Idle Days in Patagonia by William Henry Hudson

Too many idle thoughts, not enough Patagonia

William Henry Hudson (1841-1922) was born in Argentina, the son of settlers from the United States. He was raised in the pampas near Buenos Aires. He became a British citizen in 1900, and over the course of a literary career that spanned roughly four decades, he published many books on Argentina and England, including ornithological treatises, travelogues, memoirs, and novels. His book Idle Days in Patagonia, published in 1893, is about his first trip South into the vicinity of Argentina’s Rio Negro.

In the opening chapter, Hudson tells us that this journey to Patagonia is a lifelong dream of his. He has always wanted to study the birds of that region. On his way down the Atlantic Coast from Buenos Aires, the steamer in which Hudson is traveling is inadvertently grounded on a beach. All of the passengers have to get out and walk to their destination, a journey of a couple days. Shortly after reaching the Rio Negro, an English acquaintance of Hudson’s accidentally shoots him in the foot. This injury puts a limit on his birding and botanizing expeditions, and, as Hudson explains, results in the “idle days” of the title. Nevertheless, Hudson does manage to venture out a bit on horseback and observe the scenery, wildlife, and vegetation of the region, his descriptions of which constitute much of the book..

Although Hudson is an ornithologist, this book is not a scientific text. He mentions many bird species by name and gives a sentence or two about how pretty they are, but there is very little to learn here about the anatomy or behavior of South America’s birds. This is more a work of travel literature, and not a very good one at that. Successful travel literature requires that the author give the reader a sense of place in regards to the location that’s being discussed, and Hudson doesn’t really accomplish that. In fact, he doesn’t even seem to care whether he writes about Patagonia or not. He drew several of the chapters from papers and articles he had previously published in periodicals. There is an entire chapter in which he rambles on about snow, whiteness, and Herman Melville that has nothing to do with Patagonia at all. Two chapters on eyes and eyesight only vaguely touch upon the people and birds of South America. A chapter on the sense of smell is even more irrelevant. There is even a brief passage in which Hudson advocates for nudism. Hudson frequently departs from his Patagonian narrative to go off on all sorts of asides, which might be forgivable if they approached the philosophical profundity of Henry David Thoreau’s digressions. Instead, Hudson’s musings are mostly just common sense and personal opinion.

Hudson strikes me as one of those authors who decided early in life, “I’m a writer, by God!” and then proceeded to crank out a relentless stream of books about anything that crossed his mind without any consideration of whether what he was saying would be interesting to others. Many writers, once they’d been shot in the foot, might have decided “OK, I guess I’m not going to write this book,” but not Hudson. As a birding enthusiast, I have a high tolerance for writers who just like to talk about birds. Idle Days in Patagonia, however, left me with the feeling that, if I went and spent some time in Argentina, even I could write a better book about it than this.
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