Publishing my Edward Thomas

Edward Thomas and Trees

I am borrowing from Robert MacFarlane the idea that trees have a symbolic meaning for Thomas, that of stability and rootedness, as against birds which use them but have motion and freedom. These themes were echoed in his own life, as he would be violently restless against home, long to get away, then once away would need to come home.

 I think that trees often stand for people too - as the aspens and pollarded willows and the extraordinarily damaged trees in 'The Hollow Wood'.

Aspens - Populus Tremula

collective commons


Then there is the different concept of forest, which I'll look at next time.

Here is a very rooted tree indeed, from 'In Pursuit of Spring: the hawthorn tree reputed to have sprung from Joseph of Arimethia's staff ( Not vandalised as of course it was quite recently.)



guardian

.'............Joseph of Arimathea's thorn, and how it blossomed at Christmas. "Did you ever see it blossoming at Christmas?" I asked. "Once," she said, and she told me how the first winter she spent in Glastonbury was a very mild one, and she went out with her brothers for a walk on Christmas day in the afternoon. She remembered that they wore no coats. And they saw blossom on the holy thorn. After all, I did go through the turnstile to see the abbey. The high pointed arches were magnificent, the turf under them perfect. The elms stood among the ruins like noble savages among Greeks. The orchards hard by made me wish that they were blossoming. But excavations had been going on; clay was piled up and cracking in the sun, and there were tin sheds and scaffolding. I am not an archaeologist, and I left it. As I was approaching the turnstile an old hawthorn within a few yards of it, against a south wall, drew my attention. For it was covered with young green leaves and with bright crimson berries almost as numerous. Going up to look more closely, I saw what was more wonderful -- Blossom. Not one flower, nor one spray only, but several sprays. I had not up till now seen even blackthorn flowers, though towards the end of February I had heard of hawthorn flowering near Bradford. As this had not been picked, I conceitedly drew the conclusion that it had not been observed. Perhaps its conspicuousness had saved it. It was Lady Day. I had found the Spring in that bush of green, white, and crimson. So warm and bright was the sun, and so blue the sky, and so white the clouds, that not for a moment did the possibility of Winter returning cross my mind. '

  Also from In Pursuit:

“The pollard willows fringing the green, which in the sunlight resemble mops, were now very much like a procession of men, strange primeval beings, pausing to meditate in the darkness.”

In the novel I have many references to specific trees:
The orchards at Leddington where the novel begins, the foliage so green that it colours their rooms at Oldfields.
The seven elm trees at the Gallows which distress Robert during his last winter in England and which were blown down in March 1916.
The abandoned tree where Edward watches the ploughman in 'As the team's headbrass' -  implying destructiveness in its fall but more so in the absence of men to remove it out of the plough's way.

The mix of black yew and bright whitebeam he sees every day from his study window.

redhawk55

'Wind-beat whitebeam'. Hopkins

The destroyed, splintered trees in France and these, in his memory:

 

'He walked back heavily, hearing the wind howling in the empty rooms of the great house when he went in. He sat at the broken window, watching a dozen black crumpled sycamore leaves swirl round and round on the terrace.

Their occasional rustling whispers brought a memory to his mind: the very different lively chatter of aspens at the crossroads in Steep when a breeze blew, a breeze that often meant rain. A Sunday and the village street utterly quiet, the public house closed and the smithy silent. Only the group of aspens had seemed alive on the earth at that moment, talking together, their alignment suggesting an empty room, a room of ghosts. He had had a strange sense of premonition that day: whether for the country life he had known and loved, or for more than that, he could not tell, but as he sat in that ruined landscape he thought of it.'

 

Poem:

 

Here is the ultimate 'restless, walking Tom, get away from home' poem,

 

The Lofty Sky

To-day I want the sky,
The tops of the high hills,
Above the last man's house,
His hedges, and his cows,
Where, if I will, I look
Down even on sheep and rook,
And of all things that move
See buzzards only above:-
Past all trees, past furze
And thorn, where nought deters
The desire of the eye
For sky, nothing but sky.
I sicken of the woods
And all the multitudes
Of hedge-trees. They are no more
Than weeds upon this floor
Of the river of air
Leagues deep, leagues wide, where
I am like a fish that lives
In weeds and mud and gives
What's above him no thought.
I might be a tench for aught
That I can do to-day
Down on the wealden clay.
Even the tench has days
When he floats up and plays
Among the lily leaves
And sees the sky, or grieves
Not if he nothing sees:
While I, I know that trees
Under that lofty sky
Are weeds, fields mud, and I
Would arise and go far
To where the lilies are.