Read Online The Phantom of Fifth Avenue: The Mysterious Life and Scandalous Death of Heiress Huguette Clark by Meryl Gordon - Free Book Online
Authors: Meryl Gordon
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scrapbooks of family photos. She often told Irving Kamsler about “how much she loved her father, how he took good care of her, how close she was to her mother.”
Still, Butte was an odd place for a wealthy child: there were no trees, bushes, or flowers in the Clark backyard, although the copper king could certainly afford a gardener. The reason? The fumes from William Clark’s mining operations had killed all the vegetation in the city. “There is a hell on earth; it is Butte, Mont.,” declared the
Philadelphia Record
in 1904. “Why do they call Butte the early realm of Satan? Chiefly because roasting ores give off fumes of sulphur. This smoke—the color of watered milk—sometimes gets as thick as a London fog. Not one green leaf ever flutters in Butte; nor does a sprig of grass grow there.”
Mines dotted residential neighborhoods in Butte. Just a few blocksfrom the Clark mansion, the remnants of a mine have been preserved as a historic structure, a distinctive huge black metal frame resembling an oil derrick. Miners called them by the evocative name “hanging gallows,” since the mechanism lowered them hundreds of feet into the dark earth. Death came quickly in mines, via an explosion or a fire underground, or slowly from damage to miners’ lungs, silicosis.
Small children are innocents, but as she grew up, Huguette could not help but become aware that her parents occupied a rarified world. The grimy miners coming off a shift passed right by the house where Huguette, in a frilly white dress and oversized white hat, smiled shyly as she posed for a photograph on the front porch with her dolls, the most reliable companions in her life. She lined up her dolls in a row as if giving them their marching orders and arranged them in mother-and-children scenes. Like a theatre director orchestrating the onstage action, Huguette took joy in the imaginary world of her dolls and her ability to control their inanimate lives. Just as other children invent make-believe friends, she gave her dolls names, a habit she would continue into her adult life.
Huguette had enough pride in her family heritage and fond memories of her time in Butte that many years later—in 1964—Huguette and an older half sister, Katherine Clark Morris, unsuccessfully tried to buy back their father’s Granite Street home from a new owner, Anna Cote, who had turned it into a boardinghouse. They hoped to transform it into a historic monument, but Cote declined to sell.
Just two blocks from the Copper King Mansion is the second most famous house in Butte: a French-style château that William Clark built for his oldest son, Charles; it is now a museum. After graduating in 1893 from Yale—where he was notorious for “spending more money in one year at Yale than any man who had ever attended,” according to the
Washington Post
—Charles Clark went to work for his father, holding well-paid positions in the mining conglomerate. But he was always best known as a rich man’s spoiled son. A gambler who was fond of women and liquor, Charlie lost $20,000 in one night at roulette in Los Angeles in 1908, complaining to the police when gangstersharassed him to pay. He built a racetrack at his California estate, buying thoroughbreds (splurging $125,000 for Harry Payne Whitney’s colt Whiskaway) and racing the horses under copper-colored silks. No matter how much money he had, it was never enough; he was sued repeatedly for nonpayment of bills. Even his indulgent father joked about his son’s free-spending ways: William Andrews Clark once gave a shoeshine man a quarter tip. The ungrateful man complained that was a meager sum compared to the $5 tip left by Charlie Clark. According to oft-repeated Butte lore, William Clark replied, “Well, that’s all right for Charlie. You see, Charlie has a rich father and I haven’t.”
William Andrews Clark was a regular presence in Butte until his death in 1925. His family then severed business ties to the city, selling
Still, Butte was an odd place for a wealthy child: there were no trees, bushes, or flowers in the Clark backyard, although the copper king could certainly afford a gardener. The reason? The fumes from William Clark’s mining operations had killed all the vegetation in the city. “There is a hell on earth; it is Butte, Mont.,” declared the
Philadelphia Record
in 1904. “Why do they call Butte the early realm of Satan? Chiefly because roasting ores give off fumes of sulphur. This smoke—the color of watered milk—sometimes gets as thick as a London fog. Not one green leaf ever flutters in Butte; nor does a sprig of grass grow there.”
Mines dotted residential neighborhoods in Butte. Just a few blocksfrom the Clark mansion, the remnants of a mine have been preserved as a historic structure, a distinctive huge black metal frame resembling an oil derrick. Miners called them by the evocative name “hanging gallows,” since the mechanism lowered them hundreds of feet into the dark earth. Death came quickly in mines, via an explosion or a fire underground, or slowly from damage to miners’ lungs, silicosis.
Small children are innocents, but as she grew up, Huguette could not help but become aware that her parents occupied a rarified world. The grimy miners coming off a shift passed right by the house where Huguette, in a frilly white dress and oversized white hat, smiled shyly as she posed for a photograph on the front porch with her dolls, the most reliable companions in her life. She lined up her dolls in a row as if giving them their marching orders and arranged them in mother-and-children scenes. Like a theatre director orchestrating the onstage action, Huguette took joy in the imaginary world of her dolls and her ability to control their inanimate lives. Just as other children invent make-believe friends, she gave her dolls names, a habit she would continue into her adult life.
Huguette had enough pride in her family heritage and fond memories of her time in Butte that many years later—in 1964—Huguette and an older half sister, Katherine Clark Morris, unsuccessfully tried to buy back their father’s Granite Street home from a new owner, Anna Cote, who had turned it into a boardinghouse. They hoped to transform it into a historic monument, but Cote declined to sell.
Just two blocks from the Copper King Mansion is the second most famous house in Butte: a French-style château that William Clark built for his oldest son, Charles; it is now a museum. After graduating in 1893 from Yale—where he was notorious for “spending more money in one year at Yale than any man who had ever attended,” according to the
Washington Post
—Charles Clark went to work for his father, holding well-paid positions in the mining conglomerate. But he was always best known as a rich man’s spoiled son. A gambler who was fond of women and liquor, Charlie lost $20,000 in one night at roulette in Los Angeles in 1908, complaining to the police when gangstersharassed him to pay. He built a racetrack at his California estate, buying thoroughbreds (splurging $125,000 for Harry Payne Whitney’s colt Whiskaway) and racing the horses under copper-colored silks. No matter how much money he had, it was never enough; he was sued repeatedly for nonpayment of bills. Even his indulgent father joked about his son’s free-spending ways: William Andrews Clark once gave a shoeshine man a quarter tip. The ungrateful man complained that was a meager sum compared to the $5 tip left by Charlie Clark. According to oft-repeated Butte lore, William Clark replied, “Well, that’s all right for Charlie. You see, Charlie has a rich father and I haven’t.”
William Andrews Clark was a regular presence in Butte until his death in 1925. His family then severed business ties to the city, selling
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