Wednesday evening |
19 Castle Grove |
May 13 1942 |
Kendal. |
Dear Walter,
Talk about the long arm of coincidence!
For a week the address ‘8 Sandy Close, Hertford’ has been in my thoughts insistently, and I had decided that tonight I would write to the house to see if an old pal of mine was still in residence there. Honest! I should have written long ago. Will you believe me if I say I haven’t had time?
You see, my first few weeks here were spent exclusively in writing to about a dozen people I knew in Blackburn, people with whom severance was rather painful. In those early days I found a particular pleasure in coming home when the day’s work was done and spending the evening in Blackburn, as it were, chatting to familiar folk, talking about familiar places. By doing this I passed very smoothly through a period which must otherwise have been lonely. But I released a boomerang. Replies poured in, a fistful at a time, demanding further letters. Further letters were sent, further replies received. I don’t suppose any exile ever wrote more letters than I did during the winter. And, as you know, I never scribble hasty letters; if one is to be written I like to spend an evening on it.
Not until last week were my arrears of correspondence cleared, and then it was I began to think of the lost legion I had neglected – my cousin at Penistone, you, Jack Jones at Ardrossan, Mr Ashton. So it happened that tonight was set apart for a Maudsley Missive. And damn me if I don’t get a letter from you this afternoon.
Let me hasten to assure you that I have often found myself thinking of you, at odd moments, since coming to Kendal; and not merely during the past week. Always my thoughts have ended on the same note of perplexity: what on earth persuaded you to leave this fairest spot of England for life on a miserable plain? Money, was it? The Royal Mint itself wouldn’t induce me away! Now, more than ever before, flat country gives me the pip. A flat landscape is a picture only half-finished; it contains nothing to arrest the attention; there is no satisfactory horizon; the gaze wanders aimlessly over the scene and trails away to nothing; there is no background, no climax. It’s like a story without a plot.
Listen to this saga of my life in Kendal. Every day starts with an awakening, and when my eyes pop open I habitually emit a great (silent) whoop of ecstatic joy. I am immediately in a frenzy of frantic delight. Another day in Lakeland! Another day of life at its best! By my side is the recumbent form of a female, but it is not on she that I feast my eyes, it is the square of the window. That frames a picture which lifts my heart. There is the old castle, perched on its hill and surrounded by lofty trees, set against a wide sky of Mediterranean blue or of massed clouds; around the edge of the frame hang golden tresses of the jasmine that climbs up the outer walls of the house; I can see the slender branches and fresh green leaves of the silver birches in the road below. Oceans of fresh air are pouring into the room through the open casement, the same tonic stimulant which has greeted us so often o’ mornings at Rosthwaite and Wasdale and other beloved places. Stuff of this rare vintage won’t permit lying in bed; there’s no turning over for five minutes, not any desire to; it says, bluntly ‘Up, devil, get your pants on; you’re in Lakeland, and a new day is here!’ I still look out of the window with the same eagerness as of yore, when Lakeland mornings were few and precious. Not always, of course, do I see bright sunlight; sometimes, not often, the castle is hidden in a flurry of driving rain, and for a month it lay like a ghostly shadow in a snowy covering. But the gloriously clean air never has a day off. It’s there every minute of every hour – and it makes me feel good and fit and glad to be alive.
I go out into it after breakfast, hatless and coatless, wearing old flannels which weren’t suitable for the Blackburn office (anything which serves to conceal nakedness is appropriate here; it’s a town of odd attires). I cross the road to a stile (fancy climbing stiles going to work!) and go up the springy turf to the castle. I am always first up there in a morning, always first to disturb the sheep from their slumbers in the dry moat. It is from the hilltop, by the crumbling ruins, that the view of the mountains suddenly smites me between the eyes, and you can bet I go on and down the others side without watching where I put my feet. I always try to discern the cairn on Thornthwaite Crag, and usually on these clear mornings can do so without difficulty … I go on my way, a happy man, down by a wood, across the river, and so to the office.
At the office I do the work allotted to me, and I do it extremely well. Two or three times a day the Treasurer (a grand fellow) comes in and sprawls across my desk for a camp and a smoke. He likes me immensely; his early regard has turned to awe, for I have simply staggered him and the staff with my superb competence. Every job I touch is polished perfect, flawless. The work itself is varied and interesting, and very simple – it’s like learning the A.B.C. all over again. I am allowed to smoke at my desk, itself a boon and a blessing. The Mayor Aldermen and Burgesses are all as nice as ninepence; I get along extremely well with all of them, and am treated with deference and respect by the chief officials, who are, uniformly, gentlemen who wear cloth caps. There is complete freedom from restrictions and interference. Believe me, working here is a positive delight!
The atmosphere of Kendal is soaking thoroughly into me, but I have not yet lost the feeling that I am on holiday. It’s a grand old town. I browse around the shops and quaint old inns and alleyways with undiminished interest. A few people now, not many, greet me with a nod and a smile as I pass along the streets. And I see walkers, heavily laden, on their way to the hills, any my silent blessing goes with them; I see them return, brown as berries, and feel sad that they must return to the towns where there are no hills. Sometimes I look in the excellent Public Library, a treasury of Lakeland lore, and bring home the books I love best to read. If the evening is mild I climb up to the castle to watch the day depart, but more often I go across the fell to Scout Scar, eight hundred feet above the Lyth Valley, and lie down on the brink of the cliff. From this exalted viewpoint my gaze roams at will over the assembly of mountain peaks before me. They are all there, all the old friends – Bowfell, Scafell, Gable, the Pikes, Fairfield and High Street. Ah yes, I have smoked many pipes of utter contentment on Scout Scar! When the sun gets low and the valleys fill with white mist, I come back at a swinging pace, calling at a little inn on the edge of the fell, an so home for a mammoth supper. It’s a grand life, mon ami!
