Chapter Eleven

Facts, Fiction, and Betrayal

The screwball comedies of the 1930s buoyed the spirits of Americans during the Depression by featuring the foibles of the fortunate and the harebrained schemes of heirs and heiresses. A social butterfly escapes from a gold digger (It Happened One Night) only to fall for an out-of-work reporter, or a wealthy Boston Brahmin moonlights as a butler (My Man Godfrey). This escapist fare was a tonic against breadlines and the daily struggle of surviving.

The Clark family’s riches and romances continued to provide newspapers with similar grist for entertaining the masses. Everyone wanted William Andrews Clark’s money, accumulated over sixty years, and some were willing to go to court to pry away a piece of the copper fortune. The public had the fun of watching the financial hijinks play out as modern-day morality plays.

The pattern began before the stock market crash, when William Andrews Clark’s eldest daughter, Mary Clark Culver Kling de Brabant, was sued in January 1929 by her social secretary for $123,000 allegedly owed for “personal care in public and in private.” Mrs. Vernon Howe Bailey, Mary’s assistant and the wife of an artist, promised to deliver racy evidence and even call a psychic. But she suddenly dropped the lawsuit, and her lawyer issued an apologetic statement saying that “her fancied grievances were due to unfortunate misstatements and gossip by acquaintances.” The Los Angeles Times noted with disappointment, SOCIETY TONGUES CEASE WAGGING AS SUIT FIZZLES.

But nothing roused the newsroom symphony of chattering typewriters like the death of music lover William Andrews Clark Jr. On June 14, 1934, he had a heart attack at age fifty-seven, a day after arriving at his fishing camp at Salmon Lake, Montana. By the time the closest doctor, forty-five minutes away, arrived, it was too late. Clark Jr.’s last will and testament contained a startling bequest: the founder of the Los Angeles Philharmonic and rare book collector left a large share of his $9 million estate to a seventeen-year-old boy, George John Pale, the son of his housekeeper. News stories implied that Clark’s affection for the teen had sexual overtones. The Los Angeles Times stated that George Pale had been Clark’s ward and “has been reared and educated by him”—an unfortunate word choice—with the expectation of a legal adoption. The Associated Press said that Pale had been Clark’s “constant companion” and had been with him when he died.

George Pale submitted personal letters from his benefactor to the probate court. Most were tame but in one memorable note, William Andrews Clark Jr. wrote: “My Dear Baby, You promised to write me… Do not forget. Anyway, I have a whip here and your fanny will be well spanked and you will have to eat off the mantel piece… I love you and I kiss you with all my heart, Sincerely yours, Daddy.” George Pale received $1.135 million. William Andrews Clark Jr. also left $125,000 and a Santa Monica home to the “Oscar Wilde type”—Harrison Post—who had been a source of concern to his older brother, Charles Clark.

In 1936, the family name was back in the headlines when Thelma Clark, the widow of William Andrews Clark III (aka Tertius) was sued for $150,000 for committing “love theft.” The lawsuit claimed that Thelma had seduced ship’s purser Michael Fitzpatrick on a boat traveling from Los Angeles to the Panama Canal and convinced him to abandon his marriage. Hot-and-heavy telegrams and a private detective’s report were produced during the trial. Thelma Clark lost and was ordered to hand over $30,000 to the aggrieved wife, Christine Fitzgerald, for a “love balm.”

Every tidbit about the Clarks and their money was treated as good copy. Huguette’s finances remained a semi-open book: newspapers reported that she received $500,000 from her trust fund in 1935. The devoted daughter gave half of the money to her mother. This was an unimaginably large sum in the year that President Franklin Delano Roosevelt created the WPA to boost national employment, hiring workers for $41.57 per month for construction jobs fixing roads and bridges.

Although Anna and Huguette were maintaining a low profile in Manhattan, they adopted a decidedly more public one in Santa Barbara. Anna took a box at the polo matches, subscribed to concerts, and opened her home to out-of-town guests during Fiesta Week. Mother and daughter were listed in the California society pages as a matched pair, Mmes. William Clark.

In the summer of 1934, while Huguette luxuriated at Bellosguardo, her painting teacher headed for Europe, sailing into an art world controversy. Tadé Styka’s sensual portrait of actress Marion Davies had mysteriously turned up in the American Pavilion at the Venice Biennial Exhibit, although it had not been one of the artworks officially selected for the show. Whitney Museum director Juliana Force angrily demanded that the painting be removed, arguing that since Styka was Polish, not American, his work should not be displayed. The mastermind who concocted this stunt was unmasked as William Randolph Hearst. The newspaper publisher was so eager for the painting of his mistress, Davies, to receive acclaim that he had secretly cut a deal with Count Volpi di Misurata, the biennial’s director, to sneak the Styka painting into the exhibit.

For Tadé Styka, the publicity only burnished his reputation. He was already flourishing; his portrait of President Roosevelt’s mother, Sara, had received glowing reviews. He and his younger brother Adam, an artist, were planning a joint American exhibit. The New York Daily Mirror’s society column ran a flattering item: “Teas given by Tadé Styka, the noted Polish artist, are among the most interesting in New York. The walls of his studio are hung with the portraits of beautiful women. His Japanese bartender makes excellent cocktails which vanish speedily down fashionable throats. One meets only worthwhile people beneath his roof.”

Perennial bachelor Tadé sent his new muse Doris Ford a telegram inviting her to join him in Italy, with the reassuring promise that his sister and family members would be there to chaperone. “The person who delivered the telegram said, ‘It requires a response,’ ” says Wanda Styka, repeating oft-told family history. Her mother replied, “Yes, I would be delighted.” A newspaper item noted that Tadé Styka had taken Doris Ford to Rome to pose for murals that he was creating for the Vatican.

An ocean and a continent away, Huguette wrote to Tadé that July. In lyrical language, she described a vacation with her mother in Colorado, scribbling on the back of three postcards about her love of nature and rigorous traveling. Huguette had visited the home of Ganna Walska, an oft-married Polish opera star believed to have been the model for the screeching and untalented singer in Citizen Kane.

