The Phantom of Fifth Avenue: The Mysterious Life and Scandalous Death of Heiress Huguette Clark Read Free Page A

Independence, Lewis Morris.
    Carla had been working on the arrangements for the Corcoran party for months with Ian Devine, another fourth-generation Clark descendant. A preppy-looking fifty-five-year-old consultant, Devine advised financial firms on how to market their services to wealthy families. His great-grandmother, Mary Clark Culver Kling de Brabant, had been the bad girl of her generation. Married three times, Mary, the oldest child of William Andrews Clark, was a darling of the gossip columns of her era for her acrimonious divorces and exotic galas.
    Carla and Ian had only discovered by serendipity that they were related. In 2001, a business associate arranged for the duo to meet at Carla’s home office to discuss a potential work project. Ian’s brother had recently given him a family tree and certain names sounded familiar: his great-grandmother Mary and Carla’s great-grandmother Katherine had been sisters. As Ian recalls, “At the end of our business meeting, I asked if her parents were John and Erika. She said yes, and we took it from there.” Both of their families owned portraits of William Andrews Clark by Polish painter Tadé Styka (pronounced TAH-day STEE-ka), an artist popular in Washington and Hollywood, who had been commissioned by the senator to create an excessive eleven paintings.
    Carla Hall had never met or spoken to her “Tante Huguette,” but she had frequently been in touch by phone in recent years with Huguette’s lawyer, Wallace Bock. Acting in 2006 as a self-appointed family liaison to the Corcoran, Carla had asked Bock to pass along a request to Huguette to donate archival Clark family material (letters, photos, documents) to the museum. Huguette declined to do so. Curious about William Andrews Clark’s historic estate, Bellosguardo, in SantaBarbara, still owned by Huguette but vacant, Carla had requested and received permission, via Wallace Bock, to visit in 2007. She sent Huguette a thank-you note afterward but did not receive a reply.
    As soon as Carla began planning the Corcoran party, she consulted Bock and then sent Huguette an invitation to the event with a request for a donation to underwrite expenses. It was cheeky to write to a distant relative and ask for money, but everyone in the family assumed, correctly, that Huguette could easily afford it. Huguette contributed $10,000 but, as expected, declined to attend. As her accountant, Irving Kamsler, recalls telling her, “If you want to go, we can absolutely arrange it, get you there in a luxury limousine.” He adds, “But she had no desire to meet her family.” Her absence was a disappointment. Beverly Bonner McCord, a descendant of one of the senator’s sisters, says, “We would have loved to have met Huguette, even for just a few minutes.”
    The centenarian represented a living link to the most glittering era of family history. Huguette and her mother, Anna Clark, attended the opening of the Clark wing at the Corcoran in 1928—President Calvin Coolidge cut the silken cord—and she had an emotional attachment to the artworks. She had played with her older sister, Andrée, in the Salon Doré back when it was part of her father’s Fifth Avenue house. The paintings and sculptures at the Corcoran had been the backdrop to her daily life. She had accompanied her father to museums in Europe and Manhattan. Art was a way that this shy girl could connect with her formidable father. Inspired to become an artist herself, she had taken private lessons for many years with Tadé Styka. The Corcoran had even mounted a show of Huguette Clark’s artwork in 1929, which received favorable attention. With intricate brushwork, she created a striking self-portrait and romantic depictions of flowers.
    Proud of her father’s legacy as an art collector, she had been a loyal supporter of the Corcoran for many decades. “I talked to Huguette a number of times, she was very sweet,” recalls David Levy, former Corcoran Gallery director.