Empty Mansions Read Online Free PDF Page B

coat and silk top hat stepped briskly down New York’s Fifth Avenue in the Easter Sunday parade of 1914, the gawkers saw his face and recognized him instantly. His bristly beard and mustache may have turned from auburn to gray, but at seventy-five years of age, he was the picture of sartorial eminence. The proud little man was accompanied by three discreet touches of male vanity: a gold watch chain hanging from his dapper white waistcoat, a polka-dotted silk cravat held tightly to his high collar by a pearl stickpin, and his thirty-six-year-old wife. The publicity-shy Anna walked in the parade by his side, wearing a flowered hat and an uncomfortable expression, perhaps attributable to the tiny steps enforced by her fashionable but thoroughly impractical hobble skirt from Paris.

    Uncomfortable in public, Huguette’s mother, Anna, does not appear to be enjoying the Easter Parade on New York’s Fifth Avenue, which offered a chance for the public to gawk at the tycoons living on Millionaires’ Row. On Easter in April 1914, eleven-year-old Andrée walks in the parade, studying her fingernails while her mother gives her hand a tug. Seven-year-old Huguette stayed home.
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    There strode a man of unusual character, a symbol of two contradictory American archetypes.
    W. A. Clark, businessman, was legendary, respected on Wall Street as a modern-day Midas. The epitome of frontier gumption, he was a triumphant mixture of civilizing education, self-reliance, and western pluck, living proof that in America the avenues to corporate wealth were open even to one born in a log cabin.
    W. A. Clark, politician, was ridiculed on magazine covers as a payer of bribes, the epitome of backroom graft, and a crass mixture of ostentatious vanity, extravagance, and Washington plutocracy, living proof that in America the avenues to civic power were open only to those with the most greenbacks.
    An indefatigable worker, W.A. carried on at a pace that today seems impossible, especially in an era when travel was by steamship and railroad, and communication by letter and telegram. During the first decade of the 1900s, for example, he maintained homes in Paris and Montana; built and furnished the most expensive house in New York City; constructed out of his own pocket a major railroad between Los Angeles harbor and Salt Lake City; subdivided and marketed lots for the city of Las Vegas; oversaw the operation of copper mines in several western states; ran streetcar and electric power companies in the West and a bronze foundry and copper wire factory in the East; grew sugar beets in California; published several newspapers; owned a bank with a good national reputation; was forced to resign from the U.S. Senate, then was reelected and served six more years; fought off a paternity suit filed by a young woman he had met at the Democratic National Convention; traveled through Europe collecting art; maintained good relations with his adult children; married a young wife and sired two daughters. All while in his sixties.
    Though often chosen as a leader because of his intelligence, resolve, and deep pockets, he was not blessed with a magnetic disposition. W.A. was introverted and extremely private, a closemouthed man who acted as if he didn’t give a damn what people thought of him. If people didn’t like what he did, they were wrong. And yet he did give a damn about some things, including family, art, and social prominence. He was a seeker of public attention, not a great orator but a persistent one.Hecheerfully took center stage to lead the singing of “The Star-Spangled Banner” at public events and didn’t limit himself to the familiar first stanza.
    In the pocket of his cutaway coat, W.A. carried two grades of cigars, fine ones for himself and lesser ones to give away.
“TO BETTER MY CONDITION”

 
    W. A. C LARK COULD HONESTLY SAY he rose from a log cabin to the most magnificent mansion on Fifth Avenue, a handy trajectory in