Gentle Witchery

SWANS ON AN AUTUMN RIVER by Sylvia Townsend Warner. 222 pages. Viking. $4.50.

Sylvia Townsend Warner's genteel and wonderfully Victorian prose has always seemed at first sampling to be as innocuous as dandelion wine. Only after the unwary reader is under its influence does he discover that it is laced with gall and witchy nightshade, not to mention a dollop or two of venom.

Already long famous as one of Britain's most versatile and gifted writers (her Lolly Willowes was the first selection of the fledgling Book-of-the-Month Club in 1926), Author Warner turned to writing short stories exclusively in 1954. This baker's dozen of new stories shows that, at 72, she has lost neither her light-handed cruelty nor her wise compassion in picturing human fallibility.

If her tales have a fault, it is probably that some are actually character sketches rather than genuine short stories: an aging bachelor lies his way out of the hospital so he can go home to his cat; an elderly executive dies after fulfilling his dream of visiting Dublin. But minor faults are more than compensated for by one superb story, A Love Match, which tells of an incestuous relationship between a brother and sister. Author Warner not only makes the reader feel wholly sympathetic toward the characters, but in the soft-spoken telling, their relationship seems to become almost commonplace instead of shocking.

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