A new blog about William Henry Hudson points to a nice article in The Christian Science Monitor: William Henry Hudson, “A Revival of Argentina’s Thoreau”.

Confusion about Hudson’s nationality is understandable. He was himself confused. Argentine born, the child of Anglophile immigrants from Massachusetts, Hudson thought he was destined to be an Englishman. He would be that, and much more. Through his writings and civic efforts to create laws to protect birds and other animals, he fiercely rejected the biblically sanctioned notion that the natural world was man’s to conquer and dispose of at will. His was a voice in the wilderness which, like that of Henry David Thoreau, was actually heard. Were he to be writing today, he’d surely find an audience in the green movement.

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Hudson artifacts are displayed in the three-room house: his watch; a sketch for the William Rothenstein portrait of Hudson that hangs in London’s National Portrait Gallery; and rustic touches that recall his naturalist activities: ostrich eggs, a puma skull, the skeleton of an armadillo, the clay nest of the peculiar oven bird.

A painting of a bird, donated by the Japanese city of Yokohama, recalls Hudson’s link to Japan, established by the marriage of his grandniece, Laura Denholm Hudson, to Yoshi Shinya, the first Japanese immigrant to Buenos Aires. Their child, Violeta Shinya, became the first director of the museum, in 1964. Hudson’s books reached Japan late in the 19th century, and were included in the curriculum when the study of English was instituted in the schools.

I’ve been to the small town of Hudson but, somehow, missed the house where he was born that is now a museum. Again, here’s the link to the new blog about the place: Parque Ecológico Provincial Guillermo Enrique Hudson.

I definitely must go to Hudson again….field trip!