Farewell to Dorothy Whalley who has died aged 98

She had written for newspapers – including the Gazette & Herald – and magazines, and penned eight novels in a career spanning 77 years, much of it written from her bungalow in Pickering.

Dorothy wrote much of her work under her maiden name of Dorothy Cowlin, beginning with articles for the school magazine.

She went on to write for such magazines as The Dalesman, Yorkshire Life and Yorkshire Ridings, recalling her experiences growing up in the Lincolnshire town of Grantham, before becoming a teacher in Stockport and moving with her husband to Thornton-le-Dale when he became a teacher at the village school.

Her ambition to become a novelist was achieved when she successfully wrote eight books for top publishers, Jonathan Cape.

“They were romantic but not sentimental, and I used the countryside for much of the background,” said Dorothy in one of her last interviews.

She bought her first typewriter when she started teaching, paying £6 a month, and it was to be a vital tool for her over many years.

After years of typewriting, she bought herself a computer – but always insisted on writing her articles first in long-hand.

Well-known in Ryedale for her poetry, she wrote three books and was a member of the Rye Writers’ Group.

Over the years she interviewed many hundreds of people in the North Yorkshire and Wolds countryside, about their lives and local history, though she always wanted to become a full-time newspaper journalist.

She said: “I would have loved the job, but I hope I have given some pleasure to those who read my pieces.”

One of her last articles was on growing old, but always shunned any idea of retirement.

Dorothy’s funeral was held at the East Riding Crematorium, Octon, on Monday. Her family requested that donations in lieu of flowers should be given to The Woodland Trust.

Growing old through the words of an writer

AS a tribute to Dorothy Whalley, we have reprinted her last article which appeared in the Gazette & Herald in December 1997

IT’S a matter of perspective. When I was teaching, a pupil aged 14 once said to me “Oh Miss! If I haven’t got a boyfriend by the time I’m 16, I’ll commit suicide!”

I myself, at the age of 23, used to make fun of pensions and declare, “I shall commit suicide anyway when I’m 60.”

When I was 50 I was not only still alive, but proud of my prowess. On holiday with my husband, I climbed the Cheviot, first walking nine miles over a lovely stretch of heather, to its foot. It was a boiling hot day. We sweated as we walked. At the foot we hid our rucksacks in a farmhouse barn and began the climb, panting as we hauled ourselves up what seemed a nearly vertical face, almost on hands and knees, hanging on to heather.

The Cheviot is no Matterhorn, but it is high enough to make a difference to climate. At the top there was a bitter wind blowing and nothing to see except bare rocks. Nobody else was about. Shivering we crouched behind a rock, ate a bar of chocolate, scrambled down again and walked the nine miles back.

Of course, I did not commit suicide at 60, but when my husband was 60, he died suddenly of a heart attack. I tackled widowhood as well as I could and did not feel old as the years advanced. I joined Ryedale Ramblers’ Society and went walking every weekend, about eight or 12 miles.

At 70 I went on a walking tour in Greece and was thrilled one evening to be sitting at a son et Lumiere gazing at the illuminated Acropolis, while a voice told us the story of the war with the Persians.

On my 80th birthday I was climbing the Malvern Hills with my daughter and her husband. At some point on the grassy path to the hilltop beloved of Elgar, beside a bank of willowherb, I stopped and thought with astonishment, “I’m 80 years old and able to climb this hill! How lucky I am, and how happy.”

At 82 I won a poetry competition run by Yorkshire Television, the prize a weekend for two in Paris. My daughter came with me and again I was exceedingly happy.

At 90 things were not so good.

Eighteen months after the Paris trip, I fell unconscious in the garden and woke halfway to Scarborough Hospital. Six days of tests failed to find what was wrong and they assumed there had been a clot in the brain, which had dissolved doing no damage.

I began to take aspirins to ward off real strokes. It worked for two years. Then one evening as I sat reading, my hand began to tingle. Thinking I had been sitting too long with my hand pressed to the arm of the chair, I got up and found my right leg was wobbly. It passed off quickly, but the next day at the library to copy some addresses of magazines, I found I couldn’t write.

The doctor said at once it had been a stroke and doubled the dose of aspirins.

For four years that worked, but then I had another slight stroke; tests showed my cholesterol level was too high and I was put on Simvastatin. Up to now no more strokes.

The years went on faster and faster, as they do seem to as you get older.

My 90th birthday was happy enough, with my daughter and her husband in London. We had a tour of the Globe Theatre, conducted splendidly by an actor. They treated me to lunch at a restaurant on top of the National Gallery, with a view over the roofs and domes of London. Then back to my daughter’s house for a birthday tea. My daughter gave me nine paperbacks, one for each decade of my life!

Now I am 96 and feeling every minute of it.

Long ago I lost my hearing. At 60 or less I was saying “what?” so often my family, with the rudeness of families, told me I needed my ears washing out. I bought a hearing aid and ever since my hearing has remorselessly deteriorated till I now need two aids of the very best design and still cannot hear at theatres or concerts.

But the real downfall (literally so) came nearly three years ago. I was daft enough to get up a ladder to put up some curtains, knocked myself off, made a wound that took seven months to heal and damaged my spine so badly I can still feel it and can only walk with a stick.

But what of that? Half of Pickering walks with a stick after all.

It’s a good town to be old in. People in shops are so kind to all we greyheads.

Then we have this wonderful little bus which serves the whole town, especially the estates where most old people live. I could not do my shopping without it and the kindness of the drivers.

I have just about recovered now from that foolish fall. But worse was to follow.

I have developed this year a faulty heart valve which makes me so breathless I can’t walk without a rest.

Still, as I said, this is a good town to grow old in. I belong to three organisations that run outings for us: the U3A, the Forum and the WEA. On these trips I take a trolley with a put-down seat, to rest when needed, and find everybody, officials and members alike, extremely kind.

My illness is called “heart-failure” which makes it sound more alarming than it is. Friends seem to fear I’ll drop dead any minute, but I feel it more likely that I will just slowly decline and perhaps pass away painlessly in my sleep; as Keats put it “to cease upon the midnight, with no pain”. It’s what we all wish for.

I may even reach the century. So many people do so now, I believe, that the queen may decide to abandon her telegrams. Frankly, I don’t much care.

Life is still worth living. I can still read, always my favourite hobby. And I still have some friends, though one of the penalties of living long is that you lose your friends.

But I shall not commit suicide, even at 100.