The Wainwright Letters

by Hunter Davies

  What would you like me to talk about? What do you want to hear? Shall I tell you how, when I set out for the office this morning, there was white mist surrounding the valley, softening the lines of the old grey buildings I am learning to know well, making mysterious a scene that is fast becoming familiar? And how, up on the nearby hillsides, the tops of the trees showed faintly through the haze as though they were afloat, suspended, belonging neither to earth nor sky? Shall I tell you how, as I sit at my desk, I can hear the seagulls screaming on the river? Or try to describe the cleanness and freshness of the morning air as I walk along to the town, the strange stillness of the atmosphere, the quietness: those indefinable charms which no visitor to the Lake District ever forgets?

  But need I speak of these delights? You know them so well. Already I am under the spell. This is different, vastly different. It matters not a scrap that nobody here cares tuppence about me, or wonders who I am and whence I came. I am a lover come back to his first and best love, and come to stay. I have cast away, without regrets, the black boots of my profession, and put on joyfully, with relief, the comfy slippers of semi-retirement. Now I am content. Now for half a lifetime of doing what I want to do! Now watch me go rustier and rustier and enjoy the process of disintegration. When my mind itself is corroded and worn out, I shall die. Then I will go to heaven, and not know the difference. Yes, Lawrence, the prospect pleases.

  Nobody here knows me, yet I am surrounded by friends: the tall trees by the river, the enchanting path over by the castle, the birds and the squirrels in the wood; and all around me, most faithful and constant of all, the unchanging hills. Soon I shall have other acquaintances: people will come to know me, smile at me, whistle after me as I walk along. Time will bring them. If I could only hope for a small part of the affection which people in Blackburn have shown me I should be quite happy.

  This morning as I turned the corner of the road, a street-sweeper called out a cheerfully ‘Good morning’ and bestowed on me a most engaging smile. In less than a week I have gained a brand-new acquaintance!

  I shall look out for him tomorrow. There, you see, Lawrence, is the way life must start again for your old pal

  AlfW

  LETTER 15: TO LAWRENCE WOLSTENHOLME, 12 DECEMBER 1941

  ‘Stanegarth’

  Burneside Road

  Kendal

  Friday evening

  December 12 1941

  Dear Lawrence,

  There’s snow on the hills Lawrence! Wetherlam and Coniston Old Man are white from the cairns on their summits down to the valleys beneath, but the clouds which brought the snow got no further, for across Little Langdale the Pikes and Bowfell are still draped in robes of gold and purple where the bracken lies dying.

  Every day I walk to the office with my eyes to the north, where Red Screes and Fairfield and Ill Bell and Harter Fell soar up into the sky. Some mornings they have a very grim forbidding aspect, and, possessed as I am with vivid memories of wild wet days spend athwart their broad shoulders, I can easily imagine the conditions up there in these days of mid-winter: I shudder, but cannot avert my gaze. Sometimes, too, they are lost to sight behind a vaporous mass of dark clouds. But on other mornings when the sun is peeping over the horizon their tops are aflame, and then I sigh for blessed days of freedom again.

  Kendal is delightful. So is life in Kendal. So is work in Kendal. After the clatter and clamour of the Borough Treasurer’s office at Blackburn, I am, by comparison, encompassed by a deathly calm. Everything here is on so tiny a scale that I feel like a giant playing with a child’s toys. Cashbooks are written up once a month, in five minutes, and reconciled every six months. Some of the ledgers are posted twice a year; the others (including Education) not until the end of the year, so that there is some resemblance to the old bookkeeping questions we used to get in the R.S.A. Examinations: given a trial balance, prepare the ledger accounts and Balance Sheet (40 marks). And certainly I am not harassed by dam-silly Reports on Progress, etc. ‘Have reminders been sent re unpresented cheques?’. I pause to smile.

  Unquestionably I am the best writer in Kendal. Having lots of time to spare and no interruptions and no questions asked I go about leaving a trail of artistic efforts in various books which evoke excited comment from the staff, much to my gratification.

  Before I forget! Tomorrow I move into my first Lakeland home, so please note the address: 19 CASTLE GROVE, KENDAL.

  Your letter was very welcome. (So will Jim’s be when he is finally moved to reply.)

