Sunday’s midsummer programme was delivered beneath the Old Willow in the manner the season had been preparing for since the special session of the twenty-third of last month. Four items, civic-confirmed. The light was right, as the older drakes had pronounced it would be on Thursday. The full attendance, recorded by the Clerk of the Reed-Bed Subcommittee in his capacity as timekeeper, was the largest of this gazette’s recording history. Drake Halford kept the viewing position he had taken on Saturday. Hettie’s mother attended, seated at a remove this critic respected. The performance closed at the late twilight.
The first item was a recitation by the eldest of the goslings, in verses she had chosen herself. She delivered them with the seriousness of a much older performer. She did not, at any point, lose her place, nor did she at any point appear to consult one. The verses concerned weather, a leaf, and, in the third, a heron. This critic concedes the third reading may owe something to the bird’s continued presence at the west pier, of which more shortly. The eldest gosling accepted the audience’s appreciation with a brief inclination of the head and resumed her seat. This paper regards the whole as a model of platform manner.
The second item was the smallest gosling’s overture, performed this time at the advertised length, a restoration this critic records with real pleasure. Readers will recall the fourteenth of April. The first overture, attempted at the spring recital, ran longer than the programme promised, and the gosling lost her place. On Sunday she did not. The piece opened with a short statement and proceeded to a second short statement of similar tenor, the whole filling exactly the period the running order had set aside. On finishing, the smallest gosling was offered a piece of pondweed by a member of the second row. She accepted it and ate it. The continuity with the customs of the spring is plain.
The third item was the duet, and the duet was the occasion. Readers will not need reminding that its preparation has been tracked across eight weeks. The audition of the fourteenth of May. The appointment of the twenty-first. The rehearsals first heard from the south bank on the warm evening of the twenty-second. The rehearsal alarm of the sixteenth, at which the co-honker briefly considered withdrawal and was, in the careful phrasing settled on at the time, talked round. Mabel, in the form by which she has been addressed in these pages, with her assent, since the running order of the twenty-sixth of May, took her position on Hettie’s left at the appointed time. The Clerk’s timekeeping began. The silence the Cultural Subcommittee had requested in advance, observed by all but one party, held.
Hettie’s voice entered first, in the higher register the long-resident frog had once, and with some reluctance, called audible. Mabel’s voice entered on the seventh breath, in the lower register that has been the subject of three months’ attention. By this critic’s count the duet ran twenty-three breaths, paused, ran again for nineteen, and closed on a sustained final phrase. This critic will commit in print to that phrase having lasted the better part of four breaths and having involved both voices throughout. In the silence that followed, the audience did not move.
The coot, having earlier filed an attendance notice, honked once. The silence had been requested; the honk arrived. This critic notes the honk, and notes in the same sentence that it was not without a certain dignity.
The duet itself was no longer simply audible. It was, on the night, in question. By which this critic means the following. The question of what two voices, in such proximity, in such register, at such an hour of the year and such an angle of the light, may yet undertake to do, was set before this pond and left, at the close, unresolved. This critic does not propose to resolve it here.
The fourth item was the surprise of the running order announced on the twelfth of this month. It was delivered by the long-resident frog of the southern waters, from a small floating leaf manoeuvred into the audience’s near view by an agency this critic could not make out. The frog had agreed to the engagement on conditions the Clerk called characteristic. The reflection was, as the frog’s practice has it, brief and oblique. Its subject was the central position. He named it once, at the outset, and not again. He spoke for a period this critic estimates at thirty breaths and closed on a single croak, which the audience took for a sign-off. The leaf, by a similar agency, withdrew.
The heron stood unmoving at the west pier throughout. Whether it was attending the programme, or attending some other matter, there is no means of establishing, and the question is left open, as the bird’s other observable interests have been left open for months now. The fish were not visible. The dabchicks issued no statement.
At the close, the Cultural Subcommittee’s acting chair indicated that the programme had finished within the Clerk’s allotted time, and that all four performers had, in his view, acquitted themselves to the standard the season required. Drake Halford was afterwards seen in conversation with Hettie’s mother. Mabel, as the desk took its leave, was in conversation with the eldest gosling. The coot, his pebble still in the Clerk’s keeping, departed without further demonstration.
This critic came to the Old Willow on Sunday evening to review four items of music. He left having attended something larger, which the gazette will be obliged to weigh when it comes to assess the season. He does not propose to weigh it tonight. The pond, on the longest evening of the year, was kind to it.