The Wainwright Letters

by Hunter Davies

  LETTER 191: TO MAX HARGREAVE, 5 NOVEMBER 1977

  38 Kendal Green

  KENDAL, Cumbria

  5th November 1977

  Dear Mr Hargreave,

  Well, thank you for clearing up a ten-year mystery! I had long ago given up all thought of ever finding a solution to it. Then, out of the blue, came the letter from Otley, from a complete stranger, giving me the clues I had thought would elude me forever.

  I am glad to have the story straight from the horse’s mouth (if you will forgive the expression) and get the facts right. Apparently the garbled version I got at the time was substantially correct but inaccurate in detail. Now I know exactly how things came to pass, and am at last given the opportunity to express my thanks for all the time and trouble you took on my behalf.

  What happens in the case of an award such as this, is that you receive a very official letter from the Prime Minister (dear Harold, in my case) informing you of his intention to include your name in the next Honours List and asking you whether you are prepared to accept. You say yes, and subsequently you are invited to attend at Buckingham Palace for the occasion. But never, either by letter or verbally, are you told why you have been selected. And certainly you are never told on whose recommendation, or how your name came to the P.M.’s notice. So I went, and I got it, and I never knew why for sure until a lady in Otley told me.

  Of course I remember Meg, and actually have been expecting to hear from her with a report that she has completed the trinity. Since she first wrote I have had scores of letters from correspondents proudly announcing that they have climbed all the 214 fells, and asking if they have broken a record. I never fail to tell them about little Meg (which seems to deflate their ego because they never write again). I hope she keeps well and still has a fond liking for the high places of Lakeland.

  Thanks again, a lot.

  Yours sincerely,

  AWainwright

  At the end ot the Pennine Way Companion, published in 1968, AW promised a free pint to all walkers who had done the whole route and arranged with the landlord of the Border Hotel in Kirk Yetholm to send him the bill every year.

  When I interviewed AW at his home in Kendal in 1978, by which time 100,000 copies of the book had been sold, he was signing a cheque for £400 for the previous year’s bar bills. In those ten years a pint had gone up from 1/6 to four shillings, but he said he didn’t regret it. If people had done the 270 miles, they deserved it. But when he completed A Coast to Coast Walk, published in 1973, he said there would be no treats this time.

  He personally was not all that thrilled by the Pennine Way as a walk. But he always kept up the payments on the Pennine Way, almost to the end of his life, which meant he was continually getting letters about it – usually thanking him for his generosity.

  LETTER 192: TO DR TOM PATTERSON, 26 MARCH 1974

  … You are very welcome to the pint, and well earned it. In fact, being a bit cynical about the Pennine Way (believing there is much better walking to be found elsewhere in this fair country of ours), I consider that anyone who walks the Pennine Way from end to end and lives to tell the tale, deserves shares in a brewery.

  Yours sincerely,

  AWainwright

  Miles Rhodes of Moulton, Northampton, wrote in 1975 to confess that he had rather cheated when claiming his free pint. He had done the walk in two stages – first half in 1971 and second in 1972, not realising the free pint was only for those who had walked it all in one go.

  LETTER 193: TO MR RHODES, 22 OCTOBER 1975

  c/o Westmorland Gazette

  KENDAL

  22nd October 1975

  Dear Mr Rhodes,

  Thank you for a delightful letter, which I appreciate greatly. It has more than earned you absolution from your innocent mistake in claiming a free drink at Kirk Yetholm. Indeed, so generous are your comments that a block of shares in a brewery might have been a more adequate reward. Certainly you need have no further qualms of conscience. Your comments on my books are so generous that I feel I am the gainer from this brief acquaintance.

  Although there is a note of pessimism in your letter about your future walking prospects, I am sure that if you are capable of walking the Pennine Way, as you have proved, you will have before you many more happy seasons in the open countryside. I hope you have, and that you enjoy fair weather, pleasant company and rewarding experiences on all your expeditions.

