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The Elusive Paradise: a Study of W.H.Hudson

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David Lindsay Sean Miller THE ELUSIVE PARADISE: A STUDY OF W.H. HUDSON A thesis submitted for the degree of Ph.D, at Royal Holloway College, University of London, 1985 ProQuest Number: 10097573 All rights reserved INFORMATION TO ALL USERS The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. In the unlikely event that the author did not send a complete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. uest. ProQuest 10097573 Published by ProQuest LLC(2016). Copyright of the Dissertation is held by the Author. All rights reserved. This work is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code. Microform Edition © ProQuest LLC. ProQuest LLC 789 East Eisenhower Parkway P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml 48106-1346 CONTENTS Pa%e Abstract 2 Abbreviations Used in Text 3 Introduction 4 Notes to the Introduction 28 PART ONE 33 Chapter One 33 Chapter Two 44 Chapter Three 52 Chapter Four 58 Chapter Five 62 Chapter Six 67 Chapter Seven 77 Chapter Eight 82 Notes to Part One 91 PART TJO 102 Chapter One 102 Chapter Two 111 Chapter Three 118 Chapter Four 127 Chapter Five 137 Chapter Six 151 Chapter Seven 182 Notes to Part Two 191 Conclusion 207 Notes to the Conclusion 211 Select Bibliography 212 ABSTRACT I will argue in this thesis that W.H. Hudson's fiction and non-fiction share the same symbolic substructure: that of the elusive Paradise. Through attention to the concrete details of the world, in certain moments at least, Hudson apprehends an invisible or supernatural dimension. These moments might appropriately be termed epiphanic. What I shall call 'affirmative* epiphany affirms the earthly by revealing the divine through or within it; it is either directly paradisiac, or assimilable to a vision of the earthly Paradise. In contrast to the 'affirmative' epiphany, there is also 'negative' epiphany which opens up a chasm of terror and dread. Violence, affliction, and human submersion in evil are amongst the things that play into the notion of 'negative' epiphany. I will also show that, in Hudson's fiction, there are indications that evil is written into the network of chance and natural law; so that the 'darkness' or evil disclosed by 'negative' epiphany can be seen as ontologically prior to the actions of the human will. The paradisial endures as a fractured and elusive subject of experience, constantly threatened by contingency, violence, or evil. I will also show how, for Hudson, rationalistic and mechanistic ideologies (especially Darwinism) are an obstacle to consistent belief in the spiritual. In this thesis I will attempt to redress the tendency to concentrate on Hudson first and foremost as a nature writer by giving priority to his fiction, which develops the mythopoeic or symbolic aspects of his vision to a greater extent and, I will argue, for this reason involves a deeper or more profound expression of that vision. In Part One I will be using examples from his non-fiction in my examination of his fundamental concerns; in Part Two I will show how these concerns are developed at a greater depth in his fiction. Abbreviations Used in Text; Adventures Among Birds: AAB. Birds and Man: m, The Book of a Naturalist: BN. A Crystal Age: CA. Dead Man's Plack and An Old Thorn: DMP. El Ombu: EO. Far Away and Long Ago: FALA. Green Mansions: Œ. Hampshire Days: HD. A Hind in Richmond Park: HRP. The Land's End: M* Letters from W.H. Hudson to Edward Garnett: LWHH. Men, Books and Birds: MBS. Nature in Downland: 1Î2* The Purple Land: PL. INTRODUCTION 1 The disparity between W.H. Hudson's reputation during his lifetime (or at least, in his last years) and for some time after, and the general dissolution of that reputation is so marked, and the extent of the former reputation so largely forgotten, that some details demand to be set down as an indication. A re-examination of Hudson's work needn't speculate on the reasons for this disparity - and I will not attempt to do so here - but in remarking the disparity it can at least give some indication that Hudson's present position of marginality should not be taken for granted. To give some idea of how marginal a figure Hudson is now considered, we might consider a few contemporary books on the history of English literature (including those specifically on post-Victorian and modern writers). In such works as Arnold Kettle's An Introduction to the English Novel, Vol. 2; From Henry James to 1950, Raymond Williams' The English Novel; From Dickens to