So while I would not like to discourage your present plan, I believe it to be far too ambitious and virtually impossible of attainment and would strongly suggest the modified target I have mentioned. Whatever you decide, you may be assured of my good wishes. I can think of no better way of spending leisure hours than by walking over the tops according to a set plan and choosing your weather. Days spent thus are all happy ones. I hope you have a great many such, with fair winds and good walking conditions, over the nest few years.
Yours sincerely,
AWainwright
LETTER 182: TO MR GREEN, 4 AUGUST 1974
c/o The Westmorland Gazette
KENDAL, Westmorland
4th August 1974
Dear Mr Green,
It was a pleasure to hear from you again, and I really must hasten to congratulate you on your successful assault on the Aonach Eagach ridge – an objective I have had my sights on for donkeys years but never ventured to attempt. I have grown old looking at it from a safe distance, and now the effort is beyond me. You are one up on me there, all right!
As it happens I have already done a drawing of the mountain in advance for the third volume of Scottish drawings, which means, as the first is only now being printed, a wait of another two years, but you can have it, with pleasure, when it becomes available. Since my memory, like my legs, is no longer capable of sustained effort, I beg of you to remind me nearer the time.
There are still stirrings of life in me. In June I climbed two Munros in the Glen Affric area. Easy ones. Nothing like Aonach Eagach.
You must be a proud man. I would be, if I were in your boots.
Yours sincerely,
AWainwright
LETTER 183: TO MR GREEN, 27 SEPTEMBER 1975
c/o The Westmorland Gazette
KENDAL, Westmorland
27th September 1975
Dear Mr Green,
Thank you for your reminder. I expect to be able to let you have Aonach Eagach quite early next summer. I have just got Volume Two off to the printer, having been delayed for more than a year by a desire to do a sort of requiem for dear-departed Westmorland, which too is now finished, so that I am ready for Volume Three and rarin’ to start, although, as I think I told you, the drawing of A.E. and a few others are already done. In two weeks time, I go up to Glencoe to finish off the fieldwork for that area. I go there in some apprehension, actually, having booked a caravan in Glencoe and being unaccustomed to this type of accommodation. But hotel charges are really getting out of hand. I shall know later whether the suffering is worth the saving.
You are obviously a good deal tougher than I am. How often have I looked up lingeringly at A.E. and An Teallach and Liathach and the rest and how much I have read of their terrors for the timid pedestrian, and how often I have turned sadly away. I am getting old. I like a clear and easy path. I will be in touch in a few months if I survive the caravan.
Yours sincerely,
AWainwright
LETTER 184: TO MRS DEKETELAERE, 14 JUNE 1974
c/o The Westmorland Gazette
KENDAL, Cumbria
14th June 1974
Dear Mrs Deketelaere
Thank you for your very kind and friendly letter of May 30th. It was a pleasure to hear from you, and to learn of some of your expeditions and experiences on the hills. These left me a little envious. It must be great to be only 58. I’ve forgotten; so long ago!
I still have very long legs, but nowadays I would approach Easy Gully on Pavey Ark with considerable apprehension and would certainly need a shove on the awkward step.
North Wales, no, not for me. I admire the mountain scenery but am annoyed and frustrated by the pronunciation of their names. No Blencathras and Glaramaras and Helvellyns in Snowdonia. And too many people go. Two years ago I climbed Y Wydffa from Pen-y-Pass in a procession of at least three hundred others. No, I am turning more and more to Scotland, and especially Sutherland and the Far North. You must go and look at Suilven before you are 70 because you will most certainly want to climb it.
By your reference to Mollie’s husband, I assume you must mean Molly Lefebure’s. He permits his wife to correspond with me.
AWainwright.
AW was also still in correspondence with Len Chadwick, who had been one of his researchers on the Pennine Way. Len got very depressed when he lost his job as a shorthand typist – then later his home. AW tried to cheer him and also find him a job as a youth hostel warden. Len died alone in a home in Oldham in 1987.
LETTER 185: TO LEN CHADWICK, 11 JANUARY 1974
c/o Westmorland Gazette
KENDAL
11th January 1974
Dear Mr Chadwick,
Well, thank you for writing, but I must say your letter made rather depressing reading! Hardly the inspiring and optimistic message one expects at the beginning of a New Year. Nothing seems to be going right for you – bad weather, flu, three-day week, notice to quit and nowhere to go, lack of funds, loss of prestige, inability to interest people in brilliant ideas, a spoiled Christmas, and so on. A catalogue of doom.
There must be a glimmer of hope somewhere. The present may be black but the future must surely hold some promise of better times. Are you so depressed and downcast that you haven’t noticed the daffodils coming up in the garden? This has been a bad winter for everyone, and things can only improve. I have never known you so gloomy. Cheer up. Who knows, come springtime you might be right on top of the world again, perhaps married to a wealthy widow, living in a comfortable home with four good meals a day provided, no worries at work, leading fifty-mile marathons at weekends, perhaps seeing the ’latics at Wembley. 1974 could be the best ever.
