Empty Mansions

office, “was completely dependent for her physical and emotional needs on a small group of individuals, who were her only contacts with the world outside of her hospital room.”
    Her only contacts? Though she lived alone, Huguette was not isolated. First, she had her nurses twenty-four hours a day, starting with Hadassah Peri. She also had her regular visitors: her friend Madame Suzanne Pierre, with her artichokes with hollandaise; her doctor Henry Singman, with his photos of his grandchildren; and her man Friday, Chris Sattler, with his French baked goods and their buttery smell from her childhood. And she had the children and grandchildren of her friends and doctors and nurses, who also visited on occasion.
    Huguette had hundreds of other affectionate visitors, arriving in the mail. In exchange for the gifts she showered on the children and grandchildren of friends and employees, she asked only that the parents send photos of the children with their toys. These photos poured in by the hundreds: children with new bedroom furniture, children dressed as knights in suits of armor, children with guitars and electric pianos, train sets, castles, puppets, roller skates, and bicycles, all from their Tante Huguette.
    For a recluse, Huguette had a lot of pen pals, her lifelong friends, most of them unknown to one another. She was a recluse in that she locked herself away from travel and sunsets and cafés, but a woman who leaves twenty thousand pages of affectionate correspondence is also a world traveler. And she was a faithful friend, maintaining warm, mostly long-distance, relationships for decades.
    She had her Frenchman, Etienne de Villermont, with “the bond of love of half a life, which will never disappear.” She had his wife, Elisabeth, their daughter, Marie-Christine, and many others in their extended family, all grateful for Huguette’s sustained support, down to treats from their corner grocer in France.
    And her gregarious ex-husband, Bill Gower, to whom she sent money and family news.
    She had a loving, artistic goddaughter, Wanda Styka, who remained a faithful correspondent for sixty years.
    And her artist friends in France: The whimsical Félix Lorioux with his comical gift-giving insects. The fantastic and erotic Chéri Hérouard, her magazine hunter. And Jean Mercier, Manon Iessel, and J. P. Pinchon, for whom she was “a good fairy” in their old age.
    She had her telephone friends, including her cousin Paul Newell and her half-grandnephew André Baeyens. And her art helpers: Caterina Marsh, who was the go-between with her artist friend Saburo Kawakami in Japan. Her dollhouse repairman, Rudolph Jaklitsch, and his wife, Anna, who made the curtains. The staff at Au Nain Bleu and Christian Dior.
    She had her longtime friends from her childhood, the ones she supported so generously into their old age: Ninta Sandré, the daughter of her governess, and many others who received her help. Even a stranger, Gwendolyn Jenkins, whose only connection to Huguette was that she took care of Huguette’s stockbroker when he was ill.
    She had her pen pals in Santa Barbara, keeping tabs on her mother’s Bellosguardo and her sister’s bird refuge: Alma Armstrong, the chauffeur’s widow, who sent newspaper clippings. And the mayor, Sheila Lodge, whose long campaign to persuade Huguette to leave the Clark estate to the arts bore fruit in Huguette’s will and the Bellosguardo Foundation.
    Though many of those close to Huguette received large gifts, so much that one would naturally question their independence as witnesses to her competence, many doctors and nurses received nothing. Yet they tell the same story of a remarkable woman who knew her own mind. The audiologists tested her hearing and found her quite alert even at nearly ninety-nine. Dr. John Wolff visited frequently to bring Huguetteflowers and to hear her stories. And the neurologist, Dr. Louise Klebanoff, found the little old lady in the hospital to be as “cute as pie.”
    An assistant district attorney, Elizabeth Loewy, met her obligation to check on Huguette’s well-being. An FBI agent, investigating the theft of a Degas pastel, walked right into her hospital room.
    • • •
    Huguette’s hobbies were not what most people would choose if they had unlimited wealth. She was unashamed about collecting dolls, building castles, and watching the Smurfs, just as other people like to collect stamps or can name the shortstop for the Boston Red Sox in 1967.