Finding W. H. Hudson

Conor Mark Jameson

Description

An imposing, life-size oil painting dominates the main meeting room at the RSPB’s base in the heart of England: ‘the man above the fireplace’ – always present, rarely mentioned. Curious about the person in the portrait, the author began a quest to rediscover William Henry Hudson (1841–1922). It became a mission of restoration: stitching back together the faded tapestry of Hudson’s life, re-colouring it in places and adding new threads from the testaments of his closest friends.

This book traces the unassuming field naturalist’s path through a dramatic and turbulent era: from Hudson’s journey to Britain from Argentina in 1874 to the unveiling by the prime minister of a monument and bird sanctuary in his honour 50 years later, in the heart of Hyde Park – a place where the young immigrant had, for a time, slept rough. At its core, this extraordinary story reveals Hudson’s deep influence on the creation of his beloved Bird Society by its founding women, and the rise of the conservation movement. It reveals the strange magnetism of this mysterious man from the Pampas – unschooled, battle-scarred and once penniless – that made his achievements possible, and left such a profound impression on those who knew him.

By the end of his life, Hudson had Hollywood studios bidding for his work. He was a household name through his luminous and seminal nature writing, and the Bird Society had at last reached the climax of a 30-year campaign, working to create the first global alliance of bird protectionists. A century after Hudson’s death, this is a long-overdue tribute to perhaps our most significant – and most neglected – writer-naturalist and wildlife campaigner.

Preface

Acknowledgements

Part 1: Late Victorians

1. Smelling England

2. Salvations

3. The Bird Society

4. Branching Out

5. Saving London’s Birds

6. Further Afoot

Part 2: Twentieth Century

7. Early Edwardians

8. Modernists

9. Later Edwardians

10. Wider Horizons

11. Shadows of War

12. Lamps Going Out

13. Picking up the Pieces

14. Swansongs

A last word

Postscript

Notes

W.H. Hudson’s books and pamphlets

Bibliography

Index

Sujets

• Life Sciences
• birds
• Sciences et techniques
• Biology
• Ornithology
• Zoology
• 454 Life Sciences
• Science

Informations

• Publié par: Pelagic Publishing
• Date de parution: 01 août 2023
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781784273293
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 3 Mo

Extrait

FINDING W.H. HUDSON
Hudson s birthplace and childhood home. It was revived by his admirers, long after it had fallen into disrepair. Image courtesy of the Friends of Hudson Ecological Park Association.
FINDING W.H. HUDSON
The Writer Who Came to Britain to Save the Birds
CONOR MARK JAMESON
PELAGIC PUBLISHING
First published in 2023 by
Pelagic Publishing
20-22 Wenlock Road
London N1 7GU, UK
www.pelagicpublishing.com
Finding W.H. Hudson: The Writer Who Came to Britain to Save the Birds
Copyright © 2023 Conor Mark Jameson
The right of Conor Mark Jameson to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Design and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. Apart from short excerpts for use in research or for reviews, no part of this document may be printed or reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, now known or hereafter invented or otherwise without prior permission from the publisher.
https://doi.org/10.53061/YGVN4872
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 978-1-78427-328-6 Pbk
ISBN 978-1-78427-329-3 ePub
ISBN 978-1-78427-330-9 PDF
Every effort has been made to trace copyright holders and obtain permission to reproduce the material included in this book. Please get in touch with any enquiries or information relating to an image or the rights holder.
To the memory of Hudson and his friends, in particular the women who founded modern conservation campaigning; who turned wildlife from something to be owned and exhibited into something to be nurtured and protected. And to underdogs and chasers of lost causes, everywhere.

Photograph by the author.


William Henry (aka Guillermo Enrique) Hudson age 26 or 27. Image courtesy of the Smithsonian Institution, Washington DC, to whom it was sent by Hudson in 1868.
He had unfailing sympathy with young and inexperienced workers, and gave them every encouragement. When I was young he helped me over many difficult places connected with my position as Honorary Secretary of the Society for the Protection of Birds. His influence was in a curious way both potent, and permanent. Etta Lemon
There was no one I thought more highly of as a man, or respected as a genius. That he was a genius, I think all his real admirers know. Some day the world will become aware of it. Robert Cunninghame Graham
Hudson s writing is like grass that the good God made to grow, and when it is there you cannot tell how it came. Joseph Conrad
Mr Wells, Mr Bennett, and Mr Galsworthy while we thank them for a thousand gifts, we reserve our unconditional gratitude for Mr Hardy, for Mr Conrad, and in a much lesser degree for the Mr Hudson of The Purple Land , Green Mansions , and Far Away and Long Ago . Virginia Woolf
There was no one - no writer - who did not acknowledge without question that Hudson was the greatest living writer of English I have never heard a writer speak of him with anything but reverence that was given to no other human being. For as a writer he was a magician. Ford Madox Ford
I m not one of you damned writers - I m a naturalist from La Plata.
I have no style. I simply write what I think. W.H. Hudson
Contents
Preface
Acknowledgements
Part 1: Late Victorians
1 Smelling England
2 Salvations
3 The Bird Society
4 Branching Out
5 Saving London s Birds
6 Further Afoot
Part 2: Twentieth Century
7 Early Edwardians
8 Modernists
9 Later Edwardians
10 Wider Horizons
11 Shadows of War
12 Lamps Going Out
13 Picking up the Pieces
14 Swansongs
A last word
Postscript
Notes
W.H. Hudson s books and pamphlets
Bibliography
Index
Preface
F or most of the 25 years that I worked for the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB), at The Lodge, Sandy, Bedfordshire, W.H. Hudson was just the man above the fireplace , looking back at the world from a painting: pensive, mute. Then I got to know him better.
A story told by Hudson in his 1901 book Birds and Man captured my imagination. He describes staying in a big house one night, sitting by a fireplace, as a storm raged. He fell asleep and had a nightmare, that when he died he would be stuffed by the taxidermists of hell, like so much of the wildlife he loved, and condemned to eternity with no voice. And it struck me that here he is today, beside a fireplace, voiceless. A mission began to give him back his voice. The more I found out about Hudson, the more perplexed I became that he had faded into obscurity.
In an odd way, this has felt like tracing family, as well as the soul of the organisation for which I worked for so many years. Hudson was contemporary with my grandfathers grandfathers. I don t know much about them, or my great-great-grandmothers, other than that they were essentially rural people, like so many others living through a time of displacement - from the land to the city, from the outdoors to the indoors, from Scotland to Ireland and Ireland to America, with all the loss and regret that accompanied those advances in civilisation. I have recognised in Hudson what feel like family traits, and a kindred spirit in his love for wild nature, and his emigration. 1
The Pampas origins of Hudson, of course, add a whole other dimension of intrigue. His poet friend Edward Thomas captured it rather neatly: W.H. Hudson began by doing an eccentric thing for an English naturalist. He was born in South America. I love that he brings emigration full circle, via Ireland and the USA. He came back - to England - with many stories to tell. He made sense of Britain, in a way only the fresh perspective of half-foreign senses could. He also dared to challenge its norms and sacred cows: not having, nor knowing, his place.
This book is an attempt to give Hudson his voice back, to help it be heard; in a sense to revive him and his milieu. It seems that everyone wanted to keep the letters Hudson wrote to them - and he wrote a lot of letters. Hudson, meanwhile, burned almost all of those he received, and is said to have requested that his friends do the same. In many cases they went against his apparent wishes, enabling me to piece together the friend and colleague they so obviously loved, for all his native lack of delicacy , 2 and his complexity: for indeed he was complex.

Detail of the Hudson portrait by Frank Brooks that hangs above the fireplace at RSPB headquarters.
Hudson lived with fragile health and an almost constant dread of death. He veered between euphoria and gloom, between love and compassion for people and fellow creatures, and bitterness and scorn. People better qualified than me might today search for labels for his mental health.
In any event, while writing this book I have not found there to be any shortage of material to work from in forming a sense of Hudson s circumstances, character and motivations. There are several published books of his letters - to Edward Garnett, Morley Roberts, George Gissing (and many others) and Robert Don Roberto Cunninghame Graham - and published compilations of his correspondence to a range of friends and colleagues. The notes and references are grouped by chapter as endnotes.
Hudson said that he wished to be forgotten, and discouraged his contemporaries from picking over his life. It didn t deter Morley Roberts, one of his enduring friends, from immediately writing a portrait of him, with around ten further biographies to follow. What has struck me is that no one has focused on Hudson the field naturalist and campaigner - his efforts for his beloved Bird Society and the cause of bird protection have usually been at most a subplot, and usually incidental. But Hudson was first and foremost a spirit of nature and a champion of its protection. As he himself once declared to his literary friends: I m not one of you damned writers: I m a naturalist from La Plata. 3
One way or another, Hudson s importance to the history of nature conservation has been overlooked and forgotten in his adopted homeland. I hope, by telling this story, to help put that right. If this book inspires others to find out more about Hudson, his life and times, it will have done its job. I will be happy for this work to be continued and augmented, and for any of my lines of enquiry to be explored further.
Conor Mark Jameson Cambridgeshire, June 2023
The Bird Society - a note on terminology
W.H. Hudson always called it the Bird Society, the organisation we know today as the RSPB. Following his lead, and his instinct for readability, I have used this name throughout. It means the organisation that began life as the Society for the Protection of Birds (SPB, before the Royal R was added in 1904 to make it RSPB) and which merged with the Fur, Fin and Feather Folk in the early 1890s.
Acknowledgements
Special thanks to Sara Evans, Diana Donald, Jane Bransby, Tessa Boase, Peter Dance, Lachie Munro, Cecilia Hecht, Jason Wilson (author of Living in the Sound of the Wind ) and Nigel Collar. Also sincere thanks and abrazos to Andie Filadora and Maria Laura Josens, for their kind hospitality and companionship on our tour of the Pampas. To Francisco Gonzalez Taboas, my guide in finding Hudson s childhood home, and to Atilio Martinez, Ruben Ravera and the Friends of Hudson Ecological Park Association for welcoming me there and showing me round their beautifully curated Museo. Nigel Massen, David Hawkins and all at Pelagic Publishing, as well as Jeremy Complin for his indexing expertise. Elizabeth George, Lizzie Sparrow, Tara-Lee Platt, Emma Whiteway and the RSPB library team. To the Society of Authors, as the literary representative of the Estate of W.H. Hudson. And in particular to Justine Palmer and the trustees of the Royal Literary Fund for their kind words and support at a vital time.
Special thanks for photographs to the Smithsonian Inst