I am now returning the remainder of your notes, which were a great help. If they are a bit soiled it is because they were well used. Also a number of letters, which may contain information you might require. These come back to you with my very sincere thanks for a job well done.
I hope you are feeling fitter these days. By a stroke of luck I managed to complete the P.W. walking just one week before the fells were closed for the epidemic, otherwise I would have been badly held up.
Yours sincerely,
AWainwright
LETTER 88: TO LEN CHADWICK, 1 FEBRUARY 1968
38 Kendal Green, Kendal
1st February 1968
Dear Mr Chadwick,
I was extremely sorry to learn from your letter that you are faced with the prospect of finding new employment, which is bad enough in itself but doubly so when it happens at an age when most men want nothing more than to stay quietly in their present jobs and cruise along uneventfully to retirement and a pension. You don’t sound hopeful of securing fresh work in the Oldham district, and it may well be that, although we read in the papers of there being more jobs available than men, this does not apply in south Lancashire. In the Midlands or around London you would have a fair chance of getting fixed up quite quickly, but I suppose you are not eager to leave your home territory – or the hills. Neither would I be.
It is unlikely that I could do anything to solve your problem myself. Since retirement I have lost touch and broken my contacts except insofar as they affect my books.
As you are going to have to start afresh anyway, could it not be the sort of employment for which you have a natural flair, something you could really enjoy? I am thinking, of course, of a wardenship of some small youth hostel or similar outdoor institution run single-handed, somewhere in the country, even in the wilds? Or forestry? Or reservoir-keeping? There is never much demand for jobs situated far from the creature comforts of the towns. You would have to sacrifice your clerical training and start something quite new, but does this matter? ‘something new’ may be something better.
I’m sorry I can see no way of helping, but hope you get fixed up quite soon in congenial work. Please keep me informed.
THE BOOK is starting printing next week. I will send you a copy as soon as available, probably around the end of March.
Yours sincerely,
AWainwright
LETTER 89: TO LEN CHADWICK, 3 MAY 1968
38 Kendal Green, Kendal
3rd May 1968.
Dear Mr Chadwick,
I am owing you three letters, and am sorry I have been so slow in replying. Pressure of correspondence! First let me thank you for your very kind approval of PENNINE WAY COMPANION, which has (so far) had a good reception. You ought to be feeling that you have a proprietary interest in this book, and I hope that you consider the book sufficient reward for the many months of lonely reconnaissance and the miles of mud-slogging and the many doubts and difficulties you suffered on my behalf. Unfortunately I had to be very selective in what I included and what I left out in order to keep the book to reasonable dimensions, and masses of information had to be sacrificed for the public although everything was of inestimable value to myself. Your other letters have suggested improvements to the route, and I am quite sure you are right in saying that alternative passages you have tried out recently give better walking. But it is now too late to think of alterations to the present route: it is here to stay.
I am sorry to learn that you are not yet fixed up with a new job. About two months ago I had an enquiry from the C.H.A. about you, to which I was able to reply favourably, and I thought you might have been successful with your application to them, but apparently not. Then I heard, but only in a roundabout way, that the Y.H.A. were looking for a warden (single man) for their hostel in Mallerstang, but could not get confirmation of this and so did not write, imagining you anyway as being signed on by the C.H.A. In your letter received this morning there is a hint that your expect to have fresh employment soon, and I hope this materialises if the work is something you could enjoy doing. A Warden in the Lake District was also advertised for recently, I noticed, (850 p.a.), but I am afraid age would be against you for this job although there was no age-limit in the advert. However, I hope you will have good news soon.
I am making good progress with WALKS IN LIMESTONE COUNTRY, which I am finding much easier to do than the Pennine Way. Not only is the territory around Ingleton and Settle much pleasanter to walk, and much more interesting, but it also happens to be within close range of Kendal, so that I can pick out the good weather, and not find myself marooned in lodgings in bad weather far out in the wilds.
I am glad to see you are still very active with your walking programme and trust you have a successful year on the hills with no worries as to where your next meal is coming from.
Yours sincerely,
AWainwright
Part 9
Letters to Molly, 1964–6
Molly Lefebure first wrote to AW around 1957 when Book Two came out, correcting him about some point, now long forgotten. She remembered that he wrote back and said he was right and she was wrong.
Later on, she wrote again and this time something sparked off AW’s interest in Molly personally – perhaps it was because she was a sparky, middle class, educated, literary lady, of the sort he had rarely met – and so began a correspondence that went on for many years.
Molly went to North London Collegiate School and London University and then worked for three years on a chain of East End newspapers throughout the Blitz, after which, for eight years, she was medical secretary to Keith Simpson, the Home Office pathologist. She married John Gerrish, an oil company executive, and had two sons. In 1957 they bought a house in Newlands near Keswick, used by Molly as a bolt-hole to write in and for family holidays. They now live there full time. Molly has written several books on crime and the Lake District, novels for adults and children, as well as biographies of Coleridge and Thomas Hardy.
Their correspondence proper began in September 1964 when Molly wrote to him enclosing an old clay pipe she had found while climbing Robinson. ‘I knew he smoked a pipe, as he had drawn himself with one in one of his Guides. In my letter, I said it must be one of his, but he shouldn’t leave such litter on the fells …’
LETTER 90: TO MOLLY LEFEBURE, 4 SEPTEMBER 1964
c/o Westmorland Gazette, Kendal
4th September 1964
Dear Madam,
Thank you for your kind letter, with its generous comments and remarkable enclosure. The pipe is no longer serviceable, unfortunately, but your letter was a perfect delight to read, a thing of great charm, quiet fun, vivid imagination, and apt, expressive words.
You put me in a difficulty right away. How should I address you? Simply to say ‘Dear Mrs Gerrish’ seems an awful damper on your positively friendly, spirited, scintillating and spontaneous overtures to me (if ‘overtures’ isn’t an unhappy word to use here). ‘Dear Molly’ sounds much better, but would it bring an angry husband rampaging after me? (I have a dread of angry husbands, as of bulls.) You mention a bevy of offspring, unashamedly. I wonder…. Oh, what the hell – I always get myself into trouble when I write to women. Better play safe …
I am writing now only to acknowledge its receipt. Usually I keep correspondents waiting at least three months for attention – not out of discourtesy, but out of self-defence. I have such a vast heap of unanswered letters on my desk (built up into a lovely cairn – it seems such a pity to disturb it). But you are special. I can’t keep you waiting that long.
Please accept this acknowledgement until I can find time to give your letter the full attention it deserves. I’ll write as soon as I can.
Yours sincerely,
AWainwright (Mr!)
Some time later, he wrote from Scotland to her, from the Caledonian Hotel in Inverness. No year is given, but it is clearly 1965, judging by the following letter. Molly says he was doing lots of train rides, partly because he was allowed a c
ertain amount of free rail travel as a local government servant. There had been other shorter letters between them before this long letter from Scotland. The reference to Burnbank is about a running argument between them. Molly had said there was an old stone circle on Burnbank he had missed – and he said it didn’t exist, she was imagining it. This row, only half jocular, went on for years.
LETTER 91: TO MOLLY LEFEBURE, 16 MAY 1965?
Caledonian Hotel, Inverness
May 16th, I think
Dear Molly,
I must tell somebody, or I shall start screaming. And only from you, with your rich understanding of human frailties, can I expect the warmth of sympathy my present unfortunate circumstances deserve.