I am in excellent, robust health. Every weekend finds me amongst the hills, knocking lumps off Baddeley’s regulation times. There’s nothing to beat mountaineering. It keeps a man sane, stimulates his spirit. It’s what you lack, son, and precisely what you need. You were never so happy as at Carlisle, with the hills so near that you could spend your weekends amongst them. I well remember your stirring call ‘En avant’ during our Whitsuntide 1931 holiday. You were happy then. Your wants were simple. There was no vain chasing of phantoms in those days, no bitter disappointments, no disillusionment. A simple life is a happy one. The thing most worth seeking in life, Eric, is beauty. Make no mistake about that. I couldn’t be persuaded to swop this existence for any other. I have reached the foot of the rainbow, and here, sure enough, is the pot of gold I have been seeking – beauty so exquisite that it makes the heart leap with exultation, loveliness so enchanting that it brings tears to the eyes. This is wealth, real wealth; it is free of tax, and it is mine forever.
– – –
That’s the letter I was going to send you. Now I have yours, which calls for attention also. I have not forgotten Blackburn, nor ever will. But surprisingly it has not the grip I feared it would have. Already it is fast receding from my thoughts. I have made a few brief visits, staying with the golden-voiced singer you mention, but I have not been in the old office. Frankly, the old town seems a hell-hole after Kendal, and it is with relief that I come again within sight of the hills on my return. I find that many of the delights (pursuits may be a better word) I enjoyed there were shallow and superficial, after all. Not one of them gave me such keen pleasure as the view I had of Ullswater from St Sunday Crag last Saturday evening: the latter experience seemed to me one of the intimate joys of existence. I must be a very simple soul!
You tell me you are still as miserably dissatisfied as ever. No wonder. All your pet theories have crumbled before your eyes. Your philosophies have had no root; how could they survive? You need a foundation to build on, a firm belief, a simple faith; then all else falls naturally into place. Get a month’s leave of absence, stay at Burnthwaite, climb Gable every day, attend the services at Wasdale Church every Sunday. If this doesn’t cure you, nothing will. I think it will. Avoid marriage. You’d be a wife-beater. A child of your own would help to restore balance considerably, but in your case it’s too big a risk. Continue with your married friend, by all means. A widow would be better, if you could find one young and attractive. Either class is far preferable to a spinster; they are easy to get on with, not prudish, ready and eager to lie down and play snails.
I agree with you remarks re Wainwright letters. They are good, unquestionably. Actually, you know, I came here to write and draw. Wordsworth and Wainwright, these two! Here are some of the prospective titles chosen for my books:
MEN AND MOUNTAINS, by Alf Wainwright.
ONCE I CLIMBED A HILL, by Alf Wainwright.
HERITAGE OF THE HEATHER, by Alf Wainwright.
MOUNTAIN MEMORIES, by Alf Wainwright.
Demy 8vo, profusely illustrated, 10/6 each. The real classic, however, will not be published until about 1960. My life’s blood will be in it: it will be my memorial. This of course, will be WAINWRIGHT’S GUIDE TO THE LAKELAND HILLS. Look out for these publications on the bookstalls, in vivid yellow jackets. And please buy a copy, for auld lang syne!
You want PENNINE CAMPAIGN again. Such a fag having to find brown paper and parcel it up and send it! I intended to make minor corrections, and amend the title to PENNINE JOURNEY, but the months have sped by and nothing has been done. Who wants it this time? Anybody with ’fluence? Longland, for instance? I’d like to see it published, and anybody can have the copyright for fifty pounds: a rare opportunity for someone with business acumen, for royalties will roll in! I’ll send it, if you really want to have it. But it’s in tatters now. See that it doesn’t get amongst the salvage.
I mustn’t forget to tell you that my deferment expires on June 30th. The Council have lodged a spirited appeal against this decision.
When shall I see you again? When shall we sup together once more? In Munich, Vienna, Belgrade and Athens after the war? Or in England before this?
I remember an occasion when you were too shy to urinate in a chamber at Rosthwaite.
It’s ten years ago.
You were happy in those days, son. Your old pal
Alf
Thursday evening, |
19 Castle Grove |
June 11 1942 |
Kendal. |
Dear Walter,
I can do no other than send the blessed book forthwith. Here it is. Bessie seems a grand girl! Your brief but eloquent description of her early-morning salute made the red blood pulsate a trifle more rapidly in certain of my veins. Caresses ‘long, luscious, and sweet as nectar’ – this reads like poetry from one I always considered prosaic! I envy you. Nectar I never tasted; my dictionary tells me it is the fabled drink of the gods, the honey of flowers. I can well imagine that your treasured privilege of sipping daily at so delicious a fountain, of submitting gladly and eagerly to the ministrations of such a charmer, is one not conducive to earnest application to your duties until long after the spell is broken. Indeed, it is by no means difficult for me to visualize the Scene of Shame: I see her jolly entry into your sanctum at the appointed moment, the beads of dishonest sweat on your brow as you tremble at her approach, the soft brushing of her hair across your ageing jowls, the gentle pressure of the soft young body against the matured, the sucking lips, the intoxications of her nearness; then she is gone. I see your lank frame sink into the chair, morally softened and organically stiffened by the incident, a prey to uncontrollable fits of shuddering until the state of ecstatic prostration is again dormant. Very gradually Hyde merges into Jekyll, a ray of clear light shines through the writhing tumult of your thoughts, then another, and ultimately your gaze fixes on the papers on your desk.
As I say, I envy you. She must be wonderful. Are you sure she is not the one you seek? Cannot you imagine yourself undergoing the frothy expulsions of an enchanting honeymoon with her? Dammit, I’m getting worked up about her myself! Ask her to write to me when she has read the book.
Otherwise, your letter is again a Lament. Life has no meaning. There is no lasting pleasure, no true rapture. You drift aimlessly on through the years, going this way and that and always coming back to the crossroads. Have a care, man! The clock is ticking your life away.
Whitsuntide I spend at Giggleswick, near Settle, in the company of some Blackburn friends (including the aforementioned golden-voiced operatic star). So far as the weather could disrupt the proceedings, it did so. It was wet, it was wild, it was windy, it was wintry. I fled the place on the Monday, and came over to lovely Grasmere, where I sat on a boulder by Easedale Tarn and witnessed a thunderstorm stalking across the mountains. This, I thought, was better far.
This weekend I am taking a short holiday with my cousin, who is bringing his family over for the week. Probably we shall get over into Borrowdale for a night or two: we may even realize an old ambition of mine and watch the sun rise from Gable’s grim turret. We shall sojourn at Rosthwaite, so that it is quite on the cards that the House of the Spurned Utensil will again harbour me. If so, you may be sure there will be chamber music before retiring, and I promise to spare a thought, whilst in the act, for the maidenly youth who could not and would not in an age long past. 19 Castle Grove is being deluged with relatives at present. They have been coming since Christmas, but only for week-ends; now however they are coming for weeks on end; sisters, brothers-in-laws, aunts, hordes of nieces and nephews. We are completely booked up, and sleeping three or four in a bed, until mid-August. They leave very reluctantly, too, vowing to return here to live after the war, so I can see myself being installed as the first President of a local Blackburnians Assocn ere long. No doubt about it, Kendal’s a grand place!
News of minor interest to you may be the second marriage of your old Technical College fellow-student, Nellie Myerscough, alias Morrison, alias Lynch. She honeymooned at Arnside, and came over one day to pay me a call at the office. Thus another chapter comes to a close. Look out for a special chapter devoted to her in my Published Memoirs under the title ‘ONCE I CLIMBED NELLIE’. Ah, me!
I was very pleased to learn that the Call of the North was again tugging. Your description of pastoral Herts did not convince me. Tree-studded backsides! Where, in Herts, is there a Mickledore, a Black Sail, a Stonethwaite, a Buttermere? There’s hope for you still if the yearning for Lakeland is not dead, and I was interested to find that names such as Broad Stand and Lord’s Rake still flow easily from your typewriter apparently without too great a strain on distant memory.
Broad Stand – how often have I squeezed through the narrow cleft of Fat Man’s Agony and lovingly stroked its grim walls; how often have I turned sorrowfully away without attempting the climb! Other people’s lives hold regrets as well as your own, and Broad Stand is prominent amongst mine. Lord’s Rake, of course, I have flogged underfoot often.
Let me know when the date of your visit is certain, for I would like a rendezvous with you, if only for an hour. I am anxious for more details about Bessie!
I must close this letter here and now. If I don’t I shall have to blackout, and I resent having to do that; it reminds me there’s a war on.
So be strong, of good courage and stout heart. There’s always tomorrow, and Bessie will not fail.
Your old pal,
Alf
Tuesday evening, |
19 Castle Grove |
July 21 1942 |
Kendal. |
Dear Walter,
Your letter of the 17th, reeking with pungent wit, is before me.
I enjoyed every word of it.
Tonight, unfortunately, I have not time to reply at length, but write tonight I must if you are to receive my letter before you set your face to the frozen north. Only the scurvy machinations of unkind fate prevent me from shouting ‘Yoicks!’ in a loud voice and rushing to join you at an appointed rendezvous. Yet I cannot, and I deeply regret the circumstance. The fact is that at present Wainwright no longer stands majestically aloof from his fellows, but forms the geometric centre of a turmoil of frantic humans who descend upon him singly and in droves. This Queen Bee with a myriad workers is the Secretary of Kendal’s Stay-at-Home Holiday Week (August 3rd–8th). In a way, the work is decidedly enjoyable, as it is permissible to stroke my female assistants at odd moments during the preparation of the programme, and it adds to a man’s stature to have his telephone ringing all day, and have a stream of callers and a fan-mail like a film-star. It would be a reasonable assessment of the present position to say that as a result of my efforts these past few weeks the arrangements have been methodically reduced to chaos. So I’m sorry, but you are not to know the intimacy of my brace of bony knees this time. A pity! I would have loved to be awaiting you on Mickledore as you came toiling up Hollow Stones at noon on the 30th. Then we could have shoved each other up Broad Stand and rushed down to Wasdale to celebrate our triumph in a succession of foaming flagons. And later, beneath the coverlet, I should have heard from your drooling lips the Story of Bess, told with maudlin simplicity and punctuated with intervals of noisy urination. Alas, these things cannot come to pass this year! Thanks for the invitation. I shall reply more fully to your letter in a week or two, and I must thank The Girl for her criticism of my book.
I would appreciate a card from Wasdale, if you get there – a picture of jagged mountain-tops, please.
Have a good holiday, son.
Alf
for x Bess
AW, writing this next letter to Lawrence in Blackburn, also tells him about the great success he has made of Kendal’s Holiday Week. This was a Government-inspired scheme to encourage people to have holidays at home, as there was a war on, and stop them from travelling. AW was made Secretary of the Kendal Holidays at Home Week, 3–8 August 1942, and was given a free hand to organise dances, concerts, sports events, competitions to amuse and attract the locals. AW himself did the illustration for the front of Holiday Week Programme. It did him a lot of good, socially, and also workwise, increasing his status in the office and in the town.
Wednesday evening |
19 Castle Grove |
August 12 1942 |
Kendal |
Dear Lawrence,
Kendal’s Holiday Week is over.
It’s been an outrageous success, of course. It couldn’t have been otherwise, with me bossing the show. Talk about superb efficiency! Everything went like clockwork, and the sun appeared whenever he was wanted. The arrangements, planned to the last detail, worked so smoothly that I was left with nothing to do during the week but watch the events and eat ice-cream. Aldermen and Councillors were my errand-boys. The Mayor came at a whistle…. A Wainwright Production!
It’s all been very enjoyable, and there’s no doubt the experience has been a profitable one for me. You will have realized that I have at last decided to pull my light from under the bushel, the result being that I have been acclaimed on all sides as an artist of outstanding ability. I have had commissions to draw landscapes, which for the moment I have declined; I have other plans, big plans. My next job is to design a new cover for the Kendal Parish Church monthly magazine, at the request of the Vicar; then I shall start on the biggest and loveliest job I ever undertook, that of putting Kendal right on the map. It’s a grand grand place, Lawrence. I intend to do a series of sketches of the town and neighbourhood, accompany then with a narrative, and offer the lot to the Council as the Official Handbook for the years of peace when the holiday crowds return. This isn’t something you’ll get by enclosing a stamp; it will have to be paid for, but, believe me, what a success it will be! Out of the immaturity of countless expedition handbooks will come the Super Guide-book, and I shall love preparing it, for Kendal was just built to be drawn and written about. It will be my book, all of it; written, illustrated and designed Wainwright – and I have found just the printer who will make a really high-class job of it.
So I’m a big noise here now. I’m in a town where ability is appreciated, and civic pride counts a lot. There’ll be a statue to me before I’m through.
Now that the Stay-at-Home week is ended, I am stealing away-from-home for a holiday. On the 15th instant I am coming to Blackburn for a few days. I shall be Jekyll by day, Hyde by night. Then I shall wash my hands and return to Kendal the well-beloved and a rosy future. The last thing I am likely to do whilst in B. is to call at the old office. The thought appalls! Life only started for me when I fled the place. I should not, however, want to deprive you of the opportunity of basking in the radiance of my company, and if anything goes awry with my arrangements re the womenfolk I will invite you and Jim to quaff vimto with me in some suburban inn. You will understand, of course, that I shall have to depart when darkness cloaks the earth.
I saw Jimbo the other Saturday afternoon and we spend an idle hour lying on our backs on a warm hillside overlooking the town, talking of old times. ’Twas a pleasant meeting. Tell him, will you please, that I’ve asked Dot to write to him.
I was interested to learn of your holiday in Keswick and endorse our remarks anent the beauty of the hills: my eyes still turn to them as I walk about Kendal, and no view containing hills ever disappointed me. I am well qualified to extend sympathy regarding your train journey, for I too have had to stand in corridors with the window at elbow-level. Pity you didn’t see Shap: it’s grand wild country.
Maudsley was over in Wasdale last week. He wanted me to join him there, but I wasn’t able to, unfortunately being submerged just then in the Holiday Week. Dorothy, too, was in Keswick again, and tells me she climbed Scafell (I wonder!).
As you managed Esk Hause, and enjoyed it, I assume there must even yet be a spark lingering in your atrophied spirit. Tell me frankly: wasn’t it your best day for many a year?
See you soon
Alf
Monday evening |
19 Castle Grove |
August 24 1942 |
Kendal |
Dear Walter,
I have just returned from a week’s stay at Blackburn. It has not been a successful holiday. I’ve lived like a lord, with a golden-voiced operatic star bringing lovely meals to me in bed; and I’ve enjoyed every comfort in palatial surroundings; I’ve listened over and over again to my favourite musical classics, and feasted on good literature; I’ve met and wined with old friends from the office and been driven about in a car. I’ve had a really lazy time, and that’s just why the holiday failed. It’s been a week of lounging about in slippers; better far I had put on my walking shoes and gone over the hills and far away!
Blackburn is no place to spend a holiday. By the end of the third day I was pining for the hills and the woods and the racing rivers, and ready to return to my beloved Kendal. Blackburn, with its endless rows of grimy brick houses, its chimney-stacks and monstrous factories, its smells and filth, its black henpens and rubbish tips – ugh! There is no glory and no glamour about Blackburn. Life only started for me when I fled the place. Affection for the old town is not dead, but I fear it is growing very dim. The expectant delights of the sentimentalist, the sight of the scenes of boyhood, the joy of meeting former friends: these are proved spurious when the reality is at hand. I visited the old familiar places, I walked the old streets where every crack in the pavements is remembered, I saw people I once knew well – and I gazed dispassionately; there was no thrill in renewing acquaintance. Instead, the bleak poverty of the town, the ugliness and meanness, got me by the throat; I had a feeling of depression during the whole of my stay which was not banished until Lancaster was behind me on the return journey and, with nose flattened against the carriage-window, I could discern a long rugged skyline to the north.
So now I am back here in Kendal, where I long to be, and where, in 1987, I shall die.
The Kendal Holiday Week was a great success, thanks largely to the superb control exercised by an efficient organizing secretary. It proved a profitable experience for me, too, for I was finally persuaded to bring my light from under the bushel and have been acclaimed as an artist of outstanding merit. So much so that I have received commissions for further drawings (chiefly of landscapes), and my future as Lakeland’s Greatest Artist is assured. The cover design on the enclosed Programme is by Wainwright. Before I go on to a series of drawings of the Lakes, however, I am determined to put Kendal right on the map. I intend to spend the next two years in sketching the town; these drawings, with a narrative written by self in self’s inimitable style, will then be published by the Council as the official handbook to the town. It’s going to be a lovely job, for Kendal was simply built to be drawn. So out of the immaturity of countless expedition itineraries will be born the Super Guide Book, and it will be a huge success. You won’t get a copy by enclosing a stamp; you’ll have to dig in your pocket, but it will be a bargain at any price. Watch for the advertisement in all the national newspapers in the first summer of peace!
Now what of your visit to Wasdale? Lawrence told me of the embarrassment of your return journey to Carlisle, but he had nothing to tell of your grim vigil amongst the rocky ramparts of Scafell. He had some vague story of your mounting three free Frenchwomen in rapid succession, but I am more anxious to have the exclusive details of your mounting of Broad Stand, of your privations in the gloomy chasm of Fat Man’s Agony, of the musical tinkle of falling urine in the darkness of your room. How is Wasdale Head, and Burnthwaite and the glorious Sty? The details, please! Two years have gone by since I sojourned there; two long years. Soon I must go again.
