, by the American Art Association, New York.

19
A BOOK OF THE GREAT HOUSES:
Huguette had a copy of Michael C. Kathrens’s
Great Houses of New York, 1880–1930
(New York: Acanthus Press, 2005), published in her ninety-ninth year.

20
P. T. B
ARNUM:
“The House of Senator Clark,”
Architectural Record
, January 1906, 27.

21
“
THESE OPINIONS HAVE BEEN PARROTED
”
:
Christopher Gray, “Huguette Clark’s ‘Worthless’ Girlhood Home,”
The New York Times
, June 2, 2011.

1
W
HEN THE SLIGHTLY BUILT MAN:
A photograph by International News Service of the April 1914 Easter Parade on Fifth Avenue is contained in the
New York Times
archives.

2
H
E CHEERFULLY TOOK CENTER STAGE:
W.A.’s singing of “The Star-Spangled Banner” is recorded, for example, in
Proceedings and Debates of the Constitutional Convention Held in the City of Helena, Montana, July 4th, 1889, August 17th, 1889
(Helena: State Publishing, 1921), 974.

3
HAUL FARM PRODUCE:
Elizabeth Clark Abascal, unpublished memoir.

4
WHO WERE LEAVING BY FLATBOAT:
Connellsville’s role as a departure point is described by the Connellsville Area Historical Society in “Connellsville
History,”
http://​connellsville​historical​society.​com/​connellsville_​history
: “Early settlers went into the boat and barge construction business in the late 1700s as more people moved west. People headed toward the Youghiogheny River at Stewart’s Crossing, after crossing the Allegheny Mountains, to continue their westward travel by water.”

5
S
COTCH-
I
RISH HERITAGE:
The longtime proper use of the term “Scotch-Irish,” not Scots-Irish, is described, for example, in Wayland F. Dunaway,
The Scotch-Irish of Colonial Pennsylvania
(Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1944). They are known in Great Britain as Ulster Scots.

6
“W
HAT FUN WE HAD
”
:
Abascal memoir.

7
HE HELPED HIS FATHER BUILD:
Abascal memoir.

8
MORE THAN
160
YEARS:
The Clark home was still standing outside Dunbar as late as 2013, confirmed by matching current photos with historic ones.

9
“S
UCH GOOD COMMON SENSE
”
:
Ibid.

10
“
ABOUT GROWN UP
”
:
Abascal memoir.

11
C
HOOSING BRAINS OVER BRAWN:
Clark established the dates for his education and early travels in “Early Days in Montana: Being Some Reminiscences Dictated by Senator William A. Clark and Written Down by Frank Harmon Garver,” typewritten pages in the collection of the Montana Historical Society Research Center.

12
ONE-ROOM SCHOOL:
In 1859–60, W.A. taught in a one-room school in north-central Missouri, near Milan, where his older sister, Sarah, had moved.

13
“Y
OUNG MAN, YOU ARE
”
:
Abascal memoir.

14
I
N
1860,
HE ENROLLED:
Records of Iowa Wesleyan University, now Iowa Wesleyan College, were provided by archivist Lynn Ellsworth. The freshman curriculum included Cicero’s orations and the poetry of Virgil and Ovid, in Latin; the histories of Herodotus and Homer’s
Iliad
, in Greek; higher algebra and geometry; English language and grammar; and the customs, beliefs, and mythology of the ancient world. The readings for the first year of law study were Blackstone’s
Commentaries
, Vattel’s
The Law of Nations
, Smith’s treatise on constitutional law, Story on promissory notes and bills of exchange, Edward on bailments, and Story’s
Commentaries on Equity Jurisprudence
.

15
I
OWA
W
ESLEYAN
U
NIVERSITY:
Now known as Iowa Wesleyan College.

16
HE DROPPED OUT OF SCHOOL:
The records of Iowa Wesleyan University show W. A. Clark enrolled in both general freshman studies and the law department in 1860–61. In several of his later public speeches, he described attending a second year, though the university catalog for 1861–62 is lost. He is not listed among the graduates for any year and is not known to have described himself as a graduate. Nearly sixty years later, in response to a
University of Montana request for a financial contribution, W.A. offered his assessment of the value of a college education. Writing on October 10, 1921, to associate W. M. Bickford in Montana, he said, “I have never been fully impressed with the idea of indiscriminate college education for young men. A great many of them are not qualified to take on a classical education. The result is that after graduating they feel as though they should adopt some profession, which in many cases they are unable to succeed in.… Young men who are better fitted for business than for a professional life should not spend so many years pondering over Latin and Greek, but would profit much more by a business education for which they are better adapted. Personally I do not feel inclined to be very liberal in promoting the cause of education, when there are so many people starving or at least suffering for the necessaries of life.”

17
“
SIT AROUND IN OFFICES
”
:
W. A. Clark to W. M. Bickford, letter, October 28, 1921. The full passage: “No one appreciates the importance of educational advantages more than myself, but the important part of it is obtained in the common schools. The colleges and other institutions of learning are going too far, in my opinion. I think 50% of those attending educational institutions, having the professions in view, would be better off with a common school education that would enable them to earn a living, rather than to sit around in offices and wait for clients.”

18
T
HE
C
ONFEDERACY BEGAN DRAFTING:
The history of the Confederate and Union drafts is described, for example, in Jennifer L. Weber, “Service Problems,” Opinionator (blog),
The New York Times
, March 8, 2013,
http://​opinionator.​blogs.​nytimes.​com/​2013/​03/​08/​service-​problems/
.

19
A
FTER
W.A.
DIED:
The apparently false claim regarding W.A.’s Confederate war service, often repeated, was made by William D. Mangam in
The Clarks: An American Phenomenon
(New York: Silver Bow Press, 1941), which was originally published as
The Clarks of Montana
in 1939. (Changes between the editions are minor. For example, Anna became “good looking.”) It has often been said that W.A.’s heirs tried to buy up all the copies of the book, though we’ve seen no substantiation of that. Mangam’s bitter tell-all presents an interesting challenge, because he clearly held great animus toward W. A. Clark and his former law school classmate and employer, W.A. Jr. At the same time, he was privy to certain letters and documents during his long employment by the younger Clark. We have tried to check his claims and have relied on him only as a source for material he quotes and as an indicator of the stories passed around by the Clark family.

20
NO
W. A. C
LARK OF HIS AGE:
In 2013, the staff of
Ancestry.​com
searched muster rolls and other service records from Pennsylvania, Iowa, and Missouri and found no one matching W.A.’s age and county serving on either the Union or Confederate side.

21
HE RECALLED HEARING:
W. A. Clark, Address to the Semi-Centennial Celebration of the Grand Lodge of Montana (Virginia City, 1916).

22
W.A.
CHOSE THREE BOOKS:
W. A. Clark, Address to the Society of Montana Pioneers (Livingston, September 5–7, 1917).

23
I
N THE SOUVENIR PHOTOS:
This photograph (see page 24) was handed down through the Clark and Newell families with the oral tradition that the man on the right is W.A. There is considerable circumstantial evidence to support this claim. Paul Newell found the photo among his parents’ family memorabilia. Paul’s grandmother, W.A.’s sister Ella Clark Newell, cared for their mother in her old age. The photo bears on the back the imprint of Reed & McKenney, Photographers, with studios in Central City and Georgetown, Colorado. One inscription indicates that it was received in February 1870. The facial features appear consistent with those in other photos of W.A. and with how he might have looked at about age twenty-four. A separate copy of the photo was handed down through the Southmayd family, with the matching oral tradition that the man in the center is Nathan Leroy Southmayd and the man on the right became a U.S. senator.

24
HIS PASSPORT APPLICATIONS:
An 1889 passport application obtained via
Ancestry.​com
describes W.A. as being five feet nine inches. He was listed as an inch taller in 1894, then back down to five eight and a half in 1909, and five feet nine in 1914. These descriptions were written in by the clerks; perhaps he didn’t give false information, but just looked taller than he was.

25
FIVE FEET FIVE:
Testimony of Charlie Clark and others in the Montana probate trial in 1926, after W.A.’s death (In the matter of the estate of William A. Clark, deceased, case 7594, District Court of the Second Judicial District, Silver Bow County, Montana, 1926. Transcript in the Newell family collection, referred to hereafter as “1926 probate transcript”). Charlie testified, “My father was a man about five feet five to five feet five and a half in height; I don’t think he ever weighed 130 pounds in his life, and in the latter years of his life he declined to about 108 pounds.”

