I do not know how your unhappy story shall end, but I implore you to consider returning to Thrupp with your children and repairing, with time and sacrifice, the marriage to which you have committed yourself.
Your humble friend,
Phillip Asher
Exeter
February 3, 1915
Dear Mr. Asher,
You write to me as a man and not as a friend. I do not need to be told to return to Thrupp to repair a broken marriage. That judgment I am more than capable of placing on myself. I was hoping that you might, as a friend only, give me guidance as to the ethical issues involved.
Sincerely, Etna Bliss Van Tassel
14 Gill Street
February 7, 1915
Dear Mrs. Van Tassel,
I think there is a strong argument to be made that all marriages might be improved if both husband and wife had a private place to which to retreat for the contemplation — in solitude — of issues that the daily noise of life does not permit. But questions of right or wrong can exist only within a framework of convention, the circumstances agreed to by any society. In our society, at this moment, neither a man nor a woman who is married may rent or own a private and separate abode about which the spouse knows nothing. I do not speak about the legal ramifications of such an action (I suspect it is not illegal to own or rent such a room), but rather of the moral. Without trust, there can be no marriage, and a secret as large as a rented house or room puts too great a burden on that trust.
Mrs. Van Tassel, I am in a difficult position. I wish to be your friend and to give you what guidance I have in my power to bestow. But I know so little of your particular situation beyond the observable effects upon your husband. It is my understanding that your son has returned to Thrupp, but that your daughter and you have not. The presence of your son seems to have had a beneficial and salutary effect on Professor Van Tassel. He appears, at least for the moment, to have largely recovered his equanimity.
Yours,
Phillip Asher
Exeter
February 11, 1915
Dear Mr. Asher,
I am grateful to you for conveying to me the improved condition of my husband. It has been achieved, however, at great cost to me. I find myself now embroiled in a battle for the protection and custody of my son, Nicodemus, who is hardly of an age to understand why he has been separated from his mother. Theoretical issues of privacy and solitude within a marriage have vanished in the face of the very real issue of child custody, to which I am now employing all of my wits and about which I pray constantly.
Forgive me for not having apprised you of the details of our marital discord, and forgive me further for not having the necessary strength to do so now. I am grateful for your understanding, and am sorry you are in the difficult position of being privy to the thoughts of the wife even as you are the supervisor of the husband. It is an awkward position I have placed you in, and one from which I now release you. I have realized that it is inappropriate in the extreme to be writing to you in the manner in which I have, and so I shall, with immense gratitude for your patience and solicitude, stop.
With perfect consideration,Etna Bliss Van Tassel
14 Gill Street
February 15, 1915
Dear Mrs. Van Tassel,
My constitution and wits are, I trust, sufficiently strong to be able to read your letters and to “supervise” your husband, who, in any event, needs no supervision of any sort that I can offer him. I should be distressed to think I had given you any indication that our correspondence should cease because of a burden upon me. If I can offer any assistance, if only to be a sounding board of sorts, then please allow me to be. Though I know it must pain you to remember that earlier matter regarding my family, I cannot forget it, and it assuages my familial conscience, if you will, to be of help to you.
Believe me always your friend,
Phillip Asher
Exeter
February 20, 1915
Dear Mr. Asher,
Thank you for your letter of February 15 th. I have realized that in all these weeks we have written only of me, and that I have not asked a single question about your new life. Forgive me. I have been, I am afraid, too self-involved to think of others, and reluctant to ask how you are settling into a position I still believe my husband should have had. Though his recent behavior toward me has been most objectionable, and I have been the recipient of his explicit and unreserved anger, I have great sympathy for his lost possibilities. Please do tell me of yourself. Are you settling in on Gill Street?
Since the veil of polite comportment was dropped so many years ago, don’t you think it would be more appropriate to address me as Etna? It is, after all, as Etna that you knew me when we played tennis with your brother and your father.
Most sincerely,Etna
14 Gill Street
March 3, 1915
Dear Etna,
There you go again, reminding me of that horrid tennis date.