Partner Solita Solano, Mathilda Hills
Queer Places:
Miss Porter’s School, 60 Main St, Farmington, CT 06032
283 Sweet Allen Farm Rd, South Kingstown, RI 02879
Elizabeth Story Jenks Clark (December 20, 1912 - December, 1975) was born in Narragansett, Rhode Island,
one of the eight children of William Pearson Jenks, cotton broker, and Bertha
C. Johnes. She grew up in Mount Kemble, Morristown, New Jersey, and spent summers at Anawan Cliffs in Narragansett. She was known as "Lib".
She attended Miss Porter's School and then studied in Paris.
In 1928, she married Joseph S. Clark Jr., future two-term United States Senator, and they had a son, Joseph Clark III.[2] They separated in 1931 and Clark moved to Paris. While in Paris, Clark sculpted a fish fountain for the town of Narragansett at the studio of sculptor Janet Scudder. After the divorce was finalized, Clark moved back to the United States, where she lived and sculpted in Philadelphia and New York City.
In 1941, she joined the American Women's Voluntary Services (A.W.V.S.) and organized branches throughout the United States. While in New York City, Clark met Solita Solano, a fellow member of the A.W.V.S., and they started a relationship. Clark and Solano lived together for the rest of Solano's life, even though Solano maintained a close bond with her previous partner, Janet Flanner. Through Solano, Clark met magazine editor Margaret C. Anderson in 1942. Clark, Solano, and Anderson remained close friends until Anderson's death in 1973, and Clark became Anderson's executor.
After World War II, Clark worked for the boutique Henri Bendel in Fifth Avenue, New York City, and at the fashion house of designer Mainbocher. In the late 1940s, she and Solano moved to Arizona and California. In the early 1950s, they moved to the Jenks family's Mount Kemble property care for Clark's aging parents, and lived there until 1958, when the two women moved to Orgeval, France.
Solano died in 1975 and was buried in Orgeval. In 1976, Clark moved back to the United States and lived in Kingston, Rhode Island. From 1979 until her death from cancer in 1989, Clark's partner was Mathilda Hills, a member of the English faculty at the University of Rhode Island. Mathilda Hills edited ''Forbidden Fires'', Margaret Anderson's last book.
My published books:
