AW
By the end of 1965, AW had finished the manuscript of Fellwanderer, the book about writing his Pictorial Guides, which he is sent to Molly for advice and comments. She had recently published her own first Lakeland book, The English Lake District (Batsford 1964) and was working on another Cumbrian book. She didn’t like the proposed shape of Fellwanderer, saying it would stick out of the book shelves and should be shaped like the Guides – advice he ignored. But he did take out a reference to peeing in Thirlmere which he had done because he hated the Water Board for turning it into a reservoir. She said it would encourage other walkers to do the same and the Water Board would then be after him.
AW had teased her about her maiden name, Lefebure, that it was Franco-German. Her grandfather had originally come from France, hence her surname, but Molly had been born and brought up in England. ‘There was no German in our family. That was just one of AW’s silly jokes, or deliberate misunderstandings.’
LETTER 93: TO MOLLY LEFEBURE, 11 FEBRUARY 1966
Municipal Offices, Kendal
11th February 1966
Molly, I could kiss you. I could you. You must have spent hours and hours on my little manuscript. It was never my intention to encroach so much on your busy existence, and I would never have dared to ask your opinion if I had known you would feel you had to do more than read it through once. But you are obviously nothing if not thorough. You simply had to do your best to make a writer out of me, as in the past you have tried to make a man out of me.
Well, I am tremendously grateful. I think your suggestions are absolutely right. Of course I should have mentioned my introduction to the district – the thing is lopsided without it. Of course I should start at the second paragraph. Of course my discursion on handwriting is too long and out of place and should be cut. Of course, everything else. You are dead right. I will do all these things. And it will be a better book.
As for the Saga of the Stone Circle, you have permitted more than I thought you would, but you will have an opportunity to change your mind if you want to when I let you see the proofs later on. I referred to your father only to make sense of the ‘Franco-German sweep’ mentioned later – sorry! Yes, I suppose we are being rather abandoned. The association seems even to become a little suspicious when my letters to you are hidden in a cask of rum in a dark cellar and yours to me are craftily concealed in a cabinet of files of strictly local government affairs. Well, let’s bring it to the light of day if you are perfectly sure that everything will be all right at your end. I may be in trouble about it, but am inured to trouble. I might find that a private eye is following me around, but, if so, could lose him for ever on Jack’s Rake. It will be a jolt to several women who think of me as their soul-mate, but, in any case, I really ought to stop giving them this impression. We might each find people regarding us (individually, of course) out of the corner of their eyes and we might be a source of exercise for the little minds … but haven’t I read somewhere that writers are permitted some licence? Or does this apply only to poets? Don’t worry, love. We’ll switch to poetry, if need be.
Funny about that large, yeti-like thing you found prowling around the environs of L.H.S! you know, the description fits me perfectly, and I certainly was in the places you mention, several times, but it wasn’t me, I assure you. It couldn’t be could it? I wouldn’t flee up the fell if an attractive woman spoke sweetly to me, not likely. Instinct would urge me to get down in the bracken with her. Nor was it yours truly you encountered on Catbells. You were right to belabour him with your tongue. Cheeky devil! No, I don’t speak to people I meet on the fells unless they speak first, and then not always. Only once did I lose my temper and berate somebody: a party of townies had strolled up to he head of Mickleden from Dungeon Ghyll with a little yapping dog and they were having great fun watching it chase the sheep around – and this just before lambing time. So I told them off good and proper and left them with red faces. Mine was red, too.
Yes, do please tell me about the funny remark that nearly led to your arrest. The world is getting less funny every day, and people are getting far too serious on nearly every subject under the sun. There’s nothing funny about Vietnam, or Rhodesia, or landing on the moon, or teenage morals. People are becoming too earnest, too intolerant, too determined to get things just as they think they should be: they are forgetting how to laugh. I don’t think you can plan human life and human destiny by going to meetings and passing resolutions and writing to newspapers and parading through the streets. There are far too many societies springing up with the object of telling people how to live, too much interference with others. You don’t live to a prescribed pattern: this would be deadly boring. Life is happy chance, and exciting, and full of humour if you only have the imagination to recognize it. It’s the terribly earnest types who commit suicide, those who can see the funny side who most enjoy life. Yes, do please tell me that funny story!
