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| Plaudits to Conor Mark Jameson for his timely biography of a fascinating naturalist |
WHAT is the secret of staying cool in hot weather when the sun is beating down with brutal ferocity?
The answer comes from W.H. Hudson as quoted by Conor Mark Jameson in his absorbing book, Finding W.H. Hudson - The Writer Who Came to Britain to Save the Birds:
"My custom is to carry a wetted pocket handkerchief or piece of sponge in my hat.
"By renewing the moisture three or four times, or as often as water is found, I am able to keep my head perfectly cool during a ramble of 10 or 12 hours on a cloudless day in July and August."
On one summer's day, he forgot his 'brain-protector', an oversight for which he was soon to suffer.
"I experienced that most miserable feeling of a boiling brain - like a pot boiling on the fire, bubbling and pouring out jets of stream."
Although based in London - where impecunious circumstances forced him to change address many times - Hudson (1841-1922) found city life oppressive and spent whatever time he could in the countryside.
The author and naturalist spent many hours - and sometimes days - at a time communing with Nature, in particular celebrating the richness of birdlife (including nightjars, wrynecks, wheatears and red-backed shrikes) in favoured counties such as Sussex and Hampshire.
The amusing passages above (which prove that Hudson had a sense of humour) are from Nature in Downland, but others of his works are of a different complexion.
One of the most spiritual is Hudson's account of moments spent in in the New Forest in Hampshire as recounted in A Traveller in Little Things:
"Such was the loveliness of that green leafy world that the silence, the melody and the divine sunlight wrought in me a mystical state - that rare condition of beautiful illusions when the feet are off the ground when we appear to be one with Nature, unbodied like the poet's bird, but diffused in it."
At various times and to various extents, the fulfilment experienced by Hudson in Nature was, sadly, compromised by what was happening around him as civilisation 'advanced'.
Birds were being abused everywhere - by taxidermy, by recreational shooting, by egg-collecting, by trapping and caging and particularly by the millinery trade which sought to 'decorate' women's hats with brightly-coloured feathers.
Hudson was repeatedly dismayed and outraged such that he fuelled his emotions into campaigns - many of them ultimately successful - to raise awareness and to bring about bird protection legislation.
Hudson's activism provides the core of Jameson's exploration of the life and times of a man who, until this book, had largely been forgotten by time.
The author weaves a tapestry of late-Victorian and early-Edwardian society which provided the context for Hudson's eventful life.
As the above examples illustrate, Jameson has, through his exhaustive study of Hudson's many book and pamphlets, tracked down some memorable passages, revealing Hudson to be a man of passion and conviction.
Unless they are motivated by animosity biographers invariably develop a tender, almost parental, to their subjects and Jameson's portrait of his man is certainly sympathetic and approving.
But not entirely so.
He acknowledges that Hudson's relationship with women (including his much older wife, Emily) seems to have been slightly eccentric for the time.
Because of his lack of formal education, Hudson lacked social confidence and declined invitations to speak in public, preferring his pen to be his sword.
At various times, he also fell out both with individuals such as Charles Darwin and John Gould and with organisations such as the British Ornithologists' Union.
But Hudson's forthright, let's-not-beat-about-the-bush and honest attitude comes across as highly refreshing.
Would that there were more like him today. Conor Mark Jameson has done well to bring him back into the spotlight.
Finding W.H. Hudson is published in paperback at £21.99 by Pelagic Publishing.
www.pelagicpublishing.com
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