Empty Mansions

in Helena; Ellen Crain at the Butte–Silver Bow Public Archives in Butte; the World Museum of Mining in Butte; and the Jerome Historical Society in Arizona.
    With gratitude for the support and encouragement received from my loving family, including parents with me in spirit, siblings, and wonderful progeny.
    And with special admiration for my co-author, Bill Dedman, Pulitzer Prize winner, for his knack of putting a friendly face on history and for his uncommon prolificacy, born of years of delivering impressive copy in the face of inflexible deadlines.
    Bill Dedman
    T HANK YOU to the many online readers who demanded we follow up to find Huguette and to make sure she was well cared for.
    The editors at NBCNews.com (the former msnbc.com) said right from the start that they’d like to know what was up with those empty mansions, and allowed me time to work on this book. Investigations editor Mike Brunker is the patient editor every reporter imagines but doesn’t believe exists. (He also is 2,411 miles away, which turns out to be exactly the right distance from your editor.) And thanks to the big bosses: Russ Shaw, Jennifer Sizemore, Greg Gittrich, Dick Belsky, Stokes Young, Jen Brown, Charlie Tillinghast, and Vivian Schiller. They supported this effort, even if they silently questioned the view, as one reader put it, “Well, if she had a doctor with only one patient, accountants and lawyers with only one client,” then “certainly she can have one reporter.…”
    Patrick McCord, the plot whisperer, offered valuable insights from the Editing Company in Westport, Connecticut.
    Guillaine Dale Farrell translated from French four thousand pages of correspondence from Huguette’s papers and was a patient translator of continuing conversations with contacts in France. In Paris, Ph.D. student Alexander Yarbrough from the University of Buffalo helped by tracing the history of Etienne de Villermont and the Allard family’s interrupted path to nobility. Research assistants who contributed hundreds of hours to this effort were Michelle Crespo, Margaux Stack-Babich, Sara Germano, and Beau Caruso. Roland Jones helped with public records in New York, and Jacques Kauffmann in France.
    Other researchers who have walked the Clark trail showed great kindness toward this project. Professor Keith Edgerton of Montana State University Billings, who graciously shared research files on W. A. Clark. Retired newspaperman Steven Shirley in Helena, who reached Huguette for a couple of chats on the phone, offered his memories and his extensive bibliography of Montana history. Don Lynch provided research on the
Titanic
and the Clarks. Author Brad Tyer, who surveyed the environmental damage in Montana. Documentary photographer Elijah Solomon, who looked into the circumstances of Timothy Gray’s life and death. Others who offered information include Barney Brantingham of
The Santa Barbara Independent
and Gerry O’Brien, Carmen Winslow, Tim Trainor, and Roberta Stauffer of
The Montana Standard
.
    Generous assistance came from experts in diverse special subjects. On psychiatry in geriatric patients, Dr. Benjamin Liptzin, professor and deputy chair of psychiatry at Tufts University School of Medicine and psychiatry chair at Baystate Medical Center. On the history of fashions, Nancy Deihl, a master teacher of costume studies at New York University. On the music of harpist Marcel Grandjany, Professor Kathleen Bride of the Eastman School of Music at the University of Rochester. On Huguette’s paintings and the women artists of her time, Associate Professor Marice E. Rose of Fairfield University. On Japanese art and translation, postdoctoral teaching fellow Ive Covaci of Fairfield University. On New York architecture, attorney/architect Andrew Alpern. On charitable gift annuities, wealth management specialist Gavin Morrissey of Commonwealth Financial Network. On Huguette’s Stradivarius violin, La Pucelle, collector David Fulton, dealer Charles Beare, and violinist James Ehnes. On Butte and its mining history, geologist and historian Richard I. Gibson. On Masonic history and the Vigilantes, Reid Gardiner and Daniel Gardiner of the Grand Masonic Lodge of Montana. On the French nobility, Professor Jonathan S. Dewald of the University of Buffalo. On the Clark pipe organ, author Jim Lewis. On medical ethics, Yale University senior scholar Daniel Callahan, president emeritus of the Hastings Center. For analysis of Huguette’s tax returns, journalist