  Thank you again for finding the time and taking the trouble to write to me. And for doing it so nicely.

  Yours sincerely,

  AWainwright

  Meanwhile, AW was still receiving occasional letters from his old friends from the past, such as Bob Alker, whom he knew from his days in the Blackburn Treasurers’ office.

  LETTER 194: TO BOB ALKER, UNDATED, 1975

  … I am pleased to learn of your success as a superb photographer and lecturer. You ought to get up to Glencoe or Torridon or Sutherland with your camera. These are now my favourite stamping grounds since inundating the Lake District with fellwalkers: the mountains here have become crawling ant-hills. Caledonia stern and wild – this is the place to be.

  It is distressing to find you still belly-aching about Great End 8. I intend to make the necessary alteration the last thing I do before I lay down my pen for good, in about twenty years time. Tell your missus to let me know when you die. I might be able to attend the funeral, but I doubt it. I fear I will be much too busy, but at least I will be reminded of Great End 8.

  If there’s any of the old gang left, apart from Maudsley and you and me and possibly Arnold Haworth, do please give them my regards if you see them.

  AW

  [At bottom of this letter he has sketched a ‘before’ and ‘after’ self portrait.]

  LETTER 195: TO PHILIP COOPER, 24 MAY 1976

  c/o Westmorland Gazette

  KENDAL, Cumbria

  24th May 1976

  Dear Philip,

  The Westmorland Gazette have passed on to me your very kind letter of a month ago. I am sorry about the long delay in replying, which has been caused by absences from home (working on location).

  I found all your comments interesting, and it is good to know that you have taken up fellwalking in earnest and already have a commendable record of expeditions to your credit. In a way, I envy you your early start; mine came much later in life. Like you, I have enjoyed all my days on the hills, my one sad regret being that circumstances prevented me from tackling all the Scottish Munros: now, alas, such a feat is quite beyond my powers, and time is running out for me. But what a target for a young man looking for fresh fields to conquer (or hills to climb)!

  The main purpose of your letter was to arrange a meeting, but this, I am sorry to say, is just not on. I find myself overwhelmed by similar requests to such an extent that I have reluctantly had to call a halt to interviews in order to concentrate on my books without interruption. As I said, there is not much time left for me to do all I want to. So, at least until I have laid down my pen for ever, I must ask to be excused.

  Thank you for writing to me. I hope you enjoy many many more seasons of happy fellwandering and mountain climbing.

  Yours sincerely,

  AWainwright

  In a letter to Roger Elsom of Southampton, an Ordnance Survey employee, who had just done his first long distance Lakeland walk – from Thirlspot to Ambleside, via Helvellyn, Nethermost Pike, Dollywaggon, Fairfield and Great Rigg – AW revealed something he would liked to have done in life.

  LETTER 196: TO ROGER ELSOM, 8 SEPTEMBER 1976

  c/o Westmorland Gazette

  KENDAL, Cumbria

  8th September 1976

  Dear Mr Elsom,

  Thank you so much for your very kind letter.

  I am always interested to learn of the reactions of anyone sampling the Lakeland Fells for the first time, and, with never an exception, I find that all newcomers to the district seem to fall immediately under the spell and thereafter become confirmed addicts to fe
llwalking. The route you chose for your initiation was a good one, lengthier in fact than anything I have ever accomplished in the course of a day’s walk along the tops, and the stage seems set for similar and equally enjoyable excursions in the future. But don’t expect fine weather every time! It has been known to rain up here.

  I was especially interested to hear of your association with the Ordnance Survey, in praise of which I was never more sincere. I admire their work immensely, being lost in admiration of all their work. Their maps are, as ever, my favourite reading. Only once or twice have I had occasion to question their accuracy, these instances being quite trivial except for one bad boob on the Howgill Fells. I think, if I had my time to do over again, I would try my best to get on the staff. But I might have let the team down, for I could not have contributed more to the general excellence of the maps. They are a fine example of dedicated effort and meticulous accuracy. My private sanctum at home is crammed to the ceiling with Ordnance maps, most of the them dog-eared with overmuch use but all loved and respected and handled with reverence.

