Sunday, August 28, 2022

"Who taught you to kiss?": Anne Lister, part 4

Anne Lister by John Horner, ca. 1830s. Image source: Calderdale Museums: Shibden Hall Paintings

A continuation of "I was now sure of the estate": Anne Lister, part 3

Between January 1826, when she inherited Shibden Hall on her uncle's death, and May 1832, when she returned to Halifax after a lengthy stay in Hastings, Anne Lister spent more time away from Shibden Hall than she did living there. She explained why to her friend Mrs. Priestley:

Friday 10 March 1826: Sat talking to Mrs Priestley till 5. . .said my residence here [in Halifax] for some time to come was uncertain & would be till I could settle, which would not be till I had some friend ready to settle with me. [1]

Two years earlier she had made clear to Mrs. Priestley that the friend she wanted as a life partner was a woman:

Tuesday 2 March 1824: When walking with Mrs. Priestley, [I] said she would believe I should never marry if she knew me better. I had been pretty well tried. . .But I refused from principle. There was one feeling—I meant love—properly so-called, that was out of my way, & I did not think it right to marry without. Not that I could live without a companion. I did not mean to say that. She said I should be too fastidious. There would be none I should choose. 'No,' said I, 'I have chosen already.' Mrs Priestley looked. 'One can but be happy,' said I. 'It is a lady & my mind has been made up these fifteen years.' I ought to have said a dozen, for, of course, I meant M—, but said I never mentioned this to anyone but my uncle & aunt. . .I wonder what Mrs Priestley thought. She will not forget &, I think, was rather taken by surprise.

Anne had long planned to live together with her lover Mariana Lawton (M— in the diaries). However, after the events described in "I was now sure of the estate," her feelings changed. Two long stays in Paris in 1824-25 and 1826-27 had given Anne a taste for aristocratic elegance, and as she approached her 40s she began to look in earnest for a candidate to replace Mariana: a younger, richer woman who could elevate Anne's social status and increase the wealth at her disposal. In seeking this sort of "strategic marriage" Anne was following a common model among men of the land-owning classes.

A friend (and sometime lover) Anne had met through her York connections, Sibella Maclean, was the daughter of minor Scottish nobility. Sibella introduced Anne to her aristocratic circle, including Lady Caroline Duff Gordon, Lady Stuart de Rothsay and her great-niece, Vere Hobart, daughter of the Earl of Buckinghamshire. In 1829 Anne accompanied Vere during a trip to Paris. Vere told Anne that her attentiveness "seemed more to her like that of a lover than a friend, so affectionate" (Sunday 2 August 1829). [2]

Anne's behavior with the virginal, upper-class Vere was far more decorous than it had been five years previously with the widowed, middle-class Maria Barlow (see "It was all nature": Anne Lister, part 2). Her restraint ensured that she would continue to be considered an appropriate companion for Vere. When the question arose about who would be the best choice to stay with Vere during a sojourn at 15 Pelham Crescent in the southeastern seaside resort of Hastings in the fall and winter of 1831-32, Lady Stuart wrote that Anne was a "highly respectable person."

Pelham Crescent Hastings by William Westhall, 1828. Engraved by E. Francis. Image source: Swan Gallery

Lady Stuart's approval gratified Anne; during her stay in Paris with Vere she had confided to her diary, "I know not how it is that I am at heart so pleased with the really high ones of the land. Their stateliness and dignity suits me." [3]

But did Anne's "oddities" suit them? During their stay in Hastings between November 1831 and April 1832 Vere kept Anne at a distinct distance, strictly rationing the time they spent together. "The fact is, she thinks me odd—more, as she once let slip, like man than woman," Anne wrote in her diary (26 December 1831). [4]

Anne was not used to being rebuffed. She had also learned the unwelcome news that Vere had a serious male suitor, 35-year-old Captain Donald Cameron, whose regiment had fought in the decisive countercharge that broke Napoleon's Imperial Guard at Waterloo, and who would soon become the 23rd Lochiel, or chief, of Clan Cameron. Vere's relatives were strongly encouraging the match.

