Hughette was the heir and daughter of Montana copper king William Clark, who at one point in his long life was among the 25 richest Americans. Her estate has an estimated value of $400 million, but as with heiress Doris Duke, money did not buy happiness. She spent decades as a recluse in her Manhattan home.
William Clark was born in 1839 and died in 1925. The dates tell you that Hughette, who lived into Barack Obama's presidency, had a father who was born when Martin Van Buren was president.
Pretty incredible.
Then again, during my childhood in the fifties I met men and women who could remember the end of the 19th century clearly. Not only the Gold Rush of '98, but the depression of '93, and Queen Victoria's diamond jubilee in '96.
My Dad's friend Clarence Boatman, born in 1866, remembered the Custer massacre of June 25, 1876. He was a 10 year-old boy who, inflamed by the nation's thirst for Indian blood following the Little Big Horn, promised himself he would avenge Yellow Hair. Maybe he read Walt Whitman's sonnet eulogizing Custer, which Garrison Keillor calls the worst poem Walt ever wrote. (The bearded sage had no cavalry experience so he relied on newspaper clichés to describe the Indian "ambuscade.")
Anyway, Boatman did join the cavalry and serve in Montana -- after the Indians had been largely subdued. Instead of combat, he saw the collapse and impoverishment of a warrior culture.
When I was 6 or 7, my Dad took me to visit Boatman, who was living in Fairbanks. The two of them had become friends at Boatman's camp on the banks of the Kantishna River in 1937 shortly after Fabian arrived in Alaska.
By 1937, Boatman's interest in the cavalry was strictly musical. He loved "Captain Jinks of the Horse Marines," which had enjoyed wide popularity before 1900, and while he cooked dinner instructed my Dad to play a recorded version of the song on a wind-up Victrola.
I'm Captain Jinks of the horse marines
I feed my horse on corn and beans
And sport young ladies in their teens
Tho' a captain in the army.
Boatman never made captain, but he did sport a young lady while on the Kantishna. He briefly had a teenage wife, some 50 years his junior. It was a marriage of convenience. She offered the obvious; he provided a warm cabin, ready cash and a supply of hooch.
"It's more like raising a spoiled kid than being married," Clarence told Fabian after she became roaring drunk and destroyed some of his crockery. Concerned about further damage to his kitchen, Clarence locked the spoiled kid in his cache, where she passed out on a bag of flour.
Up and down the river, the neighbors told Fabian, "I don't know how the old fool puts up with her." After a while, he didn't.
Having been to the Lacey Street Theater in Fairbanks -- the movies -- I expected John Wayne when my Dad told me we were going to meet a cavalryman. The stooped sourdough who shook my hand was a disappointment. He probably was living on charity. Boatman was a watchman for Capt. George Black, keeping an eye on Black's boats and barges when they were home from carrying freight up and down Interior rivers. It seemed logical to me Boatman received his name from his occupation. After all, he was a "boat man."
Boatman died in the mid-fifties when he was in his mid-eighties. Unlike Hughette Clark, he left an estate that contained almost no cash. Year in, year out, he spent what he made. He did leave something of value, though. Photographs. Several albums of photographs of life on the Kantishna. Plus, there were several cavalry photos. My favorite is of Boatman in uniform, a head shot, circa 1890. It was taken by the well-known Montana photographer L.A. Huffman.
Copper king William Clark was in Montana in 1890, too, in a 34-room Tiffany-decorated mansion that newspapers called the most modern home in Butte. Not even a captain in the horse marines, let alone Clarence Boatman, could aspire to the privileges Clark enjoyed. Boatman and Clark lived in the same state but in different worlds. Clark spent more on bribes than Boatman earned in a year. It's true. He bribed the Montana Legislature to make him a United States senator while Boatman packed his bags and headed for the Klondike.
Michael Carey is former editorial page editor of the Anchorage Daily News. Email, mcarey@adn.com.
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