And on your return to pastoral Herts what had the fair Bess to offer you in welcome? I wonder! Now I must thank the dear child for her review of my book. So for the present I take my leave of you
Your old pal
AlfW
Monday evening, |
19 Castle Grove |
September 21 1942 |
Kendal |
Dear Walt,
The days go by, and I wait in vain for the sordid details of your Lakeland trek. Silence envelops Hertfordshire. I am sending herewith a handsome present: a print of my first drawing. My first has since been succeeded by my second and my third, in that order, and they are evoking prodigal encouragement in this grey old town of my adoption; so much so that I am now convinced that a lucrative additional source of revenue awaits my clutch. Since this is the first, however, I have had a few copies made for my friends, regardless of cost, and here is yours. It is eminently suitable, I claim, for tacking up in the lavatory and surveying moodily when in he throes of excretion.
Gable I see most evenings from fields behind my home: has Hertford anything as fair to show? Gable will have charms when Bess is gone and forgotten.
This isn’t a letter.
It’s your turn to write. When you do, please use the same envelope so that I can use it again. They’re 2d each!
Alf
AW was full of plans for books, but it’s not clear if at this stage he ever got round to much more than thinking about them, boasting about them, but he does seem to have had printed, at his own expense, quite a few copies of some of his Kendal drawings. One of several AW drawings from the 1942 period which has survived is the cover of the Holiday Week brochure.
Friday evening |
19 Castle Grove |
October 2 1942 |
Kendal |
Dear Lollipop,
I’ve had one letter from you in the past four months.
Bob will have given you, or will be giving you, a print of my ‘Blea Tarn, Langdale’. This isn’t my latest drawing, and it isn’t my best; it’s my first, and because it is the first, the prelude to many, I have had thirty copies made, regardless of cost, for my new friends and for those whose encouragement in the past I have not forgotten. I could have sold these thirty copies in five minutes, and wallowed in wealth for a few days, but that would spoil the idea. I hope you like the picture. I claim that it is eminently suitable for tacking up in the lavatory and surveying moodily during the throes of excretion, or in intervals of noisy urination.
I have set aside five more copies for others there who may like to have them. I thought originally of sending these to you to distribute as you thought best, but on reflection I think it wiser to let those who are genuinely interested ask for a copy. You might see if Jim Ashworth would like one, and N.W.E. Hamm. Alf Shaw might; Wilbur probably wouldn’t. FRED Sellers is a possibility. Perhaps you won’t have a single request! However, see.
In a few days I am setting off for wildest Lakeland for a strenuous holiday. I have developed such a belly on me these past few weeks that I can’t button my flies, so I’m planning to shake it off over Wasdale way.
The weather at present is delightfully mild and sunny, and the hills were never more colourful and attractive. But the leaves are falling from the trees – winter will soon be here.
Did you guess, by the way, where I had supper last Saturday evening. Best wishes to the whole bloody lot of you.
Alf
Tuesday evening |
19 Castle Grove |
October 6 1942 |
Kendal |
Dear Wal.
The morning of Monday, October 5th, was murky, cold and damp. I went to work in the gloom, watching a blustery wind whirling the leaves from the trees. I shivered as I walked. Winter had come.
But at the office I was to experience a shining ray of bright light that cut through the gloom of the morning and quite dispelled it. I was hardly seated at my desk before Dorothy brought me your letter of the 23rd Sept. et seq. I opened it, and commenced to read. It was truly magnificent. Your description of your first ascent of Scafell held me enthralled. It took me right out of my surroundings; I climbed Scafell with you. Together we strode along Eskdale, loveliest of valleys; we stood admiring the white lace curtain of Cam Spout, and later idled by its brink; we toiled side by side to the rocky ramparts of Mickledore; agreed that Broad Stand had better be left until the next time; made our way beneath the cliffs to Lord’s Rake; palpitated on the West Wall Traverse; and finally emerged, sweating and triumphant, from the steep funnel of Deep Ghyll to claim our reward. I know the spot well where you sat and gazed at the scene of grandeur that encompassed you. It hasn’t an equal in Lakeland. The Napes Ridges are fine, and so is Pillar Rock, but there isn’t a rival to Scafell Pinnacle and its Pisgah. Here you are right on top of the world; you look down on it as its Creator looks down on it, with utter satisfaction; you are conscious of nothing but tranquility so profound that it is almost a pain; would you could take the image away in your mind and never lose it, never let it be dimmed or put aside by material considerations! A few hours spent in contemplation and meditation above the cliffs of Scafell, in silent worship at the cathedral of the Pinnacle, does more for a man’s soul than a thousand sermons. Could you sit there and call yourself an atheist, an unbeliever? I do not think so for a moment; your doubts must surely have been lost in the gulf of Mickledore, swept away by the clean winds.
Once I sat where you sat and lost count of time as you did. Not until darkness had hidden Hollow Stones below me, and only the neighbouring peaks retained the rosy flush of the departed sun, could I tear myself away from the majestic, awe-inspiring scene. My long-delayed communion with the spirits of the mountain cost me dear then: in the gathering dusk I could not find the top of Lord’s Rake, and essayed a descent by a wide gully I subsequently found to be Red Ghyll, not without mishaps; when I reached the comforting turf of Brown Tongue I was both bloody and bowed. But I remember how long and earnestly I looked upwards at the jagged black rock-towers above me before limping down to Wasdale … the spell of that day’s glories is with me yet.
