Errata for Empty Mansions
Dear readers, we have made the following changes in later printings of Empty Mansions, fixing typos or errors of fact. If you see any error, or have questions of any kind, please send an email to Bill Dedman. Thank you for your help and encouragement. — The authors
Page with Roman numeral x: In the family tree, on the fourth row from the top, the dates for W.A. Clark's daughter Katherine Louise Clark Morris should be 1875-1974.
Page xxvii: The typeset sign by Harris, the houseman, was left on the green tile counter, not on the floor.
Page 3: The address in Paris where Huguette was born is incorrect. Now we’ve seen a copy of Huguette’s birth certificate. The Paris address of W.A. and Anna Clark at the time of Huguette’s birth was 6 Avenue Mac-Mahon, half a block north of the Arc de Triomphe, not nearby at 56 Avenue Victor Hugo, a short walk to the southwest. It was later that W.A. and Anna Clark kept an apartment at 56 Av. Hugo, as described by W.A. Clark in his last will and testament.
Page 15: We’re now doubtful that this photograph shows Anna Clark. This photo looks more like her sister, Amelia. Anna is shown in other photos of parades in other years.
Page 18: In the last full paragraph, beginning “Those were hard times,” in the next-to-last line, change “westward journey fifty years earlier” to “westward journey thirty years earlier.”
Page 20: In the first full paragraph, beginning “Will’s schooling…,” the second reference to him should be “Will,” not “W.A.,” as he was called Will at that time. So the third sentence is, “As the two oldest, Sarah and Will had an advantage over the younger children, going on at age fourteen to Laurel Hill Academy, a selective private school at the Presbyterian church in town.”
Page 20: In the last paragraph, beginning “In 1856,” the first paragraph should begin, “In 1856, at age fifty-eight, perhaps a dubious age to start a new venture, …” (Correcting John Clark’s age.)
Page 30: In the paragraph beginning “In 1867,” remove the reference to headwaters of the Columbia River. The paragraph should begin, “In 1867, W.A. found that he could earn a bigger profit by hauling the U.S. mail. His route began near Missoula in western Montana, stretching through northern Idaho to Walla Walla, which was then the largest community in Washington Territory, a distance of more than 450 miles.”
Page 43: We've removed two descriptions of the Clark mansion in Butte because they couldn't be confirmed: W.A.'s silhouette being sculpted above the mantel, and the staircase of nations.
Page 47: The middle name of Anna LaChapelle is given differently on different documents. We give it here as Eugenia. On a passport application, it is handwritten as Evangeline. Her obituaries in the New York newspapers have Evangeline. Although her grave marker in Woodlawn Cemetery has Eugenia, it also misspells her maiden name as LaChappelle; and that marker was made nearly 50 years after her death, after Huguette died and her name was added to a combined marker for mother and daughter; there’s no reason to trust that Huguette’s attorney, who made those arrangements and misspelled LaChapelle, would have had good information about her mother’s middle name. Anna’s last will and testament, and W.A. Clark’s as well, do not give Anna’s middle name. If we had to place a bet, the obituary and passport application seem to be the closest to primary sources, making it Evangeline. She was known to family and friends as “Anna E.,” differentiating her from other Annas in her family.
Page 121: In the map of mansions on Millionaires' Row, home No. 13 at 972 Fifth Avenue should be identified as the Payne Whitney house. It was built for William Payne Whitney, known as Payne Whitney, not for his brother, Harry Payne Whitney.
Page 138: In the first paragraph, beginning “Her own wedding…,” in the second sentence, delete reference to a fire. The sentence should be, “A few months after W.A.’s death in 1925, the home was shaken in the June earthquake, which burst a dam and badly damaged much of Santa Barbara’s downtown.”
