The best books by and about W. H. Hudson, in his own words

A selection of Hudson’s letters to publisher’s reader Edward Garnett was published the year after Hudson’s death. The collection was expanded in an edition published soon after the first, and in this one Garnett added a preface in which he quoted at length from and responded to some of the criticism the first edition had brought on him.

Writing in the Sunday Times, Edmund Gosse felt that the letters didn’t show Hudson at his best, owing to the provocations of his correspondent that might be guessed at from Hudson’s responses. But Hudson was wise enough and had known his opposite number long enough to work out when he was being ‘dug out’. Sometimes, however, he was in no mood to resist rising to the bait. 

"Old Huddy is amusingly down on me in many passages," Garnett wrote to John Galsworthy, when the collection was first published. "A bit of a sham fight goes on, mixed in with the realities." We can guess which of his views were heartfelt and which were badinage. Either way, Old Huddy’s words would continue to sell for some time yet, long after his death. Besides the Sunday Times there was also a critical review in the New Statesman. The Times Literary Supplement’s critique was full of praise.

Overall the collection seems fair, and Hudson knew that his letters would be sold, and didn’t begrudge his friends making money from them. What’s clear is that Hudson didn’t insist on everything being burned, as is often stated.

The letters were published by  Edward's son David ‘Bunny’ Garnett under a new imprint he had just created, Nonesuch Press. Garnett Jnr went on to become a pivotal figure in the Bloomsbury circle.

The curious charisma of Hudson lingered. Six years after Hudson’s death, Garnett told Robert Cunninghame Graham that he had "never been so captured wholly by any man or writer as by Hudson".

I particularly enjoyed this book. Hudson’s ornithological expedition in this desolate wilderness was made partly ‘idle’ by the mishap he had when examining a faulty pistol, shooting himself in the knee.

He described his solitary confinement in a remote cabin while his sole companion went off to seek help. He shared his bed with a venomous snake, and was later ferried to hospital by bullock cart, a journey of many hours over rough terrain.

"My miserable journey ended at dawn at the Mission House. Later in the day, on awakening, I found myself in the hands of a gentleman who was a skilful surgeon as well as a divine. My bullet, however, refused to be extracted. Every morning for a fortnight my host, with a quiet smile on his lips, would present a succession of probes – oh those probes of all forms, sizes and materials: wood, ivory, steel and gutta-percha… Then there would be nothing more for me to do but to lie watching the flies, and dreaming…"

Hudson must have held the book in some affection too. Nearly 20 years later, when Dorothy Brett married the eldest son of his dear friend Margaret Brooke (the fabled Ranee of Sarawak), of all his books Hudson gave the happy couple a signed copy of Idle Days. King George and Queen Alexandra, meanwhile, sent a pearl and diamond brooch.

In December 1903, as he was away from his London base, Hudson asked his wife Emily to send a copy of his manuscript of Green Mansions to Edward Garnett, and confided to his literary reader his misgivings about it: 

"[I] was again struck painfully by the cumbersomeness of the form. Perhaps some little alteration might be made here… the introductory chapters seem too slow: the story doesn’t move at all, it simply sits still and stews contentedly in its own juice; and it doesn’t even stew, or boil, a barbolloner, but simmers placidly away, like a saucepot of cocoa-nibs that has all the day before it. This too might be remedied to some extent. There are, I daresay, some good points in the book, especially the hero’s feeling for nature; and he being a Venezuelan some might say that it is all wrong. But of course it is a delusion that this feeling is confined to our race and that it is a thing of to-day. It is as strong in some of the old Spanish poets as in some of the modern English poets which show it most, and I have known S. Americans with that passion as strong in them as any Englishman… But you can see all this and much besides better than I can, and I will no further seek its merits to disclose or draw its frailties from their typewritten abode."

It is fascinating to note the doubts Hudson was having over a novel that was about to catapult him to whole new levels of fame and some fortune, with a little help from his friends – and especially his reader Garnett, who honed the manuscripts of D. H. Lawrence, E. M. Forster, and John Galsworthy, among many other stellar names. Like them, Hudson was about to become a household name in North America as well as in Britain.

We can piece together the day when Green Mansions had been accepted for publication: it was 17 November 1903. In the morning, Hudson dropped in to the Bird Society office at Hanover Square where it had just been agreed that his campaign pamphlet The Yellow Bird was going to print, with 5,000 copies being ordered. Fame and success never distracted Hudson from the basics of his conservation mission.

In November 1915 Hudson was in the care of nurses in a Cornish convent hospital, much burdened by news from the Western Front. ‘Shall I live to see peace on earth again?’ he asked Don Roberto Cunninghame Graham in a letter.

"To me nothing is left but memories, and I’m here putting some of my boyhood’s days in a book which will have a certain interest because it gives a sort of picture of the country and people before it began to be civilised."

He was writing a memoir. A combination of Don Roberto’s missives, fevered dreams, and possibly medication sparked Hudson’s visions of his Pampas childhood. He asked his nurses for paper and pencils and began to scribble what would become his acclaimed memoir, Far Away and Long Ago. Virginia Woolf said she greeted the book "like an old friend". It remains a classic of its genre.

This was another compilation of essays.

Hudson told Don Roberto Cunninghame Graham he thought it "quite as good as anything in that line I’ve done before," as he supplied one for Don Roberto's mother Missy Bontine. It was a rare example of him expressing satisfaction in anything he’d written.

When people ask me where to start with Hudson, I usually suggest starting with one of the essay books (Birds and Man or Adventures Among Birds are others).