It is a regret to me that I put off the ascent of Scafell by Cam Spout until late years. Thoughts of the weary grind so-called in the guidebooks, up the screes to Mickledore caused me to postpone it time after time. When I finally made the attempt I found it so easy and enjoyable that I wept with chagrin at the lost opportunities. I too was staying at Boot, and walked along Eskdale while the dew was still on the ground; I too thought it sublimely beautiful. Cam Spout looked stiff, but proved an easy staircase, with the added attraction of a supremely lovely series of cascades to delight me. Up above, I squeezed into Fat Man’s Agony, and lingered a long time on the rock platform at the foot of Broad Stand, intently studying the ample footholds that climbed the corner and disappeared aloft. I was sick with desire, palsied with fear … I too turned reluctantly away. Someday we must do it together.
You didn’t climb Deep Ghyll, and shouldn’t claim credit for it. That passage, inherently false, rather mars your masterly narrative. What you did was to ascend Lord’s Rake beyond the entrance to Deep Ghyll and made your way into its upper reaches, above its two pitches, by the West Wall Traverse. If Broad Stand turned you away, you certainly would not have attempted the cavern which forms the first pitch of the Ghyll. Unroped and alone you just couldn’t have climbed it.
And Scafell is the King, not the Queen, of the Lakeland mountains. Helvellyn is the Queen, and Skiddaw the Prince. You enjoyed relating the details of your day on Scafell, didn’t you? That much is clear from your description of it. And I revelled in reading it. I simply devoured it, wallowed in it. When I finally put it away in my pocket, and looked up, lo! The sun was shining, the sky serene. I am sending it along to Lawrence to leaven the weary barm of his existence for a few minutes; my heart is still heavy with compassion for those I left behind me in that soul-destroying hellhole at Blackburn.
On October 16th I am going into the hills for a few days holiday, my last fling in 1942. I shall have a night at Patterdale and another in Borrowdale; I doubt whether I shall risk dropping down into Wasdale, having regard to the lack of accommodation.
Last week I sent Alker a selection of my 1941 collection of photographs of Lakeland peaks. I’ll let you have them at an opportune time.
The Holidays Committee treated me nobly after my efforts for them, and my library of mountaineering classics is not augmented by several volumes I have long coveted.
Thanks for your kind remarks anent ‘Blea Tarn’.
Now what’s this about an operation and service in the Forces? A minor operation, you say. That is a matter of relativity. Having your useless dick cut off would be a minor operation for you, but definitely a major amputation for me.
If you really are joining the Forces I wish you well. But why the Navy? Why not
Blast it
However, if your entry is imminent, you probably won’t have time to write again before you go. But I sincerely hope you will find time occasionally to put aside your sword and take up the pen, and tell me of your feats of derring-do. And if I, in return, can bring a breath of Lakeland air into my replies, and bring back memories of happy days on the hills, I shall be happy. Let me know what happens to you.
Yours sincerely,
Alf
I saw your brother walking along Bolton Road, Blackburn, a week last Saturday.
You’ll not forget to return my book, will you, if you have to go? Remember me to Bess
What will she do, poor thing?
See o’er
[On the back of the letter AW has drawn a map of Scafell entitled ‘Scafell from Pikes Crag: Probable Route of W.E. Maudsley 30.7.42’. The drawing is a rough sketch, but reminiscent of sketches and routes to come.]
Friday evening |
19 Castle Grove |
November 20 1942 |
Kendal |
Dear Lawrence,
It was a very great surprise to me to receive your letter the other day. The trees were in new leaf and the birds were mating when last you wrote. It was springtime. Now the trees are bare of leaves and the birds have gone to warmer lands. Spring has passed, and summer, and autumn. It is winter again. In the meantime I have written to you occasionally, sent things I thought you would like to see. They brought no response until this week. It grieved me deeply, angered me almost, to be ignored thus. It is discourteous, to say the least, not to reply to letters received. Good manners demanded that I should have an acknowledgment that my communications had safely arrived. Nothing came, however, and it is now some time since I deleted your name from my list of correspondents and erased you from my mind. One does not write to a man who is dead, nor think of him. Your word, inertia, is not half strong enough. Even with this latest belated effort you made the admission, as though it were a joke, that it would not yet have been written but for your wife’s entreaties. You should be grateful to Margery for propping you up thus and reminding you of ordinary moral decencies which should be observed, but this time she was too late. Thoughtlessness has cost you a friend. I will reply to our letter, but I tell you frankly that there are other things I would much rather be doing tonight than writing to you.
In a few days time I shall have been at Kendal a year, and it has been a year of sublime contentment, of progress, of rapid advancement towards the attainment of an ambition that was born early and somehow survived the ghastly, soul-destroying environment of the Blackburn Town Hall. I look back on those years with horror. Coming here was like escaping from a foul pit. There are no days of desolation and gloom, as there were then. There are no days when things go wrong at work, no days of desperate endeavour, no weary nights of overtime, no rush jobs, no office squabbles, no R.G. wanting to see me, no interferences, no questions asked, no kow-towing to little Ceasers who ought to be shot.
In twelve months I have earned for myself a classical reputation. My ledgers, illustrated and illuminated, are things of great beauty. There is nothing here to cramp my style, no jealous criticisms and senseless comments, and I have flourished exceedingly. There is positive joy in working in these happy conditions. I am very highly thought of, and the Council’s special pet. My flair for the artistic has been quickly recognized, and applauded. Unlike the dullards who govern Blackburn, here are men of breeding and intellect and imagination; men, moreover, to whom civic pride is a religion, not a sham. And with justification, for is this not a lovely old town and are there not centuries of proud history in its mellow grey stones?
