Molly Lefebure first wrote to AW around 1957 when Book Two came out, correcting him about some point, now long forgotten. She remembered that he wrote back and said he was right and she was wrong.
Later on, she wrote again and this time something sparked off AW’s interest in Molly personally – perhaps it was because she was a sparky, middle class, educated, literary lady, of the sort he had rarely met – and so began a correspondence that went on for many years.
Molly went to North London Collegiate School and London University and then worked for three years on a chain of East End newspapers throughout the Blitz, after which, for eight years, she was medical secretary to Keith Simpson, the Home Office pathologist. She married John Gerrish, an oil company executive, and had two sons. In 1957 they bought a house in Newlands near Keswick, used by Molly as a bolt-hole to write in and for family holidays. They now live there full time. Molly has written several books on crime and the Lake District, novels for adults and children, as well as biographies of Coleridge and Thomas Hardy.
Their correspondence proper began in September 1964 when Molly wrote to him enclosing an old clay pipe she had found while climbing Robinson. ‘I knew he smoked a pipe, as he had drawn himself with one in one of his Guides. In my letter, I said it must be one of his, but he shouldn’t leave such litter on the fells …’
c/o Westmorland Gazette, Kendal
4th September 1964
Dear Madam,
Thank you for your kind letter, with its generous comments and remarkable enclosure. The pipe is no longer serviceable, unfortunately, but your letter was a perfect delight to read, a thing of great charm, quiet fun, vivid imagination, and apt, expressive words.
You put me in a difficulty right away. How should I address you? Simply to say ‘Dear Mrs Gerrish’ seems an awful damper on your positively friendly, spirited, scintillating and spontaneous overtures to me (if ‘overtures’ isn’t an unhappy word to use here). ‘Dear Molly’ sounds much better, but would it bring an angry husband rampaging after me? (I have a dread of angry husbands, as of bulls.) You mention a bevy of offspring, unashamedly. I wonder…. Oh, what the hell – I always get myself into trouble when I write to women. Better play safe …
I am writing now only to acknowledge its receipt. Usually I keep correspondents waiting at least three months for attention – not out of discourtesy, but out of self-defence. I have such a vast heap of unanswered letters on my desk (built up into a lovely cairn – it seems such a pity to disturb it). But you are special. I can’t keep you waiting that long.
Please accept this acknowledgement until I can find time to give your letter the full attention it deserves. I’ll write as soon as I can.
Yours sincerely,
AWainwright (Mr!)
Some time later, he wrote from Scotland to her, from the Caledonian Hotel in Inverness. No year is given, but it is clearly 1965, judging by the following letter. Molly says he was doing lots of train rides, partly because he was allowed a certain amount of free rail travel as a local government servant. There had been other shorter letters between them before this long letter from Scotland. The reference to Burnbank is about a running argument between them. Molly had said there was an old stone circle on Burnbank he had missed – and he said it didn’t exist, she was imagining it. This row, only half jocular, went on for years.
Caledonian Hotel, Inverness
May 16th, I think
Dear Molly,
I must tell somebody, or I shall start screaming. And only from you, with your rich understanding of human frailties, can I expect the warmth of sympathy my present unfortunate circumstances deserve.
I am making my annual railway tour of Scotland solo. The purpose is complete relaxation, mark you. But, but by a cruel chain of coincidences, I am finding myself everywhere given a hotel bedroom next to a door marked ‘toilet’, with devastating effect on sleep and rest. You must understand that I cannot sleep with a noise going on. I can not only not sleep with clock in the room, I can’t if there’s one in the next. My watch I have to bury under the carpet and put my rucksack over it. But since I came up here my nights have been punctuated by the crash of waters only the thickness of a brick from my weary head. Things were at their lowest ebb at the Loch Lomond Hotel at Balloch, which had two coach parties staying overnight. All night long they were at it, flushing the poor thing mercilessly. There was never any question of sleep. At 2 o’clock I gave up trying, put the light on and kept a tally on the wall-paper. As the result of this research into the Toilet-Going Habits of the British Tourist in Scotland, I can now produce statistics to show that (by dividing the number of flushes by the number of guests in what might be termed the ‘catchment area’ or ‘toilet zone’) the average attendance of the British Tourist between supper and breakfast is 3 and a third. This takes some swallowing, you will admit. O, for the freedom from inhibition of Burnbank Stone Circle! This may be life in the raw, but how much to be preferred! The other hotels have been little better. I feel like a wet rag; my eyes are going bloodshot.
