The Wainwright Letters

by Hunter Davies

  The Howgill book is finished and at the printers. I enjoyed doing this immensely. Whether it will sell or not is open to doubt. In the twelve months I spend in the area I did not see more than a score of other walkers, and then only in the vicinity of Sedbergh and Cautley. Everywhere else is wilderness populated only by ponies and sheep, but if you like solitude the Howgills are hand-tailored for you. Walking on these lonely hills is quite delightful. The book will be out next Easter.

  I am so glad you found the limestone area to your liking, apart from the bulls and the thistles. I hope your expedition to Smearsett Scar included a visit to the Celtic Wall which I personally found very impressive. I return the transparency herewith after noting with satisfaction that the subjects included not only Margaret Ainley, the cairn, the Ordnance column, but also her favourite guidebook to the area.

  Now you must wait in patience to see what news next April brings. I applaud your resolve to get Ainley junior on the hills as soon as he or she can walk, or even earlier – you see so many babies being happily carried over the tops in rucksacks these days. I hope you have many many happy seasons on the hills in future, and I am sure you will find that three can be very good company.

  With very best wishes,

  Yours sincerely,

  AWainwright

  LETTER 209: TO MARGARET AINLEY, 27 MARCH 1972

  c/o The Westmorland Gazette, KENDAL

  27th May 1972

  Dear Margaret,

  I regret having delayed my congratulations so long. Yes, I fully realise that the birth of Catherine is the most wonderful thing that ever happened and I agree absolutely that it is, no doubt about it; yet I have other pre-occupations that have pressed me for attention since you sent me the glad tidings and only now can I find time to say how pleased I was with your news. I am sorry it has taken me so long to get round to it. However, Catherine, although a bright little thing, is yet too young to be hurt by my apparent indifference; and her mother will, I hope, understand.

  Thank you for letting me know. Now all energies must be concentrated on a plan of campaign for getting her to the top of Smearsett Scar before the end of 1972. It can be done by concerted effort. It must be done.

  By a coincidence, I had another letter in the same post as yours from a man whose firstborn has just entered this world, in which he says that his prime object is to get his new son to bag a peak before he can walk, and he is adapting his rucksack as a mobile cot for this purpose. Something of the sort is surely not beyond Dick!

  Your account of a winter weekend in the Lakes in January made excellent reading, and you are to be complimented on a sterling performance with the odds weighted heavily (if you don’t mind me saying so) against you. I suppose it is true to say that Catherine has already been over Sty Head Pass although she won’t remember much about it. Someday soon you must take her there again and let her see the scene of her first fell-walk, carried all the way. Wasdale Head in winter is impressive, and I am glad you saw it in the right conditions.

  I look forward to receiving an account of Catherine’s first visit to a summit. And when she is old enough to have a rucksack of her very own, I hope you will let me provide it.

  You have many days on the hills to look forward to, the three of you. I trust they are all happy ones.

  Yours sincerely,

  AWainwright

  Margaret wrote back to ask if when Catherine was old enough, she could come to his house and collect the rucksack. Almost by return post, a parcel arrived from AW containing a little rucksack. Despite all the personal chat and affection, AW dreaded the idea of strangers arriving at his house.

  LETTER 210: TO MARGARET AINLEY, 14 SEPTEMBER 1972

  c/o The Westmorland Gazette, KENDAL

  14th September 1972

  Dear Margaret,

  Thank you for your letter giving advance information about the proposed Great Five-Man All-British Expedition to Smearsett Scar. I look forward to a detailed and illustrated account in due course. I hope you are all good runners: a correspondent has reported a bull on that part of the approach route known as The Happy Valley. But I am sure that, after all the preliminary preparations and planning already done, nothing, repeat nothing, will be allowed to prevent a successful accomplishment of your objective. Catherine’s first peak!

  I can imagine the wonderful day you had on the Howgills. I have had many such; days of wonderful visibility under clear skies, days of fine walking across the tops. The view from The Calf is, in my opinion, the most extensive in the country.

