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William Henry Hudson

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William Henry Hudson
William Henry Hudson
Born(1841-08-04)4 August 1841
Quilmes, Buenos Aires Province, Argentina
Died18 August 1922(1922-08-18) (aged 81)
Kensington, London, England
NationalityEnglish Argentine
Known forGreen Mansions (novel)
Scientific career
FieldsNatural history
Ornithology

William Henry Hudson (4 August 1841 – 18 August 1922), known in Argentina as Guillermo Enrique Hudson, was an Anglo-Argentine author, naturalist and ornithologist. Born in the Argentinian pampas where he roamed free in his youth, he observed bird life and collected specimens for the Smithsonian Institution. The Patagonian birds Knipolegus hudsoni and Asthenes hudsoni are named after him. He would later write about life in Patagonia that drew special admiration for his style. His most popular work Green Mansions (1904), a romance set in the Venezuelan forest inspired a Hollywood movie and several other works.

Life

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Hudson was the fourth child of Daniel Hudson (1804–1868) and his wife Caroline Augusta née Kemble (1804–1859), United States' settlers of English and Irish origin. His paternal grandwather was from Clyst Hydon in Devon. He was born and lived his first years in a small estancia called "Los Veinte-cinco Ombues"[1] which was on the banks of the Arroyo Conchitas stream which flows into the Plata river in what is now Ingeniero Allan, Florencio Varela, Argentina.[2]

In 1846 the family established at a pulpería further south, Las Acacias, in the surroundings of Chascomús, not far from the lake of the same name.[3] In this natural environment, Hudson spent his youth studying the local flora and fauna and observing both natural and human dramas on what was then a lawless frontier. He was taught by three tutors who lived on the ranch. He became keenly interested in the life of the pampas, and grew up with gaucho herders, native Indians, settlers with whom he explored the pampas and developed a special love for Patagonia. At the age of fifteen he suffered from a serious typhus fever and still later suffered from rheumatic fever. At sixteen he read Gilbert White's Natural History of Selbourne and was deeply influenced to study natural history. In 1859 his mother, a devout Christian, died, and in the same year he read Darwin's Origin of Species.[4] From 1866 he collected bird skins for the Smithsonian Institution but he would note later the glory of birds in life and the vanity of taxidermy.[5] He also collected insect specimens for Hermann Burmeister in Buenos Aires and sent bird specimens to the Zoological Society of London from 1870. In 1870 he wrote his a series of nine letters on the ornithology of Buenos Ayres that were published by P. L. Sclater in the Proceedings of the Royal Zoological Society. In his third letter of 1870 Hudson takes on some statements made by Darwin on Patagonian birds. Darwin noted that the woodpecker Colaptes campestris occurred on the Pampas where not a tree grew and Hudson argued that there were indeed trees on the La Plata and that in must vaster grassland areas, the woodpecker was never found.[6] Darwin responded, accepting that he may have been mistaken in some of his observations but that there was no wilful error and clarified the location where he had made his observations.[7] In 1872 Hudson sent specimens of birds from Patagonia, including a species Sclater would describe and name after Hudson as Cnipolegus hudsoni (spelling used in the paper).[8] Hudson was initially skeptical about evolution but he would later be a grudging evolutionist.

Around 1918

Hudson saw the pampas being destroyed by European immigrants and in April 1874 he boarded the steamer Ebro to England. He is said to have slept in Hyde park after arrival and struggled to find employment and attempted to make a living through writing. In 1876 he married singer Emily (1829-1921)[9] daughter of John Hanmer Wingrave [10]and lived in her home at Southwick Crescent where she ran boarding houses. They later moved to rented rooms and she tried to make a living by giving music lessons. They later moved to a larger three-story house in Bayswater that Emily inherited.[11] They lived in a flat and rented out the others which paid back their debts. They had no children.[12] He wrote several books including a two-volume work on Argentine Ornithology,Idle Days in Patagonia, and the The Naturalist in La Plata. He began to travel in England and wrote Nature in Downland (1900). His books on the English countryside, all of them set in Wiltshire, including Hampshire Days (1903), Afoot in England (1909), and A Shepherd's Life (1910), which helped foster the back-to-nature movement of the 1920s and 1930s. Hudson became a British citizen in 1900[13] and in 1901 he received a pension of £150 per year for his writings on natural history.