I don’t know why I’m here, anyway. The place has been smothered in mist and rain for four days. There is no pleasure in it. The last act of desperation of a man at his wits’ end is to go from Inverness to Wick and back in a day – 320 miles – and this I did yesterday. It rained all the time and I had the train to myself. I must be going out of my mind, because nobody in his right senses ever goes to Wick. My heart’s not in it, either. I cross Rannoch Moor and my thoughts are of Ennerdale, I look at the Cairngorms from Aviemore and see High Stile and Red Pike from Crummock. I climb the bonny braes above Lomond searching for Burnbank’s stone circle. The hills are mightier, the lochs vaster, the distances greater, but it is a country without charm. No, lass, this is second best, and a long way short of the best we both know and live.
It is late and I ought to be in bed, but what’s the use. Here at the Caledonian I am next door to the plumbing nerve-centre for the whole establishment. Every time somebody turns a tap, or worse, there is a spluttering convulsion in a battery of unseen but nearby pipes, and the gurgle long afterwards like a death rattler. Dawn is hours away. There is no hope for me. I have tried making ear-plugs from tufts pulled from the carpet, and from pellets of newspaper, but nothing works. My eyes are getting bloodshotter and bloodshotter. I feed jaded, weary, shot at. In my extremity, I think of you, and I don’t even know why.
NEXT MORNING
I have been to sleep! And slept well!! They say necessity is the mother of invention, but this was pure chance. During restless tossings and turnings during the night, after one particular contortion I found my head under the pillow, making a sandwich with the bolster, and all extraneous noises were immediately stilled. Here was the solution! Pressure on the pillow can be effected by some article of bedroom furniture, such as a chair. Tell all your friends who cannot sleep to put their heads under the pillow, not on it. Mind you, it gets a bit warm. And I suppose it could cause suffocation. It’s perhaps an idea to work into a murder plot. Now suppose there is this woman novelist on a lonely Lakeland farm…. I’ll think about it going down to Perth today. I must be lots better. I’m getting my imagination back.
Back in Kendal, AW describes the rest of his Scottish tour, and also says he has been to Keswick and climbed Catbells, within sight of Molly’s house (referred to as LHS). AW’s remark about her husband being ‘a fat old boy of 76’ was one of his usual teasing references, suggesting she had made a mistake to prefer him to AW. He had never met John at this stage, far less Molly. John in fact was always thin, and at the time was only in his early forties.
KENDAL, 28 May 1965
Dear Molly,
My admonition to the Gazette (to deliver to me promptly any correspondence with a Keswick postmark) has had a salutary effect, and your letter of the 18th was in my hands by the 20th.
Well, to complete the story, I got home all right, but odiferous with kippers (which I had had every morning for breakfast – just for the hell of it, being on holiday and slightly reckless) – one cannot go through an experience like this and emerge unscathed, and after a week of it I was smelling worse than Wick Harbour. I persisted with them, however, finding them effective in ensuring a compartment to one’s self, which suited me fine because I like to bob from one side to the other, looking for mountains.
When I got to Perth, the rain it was sluicing down, so I kept on the train to Glasgow, where the rain it was sluicing down, so I changed trains for Stranraer, where the rain it was sluicing down. Stranraer, like Wick, is the end of the railway and the end of hope: the sort of place you would go to commit suicide. At Stranraer I booked in at a hotel that used to be a big house built by Ross the explorer, and I think he too must have been a man easily disturbed by noises in the night: so solid are the walls that not a murmur passes from one room to another. I had a double bed all to myself (a great treat, for I wobble off single ones) and slept like a man in a grave. Beauty is often glimpsed in unexpected places, and it can be found in certain conditions even at Stranraer. Looking out on the harbour from my window at bedtime, I found that the rain had stopped and a yellow band had appeared across the sky to the west, an afterglow of sunset, against which was silhouetted the masts of the Irish steamer that had crept in during the evening and was now ablaze with lights. I looked at this pretty picture a long time. It pleased me.