  I am glad to know that Catherine is thriving, and I have no doubt at all that she is a lovely child. Yes, the rucksack came from me: it wasn’t quite the type I wanted, but the only small one they had. Catherine herself, I thought, would fit snugly inside it until she is big enough to wear it.

  I was having a week at Fort William, and tomorrow we are off to a rented cottage near Loch Carron for yet another visit to my beloved Wester Ross, where some of the mountains are even higher than Smearsett Scar.

  I cannot wait to hear that this redoubtable summit has again been conquered. I think, in the circumstances, you may be forgiven if you scratch the initials ‘C.A. 1972’ on the Ordnance column. It would have an historical significance to a few of us.

  Yours sincerely,

  AWainwright

  LETTER 211: TO MARGARET AINLEY, 8 NOVEMBER 1972

  c/o The Westmorland Gazette, KENDAL

  8th November 1972

  Dear Margaret, Dick and Catherine

  A conquest indeed! An epic in the annals of mountaineering!

  Considering the immaturity and inexperience of a vital member of the expedition, and the hazards met and overcome on the journey, I cannot but rank your successful ascent of Smearsett Scar with Whymper’s climb on the Matterhorn; in fact, since it was accomplished without loss of life, I think your performance was even more epic. Now for the North Face of the Eiger. Are you listening, Cath?

  The photographs without exception are quite delightful, and they illustrate graphically the dangers of the terrain, the supreme moment of achievement, the exhaustion of certain members on the return to base camp. I return them in haste: Half Brighouse must be panting to see them.

  History has been made. No doubt about that!

  Yours sincerely,

  AWainwright

  LETTER 212: TO MARGARET AINLEY, 21 JANUARY 1975

  c/o The Westmorland Gazette, KENDAL

  21st January 1975

  Dear Margaret,

  Thank you for your letter and New Year greetings. It was nice to hear from you again and have an up to date report on Catherine’s latest peak-bagging successes. The youthful conqueror of Smearset Scar is obviously destined for much greater heights. Catbells and Knott Rigg are merely stepping-stones to bigger and better fells, and I confidently expect to hear from you within the next two years that Great Gable and Scafell Pike have succumbed to her tireless feet. It won’t be long before her parents are puffing along in the rear. Even so, she is going to have to pull up her socks to beat the record of one of my correspondents, this being a little girl of six years, from Southport, who wrote to say she had climbed all the 214 fells in the seven books, and last week sent me further word that, now at nine years of age, she had done them all a second time.

  I am the very last person you should ask for advice on the pronunciation of Gaelic place-names. I simply have no idea. In fact, I have been badly cut down to size by a Scottish reviewer of the book, who considers me down right rude in suggesting a simplification of the names of the Scottish mountains. No, love, it’s no use asking me. Is there no Scotsman amongst your acquaintances who could help? I sometimes think the reason for the great popularity of Ben Nevis is its simple name; walkers do like to be able to say where they’ve been! One advantage of Gaelic names, the only one that I can see, is that you can adopt your own pronunciation without much fear of contradiction from others who have no idea either and may even come to look upon you with respectful awe. />
  The second book is being delayed because I am frenetically engaged on a 500-page saga of Westmorland at the present time, but I hope to resume Scotland during the coming summer. When Catherine has polished off everything in Lakeland, you too should cast your sights further north. I should be the last to decry Lakeland, but how flat it seems when you are returning from Wester Ross! This sounds like sacrilege, and of course Lakeland is lovelier by far; but I think a measure of solitude is essential for a full appreciation of mountain scenery and Lakeland is terribly overrun by tourists while the western and northern Highlands are still, for the most part, quite virgin and immeasurably grander than anything between Keswick and Windermere. When Catherine is able to spread her wings a little more and becomes determined to ascend Ben Nevis, I will let you have some useful addresses.

  Keep me posted on her progress. I enjoy hearing from you.

