[10] In 1869, the same year that he married Elizabeth Scriven, Clark began making annual summer visits to Norway, eventually building a house on an island near Skougaard's family home.

[10] Clark eulogized him in a privately published biographical sketch,[11] and created a $64,000 endowment in his memory for Manhattan's Norwegian Hospital, 4th Avenue & 46th Street.

[12] Clark also commissioned Brotherly Love (1886–87) by American sculptor George Grey Barnard to adorn his friend's grave in Langesund, Norway.

[14] According to Debby Applegate's review in The New York Times Book Review of Nicholas Fox Weber's group biography, The Clarks of Cooperstown (2007):[15] Weber suggests that Alfred [Corning Clark] led a dual life: a quiet family man in America and a gay aesthete in Europe, especially in France, which he declared "the Mecca of brotherly feeling."

When his father's death forced him to return to Manhattan, Alfred installed Skougaard down the block from the town house where he lived with his wife and children.

[Henry] James's shadow lingers longest in this chapter; surely this was the sort of thing he meant by those uneasy intimations that beneath Europe's splendor and refinement lurked something unspeakable.

[19] Clark's donation of $50,000 to the piano prodigy Jozef Hofmann in 1887 spared the eleven-year-old from having to complete a fifty-recital American tour that had been criticized by Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children.

[20] With this financial security, Hofmann and his family returned to Europe where the boy could receive a broader education before resuming his concert career.

[20] In addition to becoming one of history's most outstanding piano virtuosi, Hofmann's study in science and mathematics enabled him to become an inventor in later life, earning over 70 patents.