Uncle Abraham’s Romance

“Uncle Abraham’s Romance” is a ghost story by the English writer and poet Edith Nesbit (1858–1924), first published in the Illustrated London News in September 1891,^[1] and included in her Grim Tales (1893) collection of short stories.

The story is told as a first-person narrative by the niece^[a]Whether it is a niece or a nephew is unclear, but Uncle Abraham repeatedly addresses his relative as “my dear”. of the eponymous Uncle Abraham.

Synopsis

Uncle Abraham is old and lame, and his niece is a romantic 18-year-old. In response to a question about his own romantic adventures, Uncle Abraham says that “nothing romantic ever happened to me … unless …”. His niece’s gaze is drawn towards a miniature of a lovely woman hanging at the side of Uncle Abraham’s chair, which she had often seen as a child, but whenever she had asked who it was only ever received the reply “A lady who died long ago, my dear”.

As his niece now looks at the picture again, she asks her uncle if his romance looked like the woman in the miniature, and when he replies that she did, he is persuaded to tell her the story of “the realest thing in my long life”.

Uncle Abraham tells her that he has been lame since boyhood. Growing into manhood, girls laughed at him, and he became very lonely. As a result he got into the habit of “mooning off” in lonely places. One of his favourite spots was the local churchyard, where he never encountered anyone. He would sit there by himself well into the twilight, watching the bats flying around, and wondering why God didn’t make everyone’s legs straight.

As he is leaving the churchyard after sunset one hot August evening he hears a rustle behind him, and turning round he sees a woman, with a face just like the one in the miniature. He must have looked startled, because she laughs and says “Did I think she was a ghost?” They talk for a while, and then he goes home.

Uncle Abraham goes on to meet the woman night after night, always in the churchyard and always at twilight. But his father becomes concerned for his son’s health, commenting that he looks like he had one foot in the grave, and so arranges for him to stay with relatives at the spa town of Bath, to take the waters. The night before his departure, the woman tells Uncle Abraham that if he comes back before the full moon, she will meet him in the churchyard as usual, but if the new moon shines on a grave she points out to him, that of Susannah Kingsnorth, Ob. 1713, and he is not there, he will never see her again.

The day before he is due to return home, Uncle Abraham comes across the miniature his niece saw hanging on his chair. He asks his aunt who it is, and she tells him that it was someone betrothed to a family member many years ago, but who died before the wedding, and that her name is on the back: Susannah Kingsnorth, Ob. 1713. It was then 1813.

Uncle Abraham believes that he may have then fallen into a fit, and so did not return in time to see the new moon on the grave of Susannah Kingsnorth, and he never saw the woman in the churchyard again.