Roland returns the letters to Blackadder

Roland’s return of the original Ash–LaMotte letters turns a private confession into a consequential transfer. After taking the letters from a book and concealing them in his wallet, he unfolds them before the assembled scholars and gives them to James Blackadder, who promises to return them to the London Library without implicating Roland. The gesture restores the documents to institutional custody, but it does not settle the competing claims to the letters, their copyright, or the wider manuscript collection.

Discovery and Confession

The return follows an earlier moment of disclosure between Roland and Maud Bailey. When Maud asks where the originals are, Roland admits that he found them in a book and took them. His confession comes after they have considered how the dates might support a new account of Christabel LaMotte’s life and alter scholarship on both LaMotte and Randolph Henry Ash. The originals matter not only as evidence: their absence has become part of the ethical problem their discovery created.

Later, with the group gathered to discuss what Cropper is trying to discover and what became of the letters, everyone looks to Roland. He removes his wallet and unfolds the letters from the safe place inside it. He says he had never intended to keep them forever, cannot explain what possessed him to take them, and had felt that they were his find because no one had touched them since Ash placed them in Vico, perhaps as bookmarks. The admission exposes the difference between discovering an object and having a right to retain it.

The Handover

Roland asks who owns the letters and acknowledges that he will have to return them. Euan MacIntyre, acting as Maud’s legal adviser, distinguishes the book’s possible bequest to the London Library from the letters’ copyright, which belongs to Lord Ash. Blackadder then offers a practical way out: if Roland gives him the papers, he guarantees that they can go back to the Library without questions being asked of Roland.

Roland stands, crosses the room, and hands the letters to Blackadder. Blackadder cannot resist reading them at once; he turns the paper lovingly and possessively, recognizing the handwriting. His response makes the transfer more than a discreet change of custody: the scholar who has devoted himself to Ash encounters the physical evidence directly, while Roland relinquishes the originals he had privately kept. Blackadder dryly tells Roland that he has been resourceful; Roland replies that one thing led to another.

Ownership and the Wider Manuscript Claim

The return takes place against a complicated legal background. Maud’s family believes it holds copyright in LaMotte’s poems and stories, while her manuscripts—including Melusina, The City of Is, two fairy-tale books, and scattered lyrics—have been deposited at the Women’s Studies Resource Centre in Lincoln. The family had acquired Blanche Glover’s journal secretly at a Sotheby’s sale, unaware at the time of its importance. The question of copyright in LaMotte’s half of the correspondence is raised separately from the physical letters.

A discovered will, dictated by LaMotte to her sister Sophia Bailey on 1 May 1890, leaves her books, papers, and copyrights to Maia Thomasine Bailey, in the hope that Maia will become interested in poetry. Euan explains that copyright in unpublished letters belongs to their writers, whereas the physical letters belong to their recipients unless returned. In this case, LaMotte had asked for her letters back, and Ash complied; the distinction supports Maud’s claim to the LaMotte manuscripts without making her the copyright owner of Ash’s letters. Euan further argues that Maud’s father is the immediate heir under the will but had already given Maud the manuscripts that came down to the family.

At the later gathering, Euan presents the legal position publicly: Maud is, in his view, the heir to ownership of the LaMotte letters and almost certainly to the Ash-letter manuscripts, while copyright in Ash’s letters remains with Ash’s heirs. He says that Cropper has induced Hildebrand Ash to promise him both letters and copyright. Roland’s handover therefore settles his own possession of the originals, not the broader contest over who may own, control, or publish the correspondence.

Significance

The scene gives material form to the novel’s distinctions between discovery, custody, ownership, and intellectual rights. Roland’s sense that the letters were his because he found them collides with the legal and institutional claims surrounding the documents. Returning them is both a relinquishment of private possession and a decision to place their fate back in a public archive, while Blackadder’s immediate, almost possessive reading shows how scholarly access can itself resemble a claim of possession.