Empty Mansions (27 page)

“
Dear Etienne, I hope you have not suffered too much from the great heat and that all is well and that my letter has reached you. I would be happy to hear from you. I am thinking seriously of taking a short stay in France. What do you think of that? Affectionately, Huguette.”
(
illustration credit7.3
)

It doesn’t appear that Huguette visited Etienne in France, or ever returned to her native country after a trip there with her mother in 1928, although she did consider making the journey. On July 17, 1959, she sent Etienne a telegram saying that she was planning a visit, one she apparently couldn’t quite accomplish.

“A FLOWER IN MY LIFE”
 

T
HE LAST PHOTOGRAPH
taken of Huguette was not the uncomfortable one from the time of her marriage in 1928. She continued to have photos taken, but kept them inside the family. In her late thirties, she presented to Anna a portrait of herself standing elegantly in a Japanese-print floor-length gown, with the note, “
To my darling Mother, With all my love, Huguette.”

A devoted amateur photographer,
Huguette bought for herself and friends the latest cameras—from the highest-end models of the 1930s to the newfangled instant Land Cameras introduced by Polaroid in 1948. She kept many snapshots of the gardens and rooms at the Clark summer home, Bellosguardo, and of the view across Central Park from No. 907. She studied the light, painstakingly recording on the backs of her prints the light and camera settings: “September 30, 1956,
one floodlight, opening 4, counted four seconds.”

On Easter and Christmas through her forties and fifties, she
sat for photographs at home, perhaps self-portraits that she composed. Time after time, she placed a chair in a corner under a Cézanne still life, or sat by the 1940 Steinway piano topped with Easter flowers or a simple white Christmas tree. From year to year, the photos are nearly identical, although the costumes change and she ages. In one she is wearing high-heeled shoes and a smart, slimming dress with polka dots, in another a similar dress with sheer sleeves. Always her hair is in a wave, always a strand of pearls at her neck. Often a Japanese doll is standing on the bureau behind her.

Only one year did her mother participate in this photo session, late in Anna’s life, perhaps in the early 1960s. In the photo, Anna stands alone in front of the still life. In place of the Japanese doll is a vase of flowers. Next to Anna is one of her magnificent golden French harps, much taller than she, even in her high heels and black Mamie Eisenhower dress with its sheer back. Her back is all we see, for Anna is facing away from the camera.

• • •

Anna Eugenia LaChapelle Clark died at New York’s Mount Sinai Hospital on October 11, 1963, at age eighty-five, after several years of decline. The Catholic funeral Mass was private. In the newspapers, brief obituaries of Mrs. William Andrews Clark listed her only survivors: her sister, Amelia, and daughter, Huguette. Anna’s last will and testament, carefully drawn up in 1960 and sealed with a purple ribbon and red wax, named four executors: Huguette along with Anna’s brother-in-law, attorney, and banker. The will shows a devotion to her family, to her employees, and to charity.
Most of the bequests were simple to carry out. Anna left sums of $12,000 to $20,000 each to her sister, her sister-in-law, and her nieces, all on the LaChapelle side. She provided for several friends and relatives by establishing trusts. She directed $50,000 to be set aside for each of her goddaughters, Leontine and Ann. Her former aide Adele Marie (“Missie”) received $100,000, and other employees were remembered with smaller sums.

Among the charities, Anna left $125,000 to the Girl Scouts to support the memorial to her older daughter, Camp Andrée Clark; $100,000 to the Corcoran Gallery to support her husband’s art collection; and $100,000 each to the United Hospital Fund of New York, the Red Cross, and the Juilliard School of Music. Smaller bequests included $10,000 to the Franciscan Friars of the Atonement to serve the needy and $5,000 for the orphans at the Paul Clark Home in Butte.

Anna was interred in the mausoleum at Woodlawn Cemetery, the one with the image of W.A.’s first wife, Kate, on the brass door. She was laid to rest in a crypt next to W.A. and below Andrée.

At that moment, Huguette herself had no place to be buried. Every spot in the mausoleum was occupied. But Huguette was only fifty-seven years old. She would wait more than forty years to address this issue.

• • •

Writing to Etienne’s family in France about Anna’s death, Huguette was protective of their feelings, while masking her own grief. She cautioned that there was no need to upset any of their older relatives with such news: “It would be useless to give this great sorrow.”

