Empty Mansions (59 page)

45
“T
HERE WAS NO LACK
”
:
Clark, Address to the Society of Montana Pioneers (1923).

46
“
TRADED TOBACCO
”
:
Clark, “Early Days in Montana.”

47
RATES OF ABOUT
2
PERCENT:
Clark, Address to the Society of Montana Pioneers (1923).

48
“
WITH EVERY DOLLAR
I
HAD
”
:
Clark described these days in “Early Days in Montana.”

49
EARN A BIGGER PROFIT:
Clark described this contract in his Address to the Society of Montana Pioneers (1923).

50
“I
WAS ENTERTAINED
”
:
1926 probate transcript.

51
“
MASSACRE AT
F
T
. P
HIL
K
EARNEY
”
:
This massacre became known as the Fetterman Fight. It took place along the Bozeman Trail in northern Wyoming, near the Montana border, and was part of Red Cloud’s War, a series of conflicts between the U.S. Army and Native Americans.

52
“T
HE WEATHER IS VERY COLD
”
:
1926 probate transcript.

53
“C
LEAR AND COLD MORNING
”
:
Ibid.

54
“A
RRIVED IN
H
ELENA
”
:
Ibid.

55
“S
ENT A PROPOSAL
”
:
Ibid.

1
C
OPPER
K
ING
M
ANSION:
Known then as simply the Clark home, it became a school and convent in the 1930s, and since the 1990s has been a bed-and-breakfast called the Copper King Mansion.

2
“
WHO WAS DEAR TO ME
”
:
W. A. Clark, Address to the Society of Montana Pioneers (Deer Lodge, 1923).

3
“
WOOED AND WON
”
:
Ibid.

4
THEIR NEW HOME:
Ibid.

5
D
ONNELL
& C
LARK:
Ibid.

6
“W
HEN WE FIRST KNEW HIM
”
:
Missoula Gazette
, 1888.

7
T
HE FEDERAL CENSUS:
Accessed via
Ancestry.​com
.

8
HORSE-DRAWN BUGGY:
Charlie Clark testimony, 1926 probate transcript. W.A. described his experience in his Address to the Society of Montana Pioneers (1923).

9
“
TO SOUND THE ALARM
”
:
Ibid.

10
F
IRST
N
ATIONAL
B
ANK:
Clark, Address to the Society of Montana Pioneers (1923).

11
W.A.
LEARNED HOW TO FIELD-TEST:
Clark, Address to the Society of Montana Pioneers (1923).

12
W
HEN
F
ARLIN GOT OVEREXTENDED:
Michael P. Malone,
The Battle for Butte: Mining and Politics on the Western Frontier, 1864–1906
(Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1981), 17.

13
B
UTTE WOULD PRODUCE:
The output of the Butte mines was calculated by geologist Richard I. Gibson, who provided the estimates in interviews with Dedman in August 2012.

14
“R
ICHEST
H
ILL ON
E
ARTH
”
:
The five thousand miles of horizontal tunnels under the Butte hill have yielded about 100 tons of gold, which is nothing compared with its 24,000 tons of silver, which again is nothing compared with its 11.5 million tons of copper. Those aren’t the quantities of raw ore removed, but of pure metal extracted. And that’s not to mention the vast quantities of zinc for brass, manganese for stainless steel, lead for bullets, cadmium for batteries, sulfuric acid for drain cleaner, and selenium for dandruff shampoo.

15
PANIC ROOM
: One can see the panic room on a tour of the Copper King Mansion bed-and-breakfast in Butte,
http://​www.​thecopper​kingmansion.​com
.

16
“I
MUST SAY THAT THE LADIES
”
:
Proceedings and Debates of the Constitutional Convention Held in the City of Helena, Montana, July 4th, 1889, August 17th, 1889
(Helena: State Publishing, 1921).