  More dreamy and soulful than ever, am I? Perhaps you’re right. Maybe I am drifting into a state of coma again. I want to, because I work better when I am torpid. The mood will burst with a loud bang, however, when its purpose is served, and then, out of its agony, will be delivered Wainwright’s First Lakeland Classic.

  With regard to your other principal point, I refuse to be inveigled into a discussion of the female sex in this correspondence. That can wait until we are face to face once more.

  ‘Mountain Vision’ by Smythe hit me between the eyes as I was idly scanning a bookstall a few days before your letter arrived. A day earlier I had bought ‘Snowdonia through the Lens’ (18/-), so that I gazed upon ‘Mountain Vision’ long and earnestly, jangling my money the while, but finally moved away in meditative mood without having effected a purchase. Your proposal, therefore, I greet with acclaim.

  Your letter contains no invitation to me to join Marjorie and yourself at tea or supper on some occasion during Christmastide. I am a little pained. Would you have me go to the British Restaurant when I visit Blackburn?

  Alf

  His third letter to Lawrence is in handwriting. He did not add the date, but it would appear to be later in December 1941, judging but the reference to a Christmas card, and the mention of a 2d stamp. Basic postage was still 2d in 1941 – rising to 2 1/2d in 1942.

  Dorothy (Coleman) was a married blonde in the office, who had been made Honorary Secretary of the Pendle Club. Miss D, of course, was Betty Ditchfield, the one in the office whom AW really fancied …

  LETTER 16: TO LAWRENCE WOLSTENHOLME, DECEMBER 1941?

  Kendal, Saturday

  Dear Lawrence,

  There was a time, I agree, when I would have been deeply hurt, and not a little chagrined, to hear myself described as ‘benign’. But long years of service devoted to the public weal have finally effaced the rebellious, contrary spirit of the old showman. Benign is the right word, now.

  The role I am assiduously fostering now, with some success, is that of ‘Patriarch of the Fells’. A fine upstanding figure of a man, no longer young, with white locks flowing behind him as he faces the wind in the high places, a tireless and appreciative walker on the hills, with a kindly (yet a little sad) smile and a warm greeting and helpful advice for those he meets on his wanderings. On the hills I am as a king in his kingdom, with a friendly blessing for all my admiring subjects. I have even been known to pat the heads of youthful fellow travellers. That’s AW, now.

  Perhaps the turn-about is best illustrated by the fact that I am no longer a borrower of half-crowns till monthend, but a cheerful and accommodating lender of same. Since I have no evidence that a similar transformation has taken place in your own life, there is nothing I can say about Dorothy that would not be misunderstood.

  To save a twopenny stamp (blooming expensive, being benign!), I send you Helen’s Christmas card herewith. You must send her up here when she is old enough to be really interesting, and let me introduce her to the hills, inter alia.

  I only want to be remembered to Miss D, nobody else.

  AW

  Best writer in Kendal

  LETTER 17: TO LAWRENCE WOLSTENHOLME, 10 FEBRUARY 1942

  Tuesday evening,

  19 Castle Grove

  February 10 1942

  Kendal

  Dear Lawrence,

  For some reason which is not clear, you persist in harping about ladies in your communications. From time to time you make references, s
ometimes vague but more often pointed, concerning my past interest in the other sex which are entirely unwarranted.

  You remember best, it would appear, the sham A.W., the poseur; the man of furtive downward glance and lascivious habit, the willing prey to morbid phobias, the evil creature of sinister nocturnal missions. Apparently you never knew the real A.W.

  All those unhealthy tendencies I have shed as easily as a garment. They were quite superficial. Believe me, your remarks about ‘hillocks’ and ‘valleys’ doubtless intended to tantalize me, arouse no feeling whatever. Blue-veined milky bosoms interest me not at all. If I admire a supple curve it is with the eyes of an artist.

  Lawrence, I once sat on a boulder at the foot of Sty Head Pass and gazed up at the Napes Ridges for two hours without blinking. Fifty yards away, at Burnthwaite, there was a huge feed awaiting me: I was both tired and hungry after a hard day. Yet I could not take my gaze away from the rocky pinnacles above me, and not until the setting sun drew his concealing shadow across the scene did the fascination depart…. Now I submit seriously that no woman, however shameless her antics, could compel my attention to such a pitch of absorption. Let her reveal herself to the uttermost whisker, and let sweet seductiveness do its darnedest – and still I would greatly prefer to sit on a stone with an empty belly and aching limbs and look at a naked mountain.

