The Man Whom the Trees Loved

Algernon Henry Blackwood, (1869 -1951) was an English writer of supernatural fiction. Blackwood was also a journalist and a broadcasting narrator. Blackwood had a varied career, farming in Canada, operating a hotel, a newspaper reporter in New York, and essayist for various periodicals. His works included ten collections of short stories, fourteen novels, children's stories, and several plays. Many of his stories reflect his love of nature and the outdoors. His two best-known stories were "The Willows" and "The Wendigo". The Man Whom the Trees Loved is the story of a man with a special relationship with trees. The story begins, "He painted trees as by some special divining instinct of their essential qualities. He understood them. He knew why in an oak forest, for instance, each individual was utterly distinct from its fellows, and why no two beeches in the whole world were alike. People asked him down to paint a favorite lime or silver birch, for he caught the individuality of a tree as some catch the individuality of a horse. How he managed it was something of a puzzle, for he never had painting lessons, his drawing was often wildly inaccurate, and, while his perception of a Tree Personality was true and vivid, his rendering of it might almost approach the ludicrous. Yet the character and personality of that particular tree stood there alive beneath his brush--shining, frowning, dreaming, as the case might be, friendly or hostile, good or evil. It emerged."