Read Online The Phantom of Fifth Avenue: The Mysterious Life and Scandalous Death of Heiress Huguette Clark by Meryl Gordon - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Meryl Gordon
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Clark’s holdings in 1928 to the Anaconda Copper Company (the company later responsible for the Berkeley Pit catastrophe).
Montana American
reporter Byron Cooney once asked Clark why he did not build a monument to himself in Butte. “Columbia Gardens is my monument,” Clark replied. “Of the many business enterprises, it is the one I love best and it is practically the only one on which I lose money.” The amusement park could have been donated to the city by William Clark’s children in his memory, but they included it in the sale. Despite civic protests, Anaconda Copper later shut down Columbia Gardens, and a mysterious fire destroyed the remains.
Visitors to the Copper King Mansion in Butte are treated to an expurgated version of the family history. The owners, Anna Cote’s children Erin Sigl and her brother John Thompson, have created a script for the tour guides. A recent version recites Clark’s accomplishments and his “reputation as one of the hundred men who owned America.” There is no mention of the darker elements of Clark’s life. An unapologetic racist, as a senator he opposed efforts to allow more Chinese immigrants into this country, stating, “We should not allow what we call coolie labor to come into this country unrestricted.”
The master of political backroom deals, a man willing to engage in bruising industrial battles, Clark was envied for his riches and reviled for his tactics. There are corrupt moguls who are charming enough to be forgiven, but Clark built a reputation for being justplain unlikable. “If the element of failure or near-failure ever touched him, it was in human relationships,” wrote Mary Montana Farrell in her 1933 University of Washington master’s thesis. (Her mother, a Butte native, was well versed in Clark lore.) “He seemed unable to make and keep friends, due to an innate penuriousness which characterized all his contacts with the public. If men admired his keen mentality, they hated his tight-fistedness.”
For William Andrews Clark, the ultimate self-made man, his millions were the tangible symbol of his intelligence and cunning, and how he kept score. He relished recounting early tales describing how hard he worked to earn each copper penny. The grandson of Scots-Irish immigrants, Clark was born, literally, in a log cabin on January 8, 1839, near the town of Connellsville, Pennsylvania. His father, John, was a thirty-nine-year-old second-generation Presbyterian farmer, while his mother, Mary Andrews, twenty-three, was the daughter of a member of the Pennsylvania State Legislature.
As the second-born of eleven children, William Clark watched his family suffer when three younger siblings died, two as infants and then three-year-old George from whooping cough. As an adult, Clark was often described as cold and uncaring, but he learned at an early age the survival skills of stoicism and carrying on.
Like many children of nineteenth-century farmers, William Clark attended school for three months during the winter and spent the rest of the year helping out on the farm. Once he showed academic promise, his ambitious parents were willing to invest in his future, sending him and his older sister Sarah to the local Laurel Hill Academy.
In 1856, John Clark bought a larger farm near Bentonsport, Iowa, more than seven hundred miles away. As a seventeen-year-old, William helped his father till the new land and found paid work teaching at a local school. He used his savings to study law for two years at Iowa Wesleyan University in Mount Pleasant. His next stop was teaching school in rural Missouri. The Civil War erupted in 1861, but Clark did not feel obligated to join the Union cause. Instead he fled to Colorado in 1862 to join the gold rush.
He learned the rudiments of mining by working on another man’s claim in the countryside near Denver. Rumors of lucrative spots in Montana led Clark and several companions to buy two yokes of cattle, a wagon, picks, shovels, and
Montana American
reporter Byron Cooney once asked Clark why he did not build a monument to himself in Butte. “Columbia Gardens is my monument,” Clark replied. “Of the many business enterprises, it is the one I love best and it is practically the only one on which I lose money.” The amusement park could have been donated to the city by William Clark’s children in his memory, but they included it in the sale. Despite civic protests, Anaconda Copper later shut down Columbia Gardens, and a mysterious fire destroyed the remains.
Visitors to the Copper King Mansion in Butte are treated to an expurgated version of the family history. The owners, Anna Cote’s children Erin Sigl and her brother John Thompson, have created a script for the tour guides. A recent version recites Clark’s accomplishments and his “reputation as one of the hundred men who owned America.” There is no mention of the darker elements of Clark’s life. An unapologetic racist, as a senator he opposed efforts to allow more Chinese immigrants into this country, stating, “We should not allow what we call coolie labor to come into this country unrestricted.”
The master of political backroom deals, a man willing to engage in bruising industrial battles, Clark was envied for his riches and reviled for his tactics. There are corrupt moguls who are charming enough to be forgiven, but Clark built a reputation for being justplain unlikable. “If the element of failure or near-failure ever touched him, it was in human relationships,” wrote Mary Montana Farrell in her 1933 University of Washington master’s thesis. (Her mother, a Butte native, was well versed in Clark lore.) “He seemed unable to make and keep friends, due to an innate penuriousness which characterized all his contacts with the public. If men admired his keen mentality, they hated his tight-fistedness.”
For William Andrews Clark, the ultimate self-made man, his millions were the tangible symbol of his intelligence and cunning, and how he kept score. He relished recounting early tales describing how hard he worked to earn each copper penny. The grandson of Scots-Irish immigrants, Clark was born, literally, in a log cabin on January 8, 1839, near the town of Connellsville, Pennsylvania. His father, John, was a thirty-nine-year-old second-generation Presbyterian farmer, while his mother, Mary Andrews, twenty-three, was the daughter of a member of the Pennsylvania State Legislature.
As the second-born of eleven children, William Clark watched his family suffer when three younger siblings died, two as infants and then three-year-old George from whooping cough. As an adult, Clark was often described as cold and uncaring, but he learned at an early age the survival skills of stoicism and carrying on.
Like many children of nineteenth-century farmers, William Clark attended school for three months during the winter and spent the rest of the year helping out on the farm. Once he showed academic promise, his ambitious parents were willing to invest in his future, sending him and his older sister Sarah to the local Laurel Hill Academy.
In 1856, John Clark bought a larger farm near Bentonsport, Iowa, more than seven hundred miles away. As a seventeen-year-old, William helped his father till the new land and found paid work teaching at a local school. He used his savings to study law for two years at Iowa Wesleyan University in Mount Pleasant. His next stop was teaching school in rural Missouri. The Civil War erupted in 1861, but Clark did not feel obligated to join the Union cause. Instead he fled to Colorado in 1862 to join the gold rush.
He learned the rudiments of mining by working on another man’s claim in the countryside near Denver. Rumors of lucrative spots in Montana led Clark and several companions to buy two yokes of cattle, a wagon, picks, shovels, and
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