Cher Maitre,

I do not want to leave Colorado without sending you these few photos taken of an uninhabited chateau that we visited around the Garden of the Gods, which is one of the curiosities of the country. The chateau is called Glen-Eyrie, because of a nest of perched eagles on the park’s boulder. It belonged to one of Ganna Walska’s husbands. She got a divorce before living in it. Now it is for sale. This castle is like a dream it’s so picturesque and a fairy-like and fantastic landscape that surrounds it.

The Royal Gorge is also very beautiful and the suspended bridge is the highest in the world. We went down in an elevator to admire the view at the bottom, which is as grandiose but far from as beautiful as that of the Grand Canyon or Yellowstone…

Tomorrow we are going to visit Pike’s Peak, the highest mountain in Colorado. Hoping to soon hear of your good news and I send you my fondest regards,

Huguette

Although the artist had taken Doris with him to Europe, once he was back in New York in the winter of 1935, he began to squire Huguette around town at night, in addition to giving her painting lessons four times a week. His appointment calendar is dotted with their frequent outings: taking Huguette to the theatre and a Fifth Avenue fashion show; a dinner at Brooklyn’s ornate 1909 Hotel Bossert on Montague Street with its romantic roof terrace and sweeping views of Manhattan; a movie date followed by dinner and music at the new popular French nightclub Versailles on East Fiftieth Street. “The management of the Versailles Restaurant continues to shoot at the moon,” the New York Times reported earlier that week, “… and on Monday, the trophy room will celebrate the addition of Libby Holman, the singer of sad, sad songs… a proper adornment for the luxurious spot.” Tadé also joined Huguette and her mother for dinner and a bridge game at 907 Fifth Avenue. He jotted down notes in his appointment calendar about her artwork, noting that on April 15 she had started work on a painting of a Japanese courtesan. Tadé hired Japanese female models so that Huguette could work from real inspiration. (He could not resist noting in his calendar that one had “beautiful breasts.”)

For Huguette, this was the life that she had dreamed of, painting the town with the man she had adored for years. Yet as fond as Tadé was of the heiress, his feelings were platonic. She had an appealing innocence compared to the sophisticated society ladies he was commissioned to paint. The lines between his work and his friendships blurred: he was often included in the dinner parties and social lives of his clients, the perfect continental extra man. He was the frequent escort of Mrs. Amanda Storrs, the widow of Playbill founder and theatre owner Frank Vance Storrs, and one of Anna Clark’s closest friends. He did not intend to lead Huguette on, but his flirtatious nature could not help but continue to give her hope.

Anna Clark was not a shut-in, either; she showed no inclination to remarry, but the wealthy widow had a new admirer: the radio personality Major Bowes. The pioneering entertainer’s Original Amateur Hour show on NBC had recently become a national sensation. Each week, more than ten thousand people applied to perform on his show in the hope of being discovered. Recently widowed and a Catholic like Anna, Bowes came from an impoverished background. This grammar school dropout had reinvented himself as a theatre owner and an on-air performer. (His name was Edward Bowes, but he assumed “Major” as a showbiz moniker.) Bowes was known for using a gong to cut off performers, and his on-air catchphrase was: “The wheel of fortune goes ’round and ’round, where she stops, nobody knows.” An aspiring young Frank Sinatra appeared on the show with the quartet the Hoboken Four.

An art collector with paintings by Renoir, Van Gogh, and Rembrandt, Bowes became so fond of Anna Clark that he gave her a large, square canary diamond that she had mounted as a ring. He was four years her senior, much more of a contemporary than her husband had been. Bowes also presented her with the requisite autographed photo, which she displayed prominently in her music room along with signed photographs of celebrities she had known, such as the opera star Enrico Caruso. Anna also cherished a photo of Bowes in a more relaxed setting: playing cards while clad in an elegant smoking jacket and slacks.

Mother and daughter entertained together: on April 28, Tadé Styka went to the Clarks’ Fifth Avenue apartment to listen to a Major Bowes broadcast and then have dinner afterward with the radio host. The artist spent Thanksgiving with Huguette and Anna at the home of Anna’s sister, Amelia. The evening ended abruptly when Tadé made an emergency trip to the hospital for appendicitis. Anna sent her chauffeur to the hospital to bring him home several days later. On Christmas Day 1935, Anna and Huguette celebrated the holiday by hosting an intimate dinner for Major Bowes, Tadé Styka, and Amelia and her husband, Bryce Turner.

Huguette’s dance à deux with Tadé continued into 1936, with regular outings in addition to her lessons. On January 25, the couple went to see the opera Carmen; on February 15, he took Huguette to the Ziegfeld Follies to see Josephine Baker sing and dance and the Nicholas Brothers tap dance on stage. “Miss Baker cannot sing but sure can wear clothes. And roll those eyes,” pronounced Variety in a review of the show that appeared that very morning. “She looks best in an exotic scene called ‘5 a.m.’ in which she sings and dances with four shadowy black-masked men. It is a Balanchine ballet.” After seeing the Follies, the painter and Huguette dined at Maisonette Russe at the St. Regis Hotel.

Three days later, Tadé accompanied Huguette, her mother, and her aunt to an art exhibit. On February 22, he took Huguette dancing at the St. Regis; on Sunday, March 22, he and Huguette went to hear a violin concert. On April 27, they dined at the Hotel Sherry-Netherland with her aunt; on May 6, he took Huguette to the French Casino to see the extravaganza Folies de Femmes show of dancing girls. (This risqué performance had become a must-see after a magistrate acquitted the theatre owners in late February—CABARET MEN CLEARED, announced the New York Times—of charges of “conducting indecent shows.”) When his brother Adam and his sister-in-law Wanda visited from Poland, the artist took them out to dinner with Huguette.

Throughout the 1930s, Huguette continued her summer pilgrimages to Bellosguardo. When she was leaving New York by train for Santa Barbara, the gentlemanly Tadé escorted her to Pennsylvania Station and gave her a corsage. She sent him a playful telegram en route: “Cher Maitre. Infinite thanks for your magnificent corsage which still keeps all of its freshness. I am tending to it in order to wear it while disembarking the train in Los Angeles. It was a hit in Chicago. Again, I wish you a good vacation. Regards, Huguette.”