Again, many many thanks for your wonderful help. I won’t be dedicating the book to you, nor even mentioning you in acknowledgment, because this might cause a major domestic explosion that would penetrate even my thick skin, but I shall always remember your extreme kindness in the matter, and be grateful.
AW
Molly did not hide AW’s letters. That was another of his jokes. Her husband John always read and was amused by AW’s – but presumably AW did keep Molly’s letters hidden from his wife Ruth, just in case they could be misconstrued.
He was delighted with Molly’s suggestion that they should write some sort of book together – especially as he seemed to be getting bogged down in his Pennine Way project.
LETTER 94: TO MOLLY LEFEBURE, 15 APRIL 1966
Municipal Offices, Kendal
15th April 1966
Dear Molly,
I am going to write to you here and now if it kills me. I am disgustingly busy. But never mind the ringing telephone, never mind the queue of dear old ladies who want to see me about rate rebates (they lose their attractiveness to me when they get to 75 to 80, anyway – some queer twist in my make-up, must be), never mind the accumulation of IN papers on my desk, never mind anything. Molly is my darling, and I have three fat juicy letters from her and none of them answered yet. L.H.S. must be shaking from her sobs.
Yes, I am 101% (as Sam Goldwyn would have said) behind the idea of doing a book together. I can just see it in Chaplin’s bookshop window, with a hand-drawn gnarled, arthritic finger pointing to it with the words ‘JUST OUT’ – LAKELAND LETTERS OF LEFEBURE AND WAINWRIGHT BEING AN EXCHANGE OF CORRESPONDENCE BETWEEN A SCATTY INEBRIATE AND A SEEDY REPROBATE. The cover, in superb technicolour, would show a couple in silhouette against a westering sun on the shores of Buttermere, SHE obviously once-handsome but now wearied with liquor and child-bearing, HE merely rather distinguished. But it wouldn’t have to be a book about ghosts, love. You’ve only found one, anyway. No, we must battle fiercely on the subjects most in the Lakeland news – wider roads, chair-lifts, public W’s in Borrowdale, foxhunting, fell races, water abstraction, and so on – and we must be clever enough to give the impression (between the lines) that although we fight we are really fond of each other. We won’t ever say so but we will lead our readers to that conclusion, and then they will think themselves very smart and gossip about it in the Portinscale hotels.
About Moses Rigg. You must be absolutely right. I had previously seen a reference to him with the surname of Rigg, but was influenced to doubt his existence by an informative article, ‘Moses Trod’, in the Fell and Rock Journal, many years ago, by Graham, who, after exhaustive enquiries, had found no evidence that he ever lived.
I am enclosing a rough proof of the Burnbank incident. This is your last opportunity to avoid the consequences of your high-spirited agreement to its publication, which, at the worse, could mean a future life of shame and degradation to a greater extent even than your past and present. You can alter it if you wish, or you can opt out altogether and say no, better not, Mr G. will play merry hel
l with me again and I can’t take any more. It’s up to you, baby. Don’t bother to return it unless you make some corrections.
Now for the story of The Most Disastrous Expedition in the History of Exploration. For weeks I had impatiently awaited Easter, because at Easter I was going to make a start on the Pennine Way, working northwards from Edale. The P.W. was a new toy, and I was going to play with it for the first time at Easter. Easter came and a lady friend took me down to Buxton in her car. My motives were pure and wholesome – I was going to walk the Pennine Way and write a book about it – but it’s funny how pally you can get within the confines of a mini; however, this has nothing to do with the story and is mentioned only to make you jealous. Pure and wholesome I said.
