Empty Mansions

to be a frequent social guest of the Clarks. In 1941, he took a long train ride to the West Coast to visit Bellosguardo, and was their guest at a party for Santa Barbara’s big fiesta, theOld Spanish Days. Gloria Vanderbilt was there, along with the dukes and duchesses of the Montecito summer colony.
    It’s hard to imagine that Anna broke up the marriage—tying her family to French nobility must have appealed to her, especially when she knew the Villermont family so well; and if she opposed the marriage, why would she still play host to Etienne at Bellosguardo? It’s hard to imagine that Etienne ended it—why would he pass up a chance at a wealthy American bride? So it must have been Huguette who opposed the marriage—perhaps any marriage. After all, she never did marry again. There is one secondhand account that Huguette and Anna had a spat on that 1941 stay at Bellosguardo, and that Huguette’s reclusivity became more pronounced when they returned to New York. “It was roughly right around there that she started, well, stopped coming out of the house.” That’s the story Huguette’s personal assistant, Chris Sattler, said he heard decades later. But we can’t be sure. Sattler knew no details, referring to the Marquis de Villermont as “the duke of something from France.”
    One could suppose that this connection between Etienne and Huguette was simply another nobleman’s play for a fortune, if not for the fact that these two remained friends and pen pals for life. If Huguette Clark ever had a soul mate, he was the Marquis Etienne Allard de Villermont.
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    From the 1940s to the early 1980s, Huguette and Etienne exchanged hundreds of postcards, letters, and telegrams. Dozens of his notes to hersurvive, and a few of hers to him as well—mostly telegrams, nearly always in French. And their relationship was not only long-distance. Etienne crossed the Atlantic to New York a couple of times a year, staying in an apartment that it seems Huguette paid for.
    They stayed in touch even after Etienne married in 1953 at age forty-nine. His wife, Elisabeth, got on with Huguette, and they corresponded as well. Elisabeth was sickly, and she and Etienne had separate bedrooms. Even though Etienne described himself to Huguette as “split emotionally,” there is no hint in their correspondence that his relationship with her was a threat to his marriage.
    On March 21, 1965, Etienne wrote to Huguette:
    I join you through my thoughts, and neither distance nor time alters the bond of love of half a life, which will never disappear.… My encouragement comes from knowing that we will see each other again this year in New York
.
    In February 1968, he sent Huguette a postcard with a picture of two young lovers about to kiss, protected from a shower of hearts by thebroad white brim of the young woman’s hat. The woman hides a gift behind her back in a white-gloved hand, and he offers a bouquet of roses. Etienne wrote, in French:

    From Etienne de Villermont, writing in French to Huguette in 1965 from France: “I join you through my thoughts, and neither distance nor time alters the bond of love of half a life, which will never disappear.…”
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    It’s Valentine’s Day and I am thinking of you with great affection
.
    I send you this bouquet but the mimosas are under the snow. We will take the boat in the middle of March, the United States. It will be a joy to see you, I can’t wait. I hope you are well, will try to call you
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    He added in English, “Much love, always, Etienne.”
    Like her mother,Huguette sent money to the Villermont family, $10,000 and $20,000 at a time, and even helped Etienne and Elisabeth adopt an orphaned girl born in 1962, Marie-Christine. Huguette began to shower the child with gifts: a bicycle, a stuffed toy donkey. Etienne sent back photos of himself with Marie-Christine. In one snapshot taken on a street corner in France, handsome Etienne is standing beside his little girl, buttoned up in her gray coat, and the toy donkey, both about the same size. They had named the donkey Cadichon after the mischievous character in a children’s book.

    “
Dear Etienne, I hope you have not suffered too much from the great heat and that all is well and that my letter has reached you. I would be happy to hear from you. I am thinking seriously of taking a short stay in France. What do you think of that? Affectionately, Huguette.”
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    It doesn’t