Commemorative plaque at 11 Leinster Square, London

Hudson was more than six feet tall and he loved to talk to people from rural working classes and would live among them during his travels in the countryside. Hudson was a friend of the late-19th century English author George Gissing, whom he met in 1889. They corresponded until the latter's death in 1903, occasionally exchanging their publications, discussing literary and scientific matters, and commenting on their respective access to books and newspapers, a matter of supreme importance to Gissing. He campaigned (1900) against the building of the National Physical Laboratory in the grounds of Kew Gardens.[14] He began to write fiction, his most popular work being Green Mansions (1904) which was set in a Venezuelan forest. In 1959 it was made into a movie. Other works of fiction included The Purple Land (1904), A Crystal Age (1906), Tales of the Pampas (1916), and A Little Boy Lost (1905). He wrote an autobiographical book Far Away and Long Ago (1918). In 1911 his wife became invalid and she was taken care of by nurse in Worthing, Sussex, until her death in 1921. Hudson lived in London with a weak heart and died on 18 August 1922, at 40 St Luke’s Road, Westbourne Park, Bayswater,[15] and was buried in Broadwater and Worthing Cemetery, Worthing, on 22 August 1922, next to his wife, who had died early in 1921.[16] He left some bequests but nearly his entire estate of £8225 was left to the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds of which he was an early member.[15] His Executors were the publisher Ernest Bell and Wynnard Hooper, a journalist. He wanted his notebooks and papers to be destroyed and did not want his life to be written about.[a][9][18]

Personal views

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Hudson was an advocate of Lamarckian evolution.[citation needed] Early in his life he was a critic of Darwinism and defended vitalism. He was influenced by the non-Darwinian evolutionary writings of Samuel Butler.[19][20][21] Hudson considered himself an animist and although he was familiar with Christian tradition from his mother he did not belong to any denomination.[22][23]

Recognition and awards

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Hudson memorial in Hyde Park

In 1925 a memorial to him was inaugurated in Hyde Park by Stanley Baldwin. A stone panel made by Jacob Epstein depicting Rima from Green Mansions. The engravings are by the designer Eric Gill. It stands in the Hudson Memorial Bird Sanctuary in Hyde Park, not far from where he slept upon arrival to England.[2]

Ernest Hemingway referred to Hudson's The Purple Land (1885) in his novel The Sun Also Rises, and to Far Away and Long Ago in his posthumous novel The Garden of Eden (1986). He listed Far Away and Long Ago in a suggested reading list for a young writer.[24]

James Rebanks' 2015 book The Shepherd's Life about a Lake District farmer was inspired by Hudson's work of the same name: "But even more than Orwell or Hemingway, W.H. Hudson turned me into a book obsessive ..." (p. 115), and: "One day, I pulled A Shepherd's Life by W.H. Hudson from the bookcase ...and the sudden life-changing realization it gave me that we could be in books – great books." (p. 114)

In Argentina, Hudson is considered to belong to the national literature as Guillermo Enrique Hudson, the Spanish version of his name. A town in Berazategui Partido and several other public places and institutions are named after him. The town of Hudson in Buenos Aires Province is named for him.

Works

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The complete collected works of Hudson produced in 1922-3 went to 24 volumes.[23]

Hudson's best-known novel is Green Mansions (1904), which was adapted into a a film starring Audrey Hepburn and Anthony Perkins, and his best-known non-fiction is Far Away and Long Ago (1918), which was also made into a film.

