The Purple Land

The Purple Land is a novel set in 19th century Uruguay by William Henry Hudson, first published in 1885 under the title The Purple Land that England Lost. Initially a commercial and critical failure, it was reissued in 1904 with the full title The Purple Land, Being One Richard Lamb's Adventures in the Banda Orientál, in South America, as told by Himself. Towards the end of the novel, the narrator explains the title, "I will call my book The Purple Land. For what more suitable name can one find for a country so stained with the blood of her children?"

The novel tells the story of Richard Lamb, a young Englishman who marries a teenage Argentinian girl, Paquita, without asking her father's permission, and is forced to flee to Montevideo, Uruguay with his bride. Lamb leaves his young wife with a relative while he sets off for eastern Uruguay to find work for himself. He soon becomes embroiled in adventures with the Uruguayan gauchos and romances with local women. Lamb unknowingly helps a rebel guerrilla general, Santa Coloma, escape from prison and joins his cause. However, the rebels are defeated in battle and Lamb has to flee in disguise. He helps Demetria, the daughter of an old rebel leader, escape from her persecutors and returns to Montevideo. Lamb, Paquita, Demetria and Santa Coloma evade their government pursuers by slipping away on a boat bound for Buenos Aires. Here the novel ends, but in the opening paragraphs, Lamb had already informed the reader that after the events of the story he was captured by Paquita's father and thrown into prison for three years, during which time Paquita herself died of grief.

Jorge Luis Borges dedicated an essay to The Purple Land in his book Other Inquisitions (1952). He compared Hudson's novel to the Odyssey and described it as perhaps the "best work of gaucho literature". Borges sees the novel as the story of Richard Lamb's gradual "acriollamiento" ("Creolisation"). In other words, Lamb "goes native." To begin with, Lamb looks down on the Uruguayans, with their disorganised political system and lack of law and order and civilised amenities, thinking it would have been better for Uruguay to become part of the British Empire. But he slowly comes to see the advantages of the freedom they enjoy, especially in comparison to the stuffiness of Victorian England. According to Ezequiel Martínez Estrada, who is quoted by Borges, the final pages of the novel contain "the supreme justification of America compared with Western civilisation." Hudson writes: