The Man Whom the Trees Loved

The Man Whom the Trees Loved is a horror story written by Algernon Blackwood and first published in 1912.

In this next story we discover a couple, David and Sophia Bittacy, who live on the edge of a forest.

David develops a strange and growing fascination with the trees that surround their home, and in time the attraction becomes an obsession, to the point where his wife becomes alarmed when she senses a malevolent force in their influence.

And so the trees enter the couple's story in a way they never thought possible, exploring themes of humanity's insignificance in the natural world.

"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."