In 2009 on a break from looking at online real estate listings for houses in his price range, Bill Dedman was distracted by the most expensive house for sale in New Canaan, Connecticut for $24 million dollars. The house had been unoccupied since this owner bought it in 1951. He first learned the name of the owner, Huguette Clark, then everything else he could learn about this reclusive woman. Paul Clark Newell, the co-author, is the son of her cousin, and had recorded some phone conversations he had with her in the 1990s.
It turns out Huguette Clark owned more than one empty mansion, but lived the last 20 of her 104 years in a hospital room. She was the daughter of William Clark, born in 1839, who made his fortune in copper mining in Montana and Arizona and was one of the super-rich of the Gilded Age. He and his first wife had seven children and years after she died, he married his ward Anna when she was 23 and he was 62 in France. They had two daughters, Andrée and Huguette and they lived in France long enough that Huguette retained her accent throughout her life. It’s worthy of note that William Clark was born when Martin Van Buren was president (8th president) and his daughter was alive when Barrack Obama was president (44th president) in 2011. I could go on at great length about what was very unhealthy about the life of Huguette, but want to remember a few points of interest to me.
W.A. Clark’s son Will went to the UVa law school and years later gave money for Clark Hall to house the law school library. A UVa Today story from 2008 tells more about Clark and the building. Clark graduated in 1899 and was a friend of Edwin Alderman (for whom the main library was named until 2024). The Clark Hall murals in its lobby are memorable.
Huguette continued her mother’s great interest in music and inherited multiple instruments made by Stradivarius from her, one of which was called La Pucelle. She did play some of them, but La Pucelle was especially valuable and she did eventually sell it. In her desire for privacy she preferred that the new owner never play it in public or let it be known that he bought it from her. That owner, David Fulton, an amateur musician, has loaned it out for use, including to James Ehnes. Homage is a DVD that he recorded of 12 violins and violas owned by Fulton in which he plays each one and describes their attributes. Ehnes has played at our own Charlottesville Chamber Music Festival for several years. This blogpost by Laurie, tells more about Fulton and his instruments, and especially interesting is the story of La Pucelle near the end of her post.
The story of Huguette is a sad one. After her mother’s death, she was quite alone, and by her mid-eighties was in urgent need of medical attention due to neglect of basal-cell carcinomas on her face. She then moved to a hospital and was in the care of a private duty nurse who cared for her 24/7. By the end of her life, Huguette had paid or given her $30 million. I was shocked by the story that her mother’s very valuable collection of jewelry stored in a Citibank safety deposit box was not safeguarded and was lost. Somehow the bank managed to pay her only a small percent of its value. After Huguette died, the story of her life became public knowledge through the NBC stories by the author of this book. What a fascinating book.
Bill Dedman and Paul Clark Newell, Empty Mansions, Ballantine Books, 2013, 456 pages (I listened to the audiobook). Available in the public library.