Far Away and Long Ago: A History of My Early Life

By William Henry Hudson and W H Hudson

Book Overview

W.H. Hudson, in full William Henry Hudson (born August 4, 1841, near Buenos Aires, Argentina-died August 18, 1922, London, England), British author, naturalist, and ornithologist, best known for his exotic romances, especially Green Mansions.Hudson's parents were originally New Englanders who took up sheep farming in Argentina. He spent his childhood-lovingly recalled in Far Away and Long Ago (1918)-freely roaming the pampas, studying the plant and animal life, and observing both natural and human dramas on what was then a lawless frontier. After an illness at 15 permanently affected his health, he became introspective and studious; his reading of Charles Darwin's Origin of Species, which confirmed his own observations of nature, had a particularly strong impact. After his parents' death, he led a wandering life. Little is known of this period or of his early years in England, where he settled in 1869 (and was naturalized in 1900). Poverty and ill-health may have occasioned his marriage in 1876 to a woman much older than himself. He and his wife lived precariously on the proceeds of two boardinghouses, until she inherited a house in the Bayswater section of London, where Hudson spent the rest of his life.His early books, romances with a South American setting, are weak in characterization but imbued with a brooding sense of nature's power. Although Hudson's reputation now rests chiefly on these novels, when published they attracted little attention. The first, The Purple Land that England Lost, 2 vol. (1885), was followed by several long short stories, collected in 1902 as El Omb?. His last romance, Green Mansions (1904), is the strange love story of Rima, a mysterious creature of the forest, half bird and half human. Rima, the best known of Hudson's characters, is the subject of the statue by Jacob Epstein in the bird sanctuary erected in Hudson's memory in Hyde Park, London, in 1925.The romances secured Hudson the friendship of many English men of letters, among them Joseph Conrad, Ford Madox Ford, Edward Garnett, and George Gissing. His books on ornithological studies (Argentine Ornithology, 1888-89; British Birds, 1895; etc.) brought recognition from the statesman Sir Edward Grey, who procured him a state pension in 1901. He finally achieved fame with his books on the English countryside-Afoot in England (1909), A Shepherd's Life (1910), Dead Man's Plack (1920), A Traveller in Little Things (1921), and A Hind in Richmond Park (1922). By their detailed, imaginative descriptions, conveying the sensations of one who accepted nature in all its aspects, these works did much to foster the "back-to-nature" movement of the 1920s and 1930s but were subsequently little read.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 154557720X
• ISBN13: 9781545577202
• Release Date: April 2017
• Publisher: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform
• Length: 184 Pages
• Weight: 0.68 lbs.
• Dimensions: 9.0" x 0.5" x 6.0"

Customer Reviews

An inspiring story, humbling and beautifully told

Written in 1918 by this Englishman who tells about his life as a boy in the Argentine Pampas. Filled with intense melancholy -but at the same time joy- that those recollections produce in his memory. Whoever reads this biographical account cannot but adore this man. He achieves the difficult task of making us readers see nature, wildlife, and human beings with the same eyes as his young and avid ones. He talks a lot about plants and birds, and this to me is the only minus I can find, since I sympathize with his love for nature but cannot go along with his terminology. He describes the people he met and that left in him a greater impact. His family, the daily chores at home and in the fields; but above all we get to feel like a child, to see that far away wilderness with the innocence and vulnerability of a little kid. However, the book wouldn't have been more than a picturesque story of an English child in the Pampas if it wasn't for the last 3 or 4 chapters. The death of his mother, his illness and the sentence inflicted by the doctors of a short life, the angst of knowing that his beloved nature, trees, birds and all to be lost soon, produces a struggle of faith against the pullings of new-come Darwinism and its partisans. A struggle that millions must have gone through -as the author admits- but I can't think that anybody could describe it so beautifully. How different those two men must have been: Darwin and Hudson. "Darwin, writing in praise of the gaucho in his Voyage of a Naturalist, says that if a gaucho cuts your throat he does it like a gentleman: even as a small boy I knew better- that he did his business rather like a hellish creature reveling in his cruelty." Hudson's parents were Protestant Christians, true believers. Not all his brothers inherited the parents' faith: the desire for immortality is not universal, as he mentions. But W.H.Hudson's desire was enough to grant him the faith he so much struggled to retain in the passage from childhood to manhood. An inspiring story, humbling and beautifully told.