The best-seller lists for 1937 included Margaret Mitchell’s Gone with the Wind, Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and Influence People, volumes by Virginia Woolf and Somerset Maugham, plus a novel by newcomer Myron Brinig, The Sisters. The Atlanta Constitution labeled the Brinig novel “one of the better books of the season,” and the New York Times promised readers that they would be “engrossed” by The Sisters since it “has something of the sweep of Gone with the Wind.” When the movie version came out a year later starring Bette Davis and Errol Flynn, the Boston Globe described it as a “sentimental, heart-warming story of three beautiful girls which is sure to please every woman patron…”

Not every woman. Not Anna La Chapelle Clark. Set in Montana in 1904, The Sisters stole liberally from her life story and that of her sister, Amelia. Brinig, who lived in Butte and is believed to have known the La Chapelle sisters, used many identifying details. The fictional Elliott family is originally from Michigan (where the La Chapelle family had lived) and the fictional Elliott patriarch is a pharmacist (Peter La Chapelle was convicted of practicing medicine without a license after writing prescriptions to Butte pharmacists). The fictional Elliotts live on West Granite Street, the location of William Andrews Clark’s Butte mansion.

One of the three intertwined plots centers on the rebellious, beautiful, and amoral youngest sister, Helen Elliott. She weds a widowed copper titan more than twice her age—a man who was originally from Pennsylvania and took a metallurgy course at an eastern college. (In case the reader doesn’t get the heavy-handed message, William Andrews Clark makes a cameo in the novel, stopping into a shop in Silver Bow to buy the New York newspapers.)

In the movie version of The Sisters, Helen’s mother announces in abject horror that her daughter does not love the mogul and is marrying for money. The copper titan’s daughter from his first marriage bitterly resents Helen and tries to undermine her. In the book, Helen cheats on her elderly husband, and he dies while she is in bed with another man.

Anna’s name was never mentioned in either the novel or the book. But the portrayal of her doppelganger as a heartless gold digger and adulteress was inescapable and infuriating. It was made worse by the fact that during a two-year period, the book and the movie embedded themselves into late 1930s popular culture.

Even as Tadé Styka was spending ample time with Huguette, he was also seeing model Doris Ford. Curious about the artist’s relationship with Huguette, Doris began to make notes in her journal about their activities. Rather than feel threatened, Doris tried to ingratiate herself with the painter’s wealthy pupil. On January 17, 1937, Doris wrote that Tadé was taking Huguette to see a Hindu dancer, bringing his brother and sister-in-law along. On April 30, Doris tried to be helpful by looking for Japanese models to hire for Huguette’s lessons. Doris occasionally lingered in the background at Tadé’s studio during Huguette’s sessions, trying to avoid disrupting the heiress’s concentration. She described the scene in her notes: “She liked quietly to paint, a pin could be heard if dropped.” Much to Doris’s frustration, when Huguette and Tadé did converse they spoke in French, which the model did not understand.

Doris kept track of Tadé’s dates with Huguette, noting that he took the heiress out for her birthday, June 9, to a movie and then dancing at the Rainbow Room atop Rockefeller Center. Tadé spent the summer in France, but as soon as he returned, the artist began spending time with both women yet again. Using his initials, Doris jotted such notes as “TS went to a movie with HC in the afternoon to the Clarks for dinner” on October 15, and “TS to florist where he made an arrangement for HC.”

But word was starting to circulate about the artist’s romance with Doris. On November 30, Tadé went to the Clarks’ home for dinner and then to the opera. Anna’s sister, Amelia, took him aside that night to say that her dear friend Amanda Storrs had seen Tadé out for the evening with a “tall dark girl.” Then Anna cornered him (presumably out of Huguette’s earshot) to ask if he planned to marry that girl. When Tadé recounted the story to Doris the next day, he did not tell her what he replied, but she wrote in her journal: “He’s not much for words, he silently hugged me.”

Huguette’s dance card, however, included another attentive man. Her childhood summer playmate from France, Etienne de Villermont, had turned up in New York and was now frequently featured in the gossip columns. Etienne, his younger brother, Henri, and their artist parents had been befriended by Anna and William Andrews Clark at the beach resort of Trouville in the pre–World War I era. Now Etienne, known as the Marquis de Villermont, was making headlines for his amorous American adventures. The handsome bachelor was linked in the columns to several eligible women. On March 3, 1936, he was reported to be engaged to the widow of a coffee magnate, Mrs. Claire Eugenia Smith, who had inherited $6 million. But that turned out to be a joke. Villermont and one of his closest friends, Russian prince Alexis Droutzkoy, at a nightclub with Mrs. Smith, had quipped to the Daily News that they had been rivals for her affections (MARQUIS IS WINNER OF HEIRESS WIDOW), but the emerald-draped Mrs. Smith later denied the engagement. Etienne was described as a perfume importer, but he would not hold that job for long.

In February 1938, Huguette attended a lunch with Etienne de Villermont at the St. Regis Hotel. The event honored Lady Decies, the American wife of a British aristocrat, who was due to sail on the Normandie for her home in Paris. It was the first time Huguette was seen in public with the marquis. But Etienne, two years older than Huguette, was playing the field. On November 25, 1938, Walter Winchell wrote that the marquis, now working at the French consulate, “is lavishing most of his diplomacy on Jayne Gayle, the modelulu.”

Huguette continued to go out with Tadé that spring: they attended the opera, a Japanese-themed dinner, and the Rodgers and Hart musical I Married an Angel at the Shubert Theatre. In honor of Tadé’s birthday on April 13, Huguette and her mother gave a dinner party for him.

During that summer in Santa Barbara, she wrote to Tadé as always. Even after so many mornings in Tadé’s painting studio and evenings by his side, her letters to him are chaste, as if the thirty-two-year-old’s emotions are so repressed that she cannot express deeper feelings. She plays it light and girlish, the younger pupil to older mentor. On August 14, 1938, she wrote to Tadé on stationery monogrammed with an elaborate “H.” By then it was likely that she knew Tadé was involved with Doris Ford.

Cher Maitre,

What a good and enjoyable surprise you gave me by calling from New York. I who had believed you to be in South America. Imagine my astonishment! Thank you for offering to have me resume my lessons on September 15th. This will not be possible for me, but I am delighted at the thought of picking my paintbrush up again on the 25th of next month.

I can’t wait to resume my lessons. It is such a privilege to work with you.

There was recently a horse show here which was very interesting for me, as my niece Patsy took part in it.

We are spending a lot of time at the beach. The ocean air is so good and invigorating but I find the water quite cold.

