Green Mansions: A Romance of the Tropical Forest Read online

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  GREEN MANSIONS

  A Romance of the Tropical Forest

  by W. H. Hudson

  FOREWORD

  I take up pen for this foreword with the fear of one who knows that hecannot do justice to his subject, and the trembling of one who wouldnot, for a good deal, set down words unpleasing to the eye of him whowrote Green Mansions, The Purple Land, and all those other books whichhave meant so much to me. For of all living authors--now that Tolstoihas gone I could least dispense with W. H. Hudson. Why do I love hiswriting so? I think because he is, of living writers that I read, therarest spirit, and has the clearest gift of conveying to me the natureof that spirit. Writers are to their readers little new worlds to beexplored; and each traveller in the realms of literature must needs havea favourite hunting-ground, which, in his good will--or perhaps merelyin his egoism--he would wish others to share with him.

  The great and abiding misfortunes of most of us writers are twofold: Weare, as worlds, rather common tramping-ground for our readers,rather tame territory; and as guides and dragomans thereto we are toosuperficial, lacking clear intimacy of expression in fact--like guideor dragoman--we cannot let folk into the real secrets, or show them thespirit, of the land.

  Now, Hudson, whether in a pure romance like this Green Mansions, or inthat romantic piece of realism The Purple Land, or in books like IdleDays in Patagonia, Afoot in England, The Land's End, Adventuresamong Birds, A Shepherd's Life, and all his other nomadic records ofcommunings with men, birds, beasts, and Nature, has a supreme gift ofdisclosing not only the thing he sees but the spirit of his vision.Without apparent effort he takes you with him into a rare, free, naturalworld, and always you are refreshed, stimulated, enlarged, by goingthere.

  He is of course a distinguished naturalist, probably the most acute,broad-minded, and understanding observer of Nature living. And this, inan age of specialism, which loves to put men into pigeonholes and labelthem, has been a misfortune to the reading public, who seeing the labelNaturalist, pass on, and take down the nearest novel. Hudson has indeedthe gifts and knowledge of a Naturalist, but that is a mere fraction ofhis value and interest. A really great writer such as this is no more tobe circumscribed by a single word than America by the part of it calledNew York. The expert knowledge which Hudson has of Nature gives to allhis work backbone and surety of fibre, and to his sense of beauty anintimate actuality. But his real eminence and extraordinary attractionlie in his spirit and philosophy. We feel from his writings that heis nearer to Nature than other men, and yet more truly civilized. Thecompetitive, towny culture, the queer up-to-date commercial knowingnesswith which we are so busy coating ourselves simply will not stick tohim. A passage in his Hampshire Days describes him better than Ican: "The blue sky, the brown soil beneath, the grass, the trees, theanimals, the wind, and rain, and stars are never strange to me; for I amin and of and am one with them; and my flesh and the soil are one, andthe heat in my blood and in the sunshine are one, and the winds and thetempests and my passions are one. I feel the 'strangeness' only withregard to my fellow men, especially in towns, where they exist inconditions unnatural to me, but congenial to them.... In such moments wesometimes feel a kinship with, and are strangely drawn to, the dead,who were not as these; the long, long dead, the men who knew not life intowns, and felt no strangeness in sun and wind and rain." This unspoiledunity with Nature pervades all his writings; they are remote from thefret and dust and pettiness of town life; they are large, direct, free.It is not quite simplicity, for the mind of this writer is subtle andfastidious, sensitive to each motion of natural and human life; but hissensitiveness is somehow different from, almost inimical to, that of usothers, who sit indoors and dip our pens in shades of feeling. Hudson'sfancy is akin to the flight of the birds that are his special loves--itnever seems to have entered a house, but since birth to have beenroaming the air, in rain and sun, or visiting the trees and the grass.I not only disbelieve utterly, but intensely dislike, the doctrine ofmetempsychosis, which, if I understand it aright, seems the negation ofthe creative impulse, an apotheosis of staleness--nothing quite new inthe world, never anything quite new--not even the soul of a baby; andso I am not prepared to entertain the whim that a bird was one of hisremote incarnations; still, in sweep of wing, quickness of eye, andnatural sweet strength of song he is not unlike a super-bird--which isa horrid image. And that reminds me: This, after all, is a foreword toGreen Mansions--the romance of the bird-girl Rima--a story actual yetfantastic, which immortalizes, I think, as passionate a love of allbeautiful things as ever was in the heart of man. Somewhere Hudson says:"The sense of the beautiful is God's best gift to the human soul." Soit is: and to pass that gift on to others, in such measure as hereinis expressed, must surely have been happiness to him who wrote GreenMansions. In form and spirit the book is unique, a simple romanticnarrative transmuted by sheer glow of beauty into a prose poem. Withoutever departing from its quality of a tale, it symbolizes the yearningof the human soul for the attainment of perfect love and beauty in thislife--that impossible perfection which we must all learn to see fallfrom its high tree and be consumed in the flames, as was Rima thebird-girl, but whose fine white ashes we gather that they may be mingledat last with our own, when we too have been refined by the fire ofdeath's resignation. The book is soaked through and through with astrange beauty. I will not go on singing its praises, or trying to makeit understood, because I have other words to say of its author.