  I wish you many many more happy seasons of fellwalking, and thank you again for finding the time and taking the trouble to write to me.

  Yours sincerely,

  AWainwright

  Part 16

  Letters to Richard Adams and Others, 1976–9

  Once AW was becoming well known outside Lakeland, and rumours of his massive sales started leaking out, several London publishers tried to tempt him away from the Westmorland Gazette, or to contribute illustrations to their books. In the main he refused all offers, apart of course from doing the drawings for Molly Lefebure’s two children’s books.

  In 1976 he received a letter from Richard Adams, who had achieved international success with his first novel, Watership Down, in 1972. He was a Lakeland lover and had bought AW’s guides from the beginning. He had written a novel set in Lakeland about two dogs who have escaped from a laboratory where animal experiments are being held – exactly a subject which would appeal to AW, though Mr Adams had no idea when he first wrote that AW was even an animal lover.

  He sent AW his manuscript and they exchanged several letters – though they never met. AW became very enthusiastic, so much so that he offered to do the job for no money – though Mr Adams thinks that Peter Carson of Penguin the publisher did insist he had to receive some money for his work.

  AW also took it upon himself to help Adams with the plot, not just the artwork.

  The Plague Dogs came out in 1977 and contained 20 of AW’s drawings and 8 diagrams, including the endpapers.

  LETTER 197: TO RICHARD ADAMS, 2 OCTOBER 1976

  38 Kendal Green

  KENDAL, Cumbria

  2nd October 1976

  Dear Mr Adams,

  I was rather under the impression that your absence in the U.S.A. would mean a hiatus in the arrangements for publication of ‘The Plague Dogs’ and that nothing much would be happening until your return after Christmas. But events are clearly moving apace. I have had three communiqués from you since I got back from Scotland with a streaming cold after a week of rotten weather and have also now heard from Mr Carson – proposing an early meeting to discuss the illustrations. Enthusiasm is clearly running high, and impatiently.

  Referring to your letters. That of September 15th dealt in detail with the comments I made after reading the manuscript and there are now few points on which we differ. But (pages 39 and 42) there is no doubt that the beck flowing into Coniston Water from the east is Yewdale Beck, not School Beck. The use of place-names in the dialect is all right in conversation, but in ordinary narrative is too likely to make the reader think he has spotted a mistake, especially as the accompanying maps will use only official Ordnance spellings – however, your proposed introductory note should explain this. Perhaps I have the impact on the general reader too much in mind: for instance 99% or more will think ‘thorough the fog’ (page 66) is a printer’s mistake, and ‘Low Door’ (page 243) an author’s mistake; very few will recognise the sources you use and I would have thought it better to write down to the general standard of your reading public. I still maintain that a shooting party coming up from Hall Dunnerdale would be seen from the summit or west side of Caw but not from the east (page 137). Otherwise I think we are pretty well in agreement.

  Not with any thought of influencing your preference for introducing actual persons and actual places into the story, I still personally doubt whether these touches of authenticity are worth the risk of upsetting those who are spotlighted, especially as they mean nothing to any but a handful of your readers. I still quake when I think of all the potential trouble that could arise from your mention of Lawson Park.

  I thought the comments of John Guest, enclosed with your letter of September 24th, were really splendid. First mention of A.R.S.E. is funny, but it ceases to be when kept up through 400 pages. And I think the quote on page 33 he objects to is just a bit too contrived, too artificially clever, and unnecessary in the context. We don’t mind giving offence to the bureaucrats and politicians, but not the dear old ladies who leave their money to the anti-vivisection societies. We want to enlist sympathy, not alienate it by the use of expressions never heard in Leamington Spa. Yes, I agree with John. Less so on the potted biographies of the secondary characters, which to me coloured the story and did not hold it up at all. I think the reference to Duncan Sandys should be omitted – dangerous ground, this. And, most of all, I do so agree that the book should end with the re-union of Snitter and his master. This is the perfect end to the story. To carry on thereafter for a few more pages gives the impression that, having recounted the tale and brought it to a natural and logical conclusion, you were reluctant to say finis. The interest of your readers is fully satisfied by the re-union of Snitter and his master. After that, nothing else matters. Let them put the book down with the happy thought of the re-union, and ponder that eminently satisfactory end with closed eyes for a few minutes. Any other written words are an interruption of a train of happy thoughts.