17
SHE CONTRACTED TYPHOID FEVER:
Helen Fitzgerald Sanders,
A History of Montana
, vol. 1 (Chicago: Lewis, 1913).

18
OFFICIALS HAD ASSURED FAIRGOERS:
The Official Directory of the World’s Columbian Exposition, May 1st to October 30th, 1893
(Chicago: W. B. Conkey, 1893.

19
W.A.
DEMONSTRATED HIS LOVE:
W.A.’s care in designing the mausoleum is shown in his detailed correspondence with Paul Bartlett, at the Library of Congress.

20
H
IS FIRST PROTÉGÉE:
Kathlyn Williams described her association with W.A. in a fan magazine interview in 1912 (New
York Clipper
, April 20, 1912; reprinted in
Taylorology
, no. 48 [December 1996]).

21
STARRING IN MORE THAN
170
FILMS:
Kathlyn Williams starred in the first cliffhanger serial,
The Adventures of Kathlyn
(1913), and the first film version
of the gold rush drama
The Spoilers
(1914), in a role Marlene Dietrich later played in the talkies.

22
“
TOOK A GREAT INTEREST
”
:
Ibid.

23
I
N
1893
OR
1894: Anna’s introduction to W.A. is set in 1893, the year she turned fifteen, in William D. Mangam,
The Clarks: An American Phenomenon
(New York: Silver Bow Press, 1941), 94–95. Mangam sides with the story of Anna first approaching banker James A. Murray, who sent her to Clark.

24
A
NNA
E
UGENIA
L
ACHAPELLE WAS BORN:
Anna’s birth certificate spells the name phonetically as “Lashpell.” Located through
Ancestry.​com
.

25
A
NNA WAS THE OLDEST:
U.S. Census, Calumet, MI, 1880.

26
T
HE
L
ACHAPELLES RENTED OUT:
U.S. Census, Butte, MT, 1900.

27
A
NNA’S MOTHER
, P
HILOMENE, COULD SPEAK:
Ibid.

28
STUDYING THE CONCERT HARP:
Anna’s harp teacher was Alphonse Hasselmans, a Belgian-born French harpist who trained the most well-known harpists of his day.

29
C
OURT RECORDS IN
B
UTTE:
Search conducted for authors in 2013.

30
S
HE HAD A PUCKISH:
Paul Newell discussed Anna’s stay in Paris with Anita Mackenzie and Mary Abascal, who were there with their mother, Elizabeth Clark Abascal, W.A.’s sister.

31
HER UNUSUAL EYES:
The Abascal sisters described Anna’s heterochromia iridum, having eyes of different colors, blue and brown. Anna’s passport application from 1920, via
Ancestry.​com
, confirms that she had “different coloring in eyes,” which are described as blue gray.

32
“
MOST INTERESTING LADY IN
W
ASHINGTON
”
:
W.A., serving in the Senate in Washington, was also sponsoring Anna’s sister, Amelia, at the National Park Seminary, a girls’ finishing school in the suburb of Forest Glen, Maryland. See “She May Marry Senator Clark,”
The Denver Post
, March 26, 1900. This article misidentifies Anna as “Miss Ada La Chappelle.”

33
H
ATTIE
R
OSE
L
AUBE:
“Senator Clark to Wed Again? Bride-Elect Said to Be Miss Laube, an Effective Campaign Speaker,”
The New York Times
, April 13, 1901.

34
THE PATERNITY SUIT:
“Senator Clark in Breach of Promise Suit,”
The New York Times
, April 19, 1903. The case is Mary McNellis v. William A. Clark, Supreme Court, City and County of New York, March 1901. See also “She Asks $150,49 of Senator Clark,”
New York Herald
, April 19, 1903.

35
BRACELET WITH
36
SAPPHIRES:
Anna’s jewelry is described in detail in HMC papers.

36
T
HERE HE TOURED:
A history of W.A.’s acquisition of the United Verde mine and details of the operation appeared in a company-sponsored series of articles in
The Mining Congress Journal
, April 1930. W.A. described the New
Orleans exposition in his Address to the Society of Montana Pioneers (1923).

