Empty Mansions

over a draft will, leaving Bellosguardo to the Santa Barbara Foundation to support the arts, and $1 million to her friend Etienne de Villermont, among other bequests.
    Every time the lawyers brought this up, she’d say, “Let’s wait until after the holidays.” Her objection seemed to be to the idea of having a will at all, or at least to having one
now
. Perhaps she found the subject too dark, or was suspicious of signing away her authority, as she refused repeatedly to sign any power of attorney.
    Lawyer after lawyer tried every argument. They explained that she was in such good financial condition because her parents had made sound plans. They explained that her many friends were relying on her generosity and could be left with nothing.
    Her attorneys’ letters show that they assumed they were writing to aneducated, intelligent person who knew what she wanted. Huguette was her father’s daughter. The letters are businesslike, detailed, and respectful, leaving decisions to her.
    Don Wallace reminded her that without a will, her money would go to her relatives from her father’s first marriage. “You have never expressed any interest,” he wrote, “in any of them having any part of your inheritance.” She didn’t sign, and she didn’t say why.
    • • •
    By 1985, Don Wallace was fed up with his client. For more than a decade, Wallace had handled her purchases of dolls at auction, had delivered her anonymous gifts, had done all the little things that one didn’t learn in law school. A fellow attorney recalled a meeting with Wallace in the 1980s. Huguette interrupted four times with telephone calls, and each time Wallace’s end of the conversation went something like this: “Yes, Mrs. Clark. Yes, Madame. Yes, I will take care of it, Madame.”
    Wallace had learned to talk her through her quirks. What Wallace couldn’t do was get her to sign a will.
    Wallace summed up his exasperation in a “personal and confidential” letter to Huguette in March 1985. He summoned the names of her previous lawyers who had given her the same advice.
    In the not too far distant future I will have been personally responsible for the handling of your affairs after Mr. Bannerman’s death for almost nine years. While I enjoy being of assistance in connection with your sometimes complex business and personal affairs and I can honestly say that I have never found it dull, at the same time, it has been one of the most frustrating experiences I have ever had
.
    You have received and have ignored or avoided advice given to you almost every year from 1942 to date outlining all of the reasons why it is essential that you have a current, up-to-date will. I know as I have been trying with a total lack of success for almost nine years. Based on my personal knowledge, Mr. Bannerman, Mr. Winslow, Mr. Stokes, Mr. Ellis and others all gave you similar advice. All of them, now dead, were equally unsuccessful in persuading you to have a current, up-to-date will.Perhaps their failure should make mine seem less frustrating to me, but it does not
.
    If I could have one wish granted this year it would be that you would accept my advice and instruct me to prepare a will expressing your wishes on how your property should be distributed
.
    His wish was not granted that year. Nor for the next seventeen years, as he continued to send pleading letters. Nor in his lifetime. When Don Wallace died in 2002 without persuading Huguette to sign a will,he had never met his client of twenty-six years. He had talked with her only on the phone or through a closed door. Wallace’s successor, Wally Bock, had written her with the same wish. “Once again,” he begged in 2000, “I urge you to stop
thinking
about a Will and do something about it.”
    From time to time, the attorneys did get Huguette to revise her list of beneficiaries, reflecting the pecking order of her current friendships.A 2001 list would have left 30 percent of her estate, after specific bequests to employees and friends, to nurse Hadassah, 30 percent to goddaughter Wanda, 15 percent to Etienne’s daughter Marie-Christine, 15 percent to establish the Bellosguardo Foundation for the arts in Santa Barbara, and 10 percent to Madame Pierre. But she signed nothing.
    Often on afternoons in the early 2000s, Bock and Kamsler would gather at Bock’s office. Bock would pour a vodka for Irv and a double Scotch for himself, and they would work on another draft.
    Huguette said she’d be glad to