Monday 9 January 1832: I think she will have him but what do I care? I shall have all the good I can out of her acquaintance, and not having more will not break my heart. Lady Gordon may suit me better.

Tuesday 17 January 1832: Thinking of Miss H—, annoyed and hurt. . .My whole life with her is one effort to be what I am not naturally. . .But, why write so much about her, why waste so much time and paper? I hope it may instruct me afterwards, and cure me of all folly about her, by forcing me to remember what sort of time I have really passed with her. How chequered with mortification and pain. I have in fact never been so solitary. We can hardly be said to have one feeling in common. . . [5]

Vere found Anne's behavior towards her to be too intense, and to some degree Vere may have suspected the nature of Anne's attentions:

Wednesday 8 February: She said I was too different. Wished I was a little more blended [with femininity]. . .I wanted what she could not give. [6]

Vere let Anne know a few hours in advance of her intention to accept Captain Cameron's proposal. Nonetheless, when the engagement was announced it hit Anne surprisingly hard. The next morning she shut herself in her room:

Monday 16 April 1832: Cried and sobbed miserably. . .I was ashamed of my swollen eyes, but doing very well till about near 9 1/2 when Miss H— knocked to ask if I was up. . .I faintly answered yes, but the sound of her voice set me wrong, the tears started and I was bad again as ever. . .She asked if it was her fault. . .she is not worth a heart or friendship like mine. . .she said she always told me I cared too much for her. . . [8]

In her emotional and sexual attachments Anne usually had the upper hand. She was the one who had dumped (though not necessarily ended her sexual contact with) her former lovers Eliza Raine, Isabella Norcliffe, and Maria Barlow. Previously the only time Anne had been in a similar position was when Mariana Belcombe had announced her engagement to Charles Lawton. Perhaps some of the tears Anne was shedding over Vere Hobart had their origin in her sense of betrayal by Mariana (see "I only love the fairer sex": Anne Lister, part 1).

Anne was about to receive more bad news, however. Her backup plan had been to travel to Europe with Lady Caroline Duff Gordon, with whom she had visited the Pyrenees in 1829. And from her comments about Lady Gordon in her diary (such as "Lady Gordon may suit me better") Anne seems to have viewed her as the next candidate for her life partner. On her way northward to visit Mariana Lawton before returning to Halifax, Anne called on Lady Gordon at her home in Cheltenham to broach her travel plans. 

But Lady Gordon was surprised, and not pleasantly, to be visited at her country estate by Anne without advance notice. She let Anne know that any travelling they might do would involve "different establishments"; the two women would be "independent of one another," and Lady Gordon "would not be bothered [did not wish to be encumbered] by having me to society [as company] for Florence." Anne's fantasies about Lady Gordon as a potential life companion were brought crashing down, and for the second time in two weeks she faced rejection:

Sunday 29 April 1832: I felt myself, in reality, gauche, and besides, in a false position. . .my high society plans fail. . .May never see Miss Hobart or Lady Gordon again. . .What a change in all my plans and thoughts. [9]

Return to Shibden and renewed acquaintance with Ann Walker

In May 1832 Anne returned to Shibden Hall, where she had written that her sister Marian was "cock of the dunghill." [10] Her spirits were at a low ebb. She had let go of her plans to spend her life with Mariana Lawton, whose inconvenient husband was still very much alive, but she had found no one to take her place. And her attempts to ingratiate herself with two aristocratic women had foundered.

