Empty Mansions

Warner, had raised the possibility of paying $100 million for Bellosguardo, but Huguette wasn’t interested.
    The Santa Barbara Museum of Art asked her in 1991 and 2004 to donate the home but got nowhere. Her attorney Don Wallace said she did seriously discuss leaving the home to the nearby Music Academy of the West. She said it would be nice to have chamber concerts at Bellosguardo again, but she was concerned about cars spoiling the grounds.
    When the mayor of Santa Barbara asked Huguette twice to consider giving Bellosguardo to a foundation, she said that she would consider it. In a handwritten note to Mayor Sheila Lodge in 1997, Huguette wrote, “My answer to you about Bellosguardo, is the same as it was in the year 1993 but if some day I should have a change of mind I shall let you know.”
    Historians and journalists sent letter after letter, usually trying to get interviews by promising to avoid too much mention of her father’s electoral scandal. In a typical letter, a graduate student in history, Jeanette Rodda, wrote to Huguette in 1988, “The scandal, of course, cannot be ignored but I believe I effectively reinterpret and underplay several unfortunate incidents.” Huguette’s attorneys forwarded these letters to her, but the supplicants got nowhere.
    • • •
    Anna had visited her mountain refuge outside Santa Barbara, Rancho Alegre, only occasionally and Huguette perhaps not at all. After Annadied, Huguette soon donated Rancho Alegre to the Boy Scouts in her mother’s memory. She attached one condition: The kindly ranch manager, Niels “Slim” Larsen, and his wife, Oda, would be allowed to move into the ranch house, staying as long as they wished. Today many community groups use Rancho Alegre for retreats, and the Outdoor School of Santa Barbara, run by the Scouts, serves four thousand children a year through Huguette’s generosity.
    Before Oda Larsen died in 2001, she said she recalled talking only once to Huguette, on the phone. Huguette asked her two questions:
    “What color is the swimming pool?”
    “Are there any gazelles on the property?”
    • • •
    In the sixty quiet years at Bellosguardo after Anna and Huguette’s last visit, the furniture has been covered. Anna’s harps were laid on their sides to protect them from damage in case of an earthquake. The floral Aubusson rugs of raspberry and pink were wrapped in paper and labeled with photographs of the contents, each bundle dated and signed by a member of the staff.

    The furniture at Bellosguardo remained covered during the nearly sixty years when Huguette no longer visited. Her instructions to her staff were to change nothing and to keep everything in “first-class condition.”
( illustration credit8.2 )
    Not everything on the Clark estate has stayed in first-class condition, however. The passage of time has been enough to bring about changes. The bathrooms throughout the house haven’t been updated since the 1930s, and warning signs in some read “DO NOT FLUSH.” Although seamstresses were brought from Holland in the 1950s to repair the Louis XV upholstery on the sofa and chairs in the sitting room, in recent years some of the cushions have rotted.
    The extensive landscaping once required between twelve and twenty gardeners and two full-time plumbers to keep the grounds irrigated. In recognition of the water shortages that plague Santa Barbara, the twelve hundred rose plants were carefully removed and their location mapped so the garden could be re-created if Huguette desired. Now there are only four gardeners, and the rest of the staff consists of a houseman, two part-timers for bookkeeping and filing, and the estate manager.
    IN CONVERSATION WITH HUGUETTE

 
    We discussed several times Huguette’s memories of Bellosguardo. I asked why she didn’t visit. Didn’t she want to see the house and gardens again, to enjoy the view of the Pacific?
    “Well,” she said, “when I think of Santa Barbara, I always think of times there with my mother, and it makes me very sad.”
    • • •
    Huguette kept in touch with Santa Barbara from New York. Until her death, the staff sent monthly dues to the Valley Club, though she hadn’t been there for sixty years, and annual checks to the Santa Barbara Museum of Art, along with contributions to music institutions and police and fire charities.
    She received clippings of news from Lorraine Hoelscher, second wife of the longtime estate manager, who kept the books at the