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| Woman Standing 1840-1850, Jean Baptiste Corot |
The new place felt vast to Hudson, set on the perfectly flat pampas among trees, which included 400-500 peach trees and a few quince. He doesn’t tell us exactly how many brothers and sisters he had, but it seemed they grew up together. “Our parents seldom or never punished us, and never, unless we went too far in our domestic dissensions or tricks, chided us. This, I am convinced, is the right attitude for parents to observe, modestly to admit that nature is wiser than they are and to let their little ones follow, as far as possible, the bent of their own minds.”
As a child Hudson raptly studied the creatures around him, especially the birds. Catherine noticed that he often went off by himself and worried, until she secretly followed him and found that he was only absorbed in study of some insect or bird. “And as she loved all living things herself, she was quite satisfied I was not going queer in my head.” When Hudson, at six, first confronted the death of his dog, Catherine comforted him with her own strong belief that death was not the end.
Hudson tells us that Catherine was “clever and thrifty,” making peach preserves which lasted all winter. She also made peach pickles, which were unusual. Even in a country where hospitality was practiced everywhere, Hudson never found an equal to what his parents laid out for their guests, both humble and great.
Hudson tells us of a particular evening, when a young gentleman joined them from Spain. After dinner he played the guitar as everyone gathered in front of the fire. He told them he was reminded of his own family’s evenings, and that he was surprised that this feeling should come to him so far from home, on the “great, naked pampas, sparsely inhabited, where life was so rough, so primitive.” Catherine listened raptly. The evening was, for Hudson, an example of the harmonious home his mother and father had made for him.
The family made occasional trips to Buenos Ayres, but Hudson does not tell us much about his mother’s activities in town. It was ruled in Hudson’s early years by Juan Manuel de Rosas, a powerful dictator who had, at least, kept the lawless territory relatively peaceful.
Hudson’s father was fearless, but also believed in the goodness of those around him. This led to him losing the large estate with its pulperia. The family had to return to their original ranch. Hudson himself had typhoid, a long illness through which his mother nursed him, but then rheumatic fever. He was afraid he would not live long, afraid he would not be able to enjoy the natural world, which meant so much to him. He was about sixteen, and in fact had many years left to him. His mother did not, however. She died shortly after his illnesses, in 1859.
Hudson found that their neighbors also missed his mother greatly. Though she was a Protestant and they were Catholic and strange to her, she would sit with them, “at ease in their lowliest ranchos, interesting herself in their affairs as if they belonged to her. This sympathy and freedom endeared her to them.”
Hudson regained his strength and began publishing his work on ornithology. He left for England at age 33, and remained there, writing prolifically. He wrote of his early life, the world of nature and is especially known for his novel Green Mansions.
I first read Long Ago and Far Away perhaps fifty years ago. I was charmed by Hudson’s picturesque story of life in Argentina and the idyllic life of his family. After this, I had trouble finding the book. Recently I found both a digital copy and an audio version by LibriVox readers, available here. Hudson wrote of his mother many years after her death and perhaps gives us an idealized version, but his childhood memories sustained him while living many years in London and I don’t doubt their substantial truth.