So I prosper. Kendal folk have a reputation for clannishness, but I have blasted my way right through the outer shell and find now that every man has a smile and a kind word for me. I was one of the gentlemen of Kendal who took the mayor to Church last Sunday, and am to be found in my place at all civic functions. A wealth of tradition still clings to Kendal, and I find its varied ceremonies of absorbing interest. I keep the Education, Gas, Water, Electricity, Rating, Housing and Superannuation Accounts of the Council as they have never been kept before, and yet have lots of time to free-lance. Much of my time in future will be spend at the Museum, for the Council have asked me to take it under my control and look after it. Now Kendal Museum is a very remarkable place; I’d as soon drop in there to look round as go to the pictures. It is widely acknowledged as the finest in the North of England; it is not a place of death, as yours is, but a live, exciting place which attracts hordes of visitors. Now it is mine, to display the exhibits, to publicise, to curate and to catalogue. Could there be a more delightful hobby? I have long wanted a collection of birds eggs: now I have ten thousand at one fell swoop, gratis. A public-minded citizen has provided the funds to build an extension: I shall enjoy spending the money.
My work, then, is a joy to me. But it is the hours of leisure which make life in Kendal a delirious delight. At 5.30 I promptly forget about the office (my aggregate hours of overtime since I started here are precisely nil) and continue from the night before my plans, fantastic, exhilarating, wildly exciting, for a future which has bounded much nearer and is now within my grasp. These dreams are no longer transient and far away, but real;
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Wednesday evening |
19 Castle Grove |
November 25 1942 |
Kendal |
My dear Lawrence,
Sorry to butt in on wages, but I must insist that the ‘privilege (sic) of having the last word’ be mine. So get ’em balanced, in a fashion, and stuck up, and then lend me a cavernous ear.
First let me thank you very sincerely for your condolences and those of the unnamed others in the office.
Then let me say that your letter afforded me acute delight. Listen. When I first knew you, back in the days of silent films, you were a romantic: you had a flashing eye, a fiery tongue, a ready temper. Sadly I have watched the years change the baleful glare into a bovine stare; calm the tempestuous flow of your invective, damp almost to extinction the flame that once burned so brightly within you. You are not as you were, by a long chalk. The Wolst of recent years has been characterized by meekness, timidity, submission – and I exhort you to save these qualities, such as they are, for your old age. When you were a youth you had dreams; now these are gone too. You are growing old too fast, Lawrence, much too fast. I don’t like to see you straddled with cobwebs. I preferred you as a man of passion, of action. And now, at last, I have roused you from your torpor. Every word of my harangue was designed with this end in view. Far from being a ‘hysterical outburst’ it was written, as you should have guessed, with a placid smirk on my venerable visage. It worked. For the first time you are inspired to send me a letter which is not a doleful diatribe of distress, and not only that but you reply within 48 hours. Furthermore, your reply is couched in the violent language I hoped for. I rejoice. The red blood is flowing again.
Now actually it doesn’t matter whether you write me letters or not. A letter received is a letter to be answered (it is with me, anyhow!), and when I tell you that in the past twelve months I have received over 200 (TWO HUNDRED) personal letters from folk who still think a lot of me, you will appreciate that this drain on my leisure time is hindering the fruition of my Major Plans. So you can please your damn self.
No it wasn’t your tardy letter-writing that I had a grouse about. What disappointed me was that you failed even to acknowledge my sensational free gift. Then you yap about friendship! If, in your analysis of friendship, thanks are never called for, then, sir, you are a pig. In my friendships, courtesy has prominent place. It is your sense of friendship, not mine, that is pathetic. And I repeat (to further revive your drooping ire) that you are a pig. Margery will agree with me; if, that is, she sees this letter, which I doubt.
Your cheap gibe about CEASERS shows that you quite misread my letter. I mentioned little Ceasers. By the way, are we spelling this word right?
The only passage in your letter to which I bow my head and agree is that all have not my ability to wield a facile pen. How I wish they had! Oh, how I wish they had!
I had better mention that I shall be sending you a card at Christmas. I would not like to place you at a further advantage.
Your old pal
AlfW
Wednesday evening |
19 Castle Grove |
January 27 1943 |
Kendal |
Dear Walt
I received your letter with acclamation, but my face grew grave as I learnt of your somber news. Truly, the swing of fortune has brought low the once-exalted bastion and bulwark of Congregationalism, the man Maudsley.
You still do not hint at the nature of your operations in hospital, and in view of this reticence on your part to uncover all I am driven to the surmise that it was on your hind quarters, on that fleshy globule called your bottom, that the knives of your tormentors descended so relentlessly. I admire your phlegm in the matter of the bedpan, but I am of course reminded that ten years ago chasteness would not allow you to regard humbler vessel, a chamber, without searing your soul. You have become worldly since then.
Then, make darker the sky, is your calling-up for military service, which appears to be imminent. Indeed, since it is now some weeks since your letter was penned, it is by no means improbable that you are already engaged in feats of derring-do as a regular soldier, that the Hertfordshire belles are now shaking sad heads over your departure.
But your gravest item of news was the brief mention that relations with Bess have lost their early rapture. Surely not! ‘Long, luscious, sweet as nectar’ … these are your own words. Having regard to the fact that [word blacked out] it was who, more than anyone before [three lines blacked out] will later bring in full measure – having regard to these, I cannot help but feel sad. Then, to crown your woe, you lament bitterly on the dung-coloured, uninspiring countryside in which you have chosen to live. Your happiest days were spent within sight of the hills. After the War you must come back north, for the man who goes to live amongst the pine-trees and cascades and purple heights gains the whole world by so doing. How well I recall your valiant cry, echoing amid the peaks: ‘En Avant!’
