by Meryl Gordon
Huguette continued to commission Japanese miniatures through Marsh and Company. Huguette treated as her bible a book published by the Japanese Board of Tourist Industry in 1935, Castles in Japan, by Prof. N. Orui and M. Toba. Enraptured with the Tokugawa Shogunate, she read every English-language book she could find about the era from 1603 to 1867. She was fascinated by the tales of the samurai warriors who unified the country and established the capital, Edo, which would later become Tokyo, as well as the warriors’ relationships with the emperors.
But now that she had an assistant, Huguette made an imaginative leap: she wanted to bring her inanimate objects to life. Her artistic vision was to stage scenes using her kabuki theatres and Japanese castles, peopled with miniature costumed characters and accessories. Like a set designer, she would tell Chris Sattler how to arrange these installations at her apartment and instruct him to photograph her choreographed visions. Occasionally he would bring the entire work-in-progress to the hospital for her approval or to enable Huguette to take her own photographs of the scenes.
“She worked on these projects almost every day,” says Chris. “Everything had to be perfect. If we were doing a scene of the emperor holding court, she might tell me to move the ladies-in-waiting because they were standing too close to royalty. Sometimes she would get annoyed with me because I didn’t know enough about it. She’d send me right back to the house to do it again.” Once Huguette was satisfied with the photographs, she would give them back to her assistant, who labeled and stored these projects in closets in her apartment. These were not her only artworks. Huguette envisioned the deconstruction of cartoon television shows as a frame-by-frame investigation and interpretation of the medium. Just as Jeff Koons hired assistants to produce his sculptures and paintings, Huguette relied on Chris Sattler and Daniel Peri to produce her creations, following her discerning directions.
In an art world where Damien Hirst’s cow preserved in formaldehyde sells for millions, it is impossible to know whether Huguette’s photographs of staged scenes and her binders of cartoon images would have been embraced or dismissed by critics if shown in a Soho gallery. Art is so subjective that she might have been acclaimed as an original or ridiculed as a dilettante. Trained by Tadé Styka as a painter, surrounded by Monets and Renoirs on her own walls, Huguette had an eye and a distinct vision. Her mother had been a talented amateur photographer, and her art-collector father had marched Huguette through the museums of Europe to see the paintings he was unable to bring home with him. Her parents might not have understood their daughter’s works, but they would have applauded Huguette’s artistic determination to express herself.
Other than the 1929 show of her paintings at the Corcoran Gallery, Huguette had never sought public acclaim. What continued to give her pleasure even as she headed into her nineties was the act of creation. Up until the year before she died, Huguette spent her days planning and executing new work, slowing down only when her assistant was temporarily sidelined by health problems. She had a reason to wake up each day with anticipation and a sense of purpose that animated her life.
It bothered Chris when others joked that Huguette was “playing” with her doll collection as if she had regressed to childhood. But he did not think it was his place to explain what Huguette was truly up to, and Huguette was certainly not prone to making pretentious announcements. As Chris puts it, “She would never say, ‘I’m making an artistic statement.’ She didn’t have to say it. She just did it.” Huguette’s goddaughter, Wanda, adds, “She was an artist and a scholar. That was her whole life. She was astonishingly good. She knew Japanese culture backwards and forwards.”
An elderly woman who shows quirky photos of miniature castles to visitors and is fascinated by cartoons can be easily mistaken for a doddering eccentric, rather than treated as an artist in residence. At Beth Israel North, the staff failed to understand their most prized patient. Noting that Huguette had amassed toy soldiers, castles, and dolls in her room, Dr. Henry Singman was patronizing in his description of Huguette’s activities, writing in a memo, “She is an excellent photographer and her room is a model occupational therapy setting.”
Huguette’s relationships with internist Dr. Singman, who supervised her care, and surgeon Dr. Jack Rudick, who continued to visit, were complicated by the financial agendas of both physicians. Not only were the two doctors working closely with the hospital’s development staff to convince Huguette to donate money early and often; they were also padding their own pockets with her cash. Grateful for the physicians’ care and attention, Huguette gave them bonuses: Dr. Rudick and his wife, Irene, initially received roughly $40,000 per year; Dr. Singman and his wife, Grace, got roughly $50,000, on top of his monthly $2,400 retainer. Those sums would escalate exponentially through the years as the doctors, just like Hadassah, began to mention their problems and desires to Huguette.
