New York Times - 6 days ago
Abundantly Wealthy, But Not Living It Up ... Ms. Clark was not dead at all, but she did not live in any of her immense ... Clark as a poor little rich girl with a bad case of arrested development. ... The authors invoke “To Kill a Mockingbird”: they call her “a modern-day 'Boo' Radley, shut up inside by choice, safe ...
Abundantly Wealthy, But Not Living It Up
‘Empty Mansions,’ About the Heiress Huguette Clark
By JANET MASLIN
Published: September 4, 2013
The story of how the book “Empty Mansions” came to be, in the words of
Bill Dedman, one of its two authors, begins with “an exercise in
American aspiration.” And when Mr. Dedman, a journalist, embarked on
that exercise, he could not have guessed how right that phrase would be.
In 2009 he and his wife were looking for a house outside New York City.
Just for fun, Mr. Dedman Googled real estate listings in the
astronomical range. He found a markdown in New Canaan, Conn., a house
that had gone from $35 million to $24 million and had one very unusual
feature, even more unusual than its room for drying draperies. The place
had been unoccupied since it was purchased. In 1951.
Patricia Wall/The New York Times
EMPTY MANSIONS
The Mysterious Life of Huguette Clark and the Spending of a Great American Fortune
By Bill Dedman and Paul Clark Newell Jr.
Illustrated. 456 pages. Ballantine Books. $28.
Mr. Dedman located the house and coaxed forth its caretaker. This man
had never met his employer of more than 20 years, Huguette Clark. But he
had a newspaper clipping about the sale at auction of a $23.5 million
Renoir painting that came from “the estate of Huguette Clark.” The
caretaker was puzzled. Had Ms. Clark been dead all these years he worked
for her?
Mr. Dedman had stumbled onto an amazing story of profligate wealth, one
so wild that “American aspiration” doesn’t begin to describe its
excesses. Ms. Clark was not dead at all, but she did not live in any of
her immense dwellings, which included an estate atop a mesa in Santa
Barbara, Calif., and three apartments, totaling more than 40 rooms, in a
grand Fifth Avenue building. At 103, and in need of not much more
medication than vitamin pills, she had long ago sequestered herself in a
hospital room and had not been to any of her homes in more than 20
years. “Empty Mansions” is the self-explanatory title of the Huguette
Clark story.
This book credits Paul Clark Newell Jr., a cousin to Ms. Clark, as its
co-author. Unlike many other Clark family members, he knew Huguette, who
died in 2011
at 104, well enough to receive occasional phone calls from her, though
she was too wily to give him her number. She was polite, lucid and even
chatty, all of which undermine the idea that she was a crazy recluse
living in miserable isolation. Far from it: her favorite
late-18th-century French fable described the benefits of living
unobtrusively as a cricket, rather than glamorously as a butterfly. She
seems simply to have preferred to live quietly in tightly controlled
surroundings, after spending her childhood and young adulthood as a
jewel-bedecked heiress to a vast copper fortune.
A more reckless and sensationalized book than “Empty Mansions” would try
to pigeonhole Ms. Clark as a poor little rich girl with a bad case of
arrested development. (She loved the Smurfs and the Flintstones. She
also took a serious interest in dolls, and commissioned the House of
Dior to create doll clothes.) A more lurid account would also salivate
over the conflicting claims to her estate. And authors less open-minded
than these would draw easy comparisons between Ms. Clark’s later years
and those of Howard Hughes. But she was a generous woman with many
long-distance friendships; she just liked to keep them that way. The
authors invoke “To Kill a Mockingbird”: they call her “a modern-day
‘Boo’ Radley, shut up inside by choice, safe from a world that can
hurt.”
The early parts of this book tell an outsized tale of rags-to-riches
prosperity, describing the ambition and ingenuity of W. A. Clark, the
copper-mine millionaire and politician whose biography has tended to get
lost in robber baron lore. But Clark was wealthy enough to be known as
the Copper King, and one of the less notable things he did was to help
create a railroad linking Salt Lake City with Los Angeles. He sold
residential lots at a spot in Nevada that could be useful for railroad
maintenance and refueling. The small town he created became Las Vegas.
Clark married twice and had children by both wives. Ms. Clark was the
younger of two daughters from his second marriage. By the time she was
born, in 1906, her father was in his 60s, had become a United States
senator from Montana despite a scandal involving his efforts to buy
votes, and remained a study in extravagance. The now-vanished Clark
homestead in New York City can be seen on the book’s cover, complete
with gaudy turret.
Ms. Clark had the credentials of a debutante, but that was not the life
she chose. She married briefly and mysteriously and wrote amorous
letters to a French confidant, but her primary interests were closer to
home. Devoted to her mother and sister (and greatly bereaved when she
lost them), she had an affinity for art as both painter and collector.
She also inherited her mother’s love of music and wherewithal to collect
rare instruments. A Stradivarius violin with a wood-carved image of
Joan of Arc was one of the prized possessions that made Ms. Clark, in
her later years, a target for predators. The best parts of the book
describe the unseemly efforts of trustees, hospital administrators, a
private nurse who collected millions from her patient, and an accountant
caught in an Internet sex sting to separate the heiress from her money.
The messy circumstances surrounding her estate may become much more
public, as a group of Clark descendants (from W. A. Clark’s first
marriage) prepare to challenge her will. (A settlement is possible, but
court proceedings have been scheduled for this month.) They are made
especially messy by Ms. Clark’s habit of bestowing extravagant gifts
without understanding that gift taxes were due. The book illustrates how
readily her largess, legal fees and tax debts reduced her fortune,
though she seems to have remained canny about those seeking to exploit
her.
The unsuccessful efforts of Beth Israel Medical Center to squeeze a
major contribution from its most peculiar long-term patient are
especially embarrassing. As the hospital’s president, Dr. Robert Newman,
wrote in a memo to his fund-raising staff: “Madame, as you know, is the
biggest bucks contributing potential we have ever had.” Dr. Newman also
used the phrase “super-mega gift” to describe what he was hoping for.
The whopping gift didn’t happen. So something else did. When Beth Israel
discovered that Ms. Clark’s bequest would be only $1 million, she was
moved to a room next to a janitor’s closet. The photo illustrations in
“Empty Mansions” show both the sweeping Central Park vista outside Ms.
Clark’s Fifth Avenue windows and the third-floor view of an
air-conditioning unit to which Beth Israel relegated her. The hospital
says it moved her only because her old room required renovation.
People can survive "normal" lives but often living it up means drinking or drugs and unusual people who might be a threat to you possibly. So, not living it up when one is rich is safer for many. So, you will find thoughtful practical people not living it up who are rich all over. Also, some of the richest people you would never know because they don't tell anyone about it. Instead they hide their money in their mattress or in savings bonds or other vehicles and just don't tell anyone except maybe they send their nephews or nieces or kids 100 or 1000 dollars on their birthdays. Actually there are many more "secretly wealthy people" than there are the flamboyant ones who "flame out" spectacularly on TV everyday.
Also, I was right in another blog post. The huge estate on top of a mesa near the Zoo on the beach in Santa Barbara must have been owned by her.
Also, I was right in another blog post. The huge estate on top of a mesa near the Zoo on the beach in Santa Barbara must have been owned by her.
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