  Yours sincerely,

  AWainwright

  LETTER 213: TO MARGARET AINLEY, 5 MARCH 1975

  38 Kendal Green, KENDAL

  5th March 1975

  Dear Margaret,

  Since you have discovered that I live in a house and not in a room at the Gazette office there seems little point in further pretence. Yes, write to me here if you prefer but don’t get too affectionate; my wife grabs the post first.

  So they are Sgoor nan Eech and Sgoor nan Clash yeala slurred together. Clever of you to ferret this out, and from no less authority than Hamish Brown, the man whose review of my book in ‘Mountain Life’ left me squirming with rage and humiliation. What right have I, from south of the Border, to criticise Gaelic spellings and pronunciation: what rot the fellow writes; what a cheek to suggest a Royal Commission to agree on uniformity of Scottish mountain names; what if there are five ways of spelling a name for ‘white mountain’ – the Scots understand and like it that way; I am quite wrong in thinking Blencathra and Glaramara are sweeter-sounding names. And so on, and so on…. Mind you, I was expecting criticism of this sort. I suppose I was being cheeky. But I still think that life should be made more tolerable for earnest English mountain-lovers in the Highlands. On the mountains, more than anywhere, there should be no closed shops. If you have now got really pally with Hamish, you can tell him so.

  But for Hamish the mountaineer I have the greatest respect. The enclosed cutting will tell you why. All the Munros in one long walk! Now there is an objective for the Ainleys when Catherine gets in the tiger class. I’m glad, though, that you have set your sights on the Highlands. When Catherine sets foot on the summit of Liathach (Leegak) Smearsett Scar will seem almost a shameful incident in her life. You have some wonderful years ahead of you.

  Incredibly I managed two Munros myself last summer in a glorious week based on Glen Affric, a feat of which I am inordinately proud and which has encouraged the hope that I might reach the tops of one or two more during my three planned expeditions this coming summer. I have gone off hotels now, just as I went off boarding houses years ago. Heaven in the Highlands consists of being under your own exclusive roof, and hired cottages and well-sited chalets where you can get your maps spread out all over the floor without fear of disturbance, provide this opportunity. Fellow-lodgers, I have decided, are a menace to enjoyment. And especially so if they speak the Gaelic.

  Please don’t trouble to return the cutting. Pin it up on the kitchen wall and plan a great future for the Ainley clan.

  Yours sincerely,

  AWainwright

  LETTER 214: TO MARGARET AINLEY, 23 OCTOBER 1975

  38 Kendal Green, KENDAL

  CUMBRIA

  23rd October 1975

  Dear Margaret,

  I am sorry for the delay in replying to your interesting (and entertaining) letter, but it arrived just as I was about to depart for the third time this year to the far north. We had hired a caravan in Glencoe, this being a new experience for me (I mean the caravan, not Glencoe) and it proved enjoyable, even so late in the year, largely because the weather was so mild and there was no rain at all. It was a six-berth, roomy enough for me to spread myself with my maps, the only ‘inconvenience’ being the extremely restricted W.C., which was so small that I could not even enter it let alone enter it and sit down. Catherine might just have managed it.

  You really must get up into Caledonia before she is much older and before the tourist hordes swarm north. You would all enjoy it immensely. The scenery all along the west coast and inland of it is quite superb. Lakeland looks almost flat on the return journey south. When Catherine is old enough to go to school, not long now, she should take Gaelic as a second language: it will be a great advantage, and avoid you much embarrassment when you fall into the company of people like Hamish.

  The second Scottish book will be out early in the New Year and the third will follow in the early summer, 1975 having been a rewarding year for the necessary fieldwork.

  I’m sorry the weather was none too good for your Keswick holiday, but you seem to have got around quite well, the highlight being the Haystacks – High Stile day; yes, despite Gamlin End, still one of my favourite expeditions. The paths, as you say, are becoming a problem in many places, some of them, once narrow trods, having acquired the dimensions of a motorway. I don’t know what can be done about this, short of abandoning the paths altogether and finding your own virgin routes to the tops (which actually is much more fun).

