Book Three of the Berkeley Trilogy

© Tate Britain

The Ivy and The Violet – Book Three  1811 – 1844 

Sometimes the most fragile flower can confound the rampant creeper! Despite her history, the widow is not proof against the advances of powerful suitors and becomes a respected hostess of politicians and foreign diplomats. Mary watches her children make their (often chequered) way in the world in the shadow of their parents’ infamy. For more than thirty years she employs a watchman to pace the terrace below her window at Cranford, assured that a carriage is waiting day and night outside her secret tunnel lest the Regent (and then King George IV) should die and the law besiege her! During these years, however, she learns the art of inner contentment and on the day of her death sits by the hearth reflecting upon her extraordinary life. Gazing into the fire, the flame of life sinks lower and lower. She recalls that the date is the anniversary of the late James Perry’s birth and feels his presence powerfully. ‘Why, lassie,’ she hears him say, ‘you found your way home….’