Books: Great Concert of Talk

THE GODSTONE AND THE BLACKYMOR (225 pp.) — T. H. White — Putnam ($3.95).

Because he likes sea birds and dislikes Britain’s tax strictures, Author T. H. White (The Once and Future King) lives on low-tax Alderney, a 3-sq.-mi. dot of an island in the English Channel. There he flaps about in baggy fisherman’s corduroys, roams the beaches with a red setter named Jenny, and drives about in a mud-clotted, war-surplus Hillman. He gets along well with the islanders, but fumes at the excessive pace (30 m.p.h.) of Al-derney’s three cabs. He seldom ventures from the island these days, but during the war he prowled western Ireland, and his latest book is a memoir of these years, vagrant and various as the way home from a pub.

Among the things Briton White writes about are hunting, the schooling of hunting birds and beasts (Falconry, White insists, “is not a hobby or an amusement: it is a rage “), and the odd people and places he encountered. The Godstone of the book’s title is an idol for controlling weather and crop fertility, reportedly venerated as late as this century, and White was determined to unravel the mystery of its origin. Mainland oldsters remembered the idol, all right, but they were evasive, afraid that White would impugn their Catholicism with a report of pagan behavior. In the end, the author reports mischievously, the Godstone turned out to be the stone pillow of an early saint.

As for the “Blackymor,” he was a scarred African Negro called James Montgomery-Majoribanks, who traveled about western Ireland peddling patent medicine. White hired the medicine man, who doubles as a masseur, to unstiffen the rusted joints of two rheumatic old villagers. The healing scene is comical, but writing of it, White manages to convey the dignity of the two crippled ancients and the courage of the lonely, ridiculous African. The story ends with a clink and a gurgle. “Our faces glowing with liquor, our eyes more flashing, our tongues volubly tripping and repeating, we had great concert of talk and narrative, admiring ourselves and one another with warm, welcoming, smiling, appreciative, comradely, rosy hearts. We talked of motor engines and Henry Ford, of poith¡n and the fairy fire, of famous poachers and deeds of blood and all the subtle stratagems of the Gael.”

Having finished the chronicle of his Gaelic adventures, Author White has returned to his vast Arthurian cycle, is now working on volume five, the story of Sir Tristram. For the future, Tim White solemnly assures visitors to Alderney, he plans a series of sequels to Shakespeare’s plays. The Tempest, for instance, will begin as Prospero leaves the island. Caliban and Trinculo say to each other: “Well, thank God he’s gone!”