I am making my annual railway tour of Scotland solo. The purpose is complete relaxation, mark you. But, but by a cruel chain of coincidences, I am finding myself everywhere given a hotel bedroom next to a door marked ‘toilet’, with devastating effect on sleep and rest. You must understand that I cannot sleep with a noise going on. I can not only not sleep with clock in the room, I can’t if there’s one in the next. My watch I have to bury under the carpet and put my rucksack over it. But since I came up here my nights have been punctuated by the crash of waters only the thickness of a brick from my weary head. Things were at their lowest ebb at the Loch Lomond Hotel at Balloch, which had two coach parties staying overnight. All night long they were at it, flushing the poor thing mercilessly. There was never any question of sleep. At 2 o’clock I gave up trying, put the light on and kept a tally on the wall-paper. As the result of this research into the Toilet-Going Habits of the British Tourist in Scotland, I can now produce statistics to show that (by dividing the number of flushes by the number of guests in what might be termed the ‘catchment area’ or ‘toilet zone’) the average attendance of the British Tourist between supper and breakfast is 3 and a third. This takes some swallowing, you will admit. O, for the freedom from inhibition of Burnbank Stone Circle! This may be life in the raw, but how much to be preferred! The other hotels have been little better. I feel like a wet rag; my eyes are going bloodshot.
I don’t know why I’m here, anyway. The place has been smothered in mist and rain for four days. There is no pleasure in it. The last act of desperation of a man at his wits’ end is to go from Inverness to Wick and back in a day – 320 miles – and this I did yesterday. It rained all the time and I had the train to myself. I must be going out of my mind, because nobody in his right senses ever goes to Wick. My heart’s not in it, either. I cross Rannoch Moor and my thoughts are of Ennerdale, I look at the Cairngorms from Aviemore and see High Stile and Red Pike from Crummock. I climb the bonny braes above Lomond searching for Burnbank’s stone circle. The hills are mightier, the lochs vaster, the distances greater, but it is a country without charm. No, lass, this is second best, and a long way short of the best we both know and live.
It is late and I ought to be in bed, but what’s the use. Here at the Caledonian I am next door to the plumbing nerve-centre for the whole establishment. Every time somebody turns a tap, or worse, there is a spluttering convulsion in a battery of unseen but nearby pipes, and the gurgle long afterwards like a death rattler. Dawn is hours away. There is no hope for me. I have tried making ear-plugs from tufts pulled from the carpet, and from pellets of newspaper, but nothing works. My eyes are getting bloodshotter and bloodshotter. I feed jaded, weary, shot at. In my extremity, I think of you, and I don’t even know why.
NEXT MORNING
I have been to sleep! And slept well!! They say necessity is the mother of invention, but this was pure chance. During restless tossings and turnings during the night, after one particular contortion I found my head under the pillow, making a sandwich with the bolster, and all extraneous noises were immediately stilled. Here was the solution! Pressure on the pillow can be effected by some article of bedroom furniture, such as a chair. Tell all your friends who cannot sleep to put their heads under the pillow, not on it. Mind you, it gets a bit warm. And I suppose it could cause suffocation. It’s perhaps an idea to work into a murder plot. Now suppose there is this woman novelist on a lonely Lakeland farm…. I’ll think about it going down to Perth today. I must be lots better. I’m getting my imagination back.
Back in Kendal, AW describes the rest of his Scottish tour, and also says he has been to Keswick and climbed Catbells, within sight of Molly’s house (referred to as LHS). AW’s remark about her husband being ‘a fat old boy of 76’ was one of his usual teasing references, suggesting she had made a mistake to prefer him to AW. He had never met John at this stage, far less Molly. John in fact was always thin, and at the time was only in his early forties.
LETTER 92: TO MOLLY LEFEBURE, 28 MAY 1965
KENDAL, 28 May 1965
Dear Molly,
My admonition to the Gazette (to deliver to me promptly any correspondence with a Keswick postmark) has had a salutary effect, and your letter of the 18th was in my hands by the 20th.
Well, to complete the story, I got home all right, but odiferous with kippers (which I had had every morning for breakfast – just for the hell of it, being on holiday and slightly reckless) – one cannot go through an experience like this and emerge unscathed, and after a week of it I was smelling worse than Wick Harbour. I persisted with them, however, finding them effective in ensuring a compartment to one’s self, which suited me fine because I like to bob from one side to the other, looking for mountains.
