The Wainwright Letters

by Hunter Davies

  Thanks a lot for writing. I should be delighted to hear from you again if you find any other points worth mentioning.

  In the meantime, you could do me a tremendous favour by recommending the book to others interested in the hills. I’m afraid my publicity and distribution arrangements have been badly hit by the strike, and a word from you here and there would help. I should be grateful if you would do this, without, of course, going to any trouble about it.

  Yours sincerely

  In placing his advertisement with Cumbria, AW had been promised extra editorial coverage and it was agreed that Bill Mitchell, editor of Cumbria, would interview him and write a personal piece. Mitchell saw AW at his office – but got nothing out of him, and produced nothing worth using. AW had suddenly gone all private and uncooperative – for which he apologised to Mr Scott, the publisher.

  LETTER 47: TO HARRY SCOTT, 10 JUNE 1955

  Harry J Scott, Esq.,

  Municipal Offices

  The Dalesman Publishing Co,

  Lowther Street

  Clapham,

  Kendal

  Via Lancaster.

  Westmorland

  10 June 1955

  Tele. 130 Kendal

  Dear Mr Scott,

  Thank you for your friendly and helpful letter.

  I apologise profoundly for what has clearly been a misunderstanding on my part. When Mr Mitchell came to see me I somehow got the impression that the June Cumbria was already made up and that he was seeking a ‘follow-up’ for the July issue – and therefore that I had time to give some thought to his questions. However, it is my fault, and my loss; I appreciate your position. I would like you to tell Mr Mitchell, please, how sorry I am that I have muddled the matter.

  Your other remarks about distribution are very interesting. I must admit that things are working out very differently from my expectations. The personal invitation by leaflet has proved a flop, and has taught me not to expect people to part with their money for something they have not seen. On the other hand, enquiries from bookshops and libraries are now coming in steadily, and it is unfortunate that for the past fortnight we have not been able to get many books out. So far as I can ascertain, 300 copies have been sold up to now, and I have many more to send out to bookshops when the strike is over, so perhaps things are not going so badly, but as you suggest, it is going to be a longer and slower process than I expected. The book has had excellent reviews, and I have had many congratulatory letters which have done much to encourage me and relieve my anxieties.

  I am extremely grateful to you, Mr Scott, for your continued interest and offers of help, and someday, when the thing is on its feet, I will look in at your office, and thank you personally. I shall always remember that you were one of the first to pronounce a blessing on my efforts.

  Yours sincerely,

  LETTER 48: TO MRS MARY HELPS, 15 JUNE 1955

  Henry Marshall, Low Bridge, Kentmere, Westmorland.

  Dear Mrs Helps

  Mr Marshall has passed your kind and interesting letter on to me: he is out of action at present

  I hope you had an enjoyable holiday and collected more precious memories.

  Here is the book. I do hope you like it!

  Yours sincerely

  AWainwright.

  In June 1954, John and Mary Helps, who lived near Ilford in Essex, where he worked with his father running a mail order business in flower bulbs, were on their honeymoon in Scotland on the Isle of Skye. Staying by chance in the same bed and breakfast were AW and Henry Marshall. While climbing Sgurr nan Gillean, they came across AW and Marshall struggling to get the top, which they themselves had just done, so they escorted them to the top. Mr Helps took a photo of AW and Marshall, with his wife Mary, beside the cairn. (I used this photo in my biography of AW, purely as evidence that AW and Marshall had once been reasonably close friends, though I did not know at the time identity of the woman in the photograph.)

  About a year later, Mrs Helps sent the photo to AW and Marshall and Marshall replied by telling her that he and AW had just published their first book – would she like to buy a copy? She posted the money and AW sent a signed book – which they still have in their Keswick home, which is where they retired to in the 1980s. AW always liked the photograph and kept it carefully.

  LETTER 49: TO MR SCOTT, 21 JUNE 1955

  Municipal Offices

  Lowther Street

  Kendal

  Westmorland

  21 June 1955

  Dear Mr Scott,

  Your very kind letter about ‘The Eastern Fells’ really gave me the most warming glow of pleasure!