  Anyway, I am really writing to let you know that Peter Carson is seeking a meeting with me to discuss the illustrations when he gets back from a holiday in Spain. This seems to me rather premature because the author himself has not yet seen, and approved or not approved, the proposed drawings and diagrams, and I have therefore suggested to him that I should send them on to you to look at while he is away from home, and give you a chance to express opinions or choices. On the diagrams the route followed is indicated by a dotted line; if Peter agrees to a thin red line I shall have to take the dots out and draw the route separately for overprinting in red. If there are other changes resulting from revision (e.g. the omission of A.R.S.E.) these amendments will also be necessary on the diagrams. In fact, I think you should regard the diagrams merely as drafts at this stage, and I will do them again when all doubts are settled. Having looked at them and decided what you would like to include, and what not, perhaps it would be a good idea to send them on to Peter to await his return on October 22nd so that he too can be studying the matter before we meet.

  I hope to be in touch with Gerald Gray within the next few days.

  It’s Vermont I would most like to see at this time of year!

  Yours sincerely,

  AWainwright

  AW could spend just as much time and energy writing to ordinary readers, not just famous authors, and give his forthright views and opinions

  In March 1976 a Mr Brian L. Kershaw of King’s Heath, Birmingham, clearly an early computer buff, took issue with a sentence in AW’s Fellwanderer where he wrote ‘Machines are monsters and they produce little horrors.’

  Mr Kershaw said they could do worthwhile things, and to prove it he had fed into his computer details of all the fells in the seven Pictorial Guides, along with the grid references, summits and starting points. He then produced a computer print-out that must have been a massive document – horrifying AW.

  LETTER 198: TO BRIAN KERSHAW, 6 MARCH 1976
/>   38 Kendal Green

  KENDAL, Cumbria

  6th March 1976

  Dear Brian,

  To say that I was struck dumb by the remarkable document accompanying your letter of 26th February would be to put it mildly. Here was the enemy, suddenly attacking me when I was unprepared for shocks, at first bemusing and confusing me as do the unintelligible hieroglyphics on electricity bills, but gradually my dazed eyes started to recognise names I knew well…. Esk Pike, Crinkle Crags, Three Tarns, Cam Spout – these were Lakeland names, surely, and the long columns of figures, daunting at first sight, took on a meaning when I studied them more closely. Perhaps I should have read your letter first, and been warned!

  Well, you seem to have proved something; I’m not sure what. I didn’t realise these modern mammoth contrivances had a human streak, after all, and it is rather a revelation to find the monsters wrestling with the relative statistics of ascents of the Lakeland Fells. 1984 is with us. A computer installed on Esk Hause will tell you all you want to know. Should we go on to do Scafell Pike, or feed into the machine weather prospects, physical condition of each member of the party, time of day, and see whether it think it would be safer to turn back and go home? Fellwalking made easy, at last!

  I think you have done a wonderfully imaginative job, but a rather frightening one if it is a foretaste of the sort of planning we might expect in the future. No, not for me. Give me my old dog-eared maps, which I can understand and which never go wrong.

  I concede that you have certainly proved something, but nothing that has any appeal for me. If anything you have confirmed my impressions of new-fangled machines and in no way induced in me a liking for them. This document you have produced is the stuff of which nightmares are made. Heaven help us if these soul-less instruments take over the planning of our leisure as well as all else.