37
EIGHT MILLION POUNDS:
Clark, Address to the Society of Montana Pioneers (1923).

38
“T
HIS WAS ONE
”
:
Ibid.

39
H
IS BROTHER
R
OSS SOON FOLLOWED:
The first of W.A.’s siblings to move to Los Angeles were his unmarried sisters Anna Belle and Ella, who accompanied his mother, Mary, in 1880. They lived initially at Hill and Spring streets and subsequently in Mary’s spacious but unpretentious Victorian home at 933 South Olive Street. W.A.’s other sisters, Sarah, Elizabeth, and Mary Margaret, followed with their families. Ross and his family arrived in 1892, and he founded Citizens Bank there. Joseph left W.A.’s employ as superintendent of the Butte mines and took up residence in Portland, Oregon.

40
M
ONTANA
R
ANCH:
Portions of the Montana Ranch were developed and sold later, including the Douglas Aircraft factory and residential properties near Long Beach. The remainder was sold to developers after World War II for the creation of the planned city of Lakewood. Rancho Los Alamitos became part of the city of Long Beach.

41
C
LARK OUT FRONT AS PRESIDENT:
Clark and Harriman remained railroad partners until Harriman died in 1909. Clark sold his railroad interests in 1921.

42
T
HE
C
LARKS DONATED:
The home in Los Angeles was operated by the YWCA until it was damaged in the 1987 earthquake, but it continues today, beautifully renovated, as housing for low-income residents—and a film location for movies and television shows.

43
“A
MONG THE MORE VIVID
”
:
Paul Clark Newell, Sr., “Senator and the Train,”
Air California Magazine
, May 1977.

44
“THEY’RE MARRIED”:
The Anaconda Standard
, July 19, 1904.

45
L
OUISE
A
MELIA
A
NDRÉE
C
LARK:
The place of Andrée’s birth is uncertain. Mangam places it at “a sumptuous villa on Cape Matifou, overlooking the beautiful Bay of Algiers on the Mediterranean” (
The Clarks
, 97). A Girl Scout publication lists the Bay of Algiers as well. A ship’s registry from 1914 on the SS
France
via the Statue of Liberty Ellis Island Foundation lists it as San Luca or San Lucia, Spain.

46
“
HE LEARNED THAT HIS EARLY AFFECTION
”
:
The Butte Miner
, July 13, 1904.

47
“M
RS
. C
LARK DID NOT CARE
”
:
Ibid.

48
“A
LINE ONLY
”
:
Katherine’s letter to Will is quoted in Mangam,
The Clarks
, 101–2.

49
“
IT HAS BEEN STATED
”
:
The Butte Miner
, July 13, 1904.

50
T
HERE WAS SPECULATION:
A second pregnancy, of a boy who lived but an hour after birth, is described in Mangam,
The Clarks
, 100.

51
N
OT EVERYONE BELIEVED:
As to the reality or fiction of the date of the marriage, Mangam (The
Clarks
, 114–15) wrote that W.A. gave an interview to his own newspaper,
The Butte Miner
, in June 1901 about his European trip the previous month, and his description of his itinerary didn’t place him anywhere near Marseille.

52
THE
C
LARK FAMILY
B
IBLE:
In the possession of Paul Newell.

53
“
NO RECORD OF SAID MARRIAGE
”
:
1926 probate transcript.

54
A
NNA WAS NOW WRITING LETTERS:
HMC papers.

1
HE BEGAN A PUBLIC CAMPAIGN:
Associated Press, “Clarks and Schwabs Challenge the ’400,’ ”
Evening Times
(Grand Forks, ND), August 23, 1906.

2
“T
HIS
C
ARD
W
ILL
A
DMIT
”
:
This card is in the Metropolitan Museum of Art archives. The Clarks and the newspapers generally gave the address of the mansion as 962 Fifth Avenue, though the entrance was on Seventy-Seventh Street. The address is listed as “1 E. 77th Street” on Clark passport applications and in city building records, but the Fifth Avenue name carried prestige.