Page 144: In the second full paragraph, beginning “This run of male self-destruction,” delete the sentence beginning, “Katherine died in 1933….” (Katherine lived until 1974.) Replace with “May and Katherine had no husbands or sons ready to take over a business, and Huguette was in her twenties and recently divorced.” In the following paragraph, change “…May and Huguette sold off the United Verde…” to “…the three daughters sold off the United Verde…”
Page 145: In paragraph beginning “Butte is still paying,” adjust the punctuation so we have: “Water and wind spread the copper, arsenic, cadmium, nickel, and lead from the mines and smelters…”
Page 152: Research has come to light calling into question whether one of the Stradivarius violins had ever been owned by Paganini, though the four instruments were touted with that provenance by the dealer in New York, and continue to be so touted by their owner.
Page 172: In the paragraph beginning “Huguette had projects,” in the third line, “A.d” should be “And.”
Page 183: Line 18, change “when she was nearly ninety-nine” to “when she was ninety-seven.”
Page 195: In the paragraph beginning “An enormous floating wooden dock,” we removed the reference to the dock being stored near the rustic beach house.
Page 196: The painting near the front door of Bellosguardo is not of General John J. Pershing, but instead the French General Ferdinand Foch, commander-in-chief of the Allied forces in Europe in World War I. Huguette’s staff had identified it in testimony as General Pershing, but we’ve now seen photographs of Styka with Foch and the painting.
Page 200: We removed a reference in the second paragraph to Morton being the staff member who cultivated bonsai. It was the house man, Harry Pepper, not Morton the butler, who worked with bonsai.
Page 204: In the first full paragraph, we removed a reference to guests at Rancho Alegre riding the horses. (Few people dared to ride the stallion, Don Antonio.)
Page 204: In the last line, it was La Cumbre Junior High School, not Santa Barbara High School, where the Clark chauffeur, Walter Armstrong, embarrassed Barry Hoelscher by driving him in the Rolls-Royce.
Page 218: Documents suggest that Huguette’s “traveler,” the lesser violin she carried with her, was a Stradivarius violin from 1686, not her Stradivarius violin created in 1720. The 1686 appears to be the one that Huguette later gave to her nurse, Hadassah Peri.
Page 252: In the second line, change “overdraft free” to “overdraft fee.”
Page 273: Huguette was six miles from the World Trade Center, not two miles, on September 11, 2001. This was before she moved, so the distance should be measured from Doctors Hospital (Beth Israel North), not from the main Beth Israel downtown.
Page 304: In the third line, we now reflect that it was the cancellation of the Mapplethorpe exhibit, not its scheduling, that damaged the Corcoran’s reputation in the art world (after conservative politicians made an issue of the exhibit). The corrected sentence: “The Corcoran stepped on its reputation in the art world in 1989 by canceling an exhibit of photographs by the late Robert Mapplethorpe, including homoerotic and sadomasochistic works.”
Page 347: Corrected the brief description of aphasia. Not a disease, and not akin to dementia, it is a language disorder caused by brain damage, often due to stroke, head injury, cerebral tumors, or degenerative diseases.
Pages 348-350: In the paperback edition and later printings of the hardcover, pages 348-350 were updated completely to reflect the settlement of the contest over Huguette's will and the Clark estate. Follow this link to read those three pages in a PDF file. The paintings owned by Huguette, and those created by Huguette, were to go under the terms of her last will, to the Bellosguardo Foundation. But in the settlement no special provision was made for those paintings, so they were sold by the estate in the auction at Christie's in 2014.
Page 363: Added Katie McNally to the list of Random House staff who brought you Empty Mansions.
Page 368: On the 18th line, deleted “of the Montecito Association.”
Page 437: In the caption, in the fourth line, it should be “Clarkdale,” not “Clarksdale.”
Endnotes:
In several places, the correct name “Surrogate’s Court of the State of New York, County of New York,” is rendered incorrectly with an extra “County.”
A note for page 193 refers incorrectly to the Montecito Historical Archives, which is not connected to the Montecito Association.