Included here are a few photos of the house… and of your little rose bush which has grown nicely and faces my studio, as well as some newspaper clippings about the earthquake in New York that I think must be very exaggerated.

Write me a note, dear Maitre. I will be happy to hear from you. I hope these few lines will have found you in good health. Maman joins me in sending our best regards, Huguette.

(New York City did indeed experience a minor earthquake at 3 a.m. on July 29, 1938. Huguette’s horse-mad niece was Patsy Clark, the daughter of Charles Clark and Celia Tobin.)

In this letter to Tadé, Huguette sent along photos of the newly rebuilt Bellosguardo and a fetching photo of herself, standing by the trees on the cliff overlooking the ocean. She is wearing a white skirted suit with a cheerful polka dot blouse and matching belt. Plumper than her previous slender self, more curvaceous and womanly, Huguette looks at the camera with a wistful expression.

Huguette’s artistic love affair with Japan had intensified. Concerned about the verisimilitude of her Japanese-themed paintings, she had begun an ongoing correspondence with a Japanese woman based in California, Mrs. Sajiri. Huguette inquired about everything from the appropriate names for female figures to what kinds of insects she should portray. Mrs. Sajiri wrote to Huguette in January 1939 that there were more than one hundred known species of cicadas in Japan but “for your parasol study, however, I think that a dragonfly or a butterfly would be more appropriate.” That April, Mrs. Sajiri gave Huguette detailed instructions on where a geisha might place a coral pin on her kimono and obi.

Huguette’s and Tadé’s paths diverged that spring, although they remained close. On May 11, 1939, Tadé Styka presented a large diamond solitaire surrounded by twenty pigeon red blood rubies to Doris, whose modeling career had blossomed with magazine covers. But he did not propose. Only months later, when a friend asked Doris whether this was an engagement ring—and she repeated the conversation to Tadé—did he admit that was what he had in mind. But the perennial bachelor was in no rush to set a wedding date.

Just a few days after giving Doris the ring, Tadé took Huguette to an art exhibit; then on May 21, he and the heiress attended a concert by harpist Marcel Grandjany, Anna Clark’s harp teacher. Huguette and Tadé ventured out to Queens—likely courtesy of her chauffeur—to see the wonders of the 1939 World’s Fair. Tadé and Huguette marveled at Broadway showman Billy Rose’s spectacular Aquacade, a ten-thousand-seat amphitheater featuring an enormous pool and cascades of water. Ornately costumed glamour girls performed dance routines and then stripped down to bathing suits to show off synchronized swimming feats. Olympic champion and actor Johnny Weissmuller was featured in the act. After the show, Tadé and Huguette dined at the Italian Pavilion’s second-floor restaurant, where imported chefs concocted dishes dotted with white truffles.

Huguette, however, had romantic news of her own. She had warmed up to the idea of the Marquis de Villermont as a suitor. Her mother’s social secretary, Adele Marié, told family friends that she had helped broker the match. The society columns heralded another upcoming walk down the aisle. Walter Winchell declared on May 31, 1939, that “The Marquis de Villermont and Huguette Clark will probably wed this summer. He’s due for a post with the French diplomatic Service.”

Winchell prided himself on getting his facts right, and was saved in this case by the word probably. There was no wedding that summer, much less a formal engagement. The relationship between Huguette and Etienne never did progress to marriage. But they would continue to see each other periodically over the next few decades.

On Christmas Day 1939, Tadé Styka spent the holiday at dinner with Anna and Huguette at 907 Fifth Avenue, but he did not bring along his fiancée. However, he did repeat to Doris a conversation that he had that evening with Huguette. The heiress teased Tadé about his engagement. As Doris wrote in her notes, “She was joshing him about me—saying for him not to fool her as she could find out a lot but did not want to.” Huguette was trying to graciously accept the news that he was now committed to someone else, but this transition troubled her.

Ever since the newspapers had feasted on the tale of her 1930 divorce, Huguette had loathed publicity. But she could not avoid it. As one of the wealthiest women in Manhattan, she remained a figure of interest. Less than a year after her purported engagement to the Marquis de Villermont was mentioned in the newspapers, syndicated columnist Cholly Knickerbocker wrote an item on March 16, 1940, stating that Huguette had given up on romance.

“When lists of American heiresses are compiled, ink-slingers usually overlook popular Huguette Clark, whose father the late bewhiskered Senator William A. Clark amassed a fortune in Montana’s copper and Alaska’s gold.” After mentioning her failed marriage to William Gower, the columnist continued, “She’s been disillusioned ever since, most of her time is given over to art work, and on Fifth Avenue in the winter and at Santa Barbara in the summer. She prevues [sic] oils and watercolors that win high praise from art critics. If she didn’t have $15,000,000, she could amass a fortune as an artist.”

Gossip columnists could not resist pointing out that her ex-husband, William Gower, and his second wife were tripping through Europe, highballs in hand. Gower’s niece Jan Perry recalls, “He led a fast life. We all adored him. He was a name-dropper who knew everyone.” When Perry visited her uncle in London and he honored her with a cocktail party, Lady Astor was among the guests. Gower was nominally affiliated with a law firm but, as Perry adds, “He sure acted as if he didn’t have to work.” His wife remained a social climber par excellence. As the New York Sun wrote, “Mrs. Gower is one of the most popular hostesses in the American colony in London.”

Anna and Huguette employed a large retinue of servants at 907 Fifth Avenue: cooks, maids, housekeepers, and a chauffeur. One day, a staffer delivered an unexpected, and unwanted, package to the two women—an eye-opening tell-all manuscript about William Andrews Clark and his family, written by a former family employee from Butte, William Daniel Mangam. The loose-leaf pages were in dark green three-punch binders, with copies of photos and excerpts of personal letters.

Every family has its secrets: the cruelties and shameful moments, the sibling rivalries, the forbidden romantic entanglements and hidden financial finagling. But only rarely is the dirty linen hung on the clothesline for public ridicule. Nothing ever written about the Clarks—even The Sisters—exuded vitriol like this little book entitled The Clarks of Montana.

