Daphne Dolores Moorhead

My son pointed out that this strapping lady, the American authoress Daphne Dolores Moorhead, looked a little like Huguette Clark.

Could she be another eccentric heiress or ....

....just Jeeves, played by Stephen Fry, in drag.

Reclusive Heiress Bequeaths her "Monet".

Huguette Clark, a reclusive heiress who died May 2011 in New York, has left a painting from Claude Monet’s “Water Lilies” series to Washington D.C's Corcoran Gallery of Art.

Clark, who had reached the ripe old age of 104, had an extensive art collection in her 42-room apartment on Fifth Avenue. But Huguette Clark hasn't lived in her apartment, Fifth Avenue's largest, for well over twenty years and has not been seen publicly for the same length of time. Living under the alias 'Harriet Chase', Clark has spent t the last 20 years in hospital despite reasonably good health.  It has just been released that she had bequeathed 34 million to her nurse. She left 14 million to her goddaughter Wanda Styka and a million split between her spurious lawyer and accountant.

Works by Renoir and Sargent, as well as a Stradivarius and a collection of rare books, will be transferred to the Bellosguardo Foundation, which is named after Huguette Clark’s 24-acre estate in Santa Barbara, California. According to her will, Clark's entire collection of art will be housed at Bellosguardo. The Monet will be the only work separated from the heiress’s collection. In 1930 Huguette Clark purchased Monet’s 1907 canvas from his gallery in Paris.

William Andrews Clarke and Huguette

Huguette had close family ties to the Corcoran Gallery. Her father, William Andrews Clark, a copper, timber and railroad tycoon and former senator, gave his entire extensive art collection to the Corcoran in 1925. His holdings of European art and antiquities numbered 775 works, including 166 paintings.

William A. Clark, along with J.D. Rockefeller were considered two of America's richest men at the turn of the last century. He was a one term senator and apparently ruthless. He tried to buy his way into the Montana Legislature. In 1907, Mark Twain wrote of Clark: “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 ball and chain on his legs.”

Clark’s first wife, and the mother of five of his children, died in 1893. Soon after, a young 15-year old girl named Anna Eugenia La Chapelle became Clark’s ward!?! It sounds very sordid. The French-Canadian wannabe- actress may have been a gold-digger or maybe some sort of victim, but she ultimately became Clark’s lover. Ick! William Andrews Clark was born in 1839 and La Chapelle, 1878 - that's kind of a distasteful age gap of 39 years. Clark maintained that he and Anna were married in France in 1901, yet historians have still to find a marriage certificate. A daughter, Andree was born in 1902, followed by the birth of Huguette in 1906. Here's the 1910 Census in which Clark states his occupation near the bottom as "Capitalist". (it does enlarge)

Andree and Huguette were raised in an elaborate 121-room (what?) New York mansion that their father built in 1908. The ornate Victorian building, at 77^th Streeet and Fifth Avenue housed the priceless art collection and a 500-seat private theatre. The building stood for only 19 years and was demolished in 1926, one year after William Clark died.

Andree Clark died of meningitis in 1919 at age 16.  Huguette just 13, may never have overcome this loss. She was well known throughout the 1920s as an eligible young heiress, and she did have a short-lived marriage to an investment banker named William Gower who once worked for her father, but divorced him in 1930. She retreated into her eccentric private world of dolls and doll houses. She had a distrust of outsiders and began conversing only in French with her mother, who lived until1963, to prevent others from understanding her conversations.

Bellosguardo

She had an estate in Connecticut that she had owned since 1952, but had never spent a night there. Then there's the Bellosguardo mansion in Santa Barbara, California that she hadn’t visited since the 1950s. Caretakers there had worked for decades without ever meeting who they were working for. And there was also the  42-room Manhattan apartment , but Huguette hadn’t been seen there since 1988.

