The Clark book

I've finished Bill Dedman's fine study of Huguette Clark, Empty Mansions, which describes the life of the heiress whose two wills have stirred a lawsuit recently.

I became interested in the Clark family when I was researching my Butte novel. Her father, William Andrews Clark, was a copper king and one of the wealthiest men of his period. His pretentious home in Butte is open to the public, and I have been through it. Its current owners have not been able to furnish it in the manner that Clark did, but one can still get a sense of that Victorian extravagance that animated wealthy people then.

Clark became a Montana senator after buying the state legislature, and proved to be the worst senator in Montana history, rarely even showing up in the Senate. He merely wanted the title. On the other hand he was brilliant in business, and actually charitable in some respects, giving Butte its lovely Columbia Gardens.

The biography of Clark and his daughter is superbly done. Clark was born in 1839, two decades before the Civil War. His daughter Huguette died at 104 two years ago. The biography covers the whole period, but mostly focuses on her recent life secluded in a hospital room. It is absorbing reading.