26
H
IS HANDS WERE CONSTANTLY:
Ibid. Charlie testified, “He was very wiry, nervous, untiring physically.… His hands were what would be described as a nervous type, constantly in motion.”

27
“W
ITH THREE OTHERS
”
:
Clark, Address to the Society of Montana Pioneers (1917). In “Early Days in Montana,” Clark said he first stopped at Breckenridge, then went on to Central City. His friend from Iowa Wesleyan, James Rand, got him a job on the windlass, where he worked from September 1862 to May 1863.

28
NOW
M
ONTANA:
It wasn’t easy to say what part of America this Bannack was in. The gold rush had birthed the town of Bannack, named for the Bannock people, a Native American tribe that had fished for salmon and hunted buffalo in the western mountains for at least ten thousand years. Bannack
was located on leftover land that had been acquired from France in the massive Louisiana Purchase (1803). Just west of the Continental Divide, it was originally part of Louisiana Territory. In 1812, it became part of Missouri Territory, in 1821 it became an unorganized area with no name at all, and in 1861 it was absorbed by Dakota Territory. After gold was discovered there, it passed to the new Idaho Territory in 1863. The following year, the new boomtown of Bannack, with nearly ten thousand people, briefly became the capital of another new territory, Montana.

29
“T
HE REPORT GOT
”
:
Clark, “Early Days in Montana” and Address to the Society of Montana Pioneers (1917).

30
“O
UR MOTTO THEN
”
:
Clark, Address to the Society of Montana Pioneers (1917).

31
“
SAW THE NEWLY MADE GRAVES
”
:
Ibid.

32
“T
HIS WE BEGAN
”
:
Ibid. Also described briefly in Clark, “Early Days in Montana.”

33
“W
E FOUND SOME STAMPEDERS
”
:
Clark, Address to the Society of Montana Pioneers (1917).

34
“U
PON MY ARRIVAL
”
:
Ibid.

35
“D
URING OUR PROSPECTING TRIP
”
:
Ibid.

36
“T
HERE
I
FOUND
”
:
Clark, Address to the Semi-Centennial Celebration of the Grand Lodge of Montana.

37
“T
HE THIRD DAY
”
:
Clark, Address to the Society of Montana Pioneers (1917).

38
B
RIGHAM
Y
OUNG:
Clark described having a later opportunity to talk with Brigham Young, a fellow Mason, in Salt Lake City in 1867 in Address to the Society of Montana Pioneers (Deer Lodge, 1923).

39
W.A.
SAW THE BODY:
Clark, “Early Days in Montana.”

40
“I
HAVE THOUGHT IT A MYSTERY
”
:
Clark, Address to the Society of Montana Pioneers (1917).

41
THE
M
ASONIC LEADER
: Paris Pfouts was the head of the Virginia City Masonic lodge when W.A. joined in the winter of 1863–64, and during the same period was the first chosen leader of the Vigilance Committee. See Paris Swazy Pfouts,
Four Firsts for a Modest Hero: The Autobiography of Paris Swazy Pfouts
(Grand Lodge of Ancient Free and Accepted Masons of Montana, Helena, 1968).

42
“W
E WILL NOT SAY
”
:
Cornelius Hedges, past grand master of the Masonic Lodge in Montana and longtime grand secretary, set down his description of the Vigilante history in “Freemasonry in the State of Montana,” in John Milton Hodson, William H. Upton, Jonas W. Brown, and Cornelius Hedges,
Masonic History of the Northwest
(History Publishing, 1902). This chapter is available online at
http://​www.​freemason.​com/​library/​norwst29.​htm
. The
Masonic connection to the early Vigilantes has been debated, but contemporaneous accounts by Masons, including Hedges and Clark, show they took great pride in the connection.

43
“T
HEY HAD UNDOUBTED PROOF
”
:
Clark, Address to the Society of Montana Pioneers (1917).

44
“W
HILE
I
HAD CONSIDERABLE KNOWLEDGE
”
:
Clark’s memories of the Vigilante days were included in his Address to the Semi-Centennial Celebration of the Grand Lodge of Montana, in which other speakers also laid out the history of the Masonic involvement in forming the Vigilantes (records of the Grand Lodge of Ancient Free and Accepted Masons of Montana).