3
“
MY FATHER’S GREAT JOY
”
:
“Clark Family Bewail Refusal,”
The Spokesman-Review
(Spokane, WA), May 6, 1925. The history of W.A.’s art collection, including the panels of Joan of Arc by Louis-Maurice Boutet de Monvel, is described in several publications from the Corcoran Gallery, including Laura Coyle and Dare Myers Hartwell,
Antiquities to Impressionism: The William A. Clark Collection
(London: Corcoran Gallery of Art, 2001), and Yellowstone Art Center,
The William A. Clark Collection: Treasures of a Copper King
(Billings, MT: Yellowstone Art Center, 1989).

4
B
UT SUCH DISHES:
W.A.’s collection of pottery is described in Wendy M. Watson,
Italian Renaissance Maiolica from the William A. Clark Collection
(London: Scala Books, 1986).

5
W.A.
HAD BEEN INDUCED:
W.A.’s hiring of Duveen is described in Meryle Secrest,
Duveen
(New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2004).

6
THE FINEST ORGAN:
The organ’s history is told in David Lennox Smith,
Murray M. Harris and Organ Building in Los Angeles, 1894–1913
(Richmond, VA: Organ Historical Society, 2005), 77–80. Smith includes the estimate of $120,000, which apparently included the elaborate case and decorations, citing the Clark organist, Arthur Scott Brook: “Senator Clark spared no expense
.… Consequently, the effect is the most exquisite ever produced. It is the largest and most wonderful chamber organ in the world, excepting none. It is difficult to say just what it cost, but it must have been about $120,000.” The Clark pipe organ is also described in many news articles of the day, including “W. A. Clark Has Test of $120,000 Organ,”
The New York Times
, June 10, 1911. The elaborate instrument included a choir organ with twelve stops, a great organ with thirteen, swell organ with nineteen, solo with six, echo with twelve, and pedal organ with ten stops.

7
M
ORMON
T
ABERNACLE
C
HOIR:
“Mormons at Clark Mansion,”
The New York Times
, November 9, 1911.

8
THEIR OWN CHURCH ORGANIST:
The Clark organist was church musician Arthur Scott Brook, who had helped design the Clark pipe organ.

9
“H
E IS SAID TO HAVE BOUGHT
”
:
Mark Twain in Eruption
, ed. Bernard De Voto (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1940).

10
M
ARCUS
D
ALY:
Though the Clark-Daly battles are well remembered as part of Montana’s “War of the Copper Kings,” no one has been able to determine how the feud began. It seemed to start as a business feud, but it soon became personal and political. This oft-told tale of political warfare is most vividly explored in Michael P. Malone,
The Battle for Butte: Mining and Politics on the Western Frontier, 1864–1906
(Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1981).

11
“T
HE CONSPIRACY
”
:
W. A. Clark to Martin Maginnis, letter, November 19, 1888.

12
“T
HE MOST ESSENTIAL ELEMENTS
”
:
Edwin Wildman,
Famous Leaders of Industry: The Life Stories of Boys Who Have Succeeded
(Boston: Page, 1920). W.A. went on to say, “Then there must be unflinching courage to meet and overcome the difficulties that beset one’s pathway.”

13
“
OVERTHROWING THE POWER
”
:
W.A.’s testimony is in U.S. Congress,
Report of the Committee on Privileges and Elections of the United States Senate Relative to the Right and Title of William A. Clark to a Seat as Senator from the State of Montana
, 56th Cong., 1st sess., 3 vols. (Washington, DC, 1900).

14
“N
OBODY COULD EXPECT
”
:
Ibid. By “these people,” W.A. was referring not just to Daly but to John D. Rockefeller’s Standard Oil trust, which was trying to buy Daly’s Anaconda Copper Mining Company and consolidate the copper industry under a national trust, squeezing Clark’s purse considerably. That marriage happened the following year, in April 1899, beginning a period of corporate warfare for which the Senate campaign was merely a proxy.

15
“I
HAVE NOT THE SLIGHTEST
”
:
Ibid.

