One of the many facts that stood out for me in this very readable and fascinating book, is that a period of 172 years is covered from the birth of Huguette Clark's father in 1839 and her death at the age of 104 in 2011 - the lives of just two people covering such a long period of development, change, social and economic history. And so much money, unbelievably vast sums of money made by Mr Clark and ultimately inherited by his daughter Huguette. At one stage WA Clark was one of the richest men in America, and by the standards of his own time his spending was extraordinarily lavish. When Huguette died she left behind a fortune of USD$300 million, most of which was donated to charity, but not before a court battle between her distant relatives and the executors of her estate. I can hardly believe that over a twenty year period, she gave away $31 million to her nurse.
Joint author, Bill Dedman, is a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist, and quite by chance one day, while looking to buy a house to live in the state of Connecticut, he came across a very large empty house on a large piece of land. It had been empty for years and years, vines were growing through the windows, rodents and small animals wandered in and out at will. It was a mess. His interest was further piqued when he found out that rates were still being paid on the property, and were up to date. Further digging exposed a Huguette Clark was the owner. Being an investigative sort of journalist he then found out that Huguette Clark also owned a huge piece of prime real estate in New York City - overlooking Central Park no less, and a massive cliff side property above Santa Moncia foreshore. All empty, the Santa Monica property never lived in by its owner, and all up to date with rates and other expenses. Who was this mysterious Huguette Clark?
It turns out that Ms Clark had been living in a hospital for some twenty years prior to her death, by choice, and that she had lived a very comfortable but very solitary life. She had an incredibly generous nature that, it would seem, had been taken advantage of while she was in the hospital. For such a journalist as Mr Dedman, here was a story to be told, and tell it he does. He teamed up with Paul Clark Newell, jr, who is a descendant of WA Clark's via his first marriage - a detailed family tree at the beginning of the book explains it all. This relative, along with a number of distant relatives, corresponded for many years with Huguette either by letter or by phone. No one ever saw her, ever. All very mysterious.
The first third of the book I found the most interesting. It tells the story of how WA Clark made his stash - to escape being conscripted to fight in the Civil War of the 1860s, he disappeared off to the Wild West - Montana to be precise, discovered the riches that could be obtained from copper mining and the railways, and he was on his way. He sounds to have been an extraordinary man with enormous energy, not just in his business life, but also in his personal life, marrying his second wife at the age of 67 and fathering two more children - Huguette and her sister. Once he died however, in 1925, things began to unravel for Huguette and her mother, and the story also begins to lose its thread a bit. Basically Huguette had a very aimless life so consequently there is little to tell.
The book is perhaps a bit long, and there seems to be a fair bit of padding out of the last years of Huguette's life, but by crikey it is so fascinating. The book might be about Huguette Clark, but the main character undoubtedly is money, vast quantities of it, and it raises the question, yet again, of whether it is possible to have too much money.
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