The following day was all blue sky and white clouds, but perishing cold. I ended it at Dumfries, having earned for myself the cheap distinction of being the last local government officer in the history of the world to travel on the Stranraer-Dumfries railway, which closes on JUNE 14TH. At Dumfries I found myself in a room with twin beds, which seemed a waste; and in any case I can never see any sense in twin beds – they are neither one thing nor another. Between these two was a crevice into which one leg fell and was trapped during the night, but again I slept well.
Next day was spent coming home, and, as so often happens, the weather turned glorious. On the journey from Dumfries to Carlisle the hills of Lakeland can be seen across the Solway, and on this morning they looked delicious under a blue sky with little puffs of white cloud above them. From Carrock Fell to Grasmoor they could all be clearly recognized, old Skiddaw looking especially magnificent from here. Hills of memories! They looked good, so good that from Carlisle I made a bus tour of West Cumberland just to get nearer to them. At Keswick there was time to visit a favourite spot on Derwentwater where nobody else goes and look across to Catbells. Such beauty I had not seen in Scotland. It was good to be back. Real good.
Last Saturday I was back to happy routine with my usual weekly visit to Keswick, although I am only killing time until the summer bus services start. I took a stroll on Catbells. I stood looking across the valley to LHS, quietly seething with jealously of the fat old boy of 76 you follow around. And me in the full flower of manhood (according to you)! There was no flag flying over the old homestead to warn the burghers (correct spelling) of Newlands that Mr G was in residence, but I turned sadly away, in fact, this correspondence, with its unhealthy tread of sadism, is making it impossible that we should ever meet. You started it, not me. Rubbish dumps, bulls, water closets, murders and kippers – well, at any rate, nobody can ever accuse us of exchanging love letters.
From Catbells I went to look for the Roman Fort at Caermote, between Binsey and Bothel (which a lady on the bus called Brothel, which made my ears prick up intently – so perhaps you are right and I am not yet past the full flower). I couldn’t find Caermote, but noticed its pattern later from a neighbouring hillside. Back in Keswick I had a prowl round the new refuse tip, now in its formative stages, but there is nothing to recommend except possibly an old mattress that might do for your guest room, but it is nearly buried and would need a lot of tugging to get it free. The rest was a humdrum miscellany, not really inspiring.
Yes, I know the type of fierce walker you describe, but believe me I was never one such. I have always climbed hills by pulling myself up from one tuft of grass to the next. But I share your dislike, or is it mortification? Heaven preserve us from breezy individuals! The thing to do is to reverse the embarrassment. Memorise a short passage from a book on geology – just a sentence or two chosen at random – and carry a small hammer. Then when you find yourself being overtaken by someone who is obviously going to give you a hearty greeting, even if he doesn’t actually slap you on the shoulder, as he strides past, just stop in your tracks and start tapping the nearest stone. The odds are he will pass without comment, but if he should ask what you are doing, look him up and down pityingly, quote your passage, and resume your concentration. He will creep quietly away! I know, I’ve tried it!
AW
By the end of 1965, AW had finished the manuscript of Fellwanderer, the book about writing his Pictorial Guides, which he is sent to Molly for advice and comments. She had recently published her own first Lakeland book, The English Lake District (Batsford 1964) and was working on another Cumbrian book. She didn’t like the proposed shape of Fellwanderer, saying it would stick out of the book shelves and should be shaped like the Guides – advice he ignored. But he did take out a reference to peeing in Thirlmere which he had done because he hated the Water Board for turning it into a reservoir. She said it would encourage other walkers to do the same and the Water Board would then be after him.
AW had teased her about her maiden name, Lefebure, that it was Franco-German. Her grandfather had originally come from France, hence her surname, but Molly had been born and brought up in England. ‘There was no German in our family. That was just one of AW’s silly jokes, or deliberate misunderstandings.’
