I have thought it worth while to refer to these facts, not that they are themselves important, but as illustrating a Christianizing process which is often carried on with boundless effrontery by “religious” writers after the death of free-thinkers. Another instance may be seen in the case of Francis W. Newman, where a similar attempt was made to represent him as having abandoned his own deliberate convictions.
From Jefferies one’s thoughts pass naturally to Mr. W. H. Hudson. It must be over twenty-five years since through the hospitality of Mrs. E. Phillips, of Croydon, an ardent bird-lover and humanitarian, I had the good fortune to be introduced to Mr. Hudson and to his books. A philosopher and keen observer of all forms of life, he is far from being an ornithologist only; but there are certain sympathies that give rise to a sort of natural freemasonry among those who feel them; and of these one of the pleasantest and most human is the love of birds—not of cooked birds, if you please, associated with dining-room memories of “the pleasures of the table,” nor of caged birds in drawing-rooms, nor of stuffed birds in museums; but of real birds, live birds, wild birds, free to exercise their marvellous faculties of flight and song. From this love has sprung a corresponding bird-literature; and of the notable names among the prophets and interpreters of bird life, the latest, and in my opinion the greatest, is that of Mr. Hudson: his books, in not a few chapters and passages, rise above the level of mere natural history, and affect the imagination of the reader as only great literature can. If he is an unequal writer and somewhat desultory, perhaps, in his manner of work, yet at his best he is the greatest living master of English prose. Such books as The Naturalist in La Plata and Nature in Downland (to name two only) are classics that can never be forgotten. And Mr. Hudson’s influence, it should be noted, has been thrown more and more on the side of that humane study of natural history which Thoreau adopted: his verdict is given in no uncertain language against the barbarous habits of game-keeper and bird-catcher, fashionable milliner, and amateur collector of “specimens.”
If a single title were to be sought for Mr. Hudson’s writings, the name of one of his earlier books, Birds and Man, might be the most appropriate; for there seems almost to be a mingling of the avian with the human in his nature: I have sometimes fancied that he must be a descendant of Picus, or of some other prehistoric hero who was changed into a bird. There is a passage in Virgil’s Æneid where Diomede is represented as lamenting, as a “fearful prodigy,” such metamorphosis of his companions.
Lost friends, to birds transfigured, skyward soar,
Or fill the rocky wold with wailing cries.
But if such a vicissitude were to befall any of Mr. Hudson’s friends, I feel sure that, far from being dismayed by it, he would be able to continue his acquaintance with them on terms of entire understanding: they would in no sense be “lost” because they were feathered. To him a much more fearful prodigy is the savage fashion of wearing the skins and feathers of slaughtered birds as ornamental head-gear.
One of the most devoted followers of this new school of natural history, and himself a naturalist of distinction, was Dr. Alexander H. Japp, who, under the pen-name of “H. A. Page,” wrote the first account of Thoreau published in this country. I have a recollection of many pleasant chats with him, especially of a visit which he paid me with Mr. Walton Ricketson, the sculptor, a son of that intimate friend of Thoreau’s of whom I have spoken. Walton Ricketson was a boy at the time when Thoreau used to visit his father at New Bedford; but he was present on the occasion when the grave hermit of Walden surprised the company by a sudden hilarious impulse, which prompted him to sing “Tom Bowling” and to perform an improvised dance, in which, it is said, he kept time to the music but executed some steps more like those of the Indians than the usual ballroom figures.
Dr. Japp was also a biographer of De Quincey, and by his sympathetic understanding did much to correct the disparaging judgments passed on “the English opium-eater” by many critics and press-writers. As a result of a study of De Quincey which I published in 1904, I made the acquaintance, three years later, of Miss Emily de Quincey (she spelt her name in that manner), his last surviving daughter. She was a most charming old lady, full of vivacity and humour; and her letters, of which I received a good many, were written with a sprightliness recalling that of her father in his lighter moods; some of her reminiscences, too, were very interesting. She remembered the opium decanter and glass standing on the mantelpiece when she was a child, but she said that De Quincey quite left off the use of the drug for years before his death. She told me that the grudge against her father, which frequently found expression in “grotesque descriptions” of him, was caused in part by his neglect to answer the letters, many of a very flattering kind, addressed to him by readers of his books; a remissness which was due, not to any lack of courtesy or gratitude, but to his inveterate procrastination; he would always be going to write “to-morrow” or “when he had a good pen.” On one occasion an admirer wrote to him from Australia, begging him for “some truths” that he might give to his little son (who had been named after De Quincey) when he should be able to understand them. De Quincey said sadly to his daughter: “My dear, truths are very low with me just now. Do you think, if I sent a couple of lies, they would answer the purpose?” She feared that he never sent either truths or lies. Among the unanswered letters which her father received she recollected that there was one from “three brothers,” accompanied by a volume of poems by “Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell.” It was by the poetry of Ellis that the De Quinceys were most struck, but not till years afterwards did they guess that those “brothers” were the Brontë sisters in disguise.
Were it not a common practice of reviewers, in estimating the work of a great writer, to omit, as far as possible, any mention of humane sympathies shown by him, it would be strange that De Quincey should be represented as a mere “dreamer” and visionary; for in truth, in spite of the transcendental Toryism of his politics, he was in several respects a pioneer of advanced humanitarian thought, especially in the question of corporal punishment, on which he spoke, a hundred years ago, with a dignity and foresight which might put to shame many purblind “progressives” of to-day. His profound regard for a suffering humanity is one of the noblest features in his writings; he rejoiced, for instance, at the interference of Parliament to amend the “ruinous social evil” of female labour in mines; and he spoke of the cruelty of that spirit which could look “lightly and indulgently on the affecting spectacle of female prostitution.” “All I have ever had enjoyment of in life,” he said, “seems to rise up to reproach me for my happiness, when I see such misery, and think there is so much of it in the world.” It is amusing to read animadversions on De Quincey’s “lack of moral fibre,” written by critics who lag more than a century behind him in some of the matters that afford an unequivocal test of man’s advance from barbarism to civilization.