W.A. Clark as a leader of the Masons of Montana in the 1870s.

W.A. Clark, right, in the 1860s as he began to hunt for gold in Colorado. He was a widower with grown children when he started a second family. Huguette was the second child of that marriage, born in 1906 in Paris, when W.A. was 67 and serving in the U.S. Senate in Washington.

W.A. Clark on a visit to Jerome, Arizona, where the United Verde copper mine was the richest in the world in the early part of the 1900s.

W.A. Clark greets citizens from his private rail car in 1905 in Las Vegas, which he founded as a watering stop for his railroad. The woman at right appears to be his new wife, Anna. They had one daughter then, Andrée, and Huguette would be born in Paris the following year.

A portrait of W.A. Clark by William Merritt Chase.

W.A. Clark, the prosperous mine owner, banker and politician, on a return to the West.

The bribes to legislators to send W.A. Clark to the Senate were said to have worked in this fashion: One of Clark’s attorneys
would show a legislator ten one-thousand-dollar bills, seal them
inside an envelope, and then have the man write his initials on the outside. The attorney would keep the envelope and deliver it to the legislator only if he voted for Clark throughout the session, whether or not Clark won. It was bribery and blackmail rolled into one act. (This exhibit from the U.S. Senate trial, which led to Clark's resignation, is often misattributed as showing his initials. It shows the initials of another legislator who was said to have signed as recipient.)

The Clark case was an important event in the long march toward the Seventeenth Amendment, ratified by the states in 1913. This amendment gave the people the power to elect senators. For W. A. Clark, the election scheme left a blot on his reputation. He's shown here on the cover of Puck magazine in 1901 with Republican political boss Matthew Quay of Pennsylvania, whose re-election to the U.S. Senate was similarly contested after he was accused of misappropriating state funds. The Puck tagline: "What a fuss they made about us."

A cartoon in the opposition newspaper in Montana lampoons Clark as a payer of bribes. "The boss boodler is handy at it."

A political cartoon. W.A. Clark and Marcus Daly fire bags of money at each other at the rate of $1,000 per second.

A political cartoon. "The new chore boy" feeds money to Democracy.

A political cartoon. "And the cat came back" to the U.S. Senate. After resigning under pressure in 1900, Clark was sent back to the Senate by the legislators in Montana for a full term, 1901-1907.

The briefcase carries the title Clark sought, "Wm. A. Clark, U.S. Senator."

While craving public attention, W.A. Clark was an intensely private man of few words.

A painting of W.A. Clark inside Bellosguardo, the Huguette Clark estate in Santa Barbara, California.

A painting of W.A. Clark inside Bellosguardo, the Huguette Clark estate in Santa Barbara, California.

Though this painting of W.A. Clark is signed first by Tad� Styka, Huguette Clark's painting instructor, she apparently made changes to it, and has signed below his name, "Hugo C." Inside Bellosguardo, the Huguette Clark estate in Santa Barbara, California.

Though this painting of W.A. Clark is signed first by Tad� Styka, Huguette Clark's painting instructor, she apparently made changes to it, and has signed below his name, "Hugo C." Inside Bellosguardo, the Huguette Clark estate in Santa Barbara, California.

Though this painting of W.A. Clark is signed first by Tad� Styka, Huguette Clark's painting instructor, she apparently made changes to it, and has signed below his name, "Hugo C." Inside Bellosguardo, the Huguette Clark estate in Santa Barbara, California.