Men speak to each other of what they have heard, seen, touched,
smelled, tasted. They agree that thunder is terrifying, that the sky
is blue, that gorse is prickly, that sulphuretted hydrogen is foul,
that sloes are acid. But whether our five senses convey to any two
of us exactly the same impression, we know not nor ever shall know.
When we travel beyond sensation or perception to the working of the
intelligence we know far more of each other. Yet a man's mind is a
mystery to his own brother, and a woman's to her own sister; and
between man and woman, in the matter of identity of understanding,
there is a fixed and impassable gulf. In fact, we know nothing about
our fellow men and women; and yet for centuries men have written, and
still find courage to write, what is called history--the story, that
is to say, of the relations of individuals and of groups of men with
each other. Moreover these histories, unless shown to be false, tend
to be accepted as true; though he would be a bold historian indeed who
would claim to have penetrated to the inner truth of any historical
transaction. For always there remains the insurmountable fact that we
are and must continue profoundly ignorant concerning even those who are
nearest to us.
But if the historian of men's lives be audacious, much more so is he
who would write of the lives of other animals. In some cases we may
be fairly certain that those animals possess the same five senses as
ourselves; but some may possess more, and some fewer; and in any case
we cannot be sure that the quality of the sense is at all the same. The
mystery of their daily lives is more impenetrable even than that of our
own; and yet we can only employ the same means to pierce into it that
we can employ with each other--observation and imagination. Moreover,
our powers of observation are necessarily limited, because we cannot
(except with the help of cumbrous appliances, and then not for long)
live up in the air or under water; while our powers of imagination,
being confined within the bounds of our human experience, may easily
lead us hopelessly astray. The biographers of animals, in fact, are apt
to endow their heroes and heroines with human attributes, and to make
them think as human beings. I am myself a sinner in this respect, and
it is in consequence of this sin that I am asked to introduce to the
public Mr. Williamson's far sounder and deeper biography of Tarka, the
Otter. If I have any claim to take by the hand one whose excellent work
enables him very well to walk by himself, it is rather because I am an
historian of one phase of human nature and in that capacity have been
driven to exercise observation and imagination.
But, it may be objected, an historian's business lies with musty papers
and printed books. In a great measure, to his misfortune, it does; but
these are not his only documents. Old buildings, old roads, and old
tracks are a few among many others; and these the biographer of the
wild animal shares with him; for the otter, as Mr. Williamson shows,
has his world-old haunts and tracks, and not the otter only. Who, for
instance, would assign any age to a badger-earth or to a peregrine
falcon's eyrie unless he knew it to be recent? And, to descend to more
precise matters, a stag's shed horns of last year are a document, if
not human, at any rate cervine, from which he who runs may sometimes
read much. Mr. Williamson is always on the watch for such documents as
these, and he knows how to interpret them.
But it is not he who runs but rather he who remains still that is
the best observer of wild creatures; and it is easy to see that Mr.
Williamson has waited immovable through long hours of darkness and of
daylight, of fair weather and foul, with eyes, weary it may be, but
always alert and vigilant. And he has studied the ways not of one wild
creature but of many, and thus has been able to understand, in some
measure, the relations of the different creatures to each other. Nor
is he less attentive to their environment, for he is familiar with
wild plants and wild flowers as with wild animals; and I will venture
to guess that nothing that passes within range of his vision remains
unnoticed. He may be watching two otters at play, but, if there be a
grass-snake on the opposite bank, a patch of butterfly orchis peeping
through a gap in the fence, and two carrion-crows mobbing a buzzard
overhead, he will surely mark one and all of them.
Of knowledge and observation, then, he has a rich treasure to pour down
before us, and he has, moreover, the imagination that not only further
enriches but also beautifies it. Finally he has the literary skill to
present to us his wares in a most attractive form. If anything, his
artistic conscience is rather too sensitive, and at times possibly he
carries the work of finishing and polishing to excess; but before we
can find fault he wins us back by such a touch as this: "He (the otter)
rolled, shook himself, and set off again, roaming round the fen until
he heard again the cry of running water. The cry came out of a hollow
whose sides were scarred by the sliding of broken hummocks, _the faint
cry of a river new born_."
The spirit of Dartmoor and of Exmoor is, above all, the spirit of the
waters, and to Mr. Williamson it is a spirit so familiar as to have
become a part of himself. He loves the air, as witness his pictures of
raven and peregrine and other birds. He loves the earth, as testify
his studies of fitch and fox and badger. But above all he loves the
water--fresh, brackish, salt; mist, rain, snow, ice--he follows it
lovingly in all its forms. For him, I think, as for some others of us
the Spirit of God still moves, as before the creation, upon the face
of the waters.
And now it is time for me to drop Mr. Williamson's hand as a leader,
and leave him to guide his readers over moor and fen and meadow, over
land and stream and sea, in the track of Tarka the Otter. I have been
privileged to follow him earlier than other men; and if all shall find
the journey as full of interest and joy as myself, then our author
will have made for us a happier and more beautiful world, a world in
which we can seek refuge among the toils and the worries of life, and
be thankful.