English 9

Suguitan, Sarah Andrea S.

9-Entrepreneurship

2 nd Grading
 W.H. Hudson
(real name William Henry Hudson)
20th Century, before First World War

William Henry Hudson, also known as W.H. Hudson, is a British author, naturalist,
and ornithologist, best known for his exotic romances, especially Green Mansions.

A. Childhood and Early Life, Adulthood and Death

William Henry Hudson was born in Quilmes, near Buenos Aires, Argentina. He was
the son of Daniel Hudson and his wife Catherine née Kemble. His parents were
American settlers from England and settled in Argentina in 1830s who took up sheep
farming.

He spent his childhood—lovingly recalled in Far Away and Long Ago (1918)—freely
roaming the pampas, studying the plant and animal life, and observing both natural
and human dramas on what was then a lawless frontier.

With a three week long bout of typhus weakening him when he was 14 years old,
then a bout of rheumatic fever a few years later, Hudson spent much time alone
wandering the pampas, becoming a shy yet observant young man. He became
introspective and studious; his reading of Charles Darwin’s Origin of Species, which
confirmed his own observations of nature, had a particularly strong impact.

After his parents’ death, he led a wandering life. Little is known of this period or of
his early years in England, where he settled in 1869 (and was naturalized in 1900).
Poverty and ill-health may have occasioned his marriage in 1876 to a woman much
older than himself. He and his wife lived precariously on the proceeds of two
boarding houses, until she inherited a house in the Bayswater section of London,
where Hudson spent the rest of his life.
 His early books, romances with a South American setting, are weak in
characterization but imbued with a brooding sense of nature’s power. Although
Hudson’s reputation now rests chiefly on these novels, when published they
attracted little attention. The first, The Purple Land that England Lost (1885), was
followed by several long short stories, collected in 1902 as El Ombú. His last
romance, Green Mansions (1904), is the strange love story of Rima, a mysterious
creature of the forest, half bird and half human. Rima, the best known of Hudson’s
characters, is the subject of the statue by Jacob Epstein in the bird sanctuary
erected in Hudson’s memory in Hyde Park, London, in 1925.

The romances secured Hudson the friendship of many English men of letters,
among them Joseph Conrad, Ford Madox Ford, Edward Garnett, and George
Gissing. His books on ornithological studies (Argentine Ornithology, 1888–89; British
Birds, 1895; etc.) brought recognition from the statesman Sir Edward Grey, who
procured him a state pension in 1901.

He finally achieved fame with his books on the English countryside—Afoot in

England (1909), A Shepherd’s Life (1910), Dead Man’s Plack (1920), A Traveller in
Little Things (1921), and A Hind in Richmond Park (1922). By their detailed,
imaginative descriptions, conveying the sensations of one who accepted nature in all
its aspects, these works did much to foster the “back-to-nature” movement of the
1920s and 1930s but were subsequently little read.

Hudson was an advocate of Lamarckian evolution. He was a critic of Darwinism and

defended vitalism. He was influenced by the non-Darwinian evolutionary writings of
Samuel Butler.[2][3] He was a founding member of the Royal Society for the
Protection of Birds.

William Henry Hudson died 18 August 1922, in London, England. He is buried in

Worthing's Broadwater Cemetery, West Sussex, England. His epitaph refers to his
love of birds and green places.
 B. Role and Significance to their Era

William Henry Hudson expressed the skepticism and alienation in his books that
were become features of post-Victorian sensibility. Hudson started to reject the
teachings of orthodox religion and to place his faith in nature even though he could
not explain and justify the force — and fury — of destiny; after his discovery of the
works of Charles Darwin, the English naturalist, whose ideas about natural selection
and evolution were disturbing the intellectual circles of the nineteenth century.

In the United States, this one-time collector of Latin American bird specimens for the
Smithsonian Institution is generally filed under “W. H. Hudson,” and next to
Forgotten. In Japan, his passionate memoir of youth, Far Away and Long Ago—
composed 100 years ago, in 1917—has traditionally been used to teach English.
Since the book’s publication in 1918, students their master pronunciation of the
name William Hudson. In England, where Hudson lived out a long, grey exile
penning books and disputing Darwin himself on woodpeckers, he was called a friend
by Joseph Conrad, “an eagle among canaries” by the novelist Morley Roberts and
more “a thunderstorm” than a man by one female admirer. The London Times, in its
obituary of Hudson, who died in 1922, judged him “unsurpassed as an English writer
on nature.”

He was a master at apprehending the rhythms of nature and reflecting them back to
readers. His vision of Argentina was grand—a limitless plane of possibility, where the
pleasures of nature were only sharpened by hardship. Argentines have a
complicated relationship with rural life, often lionizing the city, but the 1950s
Argentine writer Ezequiel Martínez Estrada championed Hudson’s books, finding in
them an antidote, an illumination revealing the hidden beauties of the sparse terrain.
It took an outsider to make their own country familiar.