Municipal Offices, Kendal
11th February 1966
Molly, I could kiss you. I could you. You must have spent hours and hours on my little manuscript. It was never my intention to encroach so much on your busy existence, and I would never have dared to ask your opinion if I had known you would feel you had to do more than read it through once. But you are obviously nothing if not thorough. You simply had to do your best to make a writer out of me, as in the past you have tried to make a man out of me.
Well, I am tremendously grateful. I think your suggestions are absolutely right. Of course I should have mentioned my introduction to the district – the thing is lopsided without it. Of course I should start at the second paragraph. Of course my discursion on handwriting is too long and out of place and should be cut. Of course, everything else. You are dead right. I will do all these things. And it will be a better book.
As for the Saga of the Stone Circle, you have permitted more than I thought you would, but you will have an opportunity to change your mind if you want to when I let you see the proofs later on. I referred to your father only to make sense of the ‘Franco-German sweep’ mentioned later – sorry! Yes, I suppose we are being rather abandoned. The association seems even to become a little suspicious when my letters to you are hidden in a cask of rum in a dark cellar and yours to me are craftily concealed in a cabinet of files of strictly local government affairs. Well, let’s bring it to the light of day if you are perfectly sure that everything will be all right at your end. I may be in trouble about it, but am inured to trouble. I might find that a private eye is following me around, but, if so, could lose him for ever on Jack’s Rake. It will be a jolt to several women who think of me as their soul-mate, but, in any case, I really ought to stop giving them this impression. We might each find people regarding us (individually, of course) out of the corner of their eyes and we might be a source of exercise for the little minds … but haven’t I read somewhere that writers are permitted some licence? Or does this apply only to poets? Don’t worry, love. We’ll switch to poetry, if need be.
Funny about that large, yeti-like thing you found prowling around the environs of L.H.S! you know, the description fits me perfectly, and I certainly was in the places you mention, several times, but it wasn’t me, I assure you. It couldn’t be could it? I wouldn’t flee up the fell if an attractive woman spoke sweetly to me, not likely. Instinct would urge me to get down in the bracken with her. Nor was it yours truly you encountered on Catbells. You were right to belabour him with your tongue. Cheeky devil! No, I don’t speak to people I meet on the fells unless they speak first, and then not always. Only once did I lose my temper and berate somebody: a party of townies had strolled up to he head of Mickleden from Dungeon Ghyll with a little yapping dog and they were having great fun watching it chase the sheep around – and this just before lambing time. So I told them off good and proper and left them with red faces. Mine was red, too.
Yes, do please tell me about the funny remark that nearly led to your arrest. The world is getting less funny every day, and people are getting far too serious on nearly every subject under the sun. There’s nothing funny about Vietnam, or Rhodesia, or landing on the moon, or teenage morals. People are becoming too earnest, too intolerant, too determined to get things just as they think they should be: they are forgetting how to laugh. I don’t think you can plan human life and human destiny by going to meetings and passing resolutions and writing to newspapers and parading through the streets. There are far too many societies springing up with the object of telling people how to live, too much interference with others. You don’t live to a prescribed pattern: this would be deadly boring. Life is happy chance, and exciting, and full of humour if you only have the imagination to recognize it. It’s the terribly earnest types who commit suicide, those who can see the funny side who most enjoy life. Yes, do please tell me that funny story!
Again, many many thanks for your wonderful help. I won’t be dedicating the book to you, nor even mentioning you in acknowledgment, because this might cause a major domestic explosion that would penetrate even my thick skin, but I shall always remember your extreme kindness in the matter, and be grateful.
AW
Molly did not hide AW’s letters. That was another of his jokes. Her husband John always read and was amused by AW’s – but presumably AW did keep Molly’s letters hidden from his wife Ruth, just in case they could be misconstrued.
He was delighted with Molly’s suggestion that they should write some sort of book together – especially as he seemed to be getting bogged down in his Pennine Way project.