Me, I have finished the outlying fells and am just putting the finishing touches to a first volume of Scottish mountain drawings.
Next time you write, I hope you have better news for me and are in a much brighter mood. Never give up used to be your motto, and I think that when the sun gets a little warmer and your flu is cured and the curlews come back to the hills, it will be again.
Yours sincerely,
AWainwright
LETTER 186: TO LEN CHADWICK, 8 APRIL 1974
c/o Westmorland Gazette
KENDAL
8th April 1974
Dear Mr Chadwick,
I was glad to have your further note telling me that you had been discharged from hospital and been able, through the kindness of a friend, to get temporary accommodation for a few weeks. This will have relieved your immediate worries and given you a short breathing space for further enquiries which, I hope, will produce a permanent and satisfactory address.
Your infirmity is obviously going to take quite a time to cure, but if you are patient and do as the doctors say there is probably no reason why you should not get back to near-normal after a few months and be able to resume your work or some lighter duties. The 50-mile marathons, however, are out, but I have found myself as much pleasure in pottering around the country, resting often and taking things easy, and I am sure you will, too.
As for sorting your papers, I will do that if they are sent in a parcel, not too big, I hope, because my own quarters are chock a block with maps and books.
The Outlying Fells will be out soon after Easter and I will send you a copy to help pass your time.
Yours sincerely,
AWainwright
AW continued to be upset with the RSPCA, after his generous offer of funding back in 1967 came to nothing, and he was looking round for other animal charities and causes to support instead, but it was not until 1974 that he officially resigned in a furious letter. It was after this letter that he became involved with a local Kendal charity, Animal Rescue, and decided to help their campaign to build their own animal shelter.
LETTER 187: MRS NORTON, 20 JULY 1974
38 Kendal Green
Kendal
20th July 1974
Dear Mrs Norton
When I was elected President of the Westmorland Branch of the R.S.P.
C.A. at a recent meeting, I accepted the office, but with some reluctance, mainly on three grounds: first, because I have long been of the opinion that the work of the Branch has been impeded by the old age and resulting loss of enthusiasm of some of those in charge, and I am myself afflicted by advancing years and would have preferred the appointment of a younger person; secondly, because I am aware that the serious defects in administration of the Branch have been, and are increasingly, a matter of local concern; and thirdly, because I know, by painful personal experience, that the charges of arrogance and indifference that have gained so much press publicity recently are well founded and by no means confined to Headquarters. However, I accepted office, intending it to be for a short period only, during which time I hoped to be able to restore public confidence and in particular see that much more was done for the welfare of distressed animals – an aspect of the Society’s work in which the record of the Westmorland Branch is deplorable.
You were present at the Branch meeting last Tuesday and witnessed the events. Orderly proceedings were disrupted from the start by the insistence of a paid officer of the Society to make a statement in complete disregard of the Chair, a breach of etiquette I have never known in forty years of continuous committee work. The statement alleged a trivial contravention of the Society’s rules, a technicality, nothing more serious than the dates on which certain named members of the Committee had paid their subscriptions. Rather unfortunately for him, and due to local mismanagement, the officer’s information was inaccurate, as was pointed out to him. Nevertheless, when I asked if he was inferring that those members had no right to serve on the Committee, he affirmed that such was the case. When I asked why their ineligibility had not been mentioned at the meeting at which they were appointed (at which he was present) he could not give a satisfactory answer. When I asked if he was trying to say that those members should not be in the room at all, he said they should not. The members named then left the meeting, as indeed they had no alternative – and these were the same people, all willing helpers, who had organised and run last Saturday’s flag day when other members and office-holders had not even put in an appearance.
I considered the matter had been grossly mishandled and was a calculated affront, planned in advance with the connivance (as I later discovered) of others present. If there had been substance in the objection, surely it would have been kinder and more proper to have explained the position by letter in advance of the meeting and spared the members concerned the humiliation and embarrassment of being taken completely by surprise at their denouement in front of other people. When adult humans behave like this, even the animals have cause to be ashamed of them! So I left the room also, only to be insulted by later entreaties, from the same officer, to return to the meeting with certain named members who had, only a few minutes earlier, been told they had no right to be there. So much for his insistence that the rules be adhered to! Apparently they can be ignored to serve a purpose, as indeed they have been on other occasions. I found the whole business quite sickening.
I have no wish to preside over an assembly where matters are so obviously deliberately going wrong, where mismanagement is actually supported by paid officers of the Society, where some members can sit in silence without protest and see fellow-members shamefully treated, where personal animosities and witch-hunting are practiced, and the welfare of suffering animals neglected as a result. Nor do I think the presence of so many paid officers is at all necessary: I regarded their attendance at this meeting an extravagant waste of money subscribed in good faith for the prevention of cruelty to animals, not to the building up of a bureaucracy bound by red tape and Parkinson’s Law.