Lawrence, F.W. Bateson's A Guide to English Literature, and Peter Quennell's A History of English Literature, there is no mention whatsoever of Hudson. The list could be greatly extended. Where Hudson i_s mentioned in such works, it is usually as a non-fiction writer, so that his important fictional works - and the interrelationship between the fiction and the non-fiction - are neglected or obscured. In A.C. Ward's Illustrated History of English Literature, Vol. 3; Blake to Shaw, we find (as the complete account of Hudson) : W.H. Hudson... among numerous writings on birds and animals, achieved a masterpiece of the Wiltshire countryside in A Shepherd's Life (1910) and a fine autobiography treating largely of his childhood in Argentina, Far Away and Long Ago (1918). 1 In his Twentieth-Century English Literature; 1901-1960, Ward singles these two books out at the expense of the fiction, saying that: Imaginative romance was not his natural field. He was happier in a form which allowed direct transmission of his extraordinarily acute faculty of observation, and in the discursively personal books he is most truly himself.... (He goes on to say that A Shepherd's Life 'is a book to stand with Walton's The Compleat Angler and White's Selborne', while Far Away and Long Ago 'is more than a plain autobiographical record. It abounds in remembered 2 beauties and wise reflections.') Samuel C. Chew and Richard D. Altick's The Nineteenth Century and After contains a brief paragraph on Hudson in which its authors say that: [^He]| is sometimes numbered among writers of fiction, but this is to suggest a false emphasis, for he was a novelist only sporadically and inexpertly. (...) In all [[his fiction] the mode of tale-telling is quite artless, dependent upon Hudson's own experiences or upon hearsay. His material was not unlike Conrad's, but though he was that master's admiring friend, he was without Conrad's subtleties in 'arranging' the data stored in memory. 3 This supposed 'artlessness' would be better described as an impression of effortlessness achieved through skill and a self-conscious, intelligent use of simplicity; so Conrad, amongst others, saw it - Conrad who was, we can say, at least as much Hudson's 'admiring friend' as Hudson was his. Ford Madox Ford has pointed out that, Conrad - who was an even more impassioned admirer of Hudson's talent than am even I - used to say: "You may try for ever to l e a m how Hudson got his effects and you will never know. He writes down his words as the good God makes the green grass to grow, and that is all you will ever find to say about it if you try for ever." 4 (Ford repeats this in Joseph Conrad; A Personal Remembrance, where he says: Our greatest admiration |_that is, Conrad's and his own^ for a stylist in any language was given to W.H. Hudson of whom Conrad said that his writing was like the grass that the good God made to grow and when it was there you could not tell how it came.) 5 Ford is careful to put this down to skill, especially in regard to selection of details. (He asks: 'But why did Hudson select that exactly right image with which to get in his picture? His secrets were too well protected.') At the same time he insists on the resistance of Hudson's technical skill to any complete or final analysis; He shared with Turgenev the quality that makes you unable to find out how he got his effects. Like Turgenev he was utterly undramatic in his methods, and his books have that same quality that [[si(Q have those of the author of Fathers and Children. When you read them you forget the lines and the print. 7 We can gather also from Ford that this high esteem for Hudson was held by many other of his contemporaries. In fact. Ford claims, 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 a reverence that was given to no other human being. For as a writer he was a magician. 8 Nor was Hudson's fiction excluded from this esteem; Ford, who characterizes Hudson as a 'great imaginative writer', lists Green Mansions, El Ombu and The Purple Land as among Hudson's 'masterpieces'. He writes: The Purple Land is Romance; it is Romance as it was never before and never again will be put into words.... If I have heard one, I have heard twenty of Hudson's rivals, from Conrad to Maurice Hewlett, or from Galsworthy to the much-too-much-forgotten George Gissing, say that The Purple Land is the supreme - is the only - rendering of Romance in the English language; and if I have heard one I have heard twenty say that Green Mansions is Anglo-Saxondom's only rendering of hopeless, of aching passion.
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