Hudson's Norfolk Connection: A Note on a Visit to "Near Farm"

Hudson's Norfolk Connection: A Note on a Visit to "Neat Farm" Dennis Shrubsall Wells, Somerset, England STUDENTS AS WELL AS AFICIONADOS of rural writer and naturalist W. H. Hudson will know of his attraction to Norfolk's Wellsnext -the-Sea and its annual gathering of wild geese. This, however, is but one aspect of his association with the county. With the taciturn Hudson it is not sufficient merely to study his books. To know his work one must construct a composite account, scrutinize his correspondence (much of which has not been published),1 visit the locals and "walk the course" oneself. Having completed this programme I should like to share its results with those who, like me, still value his philosophy and prose. Hudson paid his first visit to Norfolk in June 1894 as part of a tour which took him also to Yorkshire and Humberside,2 gathering material for British Birds, commissioned by Longmans and published in 1895.3 He lodged at Norwich and Great Yarmouth and spent time on the Broads. In Great Yarmouth he became friends with an impecunious fellow-naturalist who, with a wife and seven children to support on a mere eighty pounds a year, still managed to own and maintain a houseboat. Three years later, in July 1897, Hudson returned to Great Yarmouth, this time by sea; and after an afternoon's sailing with his friend on Breydon Water, he rambled about the district for a few days before returning to London.4 During the succeeding fifteen years Hudson visited Norfolk on no less than eight occasions: four spent holidaying with his wife, the remainder alone at Wells-next-the-Sea. In August 1897 they went to Great Yarmouth whose sixteenth-century alley-ways—the famous Yarmouth "Rows"—Hudson described as "quaint" but "disreputable."5 Aware of Yarmouth's David Copperfield connection, Hudson re-read Dickens's book, but the little it contained about the town disappointed him. A 350 SHRUBSALL : HUDSON Yarmouth friend told him that he had a piece of wood salvaged from the old fisherman, Daniel Peggotty*s houseboat—a claim Hudson does not appear to have disbelieved. The Hudsons took their second Norfolk holiday in August 1904. He wrote an account of it in Afoot in Englandf and although he avoided naming the place his description of it as "a small modern pleasure town of an almost startling appearance" suggested New Hunstanton, a nineteenth -century seaside health and pleasure resort built largely of local carr-stone, the "glaring and aggressive" yellow-brown colour of which had startled him. This location is confirmed by Hudson's 17 August 1904 letter to Edward Garnett,7 some of the contents of which match information contained in the book. Lodgings were difficult to obtain, and the Hudsons spent three hours trudging about in unseasonal heavy rain before finding a place in the home of a poor seamstress. This I believe to have been 3 Mansfield Cottages which, I have learned, formerly stood in Church Street.8 Here, once again, Hudson demonstrated his genius for encouraging people to tell him about themselves when his landlady confided that six years previously she and her young son had fled her marital home to escape a drunken husband and start a new life in Hunstanton. The lad had a passion for natural history, and Hudson intimated that he might later send him "something" (probably a book) "to give his brain a fillip."9 On August 20 while walking to Thornham village four miles east of Hunstanton, Hudson lost his treasured binoculars; but despite offering a reward—both by town crier and handbills displayed in shop windows —they were never returned to him.10 Wryly he informed his wife that the loss was of little consequence since if he didn't recover his health (he was suffering from a stomach disorder) he would have no further need of them.11 Seaside holiday places—"parasitic towns," he called them—did not appeal to Hudson; only the persistently bad weather and concern for his elderly wife had reconciled him to spending a fortnight in Hunstanton. When they returned to Norfolk in August 1908 they stayed for only two days in...