On balance, worth reading

I read Green Mansions on Jan 6, 1946, and was blown away and all these many years later I treasure the enjoyment and appreciation which I had for that book. When I became aware that Hudson had written a history of his early life, I was glad to locate and read a copy of this work, first published in 1918 (though the copy I read was published in 1925). Hudson is primarily a naturalist, and I have no particular interest in nature; yet this account of the first fifteen years of Hudson's life growing up in Argentina I found, after a time, increasingly interesting. The final chapters especially caught me up. His sensitivity to birds, and all the fauna he found in his area of Argentina, as well as his astute observations of the people among whom he and his family lived, are of great interest. This book fittingly memorializes the boyhood years (1841 to 1856) of a master of English prose.

A Naturalist's Childhood on the Pampas

As we continue to pave over the beauties of our world and turn them into concrete wastelands, it is good to think back what life was like 150 years ago before we began the process of destruction in earnest. W. H. Hudson, the naturalist, is revered in Argentina, where they refer to him as Guillermo Enrique Hudson and name streets and towns after him. In simple and stately prose, he writes about his boyhood as one of several sons in an English family that ran an estancia on the Pampas. Despite several failed attempts to school him, he managed to pick up one of the best educations available: by using his eyes and ears to study nature. His skill in language, which is considerable, came from reading his father's books on his own. Whether writing about ombu trees, plovers, snakes, lightning storms, rheas (Argentinian ostriches), or his neighboring ranchers, Hudson brought a whole world to life with this book. Hudson published FAR AWAY AND LONG AGO in 1917 while he was living in England -- around the same time that a Frenchman named Marcel Proust was following where that elusive taste of madeleines led him in REMEMBRANCE OF THINGS PAST, and around the same time that World War I was destroying a whole way of life. As he writes in the book: "It is difficult, impossible I am told, for any one to recall his boyhood exactly as it was. It could not have been what it seems to the adult mind, since we cannot escape from what we are, however great our detachment may be; and in going back we must take our present selves with us: the mind has taken a different colour, and this is thrown back upon our past. The poet has reversed the order of things when he tells us that we come trailing clouds of glory, which melt away and are lost as we proceed on our journey. The truth is that unless we belong to the order of those who crystallize or lose their souls on their passage, the clouds gather about us as we proceed, and as cloud-compellers we travel on to the very end." FAR AWAY AND LONG AGO is perhaps one of the greatest autobiographies ever written. Although I finished reading it several days ago, I am still feeling its afterglow and get this itch to re-read passages from it. This is, indeed, a book that will withstand several readings.

Recreates the history, culture and geography of Argentina in a way few travel books accomplish

The Argentine pampas was a land of freedom and excitement: one literary figurehead W.H. Hudson describes in his memoir FAR AWAY & LONG AGO: A CHILDHOOD IN ARGENTINA. Descriptions of natural history and wildlife abound - and also of politics and interpersonal relationships of the times. You'd think FAR AWAY & LONG AGO would give insights into Hudson's childhood and life - and it does - but more importantly it recreates the history, culture and geography of Argentina in a way few travel books accomplish. Diane C. Donovan California Bookwatch

A neglected masterpiece

We badly need to have this book once more available. Full of insights into the meaning of human life in nature, it also chronicles the passing of a virgin landscape in S.America with the coming of a predatory civilization. Hudson came of age with little schooling but endless hours of observing life (especially birds) and reading. His friends in England, where he went in his 30s, often wondered why he was habitually sad. This profound reminiscence explains why.