The New Abelard: A Romance, Volume 3 (of 3) — Background and Themes

Letters as Weapons and Wounds

The epistolary form in this volume is not merely a narrative convenience; it is a tool for dramatizing control and its loss. Sir George’s letter to Alma is a masterclass in passive aggression. He assures her that her “secret is still quite safe in our custody,” but the phrase carries a threat: he could speak, but chooses not to, and expects gratitude. His offer to join her is undercut by the reminder that she is “young and handsome, and the world is censorious”—a judgment disguised as concern.

Later, a chapter titled “Another Old Letter” suggests that correspondence is a repository of buried truths. The novel uses letters to let characters speak without interruption, yet each letter is also a performance, shaped by what the writer chooses to reveal or conceal. The reader becomes a confidant, but also a detective, piecing together the gaps between what is said and what is withheld.

The Séance as Moral Theater

The séance in Chapter XXIV is the volume’s most vivid set piece. Buchanan describes the scene with a reporter’s eye for physical detail: the “clammy hand,” the “warm and living flesh,” the gaslight extinguished and relit. But the real drama is psychological. Bradley, the skeptic, is both repelled and fascinated; Eustasia, the medium, oscillates between defiance and tears. When she cries, “Guess some of them have been devils,” she offers a theological loophole that also hints at self-deception.

The confrontation escalates into a moral standoff. Bradley accuses Eustasia of trading on “knowledge of my private life” to “destroy the happiness of a fellow-creature.” She responds not with denial but with a plea for a handshake. The scene ends in ambiguity: is she a fraud, a pawn, or a woman trapped in her own performance? Buchanan leaves the question open, using the séance to explore how easily the desire for contact with the unseen can be exploited.

Wandering and the Weight of Reputation

Alma’s wanderings—signaled by the chapter title “Alma’s Wanderings” and the Lucerne/Geneva postmark discrepancy—are a geographical expression of her social exile. She is in motion, but without a clear destination; her uncle’s letter implies that her reputation is fragile, her presence in public a risk. The novel does not show her journey directly in the excerpts, but the letters and the séance both circle around the same problem: how to live when one’s story has been taken over by others.

Sir George’s reference to “the man to whom you owe all this misery” suggests a scandal involving a clergyman—likely the “New Abelard” of the title, a figure whose heresies and personal failings have made him a target. Alma’s silence, enforced by family pledge, mirrors the secrecy of the séance room: both are spaces where truth is known but cannot be spoken. The volume thus builds a pattern of constrained voices, whether in letters, in trances, or in the careful omissions of polite society.

Readers approaching this volume should attend to the interplay between what is shown and what is told. Letters offer one version of events; the séance offers another, more visceral kind of testimony. Neither is fully reliable. Buchanan’s interest lies less in resolving the plot than in dramatizing the struggle to interpret experience—whether as divine, diabolical, or merely human. The novel rewards attention to its silences, its half-confessions, and its characters’ efforts to control the stories that define them.

There’s something about a clergyman tangled in séance rooms and exile that stays with you quietly. I found myself thinking of another book where the same ache of hidden lives surfaces, softer but just as persistent. A Gray Eye or So. In Three Volumes—Volume II — Background and Themes holds that gentleness between letters and solitude, like remembering a conversation you never finished.