  No, Lozenge, you have got my heart’s desire all wrong. I left Blackburn not merely satiated with women, but gorged. There were no lofty peaks there for me to regard, and willy-nilly I found certain passing interests in the depths. When the chance came for me to cast these petty charmers aside in favour of holier joys I was off like a shot, with heart triumphant. Was it not so?

  On Saturday afternoon I climbed the Helm, a strange isolated hill two miles out of the town, which sticks up above the countryside like a stranded ship with keel upturned. Snow-covered and detached, it looked as if terrific winds had piled up a mammoth drift, for the gorse and bracken on its steep sides were deeply covered beneath the glittering whiteness.

  I made my way slowly to the top, ploughing through snow that was pure and virgin (damn the word!). The panorama was indescribably beautiful. Morecambe Bay, Arnside, Grange, the great wall of Lake mountains, Shap Fells, the Sedbergh Hills, the Pennines: these were the boundaries of my vision, and within the circle were five hundred miles of country wondrous fair to look upon. I was uplifted and enriched by the scene. These are the conquests I seek, the objects of my endeavour, the virgins I prefer to grind beneath me.

  Yes, I was in Blackburn on the 31st ultimo, but why the croak of triumph? I came, not to bury Ceaser, but to complete the BRSC accounts for 1941. I shall be there again on the 21st instant, for another dib in the fleshpots. How is sweet Nell of Old Witton? Why doesn’t she write?

  I duly cashed your Money Order at the Post Office, a la Billy Bunter, and forthwith made my way to the tuckshop, where I bought a lovely book called ‘Mountains in Flower’, a collection of photographs of alpine plants in their natural surroundings. Note that I could have bought a dozen French-lettres with the money. Sorry to confound your theories still further!

  I have found a kindred soul here in the person of an adorable young lady who answers to Marjorie. She is a typist at the Health Office next door. We talk wistfully of Wharfedale and Malham and Dent, and of Teesdale and Muker and the Lakes, and together we sigh and yearn for the sunny weekends to come. She’s a sweet child. And a healthy one: I have checked her particulars from her medical report for superannuation. She’s 26, weighs 100 pounds, stands 5’ 2”, is sound in wind and limb, and the condition of her urine is satisfactory.

  So roll on, ye sunny weekends!

  Alf

  This is a nasty letter.

  Don’t mention ’em again.

  After three months in Kendal, AW is beginning to feel slightly nostalgic about Blackburn, the folks he left behind and visits to Ewood Park, the home of Blackburn Rovers. He still has a soft spot for Nellie, a girl in the office, née Lynch, whose husband had died.

  In Keswick, with the money he receives as a leaving present from the Blackburn office, he buys a photograph from the Abrahams brothers, the famous Lakeland photographers who specialised in mountain scenery. Teresa is Lawrence and his wife’s first child.

  LETTER 18: TO LAWRENCE WOLSTENHOLME, 4 MARCH 1942

  Wednesday evening,

  19 Castle Grove

  March 4 1942.

  Kendal

  Dear Lawrence,

  When I closed my books at midday last Saturday and came out into the street I had completed a quarter of a year’s service with Kendal Borough Council. A quarter of a year! It’s been a long time, and in many ways a lonely time; yet the incidents of my last few days in Blackburn are so vividly engraved in my memory that I find myself still able to live them over again in detail – and often do, for my idle thoughts are all of Blackburn folk: there is, as yet, nobody to occupy my attention out of office hours.

  I recall my last visit to Ewood: how carefully I deliberated which way I should go to the ground on this final occasion, for there were many familiar and oft-tramped alternatives, all dear to me, before deciding at length to follow the route of my earliest pilgrimages twenty years before, by way of Old Bank Lane and Longshaw. I proceeded very sedately and soberly, like a man going to a funeral. And you may be sure I lingered long after the players had left the field, surveying this scene of past glories from a favourite position by the scoreboard ere I turned sadly away … I think often of my social visit to the palatial home of James Ashworth during those closing days; of my farewell call on Owen Whitfield Hives; of my last walk down Shadsworth Road to the tram at Intack … I recall every detail of the B.R.S.C. Party on the Friday night before I departed, and of my last hours at the Snapes’ house, when I sat and watched the clock.

