William Henry Hudson was a reluctant celebrity. In the final year of his life, in 1922, he asked his friends to destroy his correspondence, to thwart biographers. Henry Salt was one of those who – happily for us today – ignored him.
A scattering of Hudson letters to Salt survive, helping us plot their friendship, which began in the mid-1890s. They discussed subjects like their respective books, and Richard Jefferies, and diet, in their correspondence, and much more besides in their meetings in London. They had much in common, Hudson’s emphasis much more on the protection of wild birds, but his empathy for all non-human animals was profound.
Hudson declined the RSPB’s offer of establishing an annual Hudson Lecture, in recognition of receiving his life’s savings. It was a game-changing amount for the campaign group, amassed in late life from American publishers and movie studios for book rights. What Hudson would have made of the trickle of biographies that followed his death – and more recently my own investigation – we can only guess. But I think that anything that helped the cause of conservation would have pleased him. He might even secretly approve of the monument and sanctuary in Hyde Park, created in his honour and unveiled by the Prime Minister, Stanley Baldwin, in 1925.
Hudson’s origins were exotic and possibly traumatic, and his flourishing came late. His life has many parallels with Salt’s, who was ten years his junior. Salt’s description of him in Company I Have Kept is a useful and measured evaluation of Hudson’s magnetic and often mysterious personality. His quiet charisma, wisdom and candour were much valued by his friends. He made a deep impression on young, old, rich and poor. He was the only man in the room, supporting the women who founded the RSPB. His was an extraordinary life, from the humblest of beginnings.
Finding W. H. Hudson, Conor Mark Jameson’s biography of Hudson’s campaigning life, is published by Pelagic.