The Dark Flower opens in 1880 with 18-year-old undergraduate
Mark studying art at Oxford, and ends 30 years later with
Mark ostensibly happily married, yet torn between his wife and a beautiful teenage girlcould still be delivered by the hand of a discreet manservant, and the residents of Piccadilly kept their horses stabled close by so that they could gallop down to Richmond for fresh air.