16
SEAL THEM INSIDE:
One often-published photograph from the Library of Congress shows thousand-dollar bills sticking out of an envelope bearing
the initials “WAC.” This photo does show evidence from the Senate trial, and appears in high school history textbooks in Montana and many popular histories as proof of the complicity of candidate W. A. Clark of Butte, the banker. Yet, as the scheme was designed, it was the recipient of the bribe that wrote the initials. Testimony showed that these were the initials of a different W. A. Clark, of Virginia City, a lawyer and state legislator, the supposed intended recipient. The scheme may have been reckless, but no one was foolish enough to write the candidate’s initials on envelopes full of cash.

17
“T
HERE SEEMS TO BE NO END
”
:
U.S. Congress,
Report of the Committee on Privileges
.

18
“E
VERY MAN WHO VOTES
”
:
W.A.’s campaign manager, John B. Wellcome, was disbarred. See “Wellcome Is Disbarred,”
The New York Times
, December 24, 1899.

19
“A DAMNABLE CONSPIRACY”:
The Butte Miner
, January 11, 1899.

20
“HIS VINDICATION”:
The Butte Miner
, January 27, 1899.

21
“THEY SIMPLY FELL”:
The Anaconda Standard
, January 27, 1898.

22
C
AVIAR
à
LA
R
USSE:
The menu from W.A.’s dinner party is in the collection of the Montana Historical Society Research Center,
http://​cdm16013.​contentdm.​oclc.​org/​cdm/​compoundobject/​collection/​p267301coll1/​id/​4518/​rec/​8
. Apparent typos on the menu have been fixed here: “ris de veau” was printed as “ris de vean,” and what appears to be “salade Laitue” was “al ade Isaitue.”

23
“VOICE OF THE PEOPLE”:
The Butte Miner
, January 29, 1899.

24
“THEY TOOK”:
The Anaconda Standard
, January 27, 1899.

25
T
HE EVIDENCE THAT HURT:
Details of the changed financial status of these legislators come from U.S. Congress,
Report of the Committee on Privileges
.

26
W
HEN IT CAME HIS TURN:
Ibid.

27
“A
BOUT EVERY SIX MONTHS
”
:
Ibid.

28
“A
MAN DOES NOT FORFEIT
”
:
Ibid.

29
“
CANNOT BE OVERLOOKED
”
:
W. A. Clark to John S. M. Neill, letter, April 11, 1900, Montana Historical Society Research Center.

30
“
THE FRIENDS OF
S
ENATOR
C
LARK
”
:
U.S. Congress,
Report of the Committee on Privileges
.

31
“
THE ELECTION TO THE
S
ENATE
”
:
Ibid.

32
“H
IS FACE WAS SOMEWHAT FLUSHED
”
:
New-York Tribune
, April 11, 1900.

33
“
THE MOST DEVILISH
”
:
U.S. Congress, “Resignation Remarks of Senator W. A. Clark,”
Congressional Record
, 56th Cong., 1st sess., vol. 33, May 15, 1899.

34
A. E. S
PRIGGS
: Lieutenant Governor Spriggs not only later became governor on his own, but in 1911 he was W.A.’s point man in Guatemala, a poor
country that gave Clark’s mining company free rein to use all the country’s public resources.

35
“C
LARK
R
ESIGNS;
T
HEN
A
PPOINTED
”
:
“Clark Resigns; Then Appointed; Vacancy Hardly Made When Lieutenant Governor Names Him to Fill It; Daly Caught Napping; His Friend the Governor Leaves the State, and Senator’s Supporter Comes into Power; All a Series of Surprises,”
New York Herald
, May 16, 1900. See also “Clark Gives Up Seat in Senate; but His Appointment to Post He Resigned Is Announced,”
The New York Times
, May 16, 1900, and “Trickery in Montana,”
The New-York Tribune
, May 16, 1900.

36
“C
HAS IS WITH ME
”
:
W. A. Clark to W. M. Bickford, letter, October 17, 1908.