  This is a personal venture I have embarked upon, not without a great deal of anxiety lest it should fail. The expressions of appreciation that are coming in are a comfort to me, and make everything I have done seem well worth while.

  I am greatly encouraged by your generous remarks, and thank you for taking the trouble and finding the time to write. It was nice of you to do this.

  Yours sincerely

  AWainwright

  AW then agreed that he would answer by post some questions and answers if Bill Mitchell sent them to him. AW replied to each question – and also scribbled a covering note to Mr Mitchell – but never posted either of them. (I discovered them in 1994 in AW’s papers when working on his official biography.)

  LETTER 50: TO MR MITCHELL, UNDATED

  Dear Mr Mitchell,

  As promised, I enclose some notes from which you may be able to put together the article you intended for the July Cumbria. I apologise for the delay, but have had much on my mind since I saw you.

  I found your two principal questions (‘why did you do it?’ And ‘why did you do it in this particular way?’) not at all easy to answer, but [illegible] my observations. I enclose also Griffin’s article from the Lancashire Evening Post which contains certain biographical and other details you were interested in, and which you may care to re-hash in order to form a complete story. I feel myself that the article should be in narrative form, as Griffin’s is, rather than in the form of an interview, but please yourself on this point. In fact, I’m ready to agree to anything to get a bit more publicity. One problem has been the rail and postal restrictions which have disrupted deliveries. At least I’m making that the excuse for the negligible response so far.

  Only 70 odd replies have been received to the 1400 leaflets sent out. Griffin’s excellent article has produced only three enquiries and the June Cumbria only two! All this is a tremendous disappointment. Fortunately, the shops are doing better, but I don’t know whether more than 150 copies have been sold as yet. On the brighter side, the reviews of the book have been excellent and I have had an offer (not accepted) from another publisher to publish the six volumes that are still to come. Still optimistic, I believe everything will be OK in due course. We’ll see.

  y/s

  Q: What impelled you to write this book?

  Oddly, perhaps this is a question I have never asked myself and I am not sure that I can answer it satisfactorily. Certainly it cannot be answered in a single sentence. Ideas grow, like habits, until they become a way of life. What planted this particular seed in my mind is difficult to say. Perhaps I was born with it. Looking back, I seem always to have had a passion for hill-walking, even when a small boy; other enthusiasms have come and gone, but my love of the fells has been constant. As far back as I can remember, mountain country has attracted me and mountain literature and maps have been my favourite reading. The growing supply of mountaineering books, with their inspiring photographs and diagrams, must have influenced me considerably. It was always an ambition of mine to climb Everest (it used to be my fondest wish to die on the summit, but I’ve grown up since then!) the Everest books fascinated me and I studied them intently: in my imagination, how often I have toiled upwards towards its summit! Well, I could never go to Everest, but there was Scafell, and Helvellyn, and all the other fells I knew so well. They too had lofty ridges and hidden recesses, and
, in winter, snow and ice; away from the paths there were wide areas of lonely territory to explore, places where few walkers go. Gradually the fells have taken the place of Everest in my life; they have provided the outlet for the climbing and exploring urge fostered by the many books of mountain travel. Some years ago I started to put a notebook and a pencil in my rucksack, and to be methodical in my wanderings. Later I started to be methodical in my notes, too. Every fell had to yield the answers to the same questions: the details of its structure, the best routes of ascent, the secrets of its untrodden places, the views from the top. I regarded them all as Himalayan giants, and myself as a lone explorer. The game took a hold on me as nothing else has ever done; it became a completely absorbing pastime, but more a passion that a pastime. For every day I could spend on the fells I had six in which I could do no climbing; these I started to spend carefully putting my notes into more attractive form and planning future expeditions. The map of Lakeland had now become a vast territory for exploration, and I planned my walks as though conducting a military campaign. You remember the war maps, the black arrows of advancing troops, the pincer movements, the mopping-up operations? That’s the way I worked, but my thoughts were not of war, but utterly at peace. A tremendous impetus was given to my investigations by the re-publication of the two and a half inch Ordnance Survey maps, which, though not up-to-date, contained a wealth of interesting detail and provided a fuller appreciation of the meticulous accuracy of the cartographer’s art. With these fine maps as examples, my rough notes would never do for me now: the job I was tackling must be done properly. I must make my own up-to-date maps, my own diagrams, my own drawings, all carefully designed and presented as attractively as I could. Writing is a form of drawing, and it was natural that I should try to describe the fells in words, but only where necessary to supplement the illustrations. I started to put pen to paper in earnest, hesitatingly at first. That was in November 1952 and by Christmas 1954 I had completed the first part of my plan.

