The Wainwright Letters

Alfred Wainwright, the legendary fell walker and author of the incomparable and unique Pictorial Guides to the Lakeland Fells was also a fluent, eloquent and diligent correspondent. Writing to old friends and to the many new ones gained through his books, and to his love, and later second wife, Betty, his letters display a much warmer, more sensitive and emotional character than his gruff popular image would suggest.

Hunter Davies, Wainwright's biographer, has here collected a selection of letters that range from his early years in Blackburn to his established position as Borough Treasurer in Kendal, and cover all aspects of his professional and personal life, as well as the voluminous correspondence that was a consequence of writing and publishing the Pictorial Guides. The latter vividly illuminate many aspects of that turbulent but ultimately triumphant process, while the former present a picture of a dedicated public servant whose personal life had been deeply unhappy until late in life he found unexpected but transcendent love and happiness.

In turn business-like and comic, wonderfully well informed and remarkably innocent, deeply moving and yet tough-minded, the letters present a vivid and unforgettable picture of one of the great but eccentric creative geniuses of the twentieth century.

Introduction

How many letters did Wainwright write? Who knows. In his book Fellwanderer, published 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 l966, after only ten years as a published author, then in the next 25 years of his writing life, by which time he had published another 50 odd books, which had sold in all about two 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 have reached 5,000. Maybe even 10,000 - which would still amount to writing only one letter most days for around 30 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 hand writing 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 un-ordinary 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 art work, personal to the person who had received it . Most people also kept the envelope in which their letter had come. AW's hand writing, 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 l930s are hard to find- and I still have seen none from his childhood and youth in the l920s. 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 £200, 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 pen pals for years.