37
C
HARLIE DARED NOT ENTER:
Charlie’s château, at 321 West Broadway, is now the home of the Butte Silver Bow Arts Foundation, which offers tours. As in his father’s mansion, the top floor was devoted to a ballroom.

38
“I
HAVE CANVASSED
”
:
W. A. Clark to John S. M. Neill, letter, April 28, 1900. Montana Historical Society Research Center.

39
“T
HE APPOINTMENT BY THE
G
OVERNOR
”
:
W. A. Clark to John S. M. Neill, letter, May 17, 1900. Montana Historical Society Research Center. The letter was written on U.S. Senate stationery.

40
“
CONTEMPTIBLE TRICKERY
”
:
“Gov. Smith Talks,”
The New York Times
, May 17, 1900.

41
“T
HIS MAN
, C
LARK
”
:
The Helena Independent
, May 16, 1900.

42
LONG-LASTING EFFECTS:
In 2012, more than a century after the Clark case, the U.S. Supreme Court loosened restrictions on campaign donations, allowing individuals and corporations to once again spend millions of dollars on elections, often without reporting the source of these funds. The Court’s ruling overturned a Montana law passed in 1912 to rein in the role of money in politics. That law, the Corrupt Practices Act, banned contributions by corporations in elections. Personal contributions were limited to $1,000. Exactly one hundred years later, Supreme Court justices affirmed, by a ruling of 5 to 4, that limits on campaign spending are limits on free speech, a violation of the First Amendment. In response to that ruling, Montana attorney general Steve Bullock lamented, “The integrity of our system and the voices of Montanans, whatever their political views, are too important to be drowned out by modern-day copper kings.” Steve Bullock, “Montana—Big Sky, Clean Politics,”
Los Angeles Times
, op-ed, June 15, 2012.

43
S
EVENTEENTH
A
MENDMENT:
The weaknesses and unintended consequences of the Seventeenth Amendment are discussed in Jay S. Bybee, “Ulysses at the Mast: Democracy, Federalism, and the Sirens’ Song of the Seventeenth Amendment,”
Northwestern University Law Review
91, no. 2
(Winter 1997), available at
http://​scholars.​law.​unlv.​edu/​facpub/​350
. Paradoxically, this amendment may also have increased the role of money in elections. Scholars have described this amendment as giving more power to corporations and the wealthiest citizens. How could that be? To be elected to the Senate, candidates now had to persuade thousands or millions of people across an entire state to vote for them, making elections more expensive, especially in the television age. As a result, only those with great personal wealth or access to corporate money could expect to reach the Senate. Today, as in Clark’s day, the U.S. Senate remains a club for millionaires. No longer checked by “instructions” from state legislatures, senators are also more likely to serve for life than they were before passage of the amendment. “It is as difficult for a poor man to enter the Senate of the United States as for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven,” Representative John Corliss of Michigan said in 1898. The newspaper
Roll Call
found in 2010 that fifty-four of the one hundred senators reported a net worth over $1 million. Jennifer Yachnin, “Senate Procures Influx of Millionaires,”
Roll Call
, October 28, 2010.

44
“L
IFE WAS GOOD
”
:
Malone,
The Battle for Butte
, 200.

45
“
MY CLOSEST AND MOST VALUABLE
”
:
Autobiography of Mark Twain
, ed. Harriet Elinor Smith et al. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2010), 1:192.

46
“
AS FINE A PIRATE
”
:
Ida M. Tarbell,
All in the Day’s Work
(New York: Macmillan, 1939), 10.

47
ONE OF THE GREAT STOCK SWINDLES:
The Amalgamated stock scam is described in Thomas W. Lawson,
Frenzied Finance: The Crime of Amalgamated
(New York: Ridgway-Thayer, 1905).

48
“F
OR A WEEK NOW”
:
Mark Twain’s Correspondence with Henry Huttleston Rogers, 1893–1909
, ed. Lewis Leary (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1969).

49
T
HE MAN WHO HATCHED THE PLAN:
Lawson,
Frenzied Finance
.