The Clockmaker's Daughter

The Radcliffe Blue, a rare and valuable 23-carat blue diamond, represents the loss of something priceless. Its history exemplifies Kate Morton’s attention to detail. The diamond was supposedly stolen from Florence in the 14th century, then set into a pendant for Marie Antoinette (123). Some said that the stone had been plucked from a Hindu temple by a merchant traveling through 10th century India—this history reflects the colonial currents of Ada’s story. Around 1816 it comes into the possession of the Radcliffes.

The lost treasure that the Blue represents varies according to the character. For Edward and Lucy Radcliffe, the jewel is associated with Lily, and Lucy throws the diamond into the river as an attempt to disavow her part in Lily’s death and Edward’s grief. Burying the Blue in the river, essentially drowning it, is the only symbolic return that she can make at this point. When Ada recovers the jewel and suggests returning the Blue to the Radcliffes, Lucy warns her not to bring it anywhere near Birchwood. The jewel has been tainted for her by Martin’s scheme and the deaths the diamond caused.

When Ada gives the stone to Tip, she shares the talisman that protected her life. This is the meaning that Tip invests in the Blue when he works it into Elodie’s charm box. This storied and priceless jewel has become a trinket to please and protect a young girl, the way the Fairy Queen’s spell guards Birchwood. Tip’s gesture rewrites the Blue’s bloody history, turning the tragedy to a benevolent purpose, as does Lily’s ghost.

Birchwood is the centerpiece of the novel, the book’s chief setting and emotional heart. As a home, Birchwood symbolizes protection; it is nurturing and a refuge for the wounded. An inscription in one of the rooms with the words “Truth, Beauty, Light” indicates the qualities that the house is meant to enshrine. Its very structure is protective, with the priest holes designed to shield spiritual men from persecution.

Edward links truth, beauty, and light in his paintings and in his description of Lily, where the association of truth and beauty echoes the last lines of Romantic poet John Keats’s famous “Ode on a Grecian Urn” (1819): “Beauty is truth, truth beauty” (Keats, John. The Complete Poems. Penguin, 1976). Lily continues to display these qualities when she becomes the spirit of the house, offering solace in her own way to those wounded by grief. By the end, Birchwood and Lily are united symbols, both protective, sheltering presences that provide refuge and light.

The river runs through all the segments of the novel. As its great uniting thread, it is an enduring presence that symbolizes the passage of time, particularly as time connects to the lessening of The Influence of Grief. It plays different roles for different characters.

In Chapter 8, as she looks at the river from her flat, Elodie thinks of it as “a great, silent carrier of wishes and hopes, of old boots and pieces of silver, of memories” (110). Lucy Radcliffe tells Ada Lovegrove that rivers are always on the move; “They take their secrets and mysteries with them to the sea” (165). This moment foreshadows Lucy’s disposal of the Radcliffe Blue and Ada’s discovery of it.

Leonard notes that the river is gentler by Birchwood; “he thinks of it as a she” (203). For Juliet, the river is a steadying influence: “Its constancy was heartening; no matter what else was happening in the world, regardless of human folly or individual torment, the river kept flowing” (288). For Birdie, the river connects her life: “The Thames flowed through my life just as surely as blood flows through a body” (63). For all the characters, whether they find the river a danger or a sanctuary or a healing presence, the Thames represents what lasts when everything else is forgotten or washed away.