Empty Mansions

demonstration of the power held by someone owning a railroad.
    Among the more vivid recollections of my boyhood, growing up in Los Angeles in the early part of the century, were the occasional visits to our home of my uncle. During the years that I knew him W.A., as the family called the senator, came out to Los Angeles about once a year, usually in the fall, arriving in his private railcar on his own railroad. He came out from his palatial home on Fifth Avenue in New York, his private railcar linked to other rail lines, by way of Butte, and on to the connection point in Salt Lake City.
    I remember his visits to our house most, perhaps, because of his eccentricities. On two occasions upon his departure he headed for the hall closet door, instead of the front door, which was considerably larger. This amused me, and suggests some absent-mindedness, resultant perhaps from his intense concentration of thought.
    On occasions when he dined with us, following the saying of grace by my minister father, W.A. would remove from his vest pocket a small flask of whiskey, pour out two tablespoons full, and enjoy a drink. My parents and my aunts were all teetotalists, except for Aunt Elizabeth, who had joined her brothers in Montana in the early days.
    On one of these visits, W.A. was relishing warm family reminiscences with his sisters, his brother Ross, and their spouses, when his valet appeared at the living room door, nervously to announce that the train W.A. was boarding for the East that evening had already been held up for an hour for his accommodation. W.A., in onlyslightly disguised irritation, informed his valet that the train could wait. And wait it did for an hour or longer.
    The train happened to be the evening departure of the San Pedro, Los Angeles and Salt Lake Railroad, bound for Salt Lake City, to the rear of which was attached W.A.’s private car, and of which he was builder, president, and principal owner. It seemed obvious that to my uncle, being a railroad president was the ultimate power and glory.
“STAND BY DEAR FATHER”

 
    I N J ULY 1904, Senator W. A. Clark, one of the richest men in the world, sent a telegram containing an announcement so surprising, so incredible, that his own newspaper got scooped. The editor of
The Butte Miner
delayed publishing the news, fearing that W.A.’s political opponents had planted the preposterous story as a hoax.
    W.A.’s telegram explained that he and his ward, Anna LaChapelle, had been secretly married in the Mediterranean port of Marseille. The wedding hadn’t happened that week, or even that year, but three years earlier, on May 25, 1901. On that wedding day, W.A. was sixty-two years old, and Anna was twenty-three. That must have been a busy year for W.A., as he was sponsoring the actress Kathlyn Williams and dealing with newspaperwoman Mary McNellis’s paternity suit, as well as the publicity over temperance lecturer Hattie Rose Laube’s campaign for an engagement.
    The wedding wasn’t Senator Clark’s only secret: The couple had a daughter, Andrée, already nearly two years old. “THEY’RE MARRIED AND HAVE A BABY,” thundered a front-page headline in the opposition Montana newspaper,
The Anaconda Standard
.
    Louise Amelia Andrée Clark had been born on the southern coast of Spain on August 13, 1902, a date more than a year after the supposed marriage. The announcement was so haphazard that her name was misspelled in the newspapers as Audree.
    W.A.’s
Miner
took pains to stress the next day that the situation had been a chaste one, with his ward, Anna, chaperoned in Paris by the senator’s sister and nieces as she studied the harp. Over time, however, “he learned that his early affection for this beautiful girl had ripened into love.” And Anna was certainly now of legal age, twenty-three at the time of the supposed marriage. Her sixty-two-year-old bridegroom was still vigorous enough that year to defend himself during a street robbery in Paris, slugging one of the thieves in the mouth.
    W.A.’s announcement attempted to explain the delay in making the marriage public, pointing to Anna’s shy manner:
    Mrs. Clark did not care for social distinction, nor the obligations that would entail upon my public life. She was anxious to remain in Europe for a time to continue her studies, and felt she could do this with more freedom. Personally I would have preferred to have her with me at all times, but my extensive interests compelled me to spend a great