ANIMALS & FELLOW HUMANS

Animals and Fellow Humans

THE PATHWAY--Henry Williamson-- Dutton ($2.50). After the War, William Maddison crept back to his native Devon, to the burrows, the sandhills, the rising and ebbing tides, to starry nights in winter, to summer nights of mad lightning and serene moonlight. At the Manor of Wildernesse he still found Mary, "grave and beautiful and innocent," who loved small birds and high winds as he did himself.

He thought of War and wrote, "The hair of my Mary is dark, and her eyes are shadowed deep, but the despair of the lost generation was darker, and the water in the shell-holes that drowned them was deeper. How may I rest against her heart which beats so gently, when the heart of the world is troubled, when its breast may be beaten again by the iron of the guns of the lightless people? I am weary, but how can I rest having seen the Light?"

For William was a poet and a mystic who spoke the truth in strange symbols, who spoke frankly about God and Jesus Christ and Shelley, taking them all so seriously that he seemed often to blaspheme. The simple villagers, understanding, caressed him with their sweet Devon accent, but their patroness, wealthy spinster, bristled with gossip about him. Alarmed for her daughter, Mary's mother discouraged William's presence at the manor. Hurt, miserable, William withdrew.

To write about a mystic without making him seem too queer is a distinguished accomplishment. Author Williamson's mystic cuts strident across a maze of conventionalities, but he is never cheap, affected, sentimentalized. His theories may well antagonize, but his understanding of animals, his intuition regarding fellow humans, are faultless, impressive.

Henry Williamson is also author of the whimsical, profound, animal story, Tarka The Otter, His Joyful Waterlife and Death in the Country Of Two Rivers.