  Most of all, perhaps, my thoughts revert to that Saturday morning which brought to an end my long and revered association with you all. I had worked hard for some weeks in an attempt to get everything straight and about eleven o’clock I suddenly realized that all was completed; there was nothing else for me to do.

  From that moment I was no longer part of the office. I had but to wait until twelve o’clock, and then put on my hat and walk out for ever. One by one my old friends came to say a hearty goodbye, or to whisper farewell, and gradually the room emptied. You were there, head down over your books, as ever; Miss D was talking to me by the safe; nobody else remained. How unreal the scene; how well I remember!

  Then Miss D slipped away, I was ready to go, and you came across to wish me godspeed. You did not see how earnestly I gazed across the room before I closed the door, at the old desk and rickety chair which would know me no more. I have seen Darwen Tower again. I have walked once more the long mile of Audley Range, along the old familiar pavement where every crack in the flags is remembered well. I have seen again, from a distance, 90 Shadsworth Road.

  I have walked along the new road and studied intently the actual extensions to the Whitebirk Generating Station. (Of the hypothetical extensions there was no sign). I have gazed at the barrage balloons with a new interest. I was minded to call on you during this last brief visit, to inspect at close quarters the collapsible knee and more particularly the flat bottom mentioned in your letter. (I always had a partiality for bottoms). However, I learned that you had then been back at work for a week, and so let the opportunity pass.

  About half of my presentation money has been spent in the purchase of pictures. One especially, my main purchase, I am pleased to have acquired, because I have long coveted it; every time I have been in Keswick in recent years I have gone round to Abrahams’ to look at it. Now old Abrahams has sold it to me, and it is mine. I lift my eyes, and I can see it now. ‘Buttermere and High Crag’ – a well-loved scene. The other half of my present has been expended in tobacco and razor-blades and liquorice-all-sorts and other sundries. When next I go to Keswick I shall, however, atone by spending the monetary equivalent on the purchase
of further photographic gems of Lakeland.

  Last Sunday I went to Skelwith Force and Elterwater, returning by Red Bank and Loughrigg Terrace and Rydal. The days of prodigious effort are gone; now I can stroll as slowly as I please, and sit on a wall for a smoke. Time doesn’t matter any more. I have no programmes to rush through, and no burdens to carry. There is no longer any need for desperate hurry. The Brathay Valley, awakening to springtime beneath the snowy domes of Wetherlam and the Pikes, was really beautiful, while the view across Grasmere from the Terrace was never more entrancing … Then home for a smashing tea, and an evening spent sleepily gazing into the fire and thinking of absent friends. It’s a nice way to spend a day, Lawrence!

  Alf

  Please remember me (in a gentle undertone) to Miss Ditchfield and to the infant Teresa. AW

  LETTER 19: TO LAWRENCE WOLSTENHOLME, 8 APRIL 1942

  Wednesday evening,

  19 Castle Grove,

  April 8 1942

  Kendal

  Dear Lawrence,

  Many thanks for a very welcome and ‘newsy’ letter. Your little pen-picture of the infant Teresa was delightfully expressed, and I am pleased to learn that you have succeeded in winning the affections of this winsome maid – such a faith cannot do other than keep your heart and mind clean, and inspire you to the gallantry of a Galahad. And Nellie starts afresh at Whitsun! This was good news, and here’s my 3/6 for the subscription list. This marriage will be a success, and blessed with much issue (for she is remarkably fertile). We do not correspond, bad cess to her; so would you please remind her that she owes me two shirts? As for Dorothy’s chances of happiness anew, I ha’ ma doots, and I suppose you have, too.

  Now I must take you to task. I cannot understand your vehement objection to my ‘hugging the past’ as you wrongly term it. I don’t hug it at all, and certainly nothing would every induce me to return to the old scenes. But remember that Blackburn has 35 years of memories for me; and pleasant reminiscences are as much a delight, and a wholesome a joy, as a good meal or a classical concert of a tramp over the hills. What do you do when you listen to Mozart and Offenbach and all the other ancients but hug the past and find a present delight in doing so? There’s absolutely no difference. And would you have me forget Jim and yourself – and my mother? My roots in Blackburn went pretty deep, son!