Mangam had been the confidant of William Andrews Clark Jr. and had spent decades on the Clark payroll. In 1902, Mangam got into such a bloody bare-knuckles brawl in Butte defending Senator Clark’s reputation that the fight made the national newspapers, in which he was described as “the protege of Senator Clark.” Mangam worked his way up to become the secretary-treasurer of the Clarks’ Timber Butte Mining Company. Mangam read and kept copies of letters between family members and collected damaging internal financial documents. Even after the Clark estate sold the senator’s Montana enterprises in 1928 to the Anaconda Mining Company, he remained close to William Clark Jr. But once Junior died in the company of a teenage boy, Mangam decided to cash in.

Mangam’s lacerating book portrayed the senator as a reprobate who fathered illegitimate children with Indian women and favored “aberrant” (albeit unspecified) sexual practices. The author went after the entire Clark family, including Anna and Huguette, with vicious portraits exposing embarrassing moments. Mangam filed for a copyright in 1939, but the book got wider circulation when it was issued in 1941 by a New York publisher, Silver Bow Press, with an introduction by University of Wisconsin sociology professor Edward Alsworth Ross, who pronounced it a “priceless social document.” Ross added, “The author makes charges which would undoubtedly lay him open to ruin by many successful libel suits were he not in a position to substantiate them.” Mangam wrote an expose of Will Clark Jr.’s activities as a sexual predator, attacked Charles as an alcoholic and a philanderer, and portrayed Mary Clark de Brabant, who had died in December 1939, as a snob with terrible taste in men. Katherine Clark Morris, the only surviving child from Clark’s first marriage, is described as a stingy social climber.

Anna La Chapelle is depicted as an ambitious teenage fortune hunter who became pregnant out of wedlock and manipulatively reeled in her man, negotiating a large prenuptial settlement. Mangam quotes letters that convey the distress of Clark’s older children over the relationship. The senator’s oldest daughter, Mary, thought that her father should have married someone elevated in society, and Mangam says that she “resented it deeply” that he chose Anna La Chapelle.

The portrait of Huguette was even more cruel. Mangam flatly stated, without a shred of evidence, that she might not be Clark’s daughter but instead the product of an affair by Anna. He says that William Andrews Clark did not love Huguette. The expose described Huguette as a spoiled child with a “mother complex.” Mangam wrote with clotted syntax: “Huguette Marcelle never occupied the place in the affections of the Senator that the winsome Andrée did. His feelings toward Huguette at times seemed almost to approach indifference. It is not believed that the Senator’s attitude was dictated or influenced by the tale that Huguette was not his offspring but that of a New York doctor, a story, incidentally, in the truth of which his sons and one grandson expressed their belief.”

Those sons and grandson—Charles Clark, William Clark Jr., and William Clark III—were all dead now. But the possibility that they had not only believed but spread this sleazy story hardened Huguette and Anna against their relatives. Twisting the knife, Mangam announced the reason for the short-lived nuptials of Clark’s youngest daughter: “Huguette refused to consummate the marriage.”

Many of Mangam’s stories were probably embellished or even invented. But his description of Huguette and Anna’s bond rings true: “They seem now to live largely for each other.” The author sent the unpublished manuscript to Anna and Huguette to purportedly protect himself from a lawsuit. In his foreword, Mangam writes: “To guard against the possibility of error in the presentation of factual statements, the chapters of this narrative were submitted to all the characters who are still alive and to their legal representatives.”

Unlike The Sisters, the Mangam book was not a best seller. Rumor had it that family members tried to buy up all the copies and pulp them, although the slim volume was periodically reprinted and made its way into libraries. If anyone wanted to learn about the history of William Andrews Clark, his wife, Anna, and daughter Huguette, this was the standard volume to consult from now on. And it was merciless to Clark’s youngest daughter.

For Huguette, the seacliff estate in Santa Barbara remained her refuge, a place to escape from New York and societal expectations. She could paint, play golf with friends, swim in the ocean, and relax away from prying eyes. In 1941, she spent more time than usual in Santa Barbara. Early that year, she began writing to Tadé to ask him to save dates for painting lessons, but postponed her return to New York four times, finally returning on June 11.

In her notes to her teacher, she mentioned how tan she was becoming, so he decided to play a practical joke: a tan-a-thon. In the weeks before her scheduled arrival, he began sunning himself on the roof at lunch. Huguette swanned into his studio on June 12 and discovered that Tadé was darker than she was. He wrote a letter to his brother later that day about the prank: “She stayed in California because she wanted to astound me, astonish me with her own tan. In the meantime, I stupified her when she saw me. She did nothing else but tan.”

Huguette had always come for morning lessons, but she abruptly announced that she wanted to switch to afternoons, from 1 p.m. to 3 p.m. This upset Tadé’s own painting schedule. But much to the annoyance of his fiancée, Doris, he accepted Huguette’s demand without complaint. As his daughter, Wanda, says, “My mother mentioned that this made it difficult for my father, since he’d have to schedule a sitting in the morning or after 3 p.m., and if it was the winter the light would be going. My father was very delicate, he would never have said, ‘Gosh, this is a problem in life.’ He thought, noblesse oblige, I have to be chivalrous.”

Huguette had temporarily put aside Japanese themes to work on a new series about envelopes, some with white flaps fetchingly open, a hint of the mysteries of the letters inside. “She has been so fanatical about the little envelopes she has been painting for months, if not for all of last year,” wrote Doris in her notes. “Studying abstract perspectives to finish them.”

The heiress did not spend much time in New York that year, heading back to Bellosguardo for the month of August. Etienne de Villermont was a houseguest at Bellosguardo during the annual fiesta, which included a pageant, a parade, street dancing, and parties at the Montecito Country Club and the Biltmore’s waterfront Coral Casino. Huguette met Etienne at the train station, and a photograph caught the happy moment as she gave him a hug.

Huguette’s and the Frenchman’s social circles overlapped: when he returned to New York that fall, Etienne was a guest at a dinner given by the ubiquitous Amanda Storrs, the widow of the theatre producer. The marquis benefited financially from his friendship with the Clarks. He was named to the board of a newly formed Vermont copper company chaired by George Ellis, a lawyer who had worked for William Andrews Clark. His Manhattan firm handled legal affairs for Anna and Huguette.

Huguette returned briefly to New York that fall, but then turned around and headed back to California to spend December 1941 and the Christmas holidays with her mother at Bellosguardo. The weather was balmy, perfect for tennis or golf, a pleasant seventy-eight degrees on December 7, 1941, the day of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.

