Mr. Harvey's Reminiscence

Back in Nashville at the Natl Assn of Teachers of Singing conference, things were pretty slow a lot of the time in the exhibit hall, and so I had a chance to get to know some of the people in the neighboring booths.

We were selling through Classical Vocal Reprints, and I had spoken with its owner Glendower Jones on the phone any number of times when he called in a sales order, so it was nice to meet him. He was born in the South, lived for a while in New York, and about a year ago moved himself and his family back down South, to Fayetteville, Arkansas. His family includes his wife, who was cordial enough, and a whip-smart 6-year-old daughter, adopted from China. Mary Catherine (quite a mouthful of a name for a little girl, if you ask me) learned the Miss Mary Mack clapping game and song perfectly within an hour, and was able to write all the words (so she could remember it when she got home) with only the tiniest bit of help from me. However, I think the song quickly drove her parents crazy--I don't feel too bad, though, because I think they were already a bit insane to require an energetic young thing to be indoors in an exhibit hall for hours on end. But this post isn't about them.

It's also not about Tim, the California vegan exhibiting for Plural Publishing to the left of my booth. He was great fun, and nearly choked laughing when we were talking about how a blind conference attendee was having difficulty with her guide dog, and I suggested perhaps she would have been better paired with a guide monkey. (It turned out the doggie was in training--but he was clearly not enjoying it, and therefore not taking to it very well.)

Or about the lovely woman "of a certain age" directly across from me selling vocal studio supplies. She had the most amazing mini-bouffant, carefully styled each day, and was definitely a Steel Magnolia and the kind of woman I would have wanted as my mother.

No, this post is about the quiet salt-and-pepper haired lady across and to my right, Kathy Henkel. She was there to sell her compositions, but she spent much of her time there with Mary Catherine; I think they were both happy to have company, someone to pass the time with. But I also had a chance to speak with her, and she told me about one of her compositions, Mr Harvey's Reminiscence. I found it completely charming.

When she was younger, she married an Englishman, and had the opportunity to travel there with him. Unfortunately he was not a kind man, and she eventually decided to leave him. However, she had fallen in love with England, and travelled back there several times with her sister. On one visit they were in Cornwall, in a little town near Penzance called...Mousehole!

Can you imagine it? The very name of the place (though it is pronounced MOU-zel) conjured up images of the storybook version of Victorian England for me immediately. I was completely enchanted.

Anyway, quite by chance while there she struck up the acquaintance of an old man who had lived there all his life: Mr. Harvey. He kept a lovely garden with a rose bush, and they would sit in the evenings and he would tell her about the idyllic little fishing town it was when he was young. Sometimes his daughter would angrily call him in for dinner and break the spell, but probably it would be hard to say who enjoyed those visits more, the teller or the listener. His stories inspired Kathy to write a poem, which she later set to music; one line in particular she took directly from his words: "the fish looked like silver bowls in the moonlight." Some years later she visited the area again, but found that he had passed away.

On the last exhibit day I told her I really enjoyed the story, and wanted to buy the high voice version as a memento. She was really pleased, and said to me that of all the people she had ever told the story to, I was definitely the most attentive and seemed the most genuinely interested, and she was really happy that someone else would help remember Mr. Harvey. She was going to be in Cornwall again later in the summer, and said she would try to send me a postcard from Mousehole; so I gave her my home address and a hug.

I had forgotten about it completely until we came home from Kansas City, and in the mail were two postcards: the first from St. Mawes, with a message saying she hadn't found a Mousehole postcard yet, but hoped to before she returned to Los Angeles. The second was a picture postcard of Mousehole itself, with this message: "Hi again - The weather was so bad in Touro today that my sister and I took the train to St. Ives for a day-trip -- where the weather was glorious! While there, I found this postcard of Mousehole in one of the little shops. Mr. Harvey's house is off the postcard on the left. it is on the edge of town and overlooks the sea -- actually backs up to the sea. Take care. Hope the remainder of your year will be happy and successful. Best wishes -- Kathy Henkel"

Maybe some day I'll be able to get there myself. And if so, I hope it is the same sleepy little fisherman's town that Mr. Harvey lived his life in.