Huguette Clark's estate was valued at nearly $400 million dollars.

sources - Jacqueline Trescott and Matt Shucel - the Washington Post.

for indepth information on the Clark family please visit Josh Conviser's article in the Santa Barbara Magazine http://sbmag.com/2010/08/the-house-on-the-hill/

Poppy

While walking the dog, I found these poppies in a neighbour's garden. I was delighted at how these poppies were complemented by the maroon leaves of the smokebush and I had to return home for a camera.

Bee

Here's a carpenter bee obviously bee-sotted by the scent of my climbing hydrangea. I've beeeen practicing with my son's camera.

I'm Too Sexy for My Pot

Wow. I tried to take a picture of my newly-acquired Hibiscus but they all came out overly-turgid, if you  know what I mean. Here's my sexy hibiscus bought from the corner store and a tiny corner of my patio.

 

A mirror I found in the garbage last week; a house plaque made in pottery class circa 1996; a street-sign that my brother swears he did not steal for me 39 years ago from a university town in southern Ontario; and in the top right  - a cat skull. Sorry, the dog found it. It's fitting. 

Smell-a-vision

I wish I could share the smell of my Climbing Hydrangea. Right now it fills the garden with a yummy aroma which is a bit Rose Peony and a bit cucumber.

Hydrangea petiolaris is a great climber. It produces aerial roots and can glom on to just about anything and it produces these beautiful white flowers.

Mine was here when I moved in a dozen years ago. Apparently they can take up to three years to take off but are well worth waiting for. They don't really love the sun and are best planted with at least their roots in the shade. They can thrive even in a north-facing shady position. My hydrangea faces east and on the shady north side of my house.

Through a Glass Darkly

Top point, black and tan dog, paw facing south

The human mind relies heavily on its ability to remember and  recognize patterns. Sometimes we see patterns where there isn't one. Lying with the grass at our backs we see pictures in the clouds. I've seen Europe PLUS England at least 4 times in the clouds. France appears in my mashed potatoes. Faces are are readily recognizable pattern -  that's why we often see two eyes, a nose and a mouth in the pile of a carpet.

A blogger's son, feeling a ghostly presence in his bedroom, flashed his camera into the darkness and the pixels neatly organized themselves to reveal the face of a young black maid.

Taking pictures of  my garden through some old chandelier prisms I have dangling I have often seen faces and things.

See if you can see them too and what you think.

I see a Mennonite-like farmer in the middle third, tiny, small, profile, black hat, beard, tan shirt, black pants, but really it's just a 2 black streaks, surrounding a beige streak.

On the left side, I see a living room wall, with a fireplace, a doorframe and paintings on the wall

Top left, I see a partial creepy face - kind of like David Caruso

This one takes the cake. The ghostly white figure that looks like it's hanging Christmas ornaments is probably just the bare white space on the neighbour's garage. I see a black man that looks like Danny Glover staring at the "ghost". I also see a black child with his arm out to the left ( or is that a cat ? I don't have one). I also see a third black face, this one with a bit of pink nose looking to the left.

Bottom third on the far left  - I see the profile of a guttersnipe

Late Bloomers

Uggh. It's been such a cold, wet spring. Everything in my backyard is about 2 weeks behind. If the weather carries on this way it will be July 1st before I see any substantial colour in my garden. Since I wrote my final exam on Tuesday I've been toiling in the garden; transplanting from front yard to back yard, (that's lots of fun in a row house), dividing, moving, fertilizing, pruning and raking. Jersey, my Lab, ate a Jerusalem artichoke. I think I'm going to rename her Hoover as in "she will Hoover up anything".

It's nice today, but it's only 16 degrees Celcius or 60 F. Once we get past the predicted thunderstorm on Saturday, it should be a nice weekend, but temperatures are only going to reach 20 Celsius or 68F.

My husband decided he'd like some Celosia (Cockscomb) in the garden for some colour. Can "Dusty Miller" be far behind? I'll post more pictures of my garden as the weather warms.

My homage to Giverny, painted on an old patio table, is against the fence

Structure in the top right, affectionately known as the poop-deck, is a dog-sized litter box