Etienne comforted Huguette, making plans to visit her in New York. He wrote to her on October 14, 1963:

Huguette replied to this letter with a short telegram on October 30:

Her words seem more formal than his, less intimate. This may always have been the case, yet it’s worth noting that we have copies of only Huguette’s papers, not Etienne’s. We see only the confirmation copies of her telegrams, and do not have her letters. Of course, he also was married.

In a letter dated November 2, 1963, Etienne tells Huguette of his plan to have his wife, Elisabeth, and daughter, Marie-Christine, come to New York in the spring:

He signed the letter, in English, “With much love always. Etienne.”

• • •

Huguette had projects to throw her grief into. First, she arranged to move into her mother’s apartment, spending much of the next year redecorating and updating Apartment 8W, while holding on to 12W. A.d before Etienne’s next visit she went on a clothes shopping binge. She was looking furiously for the right style, not by visiting one of the boutiques on Madison Avenue, one block from her home, but by sending telegrams to Paris. She contacted La Maison Jean Patou, the fashion designer, in an effort to find two-piece silk dresses, for summer and winter. She was especially eager, at age fifty-seven, to find styles that would be slimming. The house of Jean Patou was about to get a dose of the Huguette Clark experience.

Cable of March 19, 1965, to Mme. Peggy, Jean Patou, Paris:

• • •

Etienne did visit several times after Anna’s death, including at least one visit with his wife and daughter. On his way home from one of his trips, as he crossed the Atlantic, he described how difficult the parting was. On May 29, 1966, he wrote:

Marie-Christine, now in her fifties, said
she remembers visiting Huguette at 907 Fifth Avenue when she was a child, with her father and mother. She said she can bring up only three details.

Tante Huguette was germophobic, afraid of catching an illness.

The long gallery in her apartment was completely lined with armchairs, each providing a seat for a doll.

After dinner, Marie-Christine had a delicious tarte aux pommes, the best apple tart she ever tasted.

• • •

Huguette also continued her financial support of Etienne and his extended family, spreading her generosity widely. From 1960 into the 2000s, she sent monthly bank drafts to half a dozen of Etienne’s relatives. She helped Etienne’s sad-sack younger brother, Henri, always starting a new agricultural venture while struggling as a bureaucrat. Huguette made sure that her physician saw all of Etienne’s family for checkups on his annual trips to Paris. She sent her handyman all the way to France to deliver vitamins and to help Etienne with the chores. After hearing that a drought had affected the cows in Normandy, she sent the family powdered milk.

Huguette established an account with Monsieur Cognin, the grocer at 42, rue Gambetta in Deauville, sending him orders for essentials and treats to be delivered to Etienne and his extended family. From 907 Fifth Avenue in New York, transatlantic telegraph cables, made of seven twisted strands of pure copper strung across the ocean floor, carried Huguette’s messages to the corner grocer 3,517 miles away. She even made sure to ask for the trading stamps, so the family could save on other purchases.

On July 2, 1962, she cabled to Monsieur Cognin:

She also sent the family gifts, including the high-priced Rolleiflex cameras from Germany, the newest film projectors. She sent small televisions to her French friends so they could watch America’s Apollo space flights. From the fabled Parisian toy store Au Nain Bleu in Paris, she ordered thoughtful gifts for the children, suited to their ages: for the girls, a musical blue goblin, Barbie dolls, a bedroom mirror and dresser with little perfume bottles, porcelain boxes filled with jewels, and lots of bows and ribbons; for the boys, not only a train set but an entire wooden village.

The Villermont family was already grateful to America for defending their country in the great wars. “Without your country,” Etienne wrote in 1968, “there would be no more France.” But they were also grateful to their Tante Huguette. An older relative prayed for her on pilgrimages to Lourdes. Henri, Etienne’s brother, wrote in 1954, “I will never forget that you saved us from utter misery and that you eased our dear mother’s last years with your tireless kindness.… You distribute happiness every chance you get for the well-being and joy of others. It is an admirable form of ideal, from which everyone must draw the most beautiful Christian virtue—forget the self in favor of the others. You practice this virtue incessantly.”

In 2001, when Huguette was ninety-five, Marie-Christine’s cousins made an illustrated French children’s book for her called
Une Princesse Merveilleuse
(A Marvelous Princess). They wrote:

When Huguette got too hard of hearing to talk with Etienne’s family on the phone, she had a friend make the calls to swap news, which from the French side usually involved complaints about transit workers on strike—except when the postal workers were on strike.