  Q: Why does the book appear in this particular and unusual fashion, that is, entirely from hand-written manuscript?

  Because the book was intended originally only as a personal chronicle of my observations, so that everything in it, the notes as well as the illustrations, was prepared by hand. The thought of publication came much later, when it began to appear to me that my observations would be of interest to others who shared my regard for the fells. So it is that the book that has emerged is nothing more than my own personal notebook, reproduced exactly as I penned it, and embellished with an introduction and a conclusion which serve the purpose of explaining the plan to which I have worked in compiling the information.

  Q: Have you had any training in art or book illustration?

  No, I have had no training in drawing, but because the fells were never out of my mind, I have for years occupied much leisure time in translating into pictures the vivid impressions I had of them. At first, I started to do this idly, but it quickly became an absorbing occupation and to me a very satisfying one because I found that by building up a favourite mountain from a blank sheet of paper I could experience the subtle joy of feeling that I was actually engaged upon the ascent physically as the familiar shape came into being under the pen. To me, this was a discovery of some importance. I could now sit in my chair on a winter’s evening and bring Scafell of Gable into the room with me. When I could not go to the hills I could make them come to me.

  Q: You must have a remarkable amount of patience?

  I don’t think patience is the right word. Patience lies in doing a task unwillingly. When a task is done because it is enjoyed, its is enthusiasm.

  Q: Have you had any interesting experiences during the making of the book?

  If you mean during my walks, yes. Every walk is an interesting experience in itself, doubly interesting because it is walked with a definite purpose. I could not begin to detail my experiences now, although someday I hope to – when the Guide is finished. In general, I would say that the most intense experiences have occurred during nights spent upon the fells. Occasionally (not often, and only in Summer) I have bivouacked alone in high places; these occasions remain vivid in memory! Nobody who has not done it can imagine the splendours of sunset and sunrise from the summits, the eerie stillness of the hours of darkness, the joy of being on the tops at dawn when the larks are rising. I recommend this to everyone who loves the fells, but I recommend company to all but guide-book writers.

  Q: Do you always go alone?

  Invariably. I prefer to go alone, and must be alone if I am to get any work done. One cannot concentrate and comprehend another’s conversation at the same time. Besides, I should be a poor companion, for my walks must often seem to be erratic, leading into unfrequented corners, zigzagging where there is no need to zig-zag, sometimes returning to the same summit two or three times during the course of a day. In fact, I have often reason to be thankful that my antics are not being observed.

  Q: When do you expect to finish Book Two?

  All being well, by the autumn of 1956.

  Part 6

  Fan Letters, 1956–61

  Book One, The Eastern Fells, was officially published in May 1955 but because of a rail strike there were few copies around until July. There was no dustjacket on Book One – AW had forgotten to do one – but when the book started selling well, and a second printing was ordered, AW decided to add one.

  One of the early fan letters about Book One came from his Aunt Nellie (also known as Helen), his mother’s sister, still living in Penistone, Yorkshire, from whence AW’s parents, on both sides, had originally come.

