The Wainwright Letters
The
WAINWRIGHT
LETTERS
Edited by Hunter Davies
Contents
Introduction
Part 1: Letters to Eric Walter Maudsley, 1932–41
Part 2: Letters to Lawrence Wolstenholme, 1941–2
Part 3: Letters to Maudsley and Wolstenholme, 1942–3
Part 4: Letters to Family and Friends, 1942–54
Part 5: Pictorial Guides, Book One: Letters, 1955
Part 6: Fan Letters, 1956–61
Part 7: Pictorial Guides Letters, 1960–6
Part 8: The Pennine Way, 1965–8
Part 9: Letters to Molly, 1964–6
Part 10: Letters to Betty, 1965
Part 11: Letters to Betty, 1966
Part 12: Letters to Betty, 1967
Part 13: The Divorce, 1966–8
Part 14: Letters to Molly, 1968–70
Part 15: Fan Letters, 1969–80
Part 16: Letters to Richard Adams and Others, 1976–9
Part 17: Letters to Margaret Ainley, 1971–80
Part 18: Letters to Chris Jesty, 1973–80
Part 19: Letters to Ron Scholes, 1979–84
Part 20: 1980s Fame
Part 21: Letters to Regular Correspondents, 1980–8
Part 22: Readers’ Letters, 1979–88
Part 23: Tax Dramas and Official Business, 1988–90
Part 24: Last Letters to Old Friends and Old Correspondents, 1985–90
Wainwright’s Books and Maps
Index
Copyright
Introduction
How many letters did Wainwright write? Who knows? In his book Fellwanderer, published in 1966, he wrote that he had had a ‘constant stream of appreciative letters from all manners of folk and all sorts of unlikely places. Some were straight forward about accommodation and itineraries and mountain campsites and the like, and some simply recounted personal experiences and adventures. But a thousand I have kept, and I count them as treasures.’
So if he had at least 1,000 letters by 1966, after only ten years as a published author, then in the next twenty-five years of his writing life, by which time he had published another fifty-odd books, which had sold in all about 2 million copies, and he had also suddenly and surprisingly turned into a TV star, then his total output of letters in his writing life, counting in all the letters he wrote before he became well known, must surely, possibly, have reached 5,000. Maybe even 10,000 – which would still amount to writing only one letter most days for around thirty years.
AW – as we shall mainly call him from now on – lived and was brought up in a time of letter writing, when people wrote to each other all the time, before phones were common, and was employed in the sort of bureaucratic office during his working life where producing endless acres of words and figures was commonplace.
Right until almost the last few months of his life, he did answer all his letters, on his own, without any secretarial help, in either handwriting or typing. His method of replying was to let them build up like a cairn on his desk, then when it collapsed, start writing replies, hoping to get the cairn down.
While he did not care to meet strangers in the flesh, and always dreaded anyone coming to his front door, he was friendly and affable, personal and sometimes quite revealing in his letters. He clearly preferred having chums on paper rather than in person.
Perhaps the most interesting aspect of his letter writing was that even from the beginning, when he was unknown to the outside world, people treasured and retained his letters. Yet it was not as if he was doing a glamorous or important job, mixing with society, people in the arts or politics, or even in a position to give insight into local events. He was basically a clerk, then a trainee accountant, a functionary sitting in the corner of a dusty municipal office, but his fellow toilers, in their stiff collars, always kept his little letters, his drawings, his notes, his home made magazines, written just to amuse himself and his friends.
He had a good hand, so that was one reason. His writing looked attractive, was pretty to have and to hold, but the contents also gave pleasure, being amusing, informative, saucy, reflective. It also seems evident that his friends and colleagues did see something in him, something out of the ordinary, despite the fact that he had done nothing unordinary in his life, hence they found themselves retaining scraps, cartoons and any personal notes that he had done.
When he became relatively well known, it is then less surprising that people kept any letter from him. They knew him from his books, knew how attractive and unusual they were, so anything from him in his own hand was seen as a unique little bit of artwork, personal to the person who had received it. Most people also kept the envelope in which their letter had come. AW’s handwriting, even of an address, had his personal, distinctive touch.
How many exist today? Again, one can only guess at a number. Some must have got lost, been destroyed. People have moved, died, their relations done clear-outs. Any from the early 1930s are hard to find – and I still have seen none from his childhood and youth in the 1920s. Perhaps he had no need to write letters at that stage, or no money for postage.
However, there is now a thriving market in his letters, and about six or so dealers and auction houses regularly have AW letters for sale (from about £50 to £500, depending on content) plus they pop up on eBay, but a great many people who personally received them have safely put them away, wanting them to be kept by their family, for ever, and have no desire to sell or offer them to the public.
I have been collecting and tracking down AW letters since 1994, which is the year I started working on his official biography. His widow Betty gave me full access to all his archives and documents – but of course they did not contain letters he had sent to other people. Fortunately, AW kept copies of all his own letters he thought vaguely important or interesting – either by writing out an exact copy or making a carbon copy, if he was typing, which he kept in his files, as a good accountant should. I never quite knew, of course, if the letter he actually sent was the same as the one he had kept, or if he had ever posted it, but Betty assured me his practice was to keep copies of letters sent. (As we shall see, there is one interesting example of answers to a Q. and A. which in fact he typed out but never sent.)