Ever since the Clarks had fled France at the outbreak of World War I, Anna and Huguette had a tendency to panic. But trapped on the West Coast in the harrowing days after Pearl Harbor, they had genuine reason to be fearful. Air sirens went off in major cities, anti-aircraft guns were fired into the sky over Los Angeles, and fear was rampant that Japanese troops were about to invade by air or by sea. Beaches were laced with barbed wire.

Huguette and her mother desperately wanted to flee California after the Japanese attack, but they were competing with thousands of terrified residents. She sent a telegram to Tadé Styka, explaining that they were having difficulty obtaining tickets and would be arriving in New York later than she had hoped.

The location of the Santa Barbara Cemetery—high above on the ocean with a sweeping view of the horizon, right next to Bellosguardo—offered an ideal observation post. The Army established a presence in the cemetery, stationing troops with artillery and searchlights there as sentries patrolled the beaches below. Bellosguardo was now part of a war zone.

Huguette and Anna had left Santa Barbara by the time the city was traumatized on February 22, 1942, when a Japanese submarine surfaced a half mile from the coast and fired at the Ellwood Oil Field. Just twelve miles from Santa Barbara, the oil facility sustained minimal damage and no one was injured, but the attack ratcheted up concerns about the region’s vulnerability.

Back in New York, Huguette and Anna began to ludicrously worry about money despite their ample means. Huguette announced that she needed to economize and cut back her painting lessons from four times a week to two visits, although it hardly dented her budget. “Her manager of financial affairs said she must cut down on expenses since the government is taking too much from her,” wrote Doris in her notes.

For Huguette, the outbreak of war was emotionally shattering. She loved Japanese culture and had been collecting Japanese artifacts for a decade, but now Japan was the enemy. She had befriended Japanese Americans and immersed herself in learning about the country. Lucien Marsh, the proprietor of the Japanese importer Marsh and Company, wrote to Huguette on January 29, 1942, to convey the obvious: “When we succeed in abolishing the war lords of Japan I believe we will be able to accomplish your unfilled orders.” He added, hopefully, “And any future orders…”

But now any American with close ties to Japan was considered a potential subversive. Until Pearl Harbor, Huguette had been receiving regular shipments from Japan of dolls, castles, and antiques. At her Fifth Avenue apartment, she received a series of unsettling visits from the FBI. She talked about the experience many years later with her assistant, Chris Sattler. As he recounts, “There was so much correspondence between Japan and Mrs. Clark, she was actually interviewed on a number of occasions by the FBI.”

The government paranoia was not as far-fetched as it seems. Velvalee Dickinson, the proprietor of a New York doll store, was later convicted of spying for Japan and sentenced to ten years in prison. She sent coded letters about American ship movements that were disguised as routine correspondence about doll shipments and repairs.

When California began rounding up Japanese residents and shipping them to internment camps in February 1942, Huguette had firsthand knowledge of a few of those taken away. Her uncle Arthur La Chapelle’s Japanese cook, Taka Muto, and his wife, Saburo Muto, were forced to leave his Beverly Hills estate and sent to a barbed-wire enclave in barren Cody, Wyoming. Huguette knew the couple well and stayed in touch with them for many decades following their release.

All of it—the specter of attack right after Pearl Harbor, the FBI interrogation, the demonization of Japan—sent Huguette into a tailspin. Already relatively slender, she began to lose weight. She even stopped turning up for her painting lessons. Tadé and Doris bought orchids for her birthday on June 9, sending them to her apartment. Ten days later, Tadé was so worried that he spoke to Adele Marié to see how Huguette was doing. As Doris wrote, “She said Miss Clark is so terribly worried over war conditions, Miss Marié worried her health will break.” Those fears proved true.

Huguette spent the next few months under the care of doctors, suffering from a psychological breakdown. She cut off contact with the outside world. On September 24, she finally emerged to tentatively make her way to Tadé’s studio. Doris described in her notes what happened: “Miss Clark came today for the first time in over two months. TS had amazingly divined her reason for staying away… She called the other day to confirm the words that TS had told me weeks ago—that she had been taking a rest cure to gain weight. She was not even allowed to talk because this wasted energy.” Where Huguette spent these months recovering from her breakdown was not spelled out, but her inability to make phone calls suggests an institutional setting.

Huguette remained in fragile shape for the remainder of the year. On December 3, Doris wrote, “Miss Clark has been staying home trying to gain weight.” To cheer her up, Tadé sent Huguette a dozen long-stemmed red roses and a new artist’s palette that he had spent months meticulously carving and sanding, with wood specially chosen from the Steinway factory to match the color of Huguette’s blonde hair. It was a Christmas gift, meant to remind Huguette of her identity as an artist and to entice her to pick up a brush again. Tadé had finally married Doris in August with a simple City Hall ceremony, but he remained attached to his favorite pupil.

Anna worried about her daughter’s emotional health. “Lani would sometimes make little semicritical comments about Huguette,” recalls Gordon Lyle Jr. “That Huguette wanted to be sheltered from all the problems of the world. For which I don’t blame her.” From then on, Anna appeared to family and friends to be especially protective of Huguette, concerned about keeping her sensitive daughter on an even psychological keel. At the end of the year, the family suffered another loss when Amelia La Chapelle Turner’s husband, Bryce, died of a heart attack on December 26. The former mining engineer had been a constant presence at family events, and the three women had now lost their final male anchor.

Once Huguette recovered enough to reengage with the world, she did her small part to aid in the war effort. She donated money to the YWCA for hospitality for the troops, loaned a painting to the Museum of Modern Art for a fund-raising exhibit for Navy relief, and appeared at a morale-boosting USO party to cheer up soldiers headed to war. She kept a photo from the event as a souvenir, which she showed to Chris Sattler. “She is sitting with three other society women, with a sailor, a Marine, and a couple Army guys, young roughhousing guys,” he says. “She looked incredibly uncomfortable.” Making small talk with homesick soldiers was not in her repertoire.

She returned to painting Japanese scenes again, although she bought a zipped case to carry her paintings out of Tadé’s studio, to avoid arousing hostility from strangers on the street.

