Empty Mansions

Huguette and never heard from her again.
    Huguette had been devoted to helping one of her cousins financially, but that was a LaChapelle cousin, on her mother’s side of the family, not a Clark.She supported this California cousin, Annie, who called Huguette by her early nickname, Hugo. Huguette established a trust for Annie and paid her bills until Annie died in 1995, the last close relative in the LaChapelle line. There were no LaChapelles to fight over Huguette’s estate.
    The Clark relatives said they were always respectful of their elderly aunt’s obvious desire for privacy and dignity, and didn’t thrust themselves into her cocoon until they felt it absolutely necessary. When New York City went dark for three days in an electrical blackout in August 2003 and people were suffering from the heat, Clark relatives who lived within a mile of her apartment did not stop in to check on her. Some years later, one relative did have her attorney call Huguette’s attorney: Niece Karine McCall had her counsel call in 2008 to ask whether she was in Huguette’s will. Karine says she needed that information for tax and estate planning, as she was moving from England. Karine, who had met Huguette as a child but never established a connection, says she always had the impression Huguette was “mentally slow.” She says she was shocked to learn that she was not going to inherit any of the Clark money from Huguette.
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    The nineteen Clarks seeking Huguette’s fortune include an international campaigner for human rights for torture victims, and an organizer of legal services for people with HIV/AIDS. One is an honored diplomat who served as the French ambassador to South Korea. Many Clarks support symphonies and museums. In recent years, several in the family have donated to environmental causes, such as campaigning against fracking, a method of extracting natural gas that environmental groups say contaminates groundwater. In that way, Clark money is being used to protect the environment from the ravages of mining.
    Although some of W.A.’s children and grandchildren squandered their money on racehorses and divorces, others worked hard, making quiet contributions on Wall Street or in hospitals. Some wrote children’s books or translated Tibetan poetry. Others bred quarter-horses or sailed yachts.
    While proud of their association with “the senator,” the Clarks are aware that their family has suffered at least its share of dysfunction: generations of alcoholism, a long stay in a mental hospital, drug abuse, sexual abuse by a trusted family servant, numerous suicide attempts. All while keeping up the façade that everything was well at home. As one of W.A.’s descendants explained, all of the splendor of the mansions seemed so normal that “I didn’t believe that people actually lived in those tiny houses that dotted the edge of our property.”
    One of W.A.’s descendants described the mixed blessing of inherited wealth: “I think having such wealth can lead some people to have a lack of self-worth because of not having developed a lucrative career of their own or even having investigated their own potential. Having an overabundance of wealth can make people insecure around others who have far less than they do, since the former might wonder if potential partners or even friends are ‘only’ after them for their money. Well-meaning people of excessive wealth can feel anxious about the lack of perfection of charities they support, and about the fact that even as willing patrons they are powerless to obliterate suffering—all the while knowing that any small amount of money that they might spend on themselves is still enough to change or even save some lives. Wealth can lead to guilt over the unfairness of people working endlessly for them who have never been included fully into the family. In sum, having immensewealth can lead one to feel isolated and to have a false sense of being special.”
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    Most of the relativessaw Huguette’s Fifth Avenue apartments for the first time in April 2012, when the administrator of her estate allowed them to take a tour. They marveled at the view of Central Park, the ornate woodwork, the outdated bathrooms.
    Her apartments were vacant, ready for showing by a real estate agent. The only belongings of Huguette, aside from a few pieces of furniture and a Steinway piano, were several of her paintings the agent had hung to give the apartments a bit of her