It was in this state that Anne received a social call on 6 July 1832 from Mr. and Mrs. Atkinson and their niece, Miss Ann Walker. Anne Lister had met Ann Walker more than a decade previously, when Ann was in her late teens. Her verdict then was not flattering:

Tuesday 18 June 1822: . . .off in a gig to Crownest, to take a walk with Miss Ann Walker, having talked of it ever since my walk with her last year. . .Very civil, etc, but she is a stupid vulgar girl. . .& I have no intention of taking more walks, or letting the acquaintance go one jot further. [11]

Crow Nest, one of three houses on the Walker's Lightcliffe estate. Image source: Lightcliffe and District Local History Society

The Walker family's wealth was derived from trade in woolen cloth, and Anne had considered that its mercantile origins made the Walkers, although far richer than the Listers, her social inferiors.

Ten years later, however, Anne was less standoffish; perhaps Ann, now 29, had improved in the intervening time. There's another possibility as well: in 1830 Anne had learned that, on the death of their younger brother John during his honeymoon in Naples, Ann and her sister Elizabeth had become co-heiresses of the 2000-acre Walker estate, worth "between three or four thousand a year to each sister" (3 September 1831). In comparison, while Anne's father and aunt were living and receiving one-third shares of the rents from the 400-acre Shibden estate, her own annual income was about £800. [12]

A few weeks after Ann Walker's call Anne returned the visit, and her diary records that she was already considering Ann as a potential companion:

Friday 10 August 1832: . . .called on Miss Walker of Lidgate & sat 1 3/4 hour with her—found her very civil & agreeable. . .We got on very well together. Thought I, as I have several times done before of late, 'Shall I try and make up to her?' [13]

After another conversation a week later, Anne's idle thoughts were beginning to take concrete shape:

Friday 17 August 1832: Thought I, 'She little dreams what is in my mind—to make up to her. She has money and this might make up for rank'. . .The thought as I returned amused and interested me. [14]

Testing the waters, Anne raised the possibility with Ann of travelling to Europe together:

Thursday 27 September 1832: I think she already likes me even more than she herself is aware. . .We laughed at the idea of the talk our going abroad together would [excite]. She said it would be as good as a marriage. 'Yes,' said [I], 'quite as good or better.' [15]

It's intriguing that Ann is the one who first compared their future relationship to a marriage. It's also interesting that even at this very early stage, Anne talked her plans over with her aunt, making the reason for her interest in Ann Walker abundantly clear:

Saturday 29 September 1832: Telling her my real sentiments about Miss Walker and my expectations that the chances were ten to one in favor of our travelling and ultimately settling together. . .My aunt. . .seemed very well pleased at my choice and prospects. I said she had three thousand a year or very near it." [16]

But perhaps Anne's plans weren't at a particularly early stage; just a few days later she broached with Ann the prospect of living together permanently:

Monday 1 October 1832: Proposed her living with me at Shibden and letting Cliff-hill. . .Said I expected to have ultimately two thousand a year. . .I then asked if she thought she could be happy enough with me, to give up all thought of ever leaving me. . .On the plea of feeling her pulse, I took her hand and held it some time, to which she shewed no objection. In fact we both probably felt more like lovers than friends. . .Thought I, 'She's in for it if ever a girl was, and so am I too.' [17]

Ann hesitated, and Anne agreed to give her six months to make up her mind. But things were quickly moving forward: a few days later Ann invited Anne to dinner tête-à-tête at Lidgate. 

Lydgate House, Lightcliffe. Image source: Lightcliffe and District Local History Society

Anne went over in the morning, and soon the two women were sitting together on the sofa:

Thursday 4 October 1832: I had my arm on the back of the sofa. She leaned on it looking as if I might be affectionate & it ended in her lying on my arm all the morning & my kissing her & she returning it with such a long, continued, passionate or nervous mumbling kiss. . .I thinking to myself, 'Well, this is rather more than I expected.' [18]

After dinner, the two women became even more intimate:

She sat on my knee and I did not spare kissing and pressing, she returning it. . .On leaving the dining-room, we sat most lovingly on the sofa. . .I prest her bosom. Then, finding no resistance and the lamp being out, let my hand wander lower down gently getting to [her] queer—still no resistance—so I whispered surely she could care for me some little. 'Yes.' [19]