Municipal Offices, Kendal
15th April 1966
Dear Molly,
I am going to write to you here and now if it kills me. I am disgustingly busy. But never mind the ringing telephone, never mind the queue of dear old ladies who want to see me about rate rebates (they lose their attractiveness to me when they get to 75 to 80, anyway – some queer twist in my make-up, must be), never mind the accumulation of IN papers on my desk, never mind anything. Molly is my darling, and I have three fat juicy letters from her and none of them answered yet. L.H.S. must be shaking from her sobs.
Yes, I am 101% (as Sam Goldwyn would have said) behind the idea of doing a book together. I can just see it in Chaplin’s bookshop window, with a hand-drawn gnarled, arthritic finger pointing to it with the words ‘JUST OUT’ – LAKELAND LETTERS OF LEFEBURE AND WAINWRIGHT BEING AN EXCHANGE OF CORRESPONDENCE BETWEEN A SCATTY INEBRIATE AND A SEEDY REPROBATE. The cover, in superb technicolour, would show a couple in silhouette against a westering sun on the shores of Buttermere, SHE obviously once-handsome but now wearied with liquor and child-bearing, HE merely rather distinguished. But it wouldn’t have to be a book about ghosts, love. You’ve only found one, anyway. No, we must battle fiercely on the subjects most in the Lakeland news – wider roads, chair-lifts, public W’s in Borrowdale, foxhunting, fell races, water abstraction, and so on – and we must be clever enough to give the impression (between the lines) that although we fight we are really fond of each other. We won’t ever say so but we will lead our readers to that conclusion, and then they will think themselves very smart and gossip about it in the Portinscale hotels.
About Moses Rigg. You must be absolutely right. I had previously seen a reference to him with the surname of Rigg, but was influenced to doubt his existence by an informative article, ‘Moses Trod’, in the Fell and Rock Journal, many years ago, by Graham, who, after exhaustive enquiries, had found no evidence that he ever lived.
I am enclosing a rough proof of the Burnbank incident. This is your last opportunity to avoid the consequences of your high-spirited agreement to its publication, which, at the worse, could mean a future life of shame and degradation to a greater extent even than your past and present. You can alter it if you wish, or you can opt out altogether and say no, better not, Mr G. will play merry hell with me again and I can’t take any more. It’s up to you, baby. Don’t bother to return it unless you make some corrections.
Now for the story of The Most Disastrous Expedition in the History of Exploration. For weeks I had impatiently awaited Easter, because at Easter I was going to make a start on the Pennine Way, working northwards from Edale. The P.W. was a new toy, and I was going to play with it for the first time at Easter. Easter came and a lady friend took me down to Buxton in her car. My motives were pure and wholesome – I was going to walk the Pennine Way and write a book about it – but it’s funny how pally you can get within the confines of a mini; however, this has nothing to do with the story and is mentioned only to make you jealous. Pure and wholesome I said.
Continued at home, in secret
It was unfortunate that Easter 1966 coincided with the Worst Weather ever recorded at Edale. On Good Friday morning the great moment arrived, although unrecognizable as such. I set a size 10 boot on the first step of the 250 mile trek, and I thought this is it, I‘ve started, I’m on my way. There was no sounding of trumpets, no firing of cannons, no fanfare. In fact, the inaugural step was downright depressing, into three inches of mud and in the unavoidable company of an infestation of strange long haired characters from Manchester and hordes of boy scouts; a drizzle had set in, mist was falling, the path was a quagmire. I thought of Borrowdale, I thought ye gods, what have I done, what am I doing in this god-forsaken spot? 250 miles of this! I must be mad. Well, I got up to the plateau, two miles, and into a wilderness of wet fog and snowdrifts and slimy peat hags, and my heart was in my boots. I turned back, back to the howling crowds and the transistor radios, and fled from Edale in a train packed to the doors with filthy youngsters, everybody cuddling everybody else except me. It’s no fun looking rather distinguished! So back to the Palace Hotel at Buxton, which did its best to make me forget the whole sorry business. The fare there is of the very best, the appointments simply luxurious. Going to do your numbers here is a joy out of this world.
