Empty Mansions

and Andrée grew up, they played host to dinners and parties to raise money for the families of French soldier-artists, for the Institute for Crippled and Disabled Men, the School Art League, the Unique Book and Handcraft Salon. All these events were held at the Clark mansion. As W.A. had threatened, the Clarks had set up their own social set, one mostly confined to their own home and directed at the arts and generosity.
    Because he opened his home so often to share its art and music, W.A. told the reporters, “I am not likely to be lonely.”

SMILES AND FOND KISSES

 
    T HE C LARK GIRLS were frequent transatlantic travelers, accustomed to the luxurious staterooms of the Cunard and White Star luxury liners. In 1911, newspapers across America carrieda photo of Andrée, nearly nine years old, arm in arm with her niece of the same age, Katherine Morris, who was holding hands with Huguette, nearly five. They were standing on the deck of the RMS
Adriatic
, crossing the Atlantic to attend the coronation of George V, king of the United Kingdom, grandson of Queen Victoria and grandfather of Queen Elizabeth II.
    The next summer, their crossing for a vacation was delayed. In April 1912, before a trip to France, W.A. showed the girls a brochure with the floor plan of their first-class staterooms on a new White Star liner. The Clarks were booked for passage from New York to Ireland to Cherbourg. This crossing would be a treat, the second voyage of the largest ship afloat: the RMS
Titanic
.
    Instead, W.A. ended up meeting survivors of the
Titanic
in New York, and the family delayed their trip while they mourned a loss. Huguette’s first cousin Walter Miller Clark, the son of W.A.’s brother Ross, had gone down with the
Titanic
. Walter had been playing cards in the smoking room when the great ship scraped an iceberg. His wife, Virginia, was saved, bobbing in lifeboat No. 4 with the pregnant Madeleine Astor, watching the ship sink with their husbands among the 1,502 people lost in the icy North Atlantic.
    The
Titanic
launched another scandal for the Clarks, as Walter’s widow remarried five months after the sinking. She and Walter had an infant son, who was at home in Los Angeles when the
Titanic
sank. For months, the newspapers were filled with the resulting custody battle between the boy’s mother and his paternal grandparents over the “Millionaire Baby.” The parties eventually settled on joint custody.
    During the family’s annual summer vacation to France, W.A. and Anna took Andrée and Huguette to their Paris apartment on avenue Victor Hugo, then out by rail to a luxurious seaside resort called Trouville, near Deauville in Normandy. W.A.’s first family had summered in Trouville as far back as 1880, and this was a regular summer spot for his second family as well.
    IN CONVERSATION WITH HUGUETTE

 
    “We didn’t get on the
Titanic
,” Huguette explained matter-of-factly. “We were booked to go. But then actually it never got to New York, because it sank before it got in. So we took another boat out. I think it was the
George Washington
.”
    Huguette remarked on how sad she was at her cousin Walter’s death on the
Titanic
. Although she commented on Walter’s drinking problem and how his wife remarried so quickly after his death, her memories focused more on the reason for her family’s planned trip to France. Andrée was especially interested in attending a commemoration of the five hundredth year since Joan of Arc’s birth. “She wanted to be there for the Joan of Arc birthday.”
    The family rented a villa at the end of the beach, at11B, rue des Roches Noires, facing the giant black rocks captured on canvas by Courbet and Boudin, whose paintings inspired the young Monet. While W.A. went on to business meetings in England and Vienna, Anna and the girls stayed in Trouville. Anna played her harp two or three hours a day, while Andrée and Huguette hunted among the black rocks for small crabs and shrimp, attended by their governess and tutor, Madame Sandré, who taught them how to swim. The tides at Trouville were gentle, making the area safe for swimming, though the water was cold even in August. The family also had the use of a yacht in the harbor.
    That summer was a high-water mark for the Clarks, and for France, with the entire family together and the nation enjoying the peace and prosperity of the Belle Epoque. Yet relations between France and Germany, already strained, were pushed into the headlines