At every major hospital, the development staff has a mandate to shake the money tree, but the techniques that executives use to sweet-talk or arm-twist patients are confidential. At Beth Israel North, the staff was willing to take extraordinary measures to convince Huguette to give away her inheritance.
Disappointed by Huguette’s initial $80,000 donation in 1991, the staff immediately began to plan a fresh assault. Dr. Rudick had no apparent medical reason to drop by Huguette’s room on a regular basis, but he was in attendance so often that he fancied himself an expert on her state of mind. As Cynthia Cromer of the development office wrote in a March 4, 1992, memo: “Dr. Rudick feels she has no ‘concept’ of money, and that without an amount mentioned, we are likely to receive another five-figure gift. He felt $5 million was the minimum gift we should be asking for.”
Dr. Rudick marched into Huguette’s room that afternoon and made his pitch, according to notes taken by the development office. Huguette hesitated, saying that she needed to speak to her lawyer. A few days later, she gave $65,000 to the hospital. In a consolation note to the development staff, hospital executive Jane Blumenthal wrote, “I believe that this saga will continue! Here’s hoping we end up with even bigger bucks.”
To research Huguette’s life, a hospital staffer tracked down a copy of the William Mangam book about her family and circulated a CliffsNotes–style summary of the more salacious stories, noting that Huguette was described as having a “mother complex” and as “hopelessly spoiled.” Keeping his eyes on this financially prized patient, hospital CEO Dr. Robert Newman convinced his own elderly mother, just a year younger than Huguette, to visit her regularly in an effort to strike up a friendship. The two senior women shared a love for France; the doctor’s mother spent part of each year in Nice.
Hospital staffers could not resist joking about Huguette’s love of cartoons. On March 4, 1993, development officer Stefanie Steel sent her colleagues a note suggesting asking Huguette for yet another donation: “She hasn’t made one in some time and it seems that she should be asked again (even if she changes the subject to the Smurfs or the Flintstones).”
Hadassah seemed to be playing a role as a double agent—as Huguette’s confidant and the hospital’s advocate. The nurse was recruited by the hospital executives to inform on her patient and use her influence. “Dr. Rudick and I agree that of all the players involved, Hadassah has the closest relationship to Mrs. Clark and has her trust,” wrote Cynthia Cromer in 1993. “She has also in the past been supportive of the requests made of Mrs. Clark and there is no reason to think she would not be now.” Cromer and Dr. Rudick met with Hadassah privately to discuss how to wheedle a third donation out of Huguette. However, in scripting their proposed pitch, Cromer noted that Dr. Rudick “is very uncomfortable discussing any kind of estate gift with Mrs. Clark because of her reluctance to discuss death.”
Ever since Huguette was a young child, death had been a frequent and frightening specter, appearing without warning. One cousin had drowned on the Titanic, another young cousin died from appendicitis, her grandmother perished within hours of feeling ill, an airplane crash
killed another cousin, and looming above it all was the death of her sister Andrée. Huguette learned early about the unexpected knock on the door, the cries in the night. To hold the heartbreak at bay, she had consistently chosen not to dwell on death. As she passed the milestones—eighty, ninety—she always behaved as if she had a lot of living yet to do. When anyone broached the topic of death, Huguette abruptly changed the subject. Religion is often a comfort to the elderly with death on the horizon, but Huguette was uninterested, rebuffing offers for visits by the hospital chaplain. As an adult she had never embraced faith, although she enjoyed the rituals of celebrating Christmas and Easter.
Like death, estate planning was an unpleasant topic that she declined to discuss. Her lawyer, Donald Wallace, complained repeatedly to Corcoran Gallery director David Levy about Huguette’s unwillingness to face the future. The Corcoran hoped to be a major beneficiary in Huguette’s will. “The great frustration that Don had with her was that she wouldn’t write a will,” says David Levy, who joined the museum in 1991. “She wouldn’t say the D word. Don felt there was going to be a terrible fight, and it would wind up in the wrong hands and half would go to the state of New York, and he thought it was a travesty. But every time he raised it with her, she would shut him down.”