At the moment I am at rather a low ebb myself. I am typing this letter with the machine half-way up the chimney and a pair or brace of bony knees thrust forward into the smouldering embers of a dying fire. I have, I fear, developed a cold, due primarily to artistic zeal which kept me sat on a boulder up at Sweden Bridge for an hour last Sunday until I was tolerably content with the rough sketch I had made. You may gather from that that I have at long last, after months of dreaming and planning, rolled up my sleeves and gone to work in earnest. I am engaged in preparing fifty drawings of Lakeland scenes (after the style of Blea Tarn): these I intend to publish on completion in book form under the title of LAKELAND SKETCHBOOK at 12/6 a copy. This will be a venture entirely new, and should bring me fame. And money, for if I sell 5,000 copies, which is my target, I shall profit on the enterprise to the extent of two thousand pounds. My only other piece of Lakeland news since I wrote last is that on Boxing Day morning I was tempted by a blue sky and warm sun to follow the Coniston Foxhounds from Ambleside ‘ower top o Kirkstone’. It was a bonny morning, springtime at Christmas; the colouring of the fells was exquisite, with wisps of white mist trailing across the hillsides and adding a peculiar charm to the views.
I was not in Blackburn at Christmas, hence your suggestion as to the reason for the unrelieved gloom of the populace was well-founded. I went over for the New Year, and wallowed in an atmosphere of fish and chip shops, black puddings, tripe, clogs, hen-pens, cloth caps. There is little joy in returning now; I have advanced and matured since those humdrum days of pre-1941. By arrangement, I met Willie Ashton on this trip, and by accident Norman Hamm.
I am not enclosing my Lakeland photographs this time, chiefly because I am using some of them to supply the details for my sketches until I can get out into the district more. And again because you may already have slung your hook from Herts. Later on I’ll let you have them, augmented by my 1943 collection.
You must let me know what happens to you in the near future, for I shall always retain a mighty interest in the welfare of one who, though misguided in some respects, always struck me as a being a very likeable cove. Good luck!
Your old pal
Alf
Saturday evening |
19 Castle Grove |
April 10 1943 |
Kendal |
Dear Mr Maudsley,
14566772!
What have they done at you, boy? If ever in the past I have thought of you as having a number as a handle to your name it has been when criminal tendencies have oozed through the smooth veneer of your sophistication and the prospect of an ultimate Dartmoor has passed, like a vague shadow, through my mind. Such occasions have been, I admit, infrequent. You were never the type to rob a bank, but sometimes you expressed anti-social views which might have landed you behind bars.
Yet you’ve got your number, all the same. You are now no longer Maudsley the peerless, nor even Maudsley the elegant. You are no longer Maudsley the one and only but 14566772, one of fourteen million odd.
It isn’t good enough, damn me if it is. All these years you’ve spend in acquiring and fostering distinctive touches so that your personality might be a rare and beautiful thing, and now, overnight, the lot goes to hell, and you with them. Out of the grey dawn emerges 14566772, a miserable and bedraggled creature shorn of his trimmings.
In a way, this experience will do you good, yes. Discipline builds character, physical training builds a fine body. But the main thing is that these attributes are being enforced upon you. You have lost your freedom. You can’t do as you please any more. You are a slave. You must be content with lesser joys now for a while. You must learn to find pleasure in grosser company than that to which you have been accustomed, to be ready to guffaw at lewd and unfunny remarks, to appreciate the appeal of cheap and frowsy women, to enjoy raw food served in a dollop on a tin plate, and, above all to squirt in a chamber if need be.
Compare your lot with mine! Inwardly I cannot help but gloat. When am I going to join the Army indeed! Never. In fact, your letter was a jolt; I had well-nigh forgotten there was a war still raging somewhere far from this peaceful Utopia of mine. I am sitting at the foot of the rainbow with my pot of gold, lady, and I am here to stay.
Take last Saturday, for instance, when you were marching and sweating in the barrack-square. I, for my part, was comfortably laid on a fragrant couch in Dora’s Field at Rydal, idly watching the blue smoke from my pipe curling upwards into the sunny sky. I was a man at peace with the world and with himself, a man inexpressibly happy and utterly content. The tree in whose shade I lay was in blossom: I could see the delicate tracery of the petals against the brightness of the sky. Around me were daffodils in profusion, a golden carpet of bloom. Life was very very sweet …
In due course I sauntered along to the Glen Rothay Hotel for tea, and subsequently made my way beneath the dark pines and the vivid-green larches by the edge of the quiet lake, and so, at length through the bracken on to Loughrigg. And there was the vast pageant of hills, sleepy in the sunshine: Bowfell the beloved, Gable, the Langdales, Fairfield. Oh, how grand to be in Lakeland, to be rid of things earthy, to dwell amidst eternal beauty!
The following day I spend in the Lyth Valley, amongst the lambs and the nesting birds, following winding paths beneath trees loaded with sweet blossom. Pastoral tranquility where’er I turned my steps. Again, life was very sweet.
You could have been a happy man, too. But there was the stink of money in your nostrils, and you chose, like a he-dog, to follow its trail. Thou fool!
Future generations, when they think of Wordsworth and Southey and Coleridge and de Quincey, will think of Wainwright also. All my energies are now devoted to this aim. I am engaged on a work which will bring me fame, and enthusiasm for it is running white-hot; life is deliriously exciting. I haven’t left myself time to tell you of my plan in detail, but believe me, this is Wainwright attaining a new best. And backing me up are friends with the stuff that counts in an enterprise of this sort. Today my researches took me on a first visit to Shap, where, by the side of the infant Lowther, in a sleepy hollow of the fells, I spent an enjoyable hour amongst the primroses gazing at the ruins of the old Abbey. I wore flannels, not khaki. I listened to the myriad voices of nature, perfectly attuned, not to the raucous call of the sergeant-major.
So leave me here with my dreams and my plans, in the Lakeland I love so passionately. Write to me whenever you wish. And fight my battles for me, that’s a good chap.
Tell me when the war’s over!
Your old pal,
14566773
Maudsley, in early 1943, having served in the Home Guard for two years, after he had recovered from his minor operation, was called up – but not into the Navy as he had hoped. He found himself in the Royal Signals, en route to Burma. He was in the army till the end of the war in 1945. His relationship with Bessy had finished before he went into the army.
AW remained in Kendal for the rest of the war, still planning the brilliant books with which he was going to astound the world.