He is, of course, a distinguished naturalist, probably the most acute, broad-minded, and understanding of all observers of Nature. And this, in an age of specialism, which loves to put men into pigeon-holes and label them, has been a misfortune to the reading public, who seeing the label Naturalist, pass on and reach down the nearest novel. Hudson has indeed the gifts and knowledge of a Naturalist, but that is a mere fraction of his value and interest. A really great writer such as this is no more to be circumscribed by a single word than America by the part of it called New York. The expert knowledge which Hudson has of Nature gives to all his work backbone and surety of fibre, and to his sense of beauty an intimate actuality. But his real eminence and extraordinary attraction lie in his spirit and philosophy. We feel from his writings that he is nearer to Nature than other men, and yet more truly civilised. The competitive, towny culture, the queer up-to-date commercial knowingness with which we are so busy coating ourselves, simply will not stick to him.
JOHN GALSWORTHY: Foreword to Far Away and Long Ago (1925)
Of American parents of English descent, he was born in Argentina near Buenos Aires, and worked on his father’s farm until he was fifteen, when rheumatic fever left him disabled for the rest of his life. His interest in ornithology now increased, and he began to publish essays and stories on natural history in English and Argentinian journals. In 1874 he emigrated to London, where he spent the rest of his life in sporadic poverty and loneliness. Although he published a number of novels and short stories, including The Purple Land that England Lost (1885), A Crystal Age (1887), much admired by Belloc, Green Mansions (1904), Idle Days in Patagonia (1893) and A Shepherd’s Life (1910), Hudson regarded himself more as a scientist, and it was his books on birds and natural life that he prized most: Argentine Ornithology (1888), The Naturalist in La Plata (1892), British Birds (1895), Birds in London (1898), Nature in Downland (1900), Birds and Man (1901) and Birds of La Plata (1920). In 1901 he was awarded a Civil List pension, which enabled him to explore England. His most popular work remains Far Away and Long Ago (1918), the autobiographical account of his childhood from which Tippett chose a passage for his Boyhood’s End.
What, then, did I want? – what did I ask to have? If the question had been put to me then, and if I had been capable of expressing what was in me, I should have replied: I want only to keep what I have; to rise each morning and look out on the sky and the grassy dew-wet earth from day to day, from year to year. To watch every June and July for spring, to feel the same old sweet surprise and delight at the appearance of each familiar flower, every new-born insect, every bird returned once more from the north. To listen in a trance of delight to the wild notes of the golden plover coming once more to the great plain, flying, flying south, flock succeeding flock the whole day long. Oh, those wild beautiful cries of the golden plover! I could exclaim with Hafiz2, with but one word changed: ‘If after a thousand years that sound should float o’er my tomb, my bones uprising in their gladness would dance in the sepulchre!’ To climb trees and put my hand down in the deep hot nest of the Bien-te-veo3 and feel the hot eggs – the five long pointed cream-coloured eggs with chocolate spots and splashes at the larger end. To lie on a grassy bank with the blue water between me and beds of tall bulrushes, listening to the mysterious sounds of the wind and of hidden rails and coots and courlans4 conversing together in strange human-like tones; to let my sight dwell and feast on the camaloté5 flower amid its floating masses of moist vivid green leaves – the large alamanda-like flower6 of a purest divine yellow that when plucked sheds its lovely petals, to leave you with nothing but a green stem in your hand. To ride at noon on the hottest days, when the whole earth is a-glitter with illusory water, and see the cattle and horses in thousands, covering the plain at their watering-places; to visit some haunt of large birds at that still, hot hour and see storks, ibises, grey herons, egrets of a dazzling whiteness, and rose-coloured spoonbills and flamingoes, standing in the shallow water in which their motionless forms are reflected. To lie on my back on the rust-brown grass in January and gaze up at the wide hot whitey-blue sky, peopled with millions and myriads of glistening balls of thistle-down, ever, ever floating by; to gaze and gaze until they are to me living things and I, in an ecstasy, am with them, floating in that immense shining void!