In denial about her own mortality, she was confronted with the inevitable every time a friend died. In early June 1993, Dr. Jules Pierre passed away at the age of one hundred. Huguette spent hours on the phone trying to comfort his wife, Suzanne. The tactless hospital staff viewed the death of Dr. Pierre, who had been affiliated with Doctors Hospital, as a moneymaking opportunity. They decided to ask Huguette to make a $1 million donation in the physician’s honor. Dr. Singman had the temerity to bring up the subject with Huguette just a week after Dr. Pierre’s death. A few days later Cynthia Cromer and Dr. Rudick met with her in the hope of closing the deal. “The very mention of his death appeared to make her uneasy and she refused to be engaged in any further discussion of her gift,” Cromer wrote. “She mentioned that she heard of someone who lived to be 120 and that she hopes to do the same.” And in a sign that Huguette was reading the newspaper, she came up with another reason to deflect the crass suggestion. Cromer added, “She said she needs to save her money because of Clinton’s health plan.” Huguette gave the hospital $80,000 that year, a generous gift by most standards but significantly below the hospital’s expectations.
Huguette did not want strangers barging into her room and tried to insist that would-be visitors ask for permission in advance. She requested that either Hadassah or Dr. Singman be present when any newcomers including medical personnel wanted to see her. When Patricia Balsamini became the vice president for development at the hospital, Dr. Singman agreed to introduce her to Huguette, but he was vague about her identity. “I spoke to Mrs. Clark and asked if she would mind if this young lady would visit her,” Dr. Singman later recalled. “I didn’t exactly describe what her position is or that she was going to ask her for any money or donations. I said she ran the public relations at the hospital, and was interested in meeting with her.” Dr. Singman had balked at bringing in a psychiatrist to evaluate Huguette without her permission, but had no qualms about being coy about the identity of someone who sought her money.
As a well-bred woman of her era, the ladylike Huguette rarely expressed anger, but two events triggered her ire. After she donated $60,000 to the hospital in 1994, the development staff dropped off a formal thank-you scroll inscribed with her name. That simple gesture set her off. “She said she doesn’t want her name printed anywhere,” wrote development staffer Tricia McGinley. Turning down an offer by McGinley to retrieve the offending document, Huguette announced that she was “going to tear it into little pieces.”
She still cared deeply about her privacy, and the second incident was also provoked by her concerns about loose lips. Like a woman juggling two rival suitors, Huguette took turns giving money to the hospital in the names of Dr. Singman and Dr. Rudick. (These donations give physicians influence, since they can help direct how the money is spent.) But she did not want the men to know that she was playing off one against the other in love-me-love-me-not fashion. Huguette became distressed when the development office alerted Dr. Singman about a $100,000 gift that she had bequeathed in honor of his rival for her affections, Dr. Rudick. Huguette made her anger known to Tricia McGinley, who chronicled the awkward conversation. “She was terribly upset… she did NOT want Dr. Singman to know about her donation… I apologized profusely…”
Huguette still treasured the memories of her early years in Paris and Montana and frequently reminisced about those times with her nurses. She felt that her Montana pioneer father had never been given his proper due in the history books. So Huguette was pleased to renew her contact with her Clark relative André Baeyens, who had returned to Manhattan in 1992 as the consul-general of France and was working on a biography of her father. With Suzanne playing intermediary, they resumed their phone calls. After Baeyens published his book in France in 1994 about William Andrews Clark, Le Sénateur Qui Aimait La France, he sent her a copy. “She was delighted, calling me to say that she was totally delighted that a book had been written about him,” Baeyens recalled. She sent him a Christmas card that year with photos enclosed, writing, “Enclosed is a brochure on the living room of Papa who was so francophile.”
Suzanne Pierre let slip to André that Huguette was in the hospital, but he never tried to see her, following the protocol that she had established. Huguette also took walks down memory lane with distant cousin Paul Clark Newell Jr., a California Realtor working on his own Clark family history. Newell, a grandson of William Andrews Clark’s sister Ella, first wrote to Huguette in October 1994, requesting an interview. Huguette asked André Baeyens whether the Realtor was a legitimate relative, and after the diplomat confirmed Newell’s bona fides, she agreed to make herself available by telephone. Newell relied on Huguette’s lawyers to set up phone calls. He taped their phone conversations.