Next day was shocking – continuous heavy rain all day. The P.W. was never in my mind. I sat for hours in an easy chair in the foyer and gloomily watched the elegant ladies coming in and going out, sizing them up, so to speak, and wondering how each would react in certain circumstances. Later I stirred myself sufficiently to go and have a look at Haddon Hall. This was fine, but it was another wasted day. I dined well and expensively that night. Enthusiasm for the Pennine Way succumbed to the soft easy life of the Palace Hotel.
Next day the same. I could stand no more, and I could afford no more. The P.W. was a thousand miles away. I came back, wondering why I had ever said I would walk the Pennine Way and write a book about it. I will do it, of course, but how I shall ache for the old green road on Catbells, the sweet birches of Ashness, the little bays of Sprinkling Tarn. I shall understand how you feel at Surbiton.
Cheer me up, love, and tell me about falling into Dalehead Tarn. You don’t have to explain that you had been on the bottle again. I will assume that much.
AW
AW sent Molly a copy of Fellwanderer when it came out in 1966. In it Molly is mentioned by name, and teased once again that she imagined she had discovered a stone circle on Burnbank, which AW mocked.
In this letter, he also teases her about being drunk and destitute, hence he is leaving her money, two other running jokes. But then he also goes rather serious as if becoming depressed. Not that he reveals what the problem might be.
Molly love, thank you for your letter, which cheered me up at lot, as you knew it would. You really know me very well. Here is The Book (capitals, like The Bog in Wythburn). The truth is out. You now have my picture, and of course you must have seen me many times, always (curiously) going across to the Gents on Keswick Bus Station. (The nearest factual stone circle being a mile away, on Castlerigg). I prefer the earlier photo, included to arouse the maternal instinct of my lady fans – they will fall for me in a big way now, I expect. (I’ve stopped hoping). Funny thing, when I am in trouble I always feel as I look in the first photo: very young, very bewildered, very helpless, wanting a soft breast – and soft breasts are hard to come by when you get to my age. However, I will survive. I am never down for long. Resilient, that’s me. I hope The Book doesn’t get you into trouble, too, at your end.
The dark hours of depression are made darker by my Pennine excursions. I ought now to be seeking rebirth on airy ridges and lofty summits, but, due to mad folly I find myself wallowing every weekend in rural slime on the fringe of industrial Lancashire and Yorkshire. You know the sort of thing: manurial farmyards, tumbledown henpens, grimy rows of cottages, mill chimneys in the distance, cinder paths dotted with puddles and cowclaps, slovenly women, cheeky kids, bus conductresses who call you ‘love’ and don’t mean it and it wouldn’t make any difference if they did, more cowclaps ….
Sometimes I stop in my tracks and ask myself what the hell am I doing here. This is where I started, this was my first environment, this is what I ran away from, remember? But soon I shall have left the towns behind me and be heading north to the lonely wildernesses of the Border. There will be a message for me there, of inspiration and encouragement. Here there is none. There I shall be able to get away from care and trouble, be captain of my soul, master of my fate and other high-sounding phrases. Free, that’s the word. Free to think, free to plan what must be a new life and a last chance.
One day I will go up Catbells and bury 2s 4d for you (4d = cost of living increase since april 1965, and is outside the ‘freeze’)
Tell me something funny, love. Make me smile. I have been living alone for the past five weeks.
I am famished with hunger
I am too weak to write more
Despite writing all these frisky, teasing, personal letters to Molly, he has not revealed why it is he might be ‘free to plan what must be a new life’.
In none of his letters does AW ever mention Ruth, his wife, or that he is married, but once they had started their correspondence, Molly asked around and discovered he was married, but not apparently very happily.
When he had finished all the Pictorial Guides, she had suggested in one or her letters to him that he should buy his wife a new hat to make up for neglecting her all these years.
‘He ignored this remark, so I never mentioned his wife again, realizing it was a sore subject.’
Nor has AW so far given any further details to Molly of the ‘lady friend’ mentioned earlier, the one he said had driven him to Buxton….