​The day acclaimed naturalist and author William Henry Hudson saved three young lives in Sussex

This story describes a fateful day when Hudson helped save three young lives from the sea.

Early in 1904, W. H. Hudson was deeply saddened – but not shocked – to receive news of the death of an old, close friend, the author George Gissing.

"In the eighties and early nineties Gissing, Morley Roberts and I were three very poor Bohemians living in London and very much together,” he wrote to Robert Cunninghame Graham, when relaying the news.

Downland Days with the cowboy naturalist in the year 1899

Morley Roberts and H. G. Wells had both gone to Gissing’s aid in southern France when news came that he was dying.

This friend group, which Gissing had dubbed ‘The Quadrilateral’ after an Italian fortress, would sometimes visit the Sussex coast for short breaks.

On one of these occasions, in autumn 1890, it was just Hudson and Roberts who made the trip south from London, Gissing’s turbulent life having kept him away this time.

This particular peaceful and sunny September morning at Shoreham would lurch suddenly into a life or death drama.

"Hudson not only saved my life, but the life of someone else,” Roberts would recall, in his biography of Hudson. I was delighted to find surviving letters from Hudson that give his version of events, an evocative vignette of Hudson’s life at this time.

Hudson and Roberts were loafing on the beach. Three young girls and an elderly lady passed them and polite greetings were exchanged.

Roberts may not have known, till that day, that Hudson couldn’t swim, but he was about to find out when, a short while later, as they sat smoking and sketching, their peace was harshly broken by the ear-splitting screams of the elderly woman, and the cries of the girls.

"Looking up, we saw them far beyond their depth and obviously drowning,” Roberts wrote.

The pair rushed immediately to the aid of the girls. Roberts, by his own estimation a strong swimmer, ploughed straight into the water, not pausing to remove even his hat or to drop his pipe.

Hudson waded straight in after him, up to his neck, using his long arms to maintain his balance in the fast-moving tide and on the loose pebbles beneath his feet.

Roberts reached the first girl and was able to bring her back for Hudson to grasp, and relay to the shore. A young clergyman also came to their aid.

Roberts now dived to rescue the second girl, who had gone under. Whether in shock or unconscious, rigid with cold and terror, she took some prising from Roberts by Hudson as she was brought to him.

The third girl was also by now near the sea-bed and Roberts managed to dive once more, reach her and bring her to Hudson.

With the rescue drama over, the girls all alive, Roberts passed out on the shore. When revived, he had to go back to the boarding house to recuperate. Hudson remained, sopping wet on the shingle, while the three traumatised girls were kept warm and consoled.

A small crowd had gathered, many dry clothes or blankets fetched and offered, wet garments peeled off, accompanied by the sounds of soft sobbing and the gentle murmur of gulls.

Roberts afterwards was modest about his role in the rescue mission, and generous about Hudson’s, and his friend’s bravery, considering his inability to swim, as well as his greater age and delicate constitution.

He felt he owed his life to Hudson and so too did the girls. Roberts also recalled that Hudson made efforts to stay in touch with the ‘salvaged damsels’ for years afterwards.

For some reason – perhaps modesty – Hudson doesn’t seem to have written about the incident in any of his books, so I was delighted when I found that letters have survived that describe the incident and its aftermath in vivid detail, from his point of view.

In one rare letter to his wife Emily, Hudson’s version of events accords with that of Roberts. He adds amusing detail, too, about how his wool suit had afterwards shrunk while drying, and how she would have to send him some other clothes to wear, before he could contemplate being seen in public.

It also emerges that the two men were invited a few days later to meet the ‘damsels’ they had saved. And the drama was all over the newspapers – Hudson slightly aggrieved to see it reported that he couldn’t swim. Touchingly, he asked Emily if she could spare a pound to send him, so he might extend his stay in Shoreham.

There is a touching footnote in the next Hudson letter. A few days later, the two life-savers were invited to the home of the old lady and they were reacquainted with the two younger girls.

I began to wonder if any descendants of the rescued girls and young woman might be traceable, any record of them retained somewhere, if only in family folklore?

Roberts’ account offers a clue to the identity of one of the girls. He says she is the daughter of an artist he calls Aumonier. I worked out that in fact two of the girls were Aumonier sisters and they were more likely the artist’s grand-daughters. I searched online and found a James Aumonier, and his evocative Sussex landscape paintings.

I wondered too if there was any other inherited knowledge of this dramatic incident, someone today who would recall their great grandmother speaking of or passing on details of such a childhood drama, such a life-changing moment.

Because Aumonier – being French – is quite an unusual name in Britain, I thought it worth making a few speculative enquiries. I soon struck lucky. An old friend, David Payne, who lives in Brighton, reminded me that not only does he know an Aumonier – Simon – but that I know him, too. Simon works for a major environmental consultancy with which I collaborated on an international partnership project for migrant birds, while I was with the RSPB.

I contacted Simon and he replied promptly. Sure enough, he is related to the artist James and therefore two of the rescued girls. Simon even has two of James’s paintings, and books and sculptures by others in the Aumonier dynasty. According to 1891 census records, the Aumonier family lived at Oxford Villas in New Shoreham. The daughters were called Louisa and Nancy. They went on to become a musician and a maternity nurse, and neither married.

On a breezy, sunny day in July 2021, I visited the setting for this life-saving incident, after cycling along the seafront from Brighton to Shoreham, wondering which part of this long stretch of shingle, with its groynes extending into the waves, Hudson and Roberts had been sitting on, on that morning in autumn 1890.

The beach was empty at one place where I paused. As chance would have it an elderly lady passed me, with three young children. I helped her lift a buggy over the railings on to the shingle. One girl had a large inflatable rubber ring.

"Be careful with that,” I couldn’t help blurting out, conscious even as I said it that it might not have been my place. They were the only people on the beach. I watched for a brief while and then left, confident that no harm would befall them.

At Worthing, I explored the pier, opened in April 1862, and found a display of Victorian photographs, including one that shows three young girls posing for the camera, and one of an elderly lady at the water’s edge, with a child – another eerie echo of the incident on that morning, 1890.

Among the mementoes of Hudson that lurk in files in the RSPB archive at its headquarters there is said to be a certificate he received in recognition of his bravery in helping to save three lives from the sea, although I didn’t have time to search for it before lockdown.

It is in a sense thanks to his part in this life-saving mission that there are people alive today who might owe their existence directly to W. H. Hudson.

This Shoreham rescue brought to my mind a well-rehearsed story passed down in my family, and told to me from a very young age, of how my mother’s father, as a young boy, had a near-death-by-drowning experience in a frozen lake in County Down, when, on a bitter winter’s day, he dared himself to cycle on its frozen surface, with disastrous consequences.

The ice broke and bike and boy went under. That he was able to drag himself out of the freezing water, and back to shore, is of course testified by my mother’s existence, and the rest.