W.H. Hudson: Interpreter of the Countryside

In this essay, on the centenary of William Henry Hudson's birth, Bates writes of the life and works of a man he describes as 'perhaps the deepest interpreter of English country life we have ever had,' and would later hail as the "greatest of our nature-writers" in The Blossoming World (p. 28),

Given that his first thirty years were spent in Argentina, Bates thinks 'the most remarkable thing about Hudson was his power to assimilate and transmit with sensibility the essence of English life.'

Bates had previously written about Hudson in a piece called 'A Traveller in Little Things' in The New Clarion (October 15, 1932, p. 439), and also briefly in one of his Country Life columns for The Spectator ('Hudson and White'. July 25, 1941, p. 85). He would also go on to provide an introduction to the 1957 edition of Hudson's Green Mansions: A Romance of the Tropical Forest.

In Country Life (London, August 8, 1941, 90, no. 2325, p. 243, attached).