At Beth Israel North, the nurses and staff occasionally asked Huguette about her family, since it seemed odd that no relatives visited. She had a stock answer: her half siblings had not been kind to her mother, and she had no desire to see their descendants. Whatever happened years ago, whatever slights occurred, she had long ago closed the door to a rapprochement.
Yet a number of Clark relatives attempted to stay in touch, sending her holiday cards, flowers, and invitations to events that she would never attend, all posted to 907 Fifth Avenue. Huguette still spoke to her California niece, Agnes Albert, every Christmas Eve and chatted with New York relative John Hall and his wife, Erika, once a year to thank them for a Christmas floral arrangement. Huguette shied away from talking about her life and asked about their families instead. “She knew every child by name, and she would ask how the children are, what they are doing,” Erika Hall recalled. “I always asked how she was, of course, and she would always say she was fine.” Their conversations were noteworthy for ending abruptly. “She would suddenly break off after talking very happily with me for a while, and then she would just say good-bye… it was different than [the way] the normal person would do that.” Niceties were not Huguette’s strong point with her relatives; she had given all that she was willing to give.
On rare occasions, Huguette sent gifts to family members, but she was much more generous to outsiders. In 1992, she was delighted to receive a letter from Jean-Loup Brusson, the son of the French children’s book illustrator Felix Lorioux. Huguette had loved and collected Lorioux’s illustrations, corresponding with him and his wife until their deaths (in 1964 and 1972, respectively).
With plans under way for a traveling exhibit of his father’s illustrations, Brusson contacted Huguette. She was so enthusiastic about the show that she arranged to reframe and loan her collection. Brusson, an executive with the fragrance company Lancôme, was surprised to receive a large Christmas check from Huguette, which became a yearly event. In return, he would send her o
ne of his father’s illustrations for her birthday. At least once a year, Huguette called him in France. As Brusson recalled, “They were very short phone calls, four to five minutes, and she would ask me about the children, if they were growing, if they were good, if they were kind, etc.…” Huguette declined to give him a photograph of herself or her phone number. She wanted to remain in control of the means of communication.
Although the heiress had a strong constitution for her age, health problems occasionally materialized. In 1998, doctors found a lump in her abdomen. As Dr. Jack Rudick recalled, “I got an emergency phone call late at night at home. I had to see her, and I found that she had an abdominal problem which could have turned out to be life-threatening.” Huguette was frightened. “She thought she had cancer,” Geraldine Coffey says. “She was worried about the surgery, but she wanted to have the surgery… I worked with her that night and she said to me, ‘I haven’t made arrangements for you, Geraldine.’ ” Huguette never mentioned the word will. Dr. Rudick operated, and the lump turned out to be noncancerous, allowing Huguette to go back to acting as if she would live forever.
For nearly thirty years, Huguette spoke several times per week with her lawyer, Donald Wallace. She never met him in person but trusted him implicitly. When he suffered a heart attack in early 1997, her longtime accountant, Irving Kamsler, who had always communicated with her by letter, nervously called Huguette. “First time I talked to her was when Don wound up in the hospital in a coma. I was the bearer of bad news,” Kamsler recalls. “It was scary on my part to call her. I know she knew my name and who I was. Steps had to be taken. I told her that Wally [Bock] would be handling her affairs until Don came back. She was very polite, surprised, upset, and concerned for Don.”
The accountant made a good first impression by phone on Huguette. Kamsler, a Bronx native, came from a hard-luck background. When he was five years old, his carpenter/cabdriver father was permanently disabled in a car accident, and as a result, his mother eked out a living as a billing clerk to support Kamsler and his two older sisters. With tuition to a top college out of reach, Kamsler attended Bronx Community College and then Baruch College, gravitating to bookkeeping as a secure profession. Kamsler had worked for Donald Wallace’s other clients, including Jane Bannerman, the wife of Huguette’s former lawyer Charles Bannerman. Kamsler began handling Huguette’s accounting and taxes in 1977, but all communication up until now had been by mail.