  • The Purple Land that England Lost: Travels and Adventures in the Banda Oriental, South America (1885)
  • A Crystal Age (1887)
  • Argentine Ornithology (1888)
  • Ralph Herne (1888)
  • Fan–The Story of a Young Girl's Life (1892), as Henry Harford
  • The Naturalist in la Plata (1892)
  • Idle Days in Patagonia (1893)
  • Birds in a Village (1893)[25]
  • Lost British Birds (1894), pamphlet
  • British Birds (1895), with a chapter by Frank Evers Beddard
  • Osprey; or, Egrets and Aigrettes (1896)
  • Birds in London (1898)
  • Nature in Downland (1900)
  • Birds and Man (1901)
  • El Ombú (1902),[26] stories; later South American Sketches
  • Hampshire Days (1903)
  • Green Mansions: A Romance of the Tropical Forest (1904)
  • A Little Boy Lost (1905)
  • Land's End. A Naturalist's Impressions in West Cornwall (1908)
  • Afoot in England (1909)
  • A Shepherd's Life: Impressions of the South Wiltshire Downs (1910)
  • Adventures Among Birds (1913)[27]
  • Tales of the Pampas (1916)
  • Far Away and Long Ago – A History of My Early Life (1918; new edition by Eland, 2005)
  • The Book of a Naturalist (1919)
  • Birds in Town and Village (1919)
  • Birds of La Plata (1920) two volumes
  • Dead Man's Plack and An Old Thorn (1920) – see Dead Man's Plack
  • A Traveller in Little Things (1921)
  • Tired Traveller (1921), essay
  • Seagulls in London. Why They Took To Coming To Town (1922), essay
  • A Hind in Richmond Park (1922)
  • The Collected Works (1922–23), 24 volumes
  • 153 Letters from W.H. Hudson (1923), edited by Edward Garnett
  • Rare Vanishing & Lost British Birds (1923)
  • Men, Books and Birds (1925)
  • The Disappointed Squirrel (1925) from The Book of a Naturalist
  • Mary's Little Lamb (1929)
  • South American Romances (1930) The Purple Land; Green Mansions; El Ombú
  • W.H. Hudson's Letters to R. B. Cunninghame Graham (Golden Cockerel Press 1941; about R. B. Cunninghame Graham)
  • Tales of the Gauchos (1946)
  • Letters on the Ornithology of Buenos Ayres (1951), edited by David W. Dewar
  • Diary Concerning his Voyage from Buenos Aires to Southampton on the Ebro (1958)
  • Gauchos of the Pampas and Their Horses (1963), stories, with R.B. Cunninghame Graham
  • English Birds and Green Places: Selected Writings (1964) ISBN 0-575-07207-5
  • Birds of A Feather: Unpublished Letters of W.H. Hudson (1981), edited by D. Shrubsall
  • Landscapes and Literati: Unpublished letters of W.H. Hudson and George Gissing (1985), edited by Dennis Shrubsall and Pierre Coustillas

Bibliographies

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  • G. F. Wilson (1922, 1968) Bibliography of the Writings of W.H. Hudson
  • John R. Payne (1977) W.H. Hudson. a Bibliography

Biographies

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  • Morley Roberts (1924) W.H. Hudson
  • Ford Madox Ford (1937) Portraits from Life
  • Robert Hamilton (1946) W.H. Hudson:The Vision of Earth
  • Richard E. Haymaker (1954) From Pampas to Hedgerows and Downs: A Study of W. H. Hudson
  • Alicia Jurado (1971) Vida y obra de W.H. Hudson
  • John T. Frederick (1972) William Henry Hudson
  • D. Shrubsall (1978) W.H. Hudson, Writer and Naturalist
  • Ruth Tomalin (1982) W.H. Hudson – a biography
  • Amy D. Ronner (1986) W.H. Hudson: The Man, The Novelist, The Naturalist
  • David Miller (1990) W.H. Hudson and the Elusive Paradise[9]
  • Felipe Arocena (2003) William Henry Hudson: Life, Literature and Science
  • Jason Wilson: Living in the sound of the wind, [A Personal Quest For W. H. Hudson, Naturalist And Writer From The River Plate], London : Constable, 2016 ISBN 978-1-4721-2205-6

Notes

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  1. ^ There is a burial record for Emily Hudson in 1921, in a grave next to one which was to be occupied by William the following year. The General Registars Office record of the death of an Emily Hudson dying in 1921 in this area of Sussex gives her age as around 4 years older than is given in the censuses. One carefully researched biographical study states that she was "eleven years his senior".[9] For the census of 1911 Hudson gave his wife’s age as sixty.[17]

References

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  1. ^ Hudson, William Henry (1918). Far Away and Long Ago. p. 12.
  2. ^ a b O’Mara, Richard (2010). "On William Henry Hudson". Sewanee Review. 118 (4): 575–585. doi:10.1353/sew.2010.0053. ISSN 1934-421X.
  3. ^ Parodiz, Juan José (1981). Darwin in the New World. Brill Archive. p. 93. ISBN 978-90-04-06546-8.
  4. ^ Ainley, Marianne Gosztonyi (1983). "Review of W. H. Hudson: A Biography". The Auk. 100 (3): 789–791. ISSN 0004-8038.
  5. ^ In Birds and Man (1915) he wrote “….and the best work of the taxidermist, who has given a life to his bastard art, produces in the mind only sensations of irritation and disgust”
  6. ^ Hudson, W.H. (1870). "Third letter on the ornithology of Buenos Ayres". Proceedings of the Zoological Society of London: 158–160.
  7. ^ Darwin, C. "Note on the habits of the Pampas woodpecker (Colaptes campestris)". Proceedings of the Zoological Society of London: 705–706.
  8. ^ Hudson, W.H. (1872). "On the birds of the Rio Negro of Patagonia". Proceedings of the Zoological Society of London: 534–550.
  9. ^ a b c d David Lindsay Sean Miller (1985). "The elusive paradise: a study of W. H. Hudson" (PDF). Royal Holloway College, University of London & ProQuest LLC, Ann Arbor MI. Retrieved 4 February 2021.
  10. ^ “Emily Wingrave”, in England, Select Births and Christenings, 1538-1975, ancestry.co.uk: “Gender: Female / Birth Date: 22 Dec 1829 / Baptism Date: 18 Mar 1830 / Baptism Place: Saint James, Westminster / Father: John Hanmer Wingrave / Mother: Sarah” (subscription required)
  11. ^ The Post Victorians:W H Hudson by H J Massingham, p261
  12. ^ General Registars Office records of marriages; censuses for 1881, 1891, 1901, 1911
  13. ^ Taking the oath of allegiance on that date: UK Naturalisation Certificates and Declarations 1870–1916, Piece 030, Certificate Numbers A11301-A11700
  14. ^ "Saving Kew Gardens". Richmond Local History Society. Retrieved 8 November 2023.
  15. ^ a b “HUDSON William Henry of at 40 St Luke’s-road Westbourne Park died 18 August 1922” in Wills and Administrations (England and Wales) 1922, p. 267
  16. ^ "Burial register search - Adur & Worthing Councils". www.adur-worthing.gov.uk.
  17. ^ 1911 United Kingdom census, St Luke’s Road, Kensington, ancestry.co.uk, accessed 25 March 2022 (subscription required)
  18. ^ Shrubsall, Dennis and Pierre Coustillas eds. Landscape and literati: unpublished letters of W. H. Hudson and George Gissing. Salisbury: Michael Russell, 1985. Also various references in Coustillas, Pierre ed.London and the Life of Literature in Late Victorian England: the Diary of George Gissing. Brighton: Harvester Press, 1978.
  19. ^ Wilson, Jason (1981). W H Hudson: the Colonial's Revenge (PDF). University of London.
  20. ^ Haymaker, Richard E. (1954). From Pampas to Hedgerows and Downs: A Study of W. H. Hudson. Bookman Associates. p. 197
  21. ^ Miller, David. (1990). W. H. Hudson and the Elusive Paradise. Palgrave Macmillan. pp. 78–82. ISBN 978-0-312-03698-0
  22. ^ Naylor, Simon (2001). "Discovering Nature, Rediscovering the Self: Natural Historians and the Landscapes of Argentina". Environment and Planning D: Society and Space. 19 (2): 227–247. doi:10.1068/d207t. ISSN 0263-7758.
  23. ^ a b Shrubsall, Dennis (23 September 2004). "Hudson, William Henry". In Matthew, H. C. G.; Harrison, B. (eds.). The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Oxford: Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/34038. Retrieved 5 August 2024.
  24. ^ "Ernest Hemingway Creates a Reading List for a Young Writer, 1934 | Open Culture".
  25. ^ Watkins, M. G. (26 August 1893). "Review of Birds in a Village by W. H. Hudson". The Academy. 44 (1112): 174–175.
  26. ^ "Review of El Ombú by W. H. Hudson". Saturday Review of Politics, Literature, Science and Art. 93 (2432): 376. 7 June 1902.
  27. ^ "Review of Adventures among Birds by W. H. Hudson". The Athenaeum (4467): 626. 7 June 1913.
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