  LETTER 51: TO HELEN (NELLIE) SMITH, 17 JANUARY 1956

  48 Kendal Green

  Kendal

  17th January 1956

  Dear auntie Nellie,

  Thank you so much for your very kind letter about ‘The Eastern Fells’. It was a great pleasure to hear from you – and not, of course, merely to receive your congratulations and good wishes, but because you are a link with a past that becomes more and more remote and yet which often comes to mind: not always a happy past, perhaps, but rather one with some happy memories. Eric, on his annual visits, serves similarly to remind me of days that are gone, although I never mention this and I’m sure he doesn’t realise it. It’s strange, really, how well I remember Penistone – a grandfather clock at Grandpa’s, auntie Lucy’s shop, aunt Grace’s little cottage, the viaduct, Percy Snape, Scout Wood – a jumble of memories, still vivid; and yet it is so many years (over thirty, I suppose) since I spent a holiday there. One of these days I really must go again!

  The printer is now working on a second impression of Book One, and for this I have designed a paper book-jacket. I must remember to send you one to put round Helen’s copy. Every spare moment is spent on Book Two: either working on it or thinking about it. It’s more than half-finished but probably won’t be published until Easter next year.

  I enjoy so much preparing these books that I look for no other reward, yet other rewards there have been in plenty in the form of letters I have received from readers all over the country – wonderfully kind letters, messages even of gratitude from elderly people who used to walk the fells and now can do so no more. Yours I will place with these, and always be grateful for it

  Alfred

  The following month AW got a letter from Weaver Owen, formerly manager of Lloyds bank in Kendal from 1949–55, now moved to Banbury. He had lived near AW in Kendal, and was also a keen walker. One morning in 1949 they had met at the same bus stop and discovered they were about to go on the same walk. They did several walks together and one hot summer’s night they even spent the night together, sleeping on a fell out in the open. (Mr Owen said later he never slept a wink but AW did as his pipe kept the midges away.)

  In his reply to Mr Weaver, AW was a trifle pompous, saying he did not care to be addressed by his Christian name – even from somebody with whom he had once slept – but his letter was friendly and chatty, giving him n
ews on Book Two. In a letter a year later, he gave him news of Book Three.

  LETTER 52: TO WEAVER OWEN, 7 FEBRUARY 1956

  Municipal Offices

  Lowther Street

  Kendal

  7th February 1956

  Dear Mr Owen (or Weaver, if you prefer it although personally I don’t)

  I was delighted to receive your letter with its inspiring enclosure. I had seen the photograph of Swindale Beck in the Lancashire Evening Post some days earlier, but there it was reproduced badly and failed to stir the emotions as the Times picture undoubtedly did. O, to be in Swindale at this very moment! What am I doing here in a stuffy office surrounded by books?

  As your letter was on its way north to me, you were very much in my thoughts, because I was en route to London on business. On a train journey I always like to sit with my nose flattened against the window and a railway map on my knee – and on this occasion I noted keenly all references to Banbury as the train passed through nearby stations, and surveyed the surrounding countryside with interest. Pleasant, yes; beautiful and exciting, no, not for me, I concluded; I’m no stickler after the fleshpots, as J.S.W. Owen obviously is. Our ambitions run in different channels … yet perhaps I was too harsh, for the sight of you on hands and knees trying to insert yourself in a tiny shelter on the shores of Small Water remains one of my richest memories.

  Life here goes on as smoothly as ever. I miss your cheerful smile, but, to be quite honest, so inflexibly have I set my course that your departure was no more than a ripple on a placid sea.

  Nevertheless, I shall be very pleased to see you in April. I am ‘engaged’ at present on the fells around the head of Longsleddale (Harter Fell and company), having just completed a three-months exploration of the Thornthwaite Crag – Ill Bell Group. My programme tells me that April is scheduled for Branstree and Selside Pike, so that if you were to accompany me on a walk in that month it would probably be from Garnett Bridge, up Longsleddale and over the tops to Swindale (scene of the photograph) and Shap – which means using the bus, not your car.