  Do we realize how far our town life and culture have got away fromthings that really matter; how instead of making civilization ourhandmaid to freedom we have set her heel on our necks, and under it bitedust all the time? Hudson, whether he knows it or not, is now the chiefstandard-bearer of another faith. Thus he spake in The Purple Land: "Ah,yes, we are all vainly seeking after happiness in the wrong way. Itwas with us once and ours, but we despised it, for it was only the oldcommon happiness which Nature gives to all her children, and we wentaway from it in search of another grander kind of happiness which somedreamer--Bacon or another--assured us we should find. We had only toconquer Nature, find out her secrets, make her our obedient slave, thenthe Earth would be Eden, and every man Adam and every woman Eve. We arestill marching bravely on, conquering Nature, but how weary and sadwe are getting! The old joy in life and gaiety of heart have vanished,though we do sometimes pause for a few moments in our long forced marchto watch the labours of some pale mechanician, seeking after perpetualmotion, and indulge in a little, dry, cackling laugh at his expense."And again: "For here the religion that languishes in crowded cities orsteals shamefaced to hide itself in dim churches flourishes greatly,filling the soul with a solemn joy. Face to face with Nature on the vasthills at eventide, who does not feel himself near to the Unseen?

  "Out of his heart God shall not pass His image stamped is on every grass."

  All Hudson's books breathe this spirit of revolt against our newenslavement by towns and machinery, and are true oases in an age sodreadfully resigned to the "pale mechanician."

  But Hudson is not, as Tolstoi was, a conscious prophet; his spirit isfreer, more willful, whimsical--almost perverse--and far more steeped inlove of beauty. If you called him a prophet he would stamp his footat you--as he will at me if he reads these words; but his voice isprophetic, for all that, crying in a wilderness, out of which, at thecall, will spring up roses here and there, and the sweet-smelling grass.I would that every man, woman, and child in England were made to readhim; and I would that you in America would take him to heart. He is atonic, a deep refreshing drink, with a strange and wonderful flavour; heis a mine of new interests, and ways
of thought instinctively right. Asa simple narrator he is well-nigh unsurpassed; as a stylist he hasfew, if any, living equals. And in all his work there is an indefinablefreedom from any thought of after-benefit--even from the desire that weshould read him. He puts down what he sees and feels, out of sheer loveof the thing seen, and the emotion felt; the smell of the lamp has nottouched a single page that he ever wrote. That alone is a marvel to uswho know that to write well, even to write clearly, is a wound business,long to learn, hard to learn, and no gift of the angels. Style shouldnot obtrude between a writer and his reader; it should be servant, notmaster. To use words so true and simple that they oppose no obstacleto the flow of thought and feeling from mind to mind, and yet byjuxtaposition of word-sounds set up in the recipient continuing emotionor gratification--this is the essence of style; and Hudson's writing haspre-eminently this double quality. From almost any page of his books anexample might be taken. Here is one no better than a thousand others, adescription of two little girls on a beach: "They were dressed in blackfrocks and scarlet blouses, which set off their beautiful small darkfaces; their eyes sparkled like black diamonds, and their loose hairwas a wonder to see, a black mist or cloud about their heads and neckscomposed of threads fine as gossamer, blacker than jet and shining likespun glass--hair that looked as if no comb or brush could ever tame itsbeautiful wildness. And in spirit they were what they seemed: such awild, joyous, frolicsome spirit, with such grace and fleetness, onedoes not look for in human beings, but only in birds or in some smallbird-like volatile mammal--a squirrel or a spider-monkey of the tropicalforest, or the chinchilla of the desolate mountain slopes; the swiftest,wildest, loveliest, most airy, and most vocal of small beauties." Orthis, as the quintessence of a sly remark: "After that Mantel got on tohis horse and rode away. It was black and rainy, but he had never neededmoon or lantern to find what he sought by night, whether his ownhouse, or a fat cow--also his own, perhaps." So one might go on quotingfelicity for ever from this writer. He seems to touch every string withfresh and uninked fingers; and the secret of his power lies, I suspect,in the fact that his words: "Life being more than all else to me. . ."are so utterly true.

  I do not descant on his love for simple folk and simple things, hischampionship of the weak, and the revolt against the cagings andcruelties of life, whether to men or birds or beasts, that springs outof him as if against his will; because, having spoken of him as one witha vital philosophy or faith, I don't wish to draw red herrings acrossthe main trail of his worth to the world. His work is a vision ofnatural beauty and of human life as it might be, quickened and sweetenedby the sun and the wind and the rain, and by fellowship with all theother forms of life--the truest vision now being given to us, who aremore in want of it than any generation has ever been. A very greatwriter; and--to my thinking--the most valuable our age possesses.

  JOHN GALSWORTHY

  September 1915 Manaton: Devon

  GREEN MANSIONS