Margery Lawrence

Ferry Over Jordan

Robert Hale, 1944.

I well remember the astonishment with which a Free French officer, one day when I was walking with him in Regent's Park, regarded the crowds of people, children and grown-ups, who were feeding the pigeons, the ducks and squirrels on a bright May day.

"You know," he said to me, "this impresses me more than anything that I have seen in England – and it is the same with all my colleagues! In France we have scarcely any song-birds, no thrushes or sparrows – we trap them for food. And as for squirrels, those would be caught and killed for their skins in a twinkling. But here – in war-time – when you are short of food you people still bring crumbs to feed these creatures, and one can see from their tameness that they have no fear of being killed."

I told him rather tersely that if anybody tried to kill one of the adorable squirrels or the pigeons that will alight on the hand of a child to be fed, he would probably be thrown into Regent's Park lake by the infuriated crowd, and he nodded thoughtfully.

"A remarkable people," he said. "A remarkable people! Nowhere else in the world would you see what I have seen this morning."

And you know, I think he is right.

The author was a spiritualist and this anecdote forms part of a chapter in which she maintains that animals have souls and an afterlife. She is probably best known for her novel, The Madonna of the Seven Moons, which was made into a film starring Stewart Granger.