As President of the Westmorland Branch, I request you to send a copy of this letter to all persons present at the meeting last Tuesday, including the Society’s officers, and to the Director of the R.S.P.C.A. with a request, which I expect him to ignore, that an investigation be held into the affairs of the Branch and the conduct of his officers at that meeting. When you have done this, then I ask you to report my resignation to your Committee.
Yours faithfully,
AWainwright
In 1971, AW started a correspondence with a dog called Meg who lived in Southport and was apparently a very keen fell walker.
LETTER 188: TO MEG, 5 JULY 1971
38 Kendal Green
Kendal
5th July 1971
My dear Meg,
I know you never bothered to learn to write, and I am sure you never bothered to learn to read, either. How could you when you have been so busy climbing hills? First things first! But perhaps your old Daddy will tell you what I say.
I think you are a super little girl. You are the tops, really and truly. Yes, a few others have climbed all the 214 hills, but they were big strong men. The youngest I know of was a boy from Carlisle, but he was 16 (sixteen, not six). So you hold the record and ought to get Daddy to write to the papers about it and get you on television. People have got medals for less!!! You have done very well indeed, especially as you have been slowed down so much by your Daddy. It’s time he gave up, at his age. Why, he’s nearly as old as I am!
What next? Well, there are 533 mountains in Scotland higher than Scafell and Helvellyn. I’ve only been up two of them, but if I was a little boy (or girl) of 6 I’d be wanting to get started on them. Learning to read and write can wait until you are really old, say about 30.
It must be awful for you, having your old Daddy with you all the time, crawling along like a snail under all his heavy clothes and boots and not letting you run after the sheep. Can you not get a rope and pull him along faster? Really, these grown-ups! They make you sick …
But never mind, love. You have many years ahead of you. They’ll be happy years if you spend them amongst the hills. I wish I were seven, and you would go with me. What fun we would have, chasing the sheep, and blow your old daddy. He could wait in the car with your Mummy. Wouldn’t it be super?
Love from AW
LETTER 189: TO MEG, 31 DECEMBER 1974
c/o Westmorland Gazette
KENDAL
31st December 1974
Dear Meg,
I know you are a truthful little girl and I believe everything you tell me, but I must confess that your letter the other day, informing me that you had now climbed all the Lakeland fells for a second time, was a great surprise to me. It is a truly remarkable performance. You ought to go down into history with Scott and Amundsen and Drake and Marco Polo. Never before in the records of fellwalking has there been such an achievement as yours. I myself was nearly sixty before I could claim to have climbed all the fells – you were six. And now you have done them all again, and are still only nine and a bit. You make me feel I have wasted my life, but I haven’t really, because as you grow older you will find that there are other things to live for, other interests, other targets to aim for, other ideals, perhaps not so exciting but no less worth while. You must work hard at your lessons and be as good at them as you are at fell-walking. And I hope you will write again sometime and tell me of your progress in other directions.
In the meantime, congratulations on a wonderful performance.
Daddy should pin a row of medals across your chest.
Yours sincerely
AWainwright
Thank you for the lovely photo. Best wishes for 1975
What AW didn’t know was that the man behind the dog letters was her owner Max Hargreave, a chartered accountant in Southport. He didn’t take up fell walking until he was fifty but he became so keen on AW’s guides that he took it upon himself to stand on the top of various Lakeland fells and collect signatures for AW to be awarded an honour. He then sent the petition to the Mayor of Kendal and, lo and behold, in 1967 AW was awarded an MBE.
AW never knew this until he received a letter from a Mrs Sutcliffe of Otley who told him about the petition raised by Mr Hargreave. AW still did not realise he had in fact been in touch with Mr Hargreave for some years – or at le
ast with his dog.
LETTER 190: TO MRS SUTCLIFFE, 17 OCTOBER 1977
c/o Westmorland Gazette
KENDAL
17th October 1977
Dear Mrs Sutcliffe,
Thank you so much for your kind letter of the 12th.
This clears up a ten-years-old mystery, because I had really no idea of the circumstances leading up to my award of the M.B.E. I remember that, some time before the official notification was received, the Town Clerk of Kendal told me that my name had gone forward as the result of a petition, but when he went on to add that the signatures had been collected by a man on the summit of Great Gable I thought he was pulling my leg good and proper, and not until I received your letter had there been confirmation of this story. Now I learn from you that there was such a man and that he was a Mr Hargreave of Southport, with whom, incidentally, I have never exchanged correspondence. As, at the time, he did not make his identity known to me, obviously preferring to do his good deed anonymously, I think perhaps I should not communicate my thanks at this late stage, but I will keep a note of his address for future reference.
Your letter was intended to give me pleasure. It did just that. Thank you for taking the trouble to write to let me have the information.
Yours sincerely,
AWainwright
AW then heard confirmation from Mr Hargreave himself.
The Wainwright Letters Page 31