Green Mansions: A Romance of the Tropical Forest by W. H. Hudson



FOREWORD

I take up pen for this foreword with the fear of one who knows
that he cannot do justice to his subject, and the trembling of
one who would not, for a good deal, set down words unpleasing to
the eye of him who wrote Green Mansions, The Purple Land, and all
those other books which have meant so much to me. For of all
living authors--now that Tolstoi has gone I could least dispense
with W. H. Hudson. Why do I love his writing so? I think
because he is, of living writers that I read, the rarest spirit,
and has the clearest gift of conveying to me the nature of that
spirit. Writers are to their readers little new worlds to be
explored; and each traveller in the realms of literature must
needs have a favourite hunting-ground, which, in his good
will--or perhaps merely in his egoism--he would wish others to
share with him.

The great and abiding misfortunes of most of us writers are
twofold: We are, as worlds, rather common tramping-ground for our
readers, rather tame territory; and as guides and dragomans
thereto we are too superficial, lacking clear intimacy of
expression; in fact--like guide or dragoman--we cannot let folk
into the real secrets, or show them the spirit, of the land.

Now, Hudson, whether in a pure romance like this Green Mansions,
or in that romantic piece of realism The Purple Land, or in books