Dear Home for Christmas,
You must take your children and go. You are very lucky indeed to have a mother who loves you and whom you consider a friend. I hope you know how exceedingly rare that is.
Consider a scenario in which you do not go. Your mother dies alone, and you forfeit the chance to say goodbye. Perhaps your husband is satisfied, but once the disagreement is over, will he even notice, much less appreciate, that you have stayed to placate him?
Consider, too, the opposite scenario: You do go. You and your mother are both comforted by your presence at the end. Your husband is upset by your absence. Is his upset worth it?
I must think so.
With my sincerest condolences,
Mrs. Landers
Effie reread his response several times, questioning himself. He was always telling these women to defy their husbands. Was it right of him to do that? He believed he was giving morally sound advice, but he was only thinking about the question immediately in front of him. He wasn’t considering the repercussions that might follow when his correspondent took his advice.
He carried the letters back to bed, taking care not to awaken Julianna. His realization was not dissimilar to the one he’d had after that day on the beach with Julianna and the boys. Julianna had been bewildered by their concern for her reputation.That is your world, not mine, she’d said. He stared at the ceiling and pondered. Was he applying the wrong lens to the problems faced by his correspondent?
Effie and Julianna had initially found it endlessly amusing that “Mrs. Landers,” the author of the magazine’s “Advice for Married Ladies” column—an addition to the magazine that had been mandated by Mr. Glanvil—was not married. Julianna had seemed to relish deceiving Mr. Glanvil, though of course she, believing Effie to be a lady, hadn’t known the true extent of the duplicity. They had both embarked on the enterprise as if it were a great big jest.
It had taken only one letter to sober Effie. It had been from a woman who was having trouble conceiving a child, and he would never forget the anguish woven through her words.
Other ladies’ magazines of the day contained nominal advice columns, but they generally used a letter as a jumping-off point for a moral essay, and they almost never printed their readers’ letters in their entirety.
Le Monde Jolitook a different approach. Julianna printed several letters in each issue, and Effie was meant to give each reader genuine, and specific, advice. That first letter had been a lesson in the weight of that responsibility.
He had, from the start, tried to keep his not-lady-ness in mind, had endeavored to compensate for his sex. He was now realizing, however, that he had not spared much thought for the class he inhabited, or that of the women who wrote to him.
It had taken Julianna telling him she had only two dresses to jolt this awareness into him.
He remained ashamed of this oversight, but what could he do but try to be better going forward?
He considered “Home for Christmas.” If his correspondent was a noblewoman wanting to visit her mother’s deathbed, that was one thing. She could take her children with her and be assured of help both on the journey and at her destination. Her husband wouldn’t suffer, not materially, by her absence. But if the woman was poor, that was quite a different scenario, was it not?
Luckily, he could ask his editor when she awakened. Which might be tomorrow.
Or—he turned to find her staring at him—it could be now.
His mouth formed itself into a smile without his conscious involvement. Her hair was mussed and her cheeks were pink, and whowouldn’tsmile at her? “How long have you been awake?”
“Long enough to observe that you look rather tortured.”
“‘Tortured’ may be somewhat hyperbolic, but read this, will you? I could do with some advice.”
She did, and he explained his dilemma, his recent realization.
“I see what you mean,” she said. “I think, however, that your initial impulse was correct. She ought to go see her mother. Perhaps you needn’t write such a lengthy answer. I adore the way you sometimes answer rather cheekily, often with a single sentence. You are familiar with the letters of which I speak?”
He explained his response to the “Sartorially Sullied” letter that was also meant for the December issue.
“Yes, precisely! While you can’t answer ‘Home for Christmas’ with humor, suppose you take a similarly minimalist approach? Say something in the vein of, “Go home to your mother for Christmas. You will regret not doing it.”
“But—”
“I know you are concerned about the larger circumstances, and that is to your credit. But we don’tknowthe larger circumstances. If you will allow it, I will give you two pieces of advice.”
“Please do.”
“The letters we print have dual purposes.”
