The Phantom of Fifth Avenue: The Mysterious Life and Scandalous Death of Heiress Huguette Clark (24 page)

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.

(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.”