Continued at home, in secret
It was unfortunate that Easter 1966 coincided with the Worst Weather ever recorded at Edale. On Good Friday morning the great moment arrived, although unrecognizable as such. I set a size 10 boot on the first step of the 250 mile trek, and I thought this is it, I‘ve started, I’m on my way. There was no sounding of trumpets, no firing of cannons, no fanfare. In fact, the inaugural step was downright depressing, into three inches of mud and in the unavoidable company of an infestation of strange long haired characters from Manchester and hordes of boy scouts; a drizzle had set in, mist was falling, the path was a quagmire. I thought of Borrowdale, I thought ye gods, what have I done, what am I doing in this god-forsaken spot? 250 miles of this! I must be mad. Well, I got up to the plateau, two miles, and into a wilderness of wet fog and snowdrifts and slimy peat hags, and my heart was in my boots. I turned back, back to the howling crowds and the transistor radios, and fled from Edale in a train packed to the doors with filthy youngsters, everybody cuddling everybody else except me. It’s no fun looking rather distinguished! So back to the Palace Hotel at Buxton, which did its best to make me forget the whole sorry business. The fare there is of the very best, the appointments simply luxurious. Going to do your numbers here is a joy out of this world.
Next day was shocking – continuous heavy rain all day. The P.W. was never in my mind. I sat for hours in an easy chair in the foyer and gloomily watched the elegant ladies coming in and going out, sizing them up, so to speak, and wondering how each would react in certain circumstances. Later I stirred myself sufficiently to go and have a look at Haddon Hall. This was fine, but it was another wasted day. I dined well and expensively that night. Enthusiasm for the Pennine Way succumbed to the soft easy life of the Palace Hotel.
Next day the same. I could stand no more, and I could afford no more. The P.W. was a thousand miles away. I came back, wondering why I had ever said I would walk the Pennine Way and write a book about it. I will do it, of course, but how I shall ache for the old green road on Catbells, the sweet birches of Ashness, the little bays of Sprinkling Tarn. I shall understand how you feel at Surbiton.
Cheer me up, love, and tell me about falling into Dalehead Tarn. You don’t have to explain that you had been on the bottle again. I will assume that much.
AW
AW sent Molly a copy of Fellwanderer when it came out in 1966. In it Molly is mentioned by name, and teased once again that she imagined she had discovered a stone circle on Burnbank, which AW mocked.
In this letter, he also teases her about being drunk and destitute, hence he is leaving her money, two other running jokes. But then he also goes rather serious as if becoming depressed. Not that he reveals what the problem might be.
LETTER 95: TO MOLLY LEFEBURE, UNDATED, 1966
Molly love, thank you for your letter, which cheered me up at lot, as you knew it would. You really know me very well. Here is The Book (capitals, like The Bog in Wythburn). The truth is out. You now have my picture, and of course you must have seen me many times, always (curiously) going across to the Gents on Keswick Bus Station. (The nearest factual stone circle being a mile away, on Castlerigg). I prefer the earlier photo, included to arouse the maternal instinct of my lady fans – they will fall for me in a big way now, I expect. (I’ve stopped hoping). Funny thing, when I am in trouble I always feel as I look in the first photo: very young, very bewildered, very helpless, wanting a soft breast – and soft breasts are hard to come by when you get to my age. However, I will survive. I am never down for long. Resilient, that’s me. I hope The Book doesn’t get you into trouble, too, at your end.
The dark hours of depression are made darker by my Pennine excursions. I ought now to be seeking rebirth on airy ridges and lofty summits, but, due to mad folly I find myself wallowing every weekend in rural slime on the fringe of industrial Lancashire and Yorkshire. You know the sort of thing: manurial farmyards, tumbledown henpens, grimy rows of cottages, mill chimneys in the distance, cinder paths dotted with puddles and cowclaps, slovenly women, cheeky kids, bus conductresses who call you ‘love’ and don’t mean it and it wouldn’t make any difference if they did, more cowclaps ….
