Empty Mansions

for $14,933.
    The second, in Lot 244, was a Thuillier pressed bisque doll, circa 1885, with fixed blue glass paperweight eyes, pierced ears, blond mohair wig, in pink silk dress with cream lacy overdress and matching strawbonnet. The estimate was higher, $18,000 to $27,000, and she craved this one even more, authorizing a bid up to $90,000. She won it at $14,054.
    On that day, not so different from many other days, Huguette spent $29,000 on two dolls, but she had been a lucky bidder. She had authorized her attorney to bid up to $135,000, twice the annual budget of the Paul Clark Home.
WANDA

 
    A FTER H UGUETTE was no longer taking painting lessons from Tadé Styka and he had moved on to his own marriage during World War II, she kept up a lively correspondence with Tadé and his new wife, Doris. When the Stykas had their only child, a daughter born in 1943, Huguette became godmother to the girl, Wanda Magdaleine Styka. Like her mother, Huguette kept the thread of relationships alive from generation to generation.
    Wanda always called Huguette by the French word for godmother, Marraine. “She really is adorable,” Huguette wrote to Doris. “I find her more so each time I see her.”
    Sometimes Huguette offered to babysit when Wanda’s parents went to the movies, and the families exchanged gifts and talked on the phone. But even with these dear friends, her visits were few. “Mrs. Clark,” Doris wrote in July 1948, “it has been so very long since we have seen you. We do hope to be given the pleasure of a visit from you soon. But if you find it difficult to venture out in this steaming weather—may Wanda and I now or soon accept the invitation you so sweetly offered, so long ago, to visit you one afternoon—for just a little while?”
    Huguette sent Wanda a baby carriage, her first bicycle, and a cashmere cardigan in ecru. She paid for air-conditioning so the Stykas wouldn’t have to suffer from the heat. And later she sent checks, $50,000 and $60,000 at a time. Huguette and Anna sent Doris and Wanda a new television in August 1948, just in time to watch Milton Berle take over as the regular host of the
Texaco Star Theater
on Monday nights. That same month, Huguette did arrange a visit, giving Wanda a new doll and a proper wardrobe for it. “As we think of what you have done and are doing for Wanda,” Doris wrote, “with no thought of glory for your dear self, the overwhelming sense of gratitude we feel is really too deep for words.”
    After Tadé died in 1954, Huguette’s generosity filled the breach, supporting Doris and Wanda and paying for Wanda’s continued educationat an elite Catholic high school for girls. The Stykas became an oddly reclusive pair themselves, living in a hideaway 1837 farmhouse in a river valley between the Berkshire Hills and the Taconic Range in southwestern Massachusetts. Wanda had no siblings and never married. It was just mother and daughter alone together in the mountains, just like Anna and Huguette alone together on Fifth Avenue.
    Like Huguette, Wanda lost her father when she was young. She lived with her mother until Doris’s death. She lived alone thereafter. She had very little contact with any of her relatives.
    Wanda, too, showed an artist’s sensibility, combined with a meticulous nature. Working as anart curator and archivist, she wrote regularly to Huguette, describing her work in a striking and imaginative handwriting that Huguette showed off to her doctors at the hospital. It was an artist’s handwriting, carrying earnest messages of her love for Huguette, along with news of the holidays and the passing seasons. Wanda often included photos of herself, at Huguette’s insistence. These photos show a short woman with her hair pulled back and parted in the middle, a bundle of positive energy posing dramatically among the peonies or the yellow roses flanking the stone steps to the Styka home. Wanda was living the quiet life, like her godmother, but in a beautiful place.
    Mother and I send streams and streams of fondest good wishes for a deeply happy Thanksgiving Day.…
    Mother and I love June for its warmth and blossoms but most of all because it is your month.…
    Snow lies all about us, as the chance of having an Indian Summer fades.…
    We greet you most affectionately, and our wishes are with you for all that is happy and beautiful. Mother sends her fondest love, and you always have, dearest Marraine, All my most Devoted love, Wanda
.
    Huguette told her