  I went through Brighouse on the bus a few weeks ago, but saw no sign of little girl who looked as though she might have been on the top of Smearsett Scar, nor did I notice any street-sign for Castlefields Crescent although I imagined it to be on the new estate going up the hill towards the M62.

  Thank you for writing and keeping me in touch.

  Yours sincerely,

  AWainwright

  LETTER 215: TO MARGARET AINLEY, 21 NOVEMBER 1975

  38 Kendal Green, KENDAL

  21st November 1975

  Dear Margaret,

  Well, fancy you wishing I had called on you during my travels through Brighouse! You must have masochistic tendencies. No, the thought never once occurred to me. I wouldn’t dream of making an unannounced appearance. I was never one for unexpected confrontations. Besides, what would your husband say, you entertaining royalty while he was slaving his guts out at Nu-Swift away in Elland? No, no, I was well content to sit in the bus and search the faces of the passers-by for someone, child or woman, who looked as though they might once have climbed to the uppermost inches of Smearsett Scar. But I saw no-one who looked, even remotely, as though they might have been inspired to undertake such an adventure. None of them even looked happy. You live in alien surroundings, love. Don’t let your roots go too deep. There are better places than Brighouse. Couldn’t Daddy persuade Nu-Swift to open a branch at Sty Head or Honister Pass?

  I have drooled over your lovely transparencies and now return them for the family album, and I have taken to heart your regretful assertion that Lakeland means less to me that it did and Scotland more. Perhaps you are right.

  Lakeland is utterly lovely and charming, a heavenly paradise on earth – but oh the crowds! There is no fun in walking in procession, not even in delectable scenery. I remember Keswick when, even in summer, you saw only a few of like kin, fellwalkers out for a day’s adventure on the hills; when the only place of refreshment after a hard day was a chip-shop. No, the old romantic atmosphere has quite gone. Only in the depth of winter do you get a reminder of things as they used to be, and only in winter can I be persuaded, these days, to re-visit the places that once I loved almost to distraction. You will see what I mean when at last you find yourselves in Torridon, or on Stac Polly, or by Loch Hourn. Then I think you might agree. Be quick and grow up, Cathy!

  You must, I implore you, restrain your impulse to call at 38 K.G. Not only would you be disappointed because, having lived like a recluse for so long I have developed the eccentricities of one, but, more important, I have a wife who is also consumed with insatiable curiosity, not only about female callers but even about fe
male correspondents. You see, I have a secret past, or so she suspects, and what is worse, I continue to enjoy a virility far beyond my years. You’d best leave me alone to get on with my writing.

  With very best wishes for a happy Christmas and new peaks in 1976,

  Yours sincerely (well, partly what),

  AWainwright

  LETTER 216: TO MARGARET AINLEY, 26 JULY 1976

  38 Kendal Green,

  KENDAL, Cumbria

  26th July 1976

  Dear Margaret,

  Thank you for your latest letter and the opportunity of seeing a few of your slides, all of which I enjoyed despite a sneaking feeling that the one of Husband on Lion Couchant was designed to take the mickey out of me although I was consoled by your admission that your own attempt on this perilous climb failed, otherwise I could indeed have taken umbrage at what I must have regarded as a cheeky exercise to emphasise my own failure. You must never climb the Lion Couchant, promise me that. I could never live with myself if you did. Then there’s young Catherine, coming along by leaps and bounds as a seasoned fellwalker. She must never do it either. A man has his pride, you know.

  How Catherine has grown! Seems only months since she was ‘expected’, only weeks since she startled the world with the first infant ascent of Smearsett. Already she is conquering giants like Ard Crags, and names like Ben Alligin and Liathach are entering her vocabulary. I don’t mind that. It’s the Lion Couchant you must keep her away from.