Tuesday’s postbag was the first opened since the close of Sunday’s programme beneath the Old Willow. It held the volume of correspondence the editor has learned to expect of occasions the gazette has covered at length. Four letters are reproduced here, two of them brief and two of them less so. They were chosen because each takes up a different part of the evening, and they are set down in the order they reached the reeds.
From Hettie’s Mother, filed Monday afternoon
Sir. I write briefly, on Hettie’s behalf and my own, to thank the gazette for the care of its coverage and the considered nature of its review on Monday morning. Hettie has read the review, or has had the relevant portions read to her, the gazette being printed on a register she does not at present read at full length without assistance, and she accepts its account of her contribution. I wish further to thank the Cultural Subcommittee, the Clerk in his timekeeping capacity, and the audience for the silence it kept during the third item, which Hettie remarked to me afterward as having been, in her phrase, “very kind.” Hettie will not, before the autumn, accept further engagements.
HETTIE’S MOTHER
[The editor accepts the letter on the terms in which it was offered. Its thanks are returned in kind. The condition on Hettie’s autumn availability has reached the Cultural Subcommittee too, by the customary channels.]
From Drake Halford, filed Monday evening
Sir. I write to record my appreciation, and my household’s, for the Cultural Subcommittee’s efforts in delivering Sunday’s programme. By my household I mean, to spare us the confusion that has lately attended our census filings, the five members of it. The decision to take the second item at the advertised length will be felt by all who recall the spring recital as a quiet act of restitution. The duet was, in this drake’s view, what it was understood to be. The fourth item I shall not attempt to characterise. I should be glad if the Subcommittee, in any future programme, would consider the addition of a piece of moderate length suited to the registers of the older members of the audience.
DRAKE HALFORD, of the east shore
[The editor commends the suggestion to the Cultural Subcommittee. It confirms, on Drake Halford’s behalf, that the household is, on the present filing, five.]
From the Family of Dabchicks of the West Pier, filed Monday morning
Sir. We write to record that we considered the programme well-pitched, and that we were not unsettled by the duet. We attended from our standard formation at the pier’s seaward end. We add, since the gazette has shown an interest in such matters, that the heron was, throughout the programme, at the west pier in our company. Or, as we should prefer to put it, in the same locality as ourselves. The heron did not depart for the willow at any point. We draw no conclusion from this beyond the observation itself.
A FAMILY OF DABCHICKS
[The editor reproduces the letter without comment. The family’s preferences on the matter of editorial comment were clearly established in earlier correspondence.]
From the Coot of the Channel Sprint, filed Tuesday morning
Sir. I write to enter, for any readers and Subcommittee members who may wish to consider it further, my view that the single honk produced by me at the close of the third item of Sunday’s programme was not inappropriate to the occasion. The silence requested had, by the moment of my contribution, served its purpose. The duet was complete. The audience’s appreciation required, in this entrant’s view, a marker, and the marker available to this entrant was the one provided. I accept the music critic’s characterisation of the honk as “not without a certain dignity,” and shall, in due course, frame the relevant cutting. The matter of my classification remains outstanding. The pebble remains with the Clerk. The Clerk of the Race has not yet returned.
COOT
[The editor reproduces the letter on a simple principle. Any letter in which the coot accepts a characterisation by another party, this paper not least, is a matter of editorial interest. The classification question is, as the coot rightly notes, a matter for the Clerk of the Race. He is not here to answer it.]
The editor declines further comment, this week.