Sometimes I stop in my tracks and ask myself what the hell am I doing here. This is where I started, this was my first environment, this is what I ran away from, remember? But soon I shall have left the towns behind me and be heading north to the lonely wildernesses of the Border. There will be a message for me there, of inspiration and encouragement. Here there is none. There I shall be able to get away from care and trouble, be captain of my soul, master of my fate and other high-sounding phrases. Free, that’s the word. Free to think, free to plan what must be a new life and a last chance.
One day I will go up Catbells and bury 2s 4d for you (4d = cost of living increase since april 1965, and is outside the ‘freeze’)
Tell me something funny, love. Make me smile. I have been living alone for the past five weeks.
I am famished with hunger
I am too weak to write more
Despite writing all these frisky, teasing, personal letters to Molly, he has not revealed why it is he might be ‘free to plan what must be a new life’.
In none of his letters does AW ever mention Ruth, his wife, or that he is married, but once they had started their correspondence, Molly asked around and discovered he was married, but not apparently very happily.
When he had finished all the Pictorial Guides, she had suggested in one or her letters to him that he should buy his wife a new hat to make up for neglecting her all these years.
‘He ignored this remark, so I never mentioned his wife again, realizing it was a sore subject.’
Nor has AW so far given any further details to Molly of the ‘lady friend’ mentioned earlier, the one he said had driven him to Buxton….
Part 10
Letters To Betty, 1965
AW first met Betty McNally some time in 1957 when she was called into his Borough Treasurer’s office about an unpaid bill for ten shillings, incurred by a charity she happened to be involved with. He reprimanded her, and told her not to sign things on behalf of other people. She sensed a gentleness despite his sternness, and also noticed the sun shining on the red hairs on the back of his hands. Then she went back to her own life.
Betty was born Betty Hayes in 1922, educated at Casteron School, which the Brontë sisters once attended, did a Speech and Drama course, got married to a Dublin doctor called Paddy McNally and had two daughters, Jane and Anne. The marriage collapsed and Betty returned with her daughters to live in Kendal – where an old school friend was living – and busied herself with good works and cultural activities, bringing up her daughters on her own.
Seven years after that first encounter with AW, some time in 1965, she wrote him a fan letter. By this time she had realised he was the author of the Pictorial Guides, which she had enjoyed reading. He wrote a reply, inviting her to his office to talk about the fells. She was a bit surprised, him being the Borough Treasurer, but a few weeks later, on 20 September, finding herself passing the Town Hall, she decided to pop in and asked to see him. They chatted and he asked her to call again, making a proper appointment this time.
When she arrived, he said he was just going off o
n a holiday to Scotland with his cousin Eric, but while he was away, he wanted her to read a book which he gave to her.
The book was a typed manuscript which he had written in 1939, an autobiographical story in which he imagines he will one day meet his Dream Lady, that he will sit with her, she will comfort him, resting his aching head on her sweet breast. He had shown no one this manuscript, keeping it totally secret.
AW was aged fifty-eight by now, already thinking of retirement, while Betty was forty-three, still officially a married woman with two young daughters. But from the moment of meeting Betty, he had decided that she was the Dream Lady, the one he had fantasised about for almost three decades.
LETTER 96: TO BETTY MCNALLY, LATE SEPTEMBER 1965?
[A note to Betty, accompanying his book]
Just read the book first, and make sure it is not a case of mistaken identity with me, and mistaken impression with you. Wait a fortnight, please. Then let me know.
How I am looking forward to my journey tomorrow! Twelve hours alone, without distraction, to sort myself out and think tenderly of you ….
Oh dear!!!!
AW returned from Scotland and got down to finishing off the last stages of Book Seven, the Western Fells, while also thinking of the Pennines, his next project, but unable to get the image of Betty out of his mind.
The Wainwright Letters Page 17