23 North Parade
Penzance.
June 2. '20.
Dear Garnett
Very many thanks for your helpful letter. I had seen when correcting the MS. that a lot of sentences and phrases ought to come out—and that Fisher allusion and things like that. But about style—the moment it looks artificial it revolts me. I have never conquered my dislike of Morris because of his Saxon words. You did not notice, I dare say, as I don't use quotation marks, that the concluding words of my Preamble are a quote from him. "Without external aid or compulsion, I say I could not make shadows breathe, restore the dead and know what silent mouths once said." Well, why didn't he stick to his own principle and make the last line: And know what mouths now dumb once said?
I suppose it was because his own diction without a Latin word thrown in here and there was too distressing even to himself. If you have ever succeeded in wading through the five huge volumes of the Earthly Paradise you must have had a sickness of that kind of writing. I'm glad you like the passages I like and think [best]. I sent a copy to Morley Roberts at the same time and he says those are the wrong passages—that Elfrida's monologues must all be cut short to make the story better.
I hope to go up next week and you will perhaps be able to come somewhere and lunch with me. Today I went to Godolphin to visit the Rector there, who last year when I was here was a poor curate with not enough to live on at St. Erths. As he is a queer unconventional fellow I wanted to congratulate him. He told me of a strange man who had spent thirty-two years in Patagonia, living near Godolphin, and as I wished to see him we went off and paid him a visit. He had lived in Tierra del Fuego and on the Straits of Magellan and among the Andes, and also at the Rio Negre and knew all my old friends there. I asked him why he didn't write his adventures. He said he would get out pen and paper and start writing them right away as soon as I left! But poor man, he is past it, I fear, at seventy-eight after spending twenty years in Cornwall since he came home.
W. H. Hudson
