Huguette Clark: A Life in Secrecy

Huguette Clark is the filthy rich daughter of William Andrews Clark, who started to make his fortune by selling eggs for $3 a dozen to poor miners and then continued with copper mining. Clark was probably almost as rich as Rockerfeller. Huguette married when she was 24, but got soon divorced.

Since ages she lives somewhere completely hidden from public view. She owns a bunch of mansions, but she never lived in those. On msnbc.com you can see an excellent article, or actually a photo narrative of Sen. William Andrews Clark and his daughter, Huguette. It was put together by Bill Dedman, an investigative reporter.

“He is as rotten a human being as can be found anywhere under the flag; he is a shame to the American nation, and no one has helped to send him to the Senate who did not know that his proper place was the penitentiary, with a chain and ball on his legs,” Mark Twain wrote a 1907 essay entitled “Senator Clark of Montana”. Mr. Clark insisted to be called Senator Clark, even though he was thrown out of the office after about one year because he allegedly had bought votes

“I never bought a man who wasn’t for sale,” Clark said. “I propose to leave to my children a legacy, worth more than gold, that of an unblemished name.”

Huguette Clark inherited almost all of William Andrew Clark’s fortune and no one really knows where Huguette lives now, except her attorney, Mr. Brock, and maybe handful of friends.

“She’s a very private person. She doesn’t care about publicity or reputation”, quotes msnbc.com. And “It’s hard to find out what the real story was,” said a nephew, based on the same source. “No one is alive – except for Huguette.”

While it is understandable that you would not want to spread out all your private things in tabloids as one extreme, it sounds rather sad to me to have all this money and a bunch of beautiful estates and not being able to enjoy it. Mrs. Clark might be rich on paper, but it looks like she can not really enjoy it.