Marion Edmunds
MEETINGS WITH REMARKABLE TREES by Thomas Pakenham (Weidenfeld and Nicolson, R195)
LEAVING the skirmishes of the Boer War behind him, and the unsightly scramble by colonialists for Africa, award-winning historian Sir Thomas Pakenham has chosen still, silent subjects for his most recent research.
Meetings with Remarkable Trees is an unusual and beautiful picture book, which unites 60 of the oldest and most splendid trees in Britain and Ireland in Pakenham’s personal gallery of favourites and friends. Pakenham provides a short written and full- page photographic portrait of each tree.
In each instance, the tree’s significance stems from its age, its stature and its associations. Through the leaves of the book, Pakenham reveals his own character, in his turn of phrase and his comments, made as he sizes up each leafy giant. He even features in some of the photographs, his face peeping out, for example, from behind the boughs of the original Irish Yew at Florence Court, County Fermanagh.
“I think far many more people than will admit have a special relationship with a tree and I brought this relationship out of the shadows,” he said in an interview in Cape Town last week, justifying his novel approach to tree cataloguing.
He puts the splendour of the photography down to his magic camera, which he showed to me during the interview. Through the viewfinder of the Linhof Technika, I was able to study a number of less remarkable trees in the garden where we were talking, on the slopes of Table Mountain. With the black cloth over my head, I was able to block out the schemes and traffic of humanity, and felt that closeness with the subject which Pakenham captures in every portrait.
Opening his book is like rambling in a friendly forest, far away from ever- restless human beings. Trees, through Pakenham’s lens, become the nobler species, stoic for lasting so long in an increasingly violent, selfish man-made world, virtuous for being so beautiful and fruitful, and divine for achieving near- immortality. Of course botanists argue that Pakenham errs by imbuing trees with human capabilities.
“My botanist friends were outraged,” said Pakenham. “Trees are not centred beings with feelings. But we all attribute feelings to things – it’s a kind of fallacy but we all take part in it.” This is one of the reasons why this book will continue to be so popular. Pakenham brings out the pantheist in his reader. In the introduction, he describes how, in anticipation of a great storm, he takes the measurements of 19 beeches on his property, fearing for their lives.
“I slipped a tape measure round the smooth, sliver-green, lichen-encrusted bellies of the trees and listed their measurements in a notebook. None was a record-breaker. But all had been good friends for generations to our family. As I taped each tree, I gave it a hug, as if to say `good luck tonight’.”
This encounter started Pakenham off on a quest to identify the best trees in the land, and pay them tribute. “I travelled the length and breadth of Britain and Ireland doing research for this book … Many of the ancient trees that I saw were suffering from neglect. Fences, put up years ago to protect them from sheep and cattle and horses were often broken. Few historians have troubled themselves much about these monuments. Yet old trees are living documents.” Pakenham marvels at these silent witnesses who have endured centuries of human endeavour. Yew trees, in particular, have caught his imagination. “It’s a romantic clich to find pleasure in ruins, but a living ruin is different. One gets far more pleasure from living ruins because they remain part of life’s stream – part of the wheel of life, even the oldest trees can be breeding new ones.
“They are very good listeners you know, trees are very good listeners – and they can be violent too, they can drop things on your head.”
Pakenham is used to writing about violence – his books on the conflict in the Boer War and the senseless carving up of the African continent, which has caused such suffering among African peoples, distinguished him as a historical writer. When Pakenham talks passionately of the problems of Zaire, his brow becomes knitted, but he talks with an open face about the response he has had to his trees.
“After writing about the Boer War I got letters from people, saying `Dear Sir, You failed to name my grandfather in your book and he fought in this or that company and he did a jolly good job and you did not mention him.’ But with Meetings with Remarkable Trees, I received more letters that the other two books and there were no letters of complaint. Some of them simply said thank you.”
Looking over the wonderful verdant garden, Pakenham begins to muse about getting letters from trees, signed with a root- print. “I’d probably get a letter from a tree, saying `You watch it – this time you’ve gone too far Pakenham,'” he said.
Pakenham is not going to stop with his first book. He is now embarking on a worldwide quest to find remarkable trees to sign up for his next book, a sequel. He was about to set out to the coast when I met him, “to stalk yellowwoods in the Knsyna Forest”.
Some of these trees photographed in their splendour might remember their moments with Sir Thomas Pakenham, standing gazing at their foliage, remarking upon their fruit and sizing them up from behind the lens. They may store the memory in their trunks as a special one – a meeting with a remarkable man.