In the loft, stashed away, when I eventually went up there with Betty, we found a dozen or so boxes containing letters sent to AW over the decades. I looked for those who appeared to be the most regular correspondents, took down their addresses, and tried to contact them, asking for copies of letters AW had sent, and any memories or opinions of AW. Almost all of them had never met him, despite being apparently bosom penpals for years.
I also contacted many old colleagues who had known him or worked with him, in Blackburn and Kendal, including several elderly gentlemen then in their eighties, long retired who were still ‘hammering the pension fund’, so they told me with glee. This was how I came to see copies of his little office home-made booklets, done for amusement in the 1920s, which they had lovingly kept safe.
In the last couple of years, while editing this book, I did try to contact them again, in case I had missed any letters first time round, but alas I was mostly too late. They had died and often I failed to find out who had inherited their Wainwright material – but I think I had made copies of all their best letters.
When the biography first came out in 1995, lots of people wrote to me telling me they had AW letters. I asked them for photocopies, which they were all pleased to send, though at the time I did not know if or when I would ever edit the Wainwright Letters. Over these last sixteen years, I have also bought quite a few AW letters myself, or got copies from other collectors. Two years ago, when I started properly on the
job of editing them, I also advertised, put the word around, asking people to contact me.
I have also been able to use letters belonging to the Wainwright Estate (which means Annie and Jane, the daughters of his widow Betty). I am grateful to all who have let me use their precious AW material.
From all these sources, I ended up with around 350 letters – not every one has been included here, as some were too short or repeated what was in other letters. I tried where possible to track down the recipient, find out who they were, why they had written to AW, but of course as time has gone on, this has become harder and harder.
Since the biography came out in 1995, interest in AW has grown greater. We now have the thriving Wainwright Society, founded on 9 November 2002, fifty years to the day when AW penned the first page of his first Pictorial Guide, with almost two thousand members. Programmes about Wainwright and his walks are regularly on radio and TV.
There was a bit of a lull in the book sales for a year or two after he died, though it still does not explain why Michael Joseph, in their wisdom, decided to stop publishing them. Fortunately, the rights were bought by Frances Lincoln in 2003, who now publish all the Pictorial Guides (updated by Chris Jesty) and other related AW books. Sales are now as healthy as they first were, back in the 1950s and 1960s. There seems no reason why the cult of Wainwright – which is what it has become – will not go on for ever.
Each year, more people achieve their ambition to climb all the 214 Wainwright Fells – while those newcomers to Lakeland, who don’t realise they are on a so-called Wainwright fell, usually find out later, then rush to buy all the books, marvelling at those little works of art, wondering how on earth he did it, falling in love with the whole notion of Wainwright.
AW fans do tend to be very devoted – and very knowledgeable. Those who don’t know him don’t know him. Obviously. I mean by that that you do often have to explain to people unaware of the cult exactly who he was, what he did – and usually they shake their heads, disbelieving. You mean someone I haven’t heard of has sold millions? You have to climb the fells, hold the guides, before true understanding and love set in. The Lakeland fells will be there for ever. We hope. So, undoubtedly, will AW fans.
In editing the letters, I had in mind that most readers will probably know something of his life, and his works, but some will not, so I had to try and make things as understandable as possible. I aimed to build up his life story, keep a narrative going, not jumping ahead of his letters by revealing events which have not yet happened.
In many edited books of Someone Quite Well Known’s Letters, or even those of Someone Dead Famous, very often the letters get slapped down in pure chronological order, with minimal explanation, leaving the reader to work out what was going on, assuming they already know most of the highlights of his or her life.
The more academic volumes of letters offer masses of explanatory footnotes, either with asterisk or numbers attached like sticky buds to each letter, sometimes each sentence, leading you to the bottom of the page, the end of the chapter or the end of the book. I always find this distracting, having to jump back and forward, ruining the flow. Often the footnote is fascinating in itself, if not always directly relevant, but you end up having forgotten where you were in the actual letter.
I had a big decision to make – totally self-created of course. I wanted to do notes – but do I offer the notes before or after the letter in question?
Adding notes after a letter is perhaps the more normal way. I did try it for the first twenty or so letters then decided that too often I was directing the reader back to the letter just read, thus slowing down the pleasure and flow of the letters themselves. I plumped instead for setting the scene before a letter or series of letters, explaining in advance any references, new names, coming up which might not otherwise be quite clear to all readers.
This does have the danger of giving away something interesting in a letter before you have come to it, and possible repetitions, but I reckoned it made for a smoother read, without recourse to going back, jumping around.
So, please note well – the editorial notes almost always come before the letter or letters you are about to read. Now and again, particularly at the end of a Part, I might have a note after a letter or letters, but this is just to sum up, tie up that Part. Well, I made these rules. I can break them.