When I got to Perth, the rain it was sluicing down, so I kept on the train to Glasgow, where the rain it was sluicing down, so I changed trains for Stranraer, where the rain it was sluicing down. Stranraer, like Wick, is the end of the railway and the end of hope: the sort of place you would go to commit suicide. At Stranraer I booked in at a hotel that used to be a big house built by Ross the explorer, and I think he too must have been a man easily disturbed by noises in the night: so solid are the walls that not a murmur passes from one room to another. I had a double bed all to myself (a great treat, for I wobble off single ones) and slept like a man in a grave. Beauty is often glimpsed in unexpected places, and it can be found in certain conditions even at Stranraer. Looking out on the harbour from my window at bedtime, I found that the rain had stopped and a yellow band had appeared across the sky to the west, an afterglow of sunset, against which was silhouetted the masts of the Irish steamer that had crept in during the evening and was now ablaze with lights. I looked at this pretty picture a long time. It pleased me.
The following day was all blue sky and white clouds, but perishing cold. I ended it at Dumfries, having earned for myself the cheap distinction of being the last local government officer in the history of the world to travel on the Stranraer-Dumfries railway, which closes on JUNE 14TH. At Dumfries I found myself in a room with twin beds, which seemed a waste; and in any case I can never see any sense in twin beds – they are neither one thing nor another. Between these two was a crevice into which one leg fell and was trapped during the night, but again I slept well.
Next day was spent coming home, and, as so often happens, the weather turned glorious. On the journey from Dumfries to Carlisle the hills of Lakeland can be seen across the Solway, and on this morning they looked delicious under a blue sky with little puffs of white cloud above them. From Carrock Fell to Grasmoor they could all be clearly recognized, old Skiddaw looking especially magnificent from here. Hills of memories! They looked good, so good that from Carlisle I made a bus tour of West Cumberland just to get nearer to them. At Keswick there was time to visit a favourite spot on Derwentwater where nobody else goes and look across to Catbells. Such beauty I had not seen in Scotland. It was good to be back. Real good.
Last Saturday I was back to happy routine with my usual weekly visit to Keswick, although I am only killing time until the summer bus services start. I took a stroll on Catbells. I stood looking across the valley to LHS, quietly seething with jealously of the fat old boy of 76 you follow around. And me in the full flower of manhood (according to you)!
There was no flag flying over the old homestead to warn the burghers (correct spelling) of Newlands that Mr G was in residence, but I turned sadly away, in fact, this correspondence, with its unhealthy tread of sadism, is making it impossible that we should ever meet. You started it, not me. Rubbish dumps, bulls, water closets, murders and kippers – well, at any rate, nobody can ever accuse us of exchanging love letters.
From Catbells I went to look for the Roman Fort at Caermote, between Binsey and Bothel (which a lady on the bus called Brothel, which made my ears prick up intently – so perhaps you are right and I am not yet past the full flower). I couldn’t find Caermote, but noticed its pattern later from a neighbouring hillside. Back in Keswick I had a prowl round the new refuse tip, now in its formative stages, but there is nothing to recommend except possibly an old mattress that might do for your guest room, but it is nearly buried and would need a lot of tugging to get it free. The rest was a humdrum miscellany, not really inspiring.
Yes, I know the type of fierce walker you describe, but believe me I was never one such. I have always climbed hills by pulling myself up from one tuft of grass to the next. But I share your dislike, or is it mortification? Heaven preserve us from breezy individuals! The thing to do is to reverse the embarrassment. Memorise a short passage from a book on geology – just a sentence or two chosen at random – and carry a small hammer. Then when you find yourself being overtaken by someone who is obviously going to give you a hearty greeting, even if he doesn’t actually slap you on the shoulder, as he strides past, just stop in your tracks and start tapping the nearest stone. The odds are he will pass without comment, but if he should ask what you are doing, look him up and down pityingly, quote your passage, and resume your concentration. He will creep quietly away! I know, I’ve tried it!
The Wainwright Letters Page 16