Huguette’s disappearance from public life had the inadvertent and undesired effect of making her even more of a figure of public curiosity. In May 1943, Cholly Knickerbocker devoted an entire column to Huguette, noting that she was keen to keep her “activities out of the news.” As the columnist wrote:

Although Huguette makes her home in a luxurious apartment on upper Fifth Avenue, you seldom encounter her about the haunts of “cafe society” and you NEVER see accounts of her comings and goings in the “sassiety” columns…

Huguette inherited great wealth—but she never had any desire to go in for a big social splash and her simplicity and directness, going hand in hand with a certain shyness are in contrast to the chi-chi and splurge affected by other Mayfairites blessed with far less coin of the realm… Huguette has continued to devote her time to her art work…

Her former husband now is married to the one-time Constance Baxter Tevis Toulmin, and, as an executive to the Red Cross, was appointed to a post with the Civilian Relief mission in London.

Huguette goes her quiet way, occupied with her art and her music, attending concerts, the theatre, the opera, various art exhibits, etc.—wartime exigencies permitted. She will have none of “cafe society.”

Huguette and Anna finally returned to California that August. Worried about possible food shortages, Anna bought a 218-acre ranch nearby with grazing cows and vegetable gardens. Anna and Huguette never lived at Rancho Alegre but relied on its produce. For Anna, the ranch was a psychological safety net, a place where she and Huguette and the staff could flee if the coast of California came under attack. Anna held on to it even after the war when the previous owner, publisher Thomas Storke, tried to buy it back.

Infants were not a regular part of Huguette’s life. But when Tadé Styka’s wife, Doris, gave birth to a daughter, Wanda, on August 19, 1943, the Clark women were besotted. Huguette was on her own in California at the time, but her mother and aunt paid an immediate visit. Tadé wrote to Huguette: “Votre dear Mother and your Aunt came to see Wanda and true to her sex, she seems to have been born with the art of winning hearts.”

Huguette accepted the mantle of godmother with joy, showering baby Wanda with affection and gifts including musical dolls, French illustrated children’s books, and $1,000 bonds. Encouraging Tadé and Doris to take home movies, she sent them an early projector. She wrote frequent notes to Doris in English conveying how much she reveled in watching Wanda grow up. Proud father Tadé painted numerous portraits of his enchanting daughter and crafted busts of her likeness, sending a bronze sculpture of Wanda to Huguette as a gift.

In a handwritten note from Santa Barbara dated June 16, 1944, a week after her own thirty-eighth birthday, Huguette wrote,

Dear Doris,

It was sweet of you and “the maestre” to remember my birthday. I am still getting much enjoyment from the delicious candy and I want to thank you both many many times. The ivy poisoning is better which makes me glad as it will be so nice seeing you again and you can imagine how I can hardly wait to see my godchild. Mother and my aunt and Uncle Arthur just rave about her… with much love, Huguette.

Six months later, Huguette sent another note gushing about Wanda. She uses a surprisingly formal address for her painting teacher, as if still trying to get used to their changed relationship.

Dear Doris,

Thank you and Mr. Styka so much for the delicious box of chocolates you so sweetly sent me for Christmas and for your thoughts of me. I so enjoyed seeing you and Wanda the other day. Wanda looked so well and has grown considerably since I last saw her. She is adorable and so intelligent. I thought it was so by the way she handed me my photograph. I just have her photographs and will have one of the larger ones framed. With much love and wishing you all three a most Happy New Year, Huguette.

Huguette frequently requested visits. “I love my little godchild,” she wrote. “Wanda has to spend the afternoon with us when you and Mr. Styka go to the movies or are otherwise engaged. Will call up very soon as I should also like you both to come to dinner one of these days.”

Once Wanda learned to talk, Huguette asked to be called “Marraine,” the French word for “godmother.” Huguette liked coming up with ways to amuse Wanda, such as demonstrating her new Polaroid camera. She wrote to Doris Styka: “I have a new camera which in minutes develop its photos. You can play a joke on Wanda. Snap her and then show it to her a minute later.”

When Huguette came to the Styka family’s duplex complex of apartments—living quarters and studio—at 222 Central Park South, Wanda would often be kept company by Anna and Huguette’s social secretary, Adele Marié. “I had to be very quiet,” Wanda recalls. “It seems to me that the lessons were two hours, but of course a child thinks that everything is very long.” Bizarre as it seems, even after Huguette reached her late thirties and was visiting a full household, she still brought along a companion.

Looking back on her early years when she was a young observer in her father’s studio, Wanda recalls being struck by how her father and Huguette expressed their very different personalities in their art. “My father was a virtuoso—he painted fast, he had an unerring touch. He liked to let the viewer finish some of the lines, to leave something unsaid in the paintings. Marraine liked everything very precise, finely delineated. She was very careful. I don’t think she was a fast worker.” For Huguette, it was all about control. She labored to show every ripple in the fabric of a gown and every flower petal unfolding, creating lifelike images.

As avidly as Huguette pursued painting, her mother remained devoted to music. Undaunted by her diminished hearing, Anna still played the harp and often invited chamber music groups to perform at her Fifth Avenue music room. In 1945, she played host to her visiting California relative, pianist Agnes Clark Albert, the daughter of Celia Tobin and Charles Clark. Agnes had proposed a musical afternoon and brought along Robert Maas, the former cellist of the Pro Arte Quartet, a Belgian group that had been stranded in America by the war. Maas had parted company with the quartet and told Anna that he was unsure of his musical future. As Agnes Clark Albert later told her daughter Karine, Anna responded with a wildly extravagant gesture. Pointing to a Cézanne painting of his wife, Anna announced, “My daughter Huguette won’t come into this room because she hates this painting so much.” Then she took the Cézanne portrait of his wife off the wall and left with it.

When she returned a few hours later, Anna announced that she had just sold the painting at the Wildenstein Gallery and spent the proceeds at the finest music store in New York. She then produced four Stradivarius violins that had belonged to the nineteenth-century Italian violinist Niccolò Paganini. Anna offered to lend them to Robert Maas if he would launch a new string quartet. (The exact details of the story may have been exaggerated through frequent retellings but Anna Clark definitely purchased the instruments and inspired the formation of the Paganini Quartet.)

After the debut performance of the chamber music group at Manhattan’s Town Hall in November 1946, the New York Times praised the Bartók and Schumann selections and expressed gratitude toward “Mrs. William A. Clark” for supplying the historic instruments. As the quartet performed across the country, Anna was credited time and again for making this heavenly music possible, an artistic legacy of her own.