I have arranged the letters into Parts, as opposed to Chapters, as this is not a biography or a novel. Roughly, each Part has a theme or connection, or the letters in that Part are all to the same person.
In real life, all of us have different things going on at the same time, separate problems and dramas, irritations and pleasures, work and leisure, all running concurrently – but in a book, even one comprised of letters, I felt it made it easier to understand and appreciate if somehow main events and major players are served up roughly on different plates, in separate takes.
In presenting the letters, I have stuck almost always to the true chronology, laying out the letters in each Part in the order of the dates they were written, but for the sake of collecting a topic or a person together, some letters in one Part often overlap with the Part which has come before or after. Not all Parts do have a clear theme or topic, being simply assorted letters to assorted people during the years in question, but that was my aim – to give some shape to the story, see his character and people developing.
I have given his full address in the early letters, where he included it, as it is interesting to see where he was and what notepaper he was using. Once the letters progress, and he is settled in his life and habits, he mainly uses two addresses – either c/o Westmorland Gazette, Kendal or 38 Kendal Green, Kendal, which was his home, and only the favoured few had that revealed. Now and again I have deleted paragraphs in certain letters if he is repeating things he has said elsewhere. I have left unchanged Wainwright’s spelling, grammar and underlinings, but now and again have rationalised his punctuation, to make things flow.
He was almost always punctilious in giving the exact date, but now and again, when he didn’t, I have had to guess from internal or other evidence and have put a question mark after the date given.
If my estimate is correct, that in fact he wrote up to 10,000 letters, then there are loads still out there, waiting to tracked down, collected, copied and then, you never know, edited into another fascinating, amusing, informative, excellent read for all AW lovers, everywhere …
Brief Early Biography
The letters begin in 1932, when he is aged twenty-five, and after that, the editorial notes fill in the main biographical events in his life as it unfolds, but it is perhaps useful to give some details about what had happened beforehand. (As for the books he went on to write, a full list of all those he eventually published, with dates, is given at the end of this book, for those who might wish to refer to them while reading the letters.)
Alfred Wainwright was born on 17 January 1907 in Blackburn, Lancashire, the youngest of four children. He had two sisters, Alice (born 1894) and Annie (born 1900) and a brother Frank (born 1896).
His father Albert was a stonemason, originally from Penistone in Yorkshire. He travelled around for his work, in Yorkshire and Lancashire, was unemployed for long periods and also drunk, often for equally long periods. His mother Emily, née Woodcock, was hard working and god fearing and brought up her family in clean if impoverished respectability. Emily had several sisters one of whom, Annie, they remained in close touch with, and AW was friendly with his cousin Eric, son of Annie, who lived in Penistone.
Their rented family house, where AW grew up, at 331 Audley Range, Blackburn, was two up, two down, with no inside bathroom or lavatory, surrounded by cottons mills. AW went to the local council school, Accrington Road Elementary, then on to what was called a Higher Elementary, Blakey Moor School.
AW was tall and thin and had bright red hair and while at school had to put up with shouts and taunts of ‘Carrots’. He was good at maths, English and drawing, but left scho
ol at thirteen, as did most children of his age and class. He secured what was seen as a most enviable job, for a boy of his background and education, as an office boy in the Borough Engineers’ Department, working at Blackburn Town Hall.
After three years, he moved to the Treasurer’s Department, where the chance of advancement was considered much better. To catch up with his colleagues in the new office, most of whom had come from a grammar school, he had to pass various examinations for which he studied at night school. Having done that, he then began the long slog of qualifying as a municipal accountant, which took many years and was done mainly by correspondence. In the office, to amuse his fellow trainee accountants, he wrote and illustrated little booklets called The Pictorial Gazette, in which he mocked superiors and poked fun at his colleagues. His fellow trainees were men but there were girls in the outer office, typists or secretaries, whom the young men spent a lot of time discussing.
AW’s first visit to the Lake District came in 1930 when he went on a holiday with his cousin Eric now working as a clerk on Penistone Council.
AW said that this first trip to the Lakes changed his life for ever. He planned to go again, the following year, 1931 and became determined somehow, some day, to live and work in Lakeland rather than amongst the dirt and squalour of urban Lancashire, without knowing how and when he would ever achieve this ambition.
Part 1
Letters to Eric Walter Maudsley, 1932–41
On Christmas Eve, 1931, Wainwright, aged twenty-four, got married to Ruth Holden, aged twenty-one, his first ever girlfriend. She was a mill girl who lived locally and attended the same church as AW: Furthergate Congregational. Both her parents had died and she lived with her sister Dora in Artillery Street, Blackburn. After their marriage, AW moved in with Ruth and her sister and lived there for two or three months, before they acquired their own house.
On the wedding certificate, AW’s job was given as clerk in the Borough Treasurer’s Office. He was still studying, mainly by correspondence, to become a qualified municipal accountant. He had passed the intermediate part of his exams, though it was another two years, after several attempts, before he passed his final exams.