Things might have proceeded even further, but Ann had a sudden attack of conscience accompanied by tears. She had been engaged to be married, but three months earlier her fiancé, Andrew Fraser, had suddenly died. She told Anne that her feelings could not be "transferred so soon." Again, it is surprising that it is Ann who is suggesting a direct equivalence between her feelings for her fiancé and for Anne. Anne was also taken aback by Ann's avidity in their lovemaking: "She certainly gulled me in that I never dreamt of her being the passionate little person I find her. . .I scarce know what to make of her. Hang it! This queer girl puzzles me." [20]

Apparently Ann's qualms of conscience passed overnight, because the over the next few days she gave Anne further encouragement:

Friday 5 October 1832: She took me up to her room. I kissed her and she pushed herself so to me. I rather felt and might have done as much as I pleased. She is man-keen enough. If I stay all night, it will be my own fault if I do not have all of her I can. . . [21]

Needing to take care of some estate business the next day, Anne did not go over to Lidgate. But on Sunday she returned:

Sunday 7 October 1832: I kissed [her] and pressed very tenderly, and got my right hand up her petticoats. . .but not to the skin—could not get thro' her thick knitted drawers, tho' she never once attempted to put my hand away. . .I shall manage it the next time. [22]

But the next afternoon near-disaster struck. Anne was once again "kissing and pressing" Ann on the sofa in the drawing room. They had taken the precaution of closing the blinds, but had not locked the door. It opened suddenly and Ann's cousin by marriage Mrs. Priestley walked in unannounced.

Monday 8 October 1832: I had jumped [up] in time and was standing by the fire but Ann looked red and pale and Mrs P— must see we were not particularly expecting or desiring company. She looked vexed, jealous and annoyed. [23]

Mrs. Priestley, seeing that her presence was unwelcome, left in "suppressed rage." Anne then returned to the sofa, and amazingly the women resumed as though nothing had happened:

We soon got to kissing again on the sofa. . .At last I got my right hand up her petticoats and after much fumbling got thro' the opening of her drawers. . .She never offered the least sign of resistance. [24]

During a break in their lovemaking Ann expressed curiosity about Anne's past lovers. Anne maintained that she had no previous "attachment," to which Ann responded,

'If you never had any attachment, who taught you to kiss?' I laughed and said how nicely that was said—then answered that Nature taught me.

But in her turn Anne was silently wondering, "And who taught you?" [25]

The Reverend Mr. Ainsworth

The women's intimacy progressed rapidly. Soon Anne was regularly spending the night with Ann at Lidgate.

Monday 15 October 1832: I undressed in half [an] hour, and then went into her room. Had her on my knee a few minutes and then got into bed, she making no objection. . .grubbling gently. . .She whispered to me in bed how gentle and kind I was to her, and faintly said she loved me. [26]

Ann's eagerness gave Anne misgivings: could she have previous sexual experience?

Friday 19 October 1832: . . .At last, said that but for her word to the contrary, I should have believed she could no longer pretend to the title of old maid. She took all very well—denied, but yet in such sort as left me almost doubtful. She said she did not deny that she had been kissed. [27]

In her diary Anne speculated about the identity of the person who had first kissed Ann as a lover. Her suspicion fell at first on Ann's former fiancé Andrew Fraser. But she also entertained the idea that it might have been Ann's friend Catherine Rawson, who had often expressed the wish to live with her. Anne rather implausibly "fancied that Catherine's classics [i.e., familiarity with bawdy ancient Greek and Roman authors] might have taught her the trick of debauching Miss W—" (Thursday 11 October 1832). [28]

On Friday 26 October Ann received a black-bordered letter with terrible news. Her friend Mrs. Ainsworth, from whom she had been expecting a visit early in the New Year, had died four days earlier after 'being thrown out of an open carriage.' Anne had an immediate realization: "It instantly struck me. She would in due time succeed her friend and be