The quartet performed at Bellosguardo, where Anna and Huguette continued to hold court. “The Clarks sponsored the Paganini Quartet and held concerts in the music room with its back-to-back Steinway concert grand pianos and harps,” wrote Barbara Hoelscher Doran in an essay for the Santa Barbara Independent. Born in 1944, Doran grew up on the estate, where her father, Albert Hoelscher, was the caretaker. In her essay, she described “lawn parties at the tennis court, with a quartet playing in a tree-house platform, and plays in the outdoor setting.” The Clarks were democratic enough to socialize with favored retainers and their children. “When Huguette and Anna E. Clark came out to the estate, Huguette would phone our house and invite me over for afternoon tea,” Doran wrote. “I would walk over with our dogs and sit with Huguette and Anna E. on the terrace under big umbrellas overlooking the great lawns and ocean.”

Huguette led a quieter life when she was in Manhattan, continuing to take her painting lessons. She had begun to correspond frequently with longtime family friends based in the South of France—not only man-about-town Etienne de Villermont but his younger brother, Henri. Their letters back and forth were always in French. Ever generous, she sent them checks, and they wrote back with family news. “I thank you endlessly and with eternal gratitude for all you have done and are still doing for us,” wrote Henri.

In April 1951, Huguette became weak and ill, ending up at St. Luke’s Hospital on Manhattan’s Upper West Side for several weeks. The hospital, which had a specialty in respiratory diseases, had an upscale clientele, treating bankers, politicians, and actresses. Tadé made note of Huguette’s illness in his appointment calendar but did not specify the problem. Henri de Villermont wrote to her on June 5: “We were so sorry in learning that you had suffered and worried about it.” On November 23, Henri reiterated his concerns, saying, “I hope, dear Huguette, that your health is definitively back to normal and that you don’t feel anything anymore. You have suffered so much for several months.”

That year, Huguette purchased a new country refuge close to Manhattan, a sprawling twelve-thousand-square-foot French-style château in New Canaan, Connecticut. Built in 1938 with parquet floors and marble fireplaces, the twenty-two-room mansion was located on a private twenty-three-acre wooded lot with a meandering stream and waterfall. But the bucolic setting was not the primary draw: amid the nuclear panic of the early years of the Cold War era, this estate offered a ready escape from New York. “They had a place in Connecticut because people were scared about the atomic bomb,” explains Gordon Lyle Jr.

The terrified atmosphere of the era rings through in a 1951 letter that Doris Styka wrote but ultimately did not send to Huguette, in which the artist’s wife stresses “the fears that have become so much part of life in New York”:

It seems that just as one starts to relax and forgets about any wars or bombing along comes other dread news over the television reviving again the thoughts of escape I have thought to smother… With an atom bomb, survival would be few. I am confiding these fears to you, Huguette, in hope you could help me to know what to do. It isn’t for myself that I fear, but the survival of our little Wanda… as well as her father whose loss to us and to the world would be irreplaceable. When I constantly hear these words of possible bombing and what to do in case of an attack, I feel I don’t want to risk the possibility of it. This fear is making me actually ill…

Huguette had similar worries, which her new refuge helped alleviate. She began renovations on her Connecticut estate, importing marble fireplaces and adding a painting studio above the master bedroom with a staircase featuring fanciful balustrades shaped like paintbrushes. She would now have a place in the country to use for weekends or if anything frightening happened in Manhattan.

On June 28, 1952, Tadé and his wife and daughter went to Long Beach on Long Island for the afternoon. On this extremely hot day, he suddenly felt quite ill and was taken by ambulance to the hospital. At sixty-three, he had experienced a stroke. Worried about her dearest friend, Huguette sent him joking get-well cards at New York Hospital, with such scenes as a patient trying to lasso a nurse and gift certificates to be claimed upon leaving the hospital for a Scotch’n Soda, six Easy Rhumba lessons, or a Ride in a Roller Coaster. She reverted to writing notes in French to him on cards imprinted with colorful flowers, rather than writing in English to his wife.

Tadé spent months recuperating in warmer climes and at his country house in Ashley Falls, Massachusetts. On January 23, 1953, Huguette scribbled, “Am so glad you are getting better and better. I hope that in Cuba you will find some nice hot water that will quicken your full recovery.” A month later, she followed up with another note:

Cher Maitre,

I am rejoicing at the idea of seeing all three of you again soon. I found the photos of Wanda very good. She is gorgeous. I hope the water in Miami has decided to become hotter so that you can finally enjoy it. With all of my most affectionate thoughts to all three of you and see you soon, Huguette.

P.S. I am laying down one of the dancer in a yellow kimono.

Five months later, she wrote to him in Ashley Falls to say, “I was so glad to have had this little chat on the phone with you today.” Her notes are meant to cheer him up, but her own anxiety is what comes through. Whenever Tadé left Manhattan, Huguette dropped him a line—in July, October, November—stressing how much she missed him and his family and asking to send Wanda a “big kiss.”

Tadé Styka died on September 11, 1954, at New York Hospital. The New York Times obituary of the sixty-four-year-old artist recalled his precocious exhibit at the Paris salon and a portrait that he had painted in 1948 of Harry Truman, presented to the president at a White House ceremony.

Shortly after the funeral, Huguette paid a condolence call to Doris and Wanda at their Central Park South apartment, the scene of decades of memories. Aware of how much Huguette had loved her painting lessons, Doris mentioned that Tadé’s artist brother, Adam, might be available to work with her. But Huguette declined. Her precious hours with Tadé could not be replicated with anyone, even his brother. A second-best consolation could not heal the hole in her heart.

When Huguette left Doris and Wanda Styka after the condolence call, they assumed that they would see her again. Huguette loved Wanda, savoring their time together and eagerly anticipating visits. Huguette remained a major part of their lives for the next half century. The heiress who blossomed as a painter under Tadé’s tutelage would engage in long, affectionate phone conversations with both Wanda and Doris. She paid for Wanda’s private-school education at the Convent of the Sacred Heart and sent frequent checks and gifts. But the visits mysteriously halted. “We were always in communication by telephone,” says Wanda. “That was her medium. We were never out of touch.” But after Tadé Styka died, Wanda would never lay eyes on Huguette again.