Thatwasinteresting. The head flames began to die down.
She turned to Mr. Ryan with newfound interest. “I wonder if you or one of your associates could be persuaded to write an account of a whaling mission for the magazine? We often publish travel accounts, tales of adventure.”
“Come now, ladies have no desire to hear about a whale hunt.” Mr. Glanvil turned to Mr. Ryan. “’Tis a ladies’ magazine we are speaking of, you see. I imagine a whale hunt is rather bloody.”
“It is indeed.”
“All the better,” Julianna said. Blood sold magazines.
Mr. Ryan’s eyebrows rose as Mr. Glanvil chuckled. It was false laughter, meant to signal that Julianna was in jest. Mr. Glanvil did this quite a lot. Apparently, having a “sister” who said absurdly amusing things was preferable to having a bloodthirsty one who commissioned reports on whale hunts.
After seeing Mr. Ryan off, Mr. Glanvil ushered Julianna into his office, which was dominated by an overlarge desk. This tableau always brought to mind a boy sitting at his father’s desk, playing at being a man—which wasn’t that far off the mark given that Glanvil Shipping had been started by Henry Glanvil Sr., who had sat behind this very desk.
Julianna missed Glanvil Senior. Which was remarkable. She had spentyearsresenting the man her mother married after the unexpected death of Julianna’s father, founder ofLe Monde Joli. After Father’s death, the magazine had gone to Mother, and things had carried on quite well for two years, Julianna stepping up to edit. She had learned more than enough from her father to continue without him, though she had missed him dearly. She still did. His perpetually ink-stained fingers, his brow knitting as he peered through thick spectacles at copy he found puzzling, his expansive sense of what was possible—for both the magazine and for his daughter. They had always planned that she would succeed him. When it happened, she’d been bereft but prepared.
But when her mother had remarried, her property, including the magazine, had gone to her new husband—Glanvil Senior. Whom Julianna had disliked from the start.
But not as much as she disliked his son.
Senior had allowed Julianna to carry on editing mostly unimpeded, though he had embraced the proprietor role. He had always been looking for “efficiencies” and never let her reinvest the magazine’s profits into improving it. She recalled more than one battle over the annual fashion spreads she wanted to have colored. How was one supposed to report accurately on the latest dresses being shown in Paris if one had to do it in black and white?
She hadn’t known how good she’d had it.
“I can scarcely believe it’s time for another editorial meeting,” Glanvil Junior said. “How the days fly by.” He went around his man-desk and made a show of getting out a nameplate he kept in a drawer and setting it out.
Henry Glanvil, proprietor,Le Monde Joli
He always did this at the start of their meetings, chortling as if he intended the gesture to be amusing, even self-deprecating.
It boiled Julianna’s blood. It wasn’t enough for him to play shipping magnate? As much as his “little magazine” phrase had irritated her just now, it wasn’t inaccurate in a fiscal sense. The magazine’s annual budget was nothing against that of the shipping company.
Why, then, did he care so greatly? Glanvil Senior had only required Julianna to meet him once a month, to acquaint him in broad terms with her plans for the upcoming issue, and to inform her that her proposed budget was too high.
Glanvil Junior insisted on weekly meetings. He wanted to be updated. He wanted to opine on the editorial outline. He wanted to hear himself talk.
Of course, he also spent a fair amount of time informing her that her proposed budget was too high.
“Is everything in hand for the production of October?” he asked.
“Yes. I’m off to the printer after this to check the proofs.” She would be late, in fact, on account of having had to wait so long for Mr. Glanvil.
“And November? How is the report from the Lake District?”
“It came in, and it is well written.” She handed him the story. Well written was about all she could say on the matter.
Julianna liked to publish travel reports, but she preferred they be from exotic destinations, places her readers were almost certainly never going to get to see. Mr. Glanvil, by contrast, favored accounts of “respectable holiday locales.”
Not that there was anything wrong with the Lake District story. It had been written by a lady married to a minor aristocrat who had an estate near Penrith. She was content—nay, eager—to see her name in print, and that name would sell magazines. Julianna had titled the story: “A Peeress’s Guide to the Lake District: Baroness Cartworth Opines on the Sights and Delights That Await You.”
“Oh!” Mr. Glanvil exclaimed. “Look at that, a listing of recommended inns.”
“Yes, I thought that since everyone is familiar with the Lake District in a broad sense, we might as well make some specific recommendations.”
“That was a good idea.”
“Yes.” She waited for it . . .
“I had a hunch that would work. Better to extract the most practical information and set it apart visually.”