“For here the religion that languishes in crowded cities or steals shame
faced to hide itself in dim churches, flourishes greatly, filling the soul with a
solemn joy. Face to face with Nature on the vast hills at eventide, who does
not feel himself near to the Unseen?” - William Henry Hudson “The Purple Land:
Being One Richard Lamb's Adventures in the Banda Oriental, in South America, as Told by Himself”,
p.235
 Famous Works of William Henry Hudson
1. The Purple Land, Being One Richard Lamb's Adventures in the Banda
Orientál, in South America, as told by Himself.

The novel tells the story of Richard Lamb, a young Englishman who marries a
teenage Argentinian girl, Paquita, without asking her father's permission, and is
forced to flee to Montevideo, Uruguay with his bride. Lamb leaves his young wife
with a relative while he sets off for eastern Uruguay to find work for himself. He soon
becomes embroiled in adventures with the Uruguayan gauchos and romances with
local women. Lamb unknowingly helps a rebel guerrilla general, Santa Coloma,
escape from prison and joins his cause. However, the rebels are defeated in battle
and Lamb has to flee in disguise. He helps Demetria, the daughter of an old rebel
leader, escape from her persecutors and returns to Montevideo. Lamb, Paquita,
Demetria and Santa Coloma evade their government pursuers by slipping away on a
boat bound for Buenos Aires. Here the novel ends, but in the opening paragraphs,
Lamb had already informed the reader that after the events of the story he was
captured by Paquita's father and thrown into prison for three years, during which time
Paquita herself died of grief.

2. A Crystal Age

While A Crystal Age (1887) follows the classic structure of a nineteenth century
utopia (a visitor arrives in an idyllic society), its focus on the protagonist's (Smith's)
culture shock makes it a darker, less polemic version. Smith's failure to adapt to the
strict mores of the pleasant, but alien, society he lands in, and his unrequited
passion for one of the utopians, turns this into a utopian tragedy.

3. The Naturalist in La Plata

Celebrated nature classic offers unusual perspective on treeless grasslands of

Argentina. Detailed, accurate observations of desert pampas, wildlife, animal
defense mechanisms, more.
 4. Idle Days in Patagonia

Idle Days in Patagonia is the narrative of his life's great adventure-- a year in
Patagonia. His time there climaxed 30 years as a naturalist, riding and roving in his
native Argentina. His visit to this remote country fulfilled not only a private dream, but
also a scientific mission. His collection of bird skins together with a brilliant report to
the Zoological Society of London more than a century ago added greatly to his
prestige as an ornithologist. In Idle Days of Patagonia, Hudson's scientific interests
harmonize perfectly with his extraordinary narrative and descriptive power. Its acute
observation of nature and man, and its evocation of remote places and strange
peoples mark him as a writer of keenness and distinction.

5. Green Mansions

A failed revolutionary attempt drives the hero of Hudson's novel to seek refuge in
the primeval forests of south-western Venezuela. There, in the 'green mansions' of
the title, Abel encounters the wood-nymph Rima, the last survivor of a mysterious
aboriginal race. The love that flowers between them is soon overshadowed by
cruelty and sorrow. First published in 1904 and a bestseller after its reissue a dozen
years later, Green Mansions offers its readers a poignant meditation on the loss of
wilderness, the dream of a return to nature, and the bitter reality of the encounter
between savage and civilized man.
 Famous Works of William Henry Hudson

1. The Purple Land, Being One Richard Lamb's Adventures in the Banda
Orientál, in South America, as told by Himself.
2. A Crystal Age
3. The Naturalist in La Plata
4. Idle Days in Patagonia
5. Green Mansions
 A Crystal Age
While A Crystal Age (1887) follows the classic structure of a nineteenth century
utopia (a visitor arrives in an idyllic society), its focus on the protagonist's (Smith's)
culture shock makes it a darker, less polemic version. Smith's failure to adapt to the
strict mores of the pleasant, but alien, society he lands in, and his unrequited
passion for one of the utopians, turns this into a utopian tragedy.

The utopian vision centers on harmonious appreciation of nature (animals works

beside humans in telepathic connection and there's a ritualistic observance of the
annual blooming of the rainbow lilies). The society also takes great care over their
clothes, music, and large communal houses. They work a short day, eat vegetarian
food, and express platonic love for an extended family. Brief periods of isolation are
the punishment for disobedience. Lying, overworking, damaging property, and being
unappreciative of natural beauty are the worst crimes.

Smith takes great pleasure in the environment he finds and the culture's beauty and
refinement entices him. He falls in love at first sight with one of the utopian women
and tries to gain acceptance into society, in part, to win her hand. However, instead
of being shown about the utopia, lectured, and introduced to its differences and
expectations — a utopian trope — Smith is adrift. The utopians are slow to recognize
him as an outsider and he is shunned and shamed when he ignorantly offends their
culture. To get along, he finds he must keep his past and questions to himself. No
one will take pains to explain the mores of society to him and he must learn to read
their language before he can educate himself.

By the time he understands the price the utopians have paid for their peaceful life —
a purely platonic existence for all but the Mother and Father of a household — it is
too late. He passionately loves a woman who cannot reciprocate his feelings, in a
society that does not recognize them. He remains torn between the desirability of the
utopia and his roots. While there is some hint that, had he waited to learn more,
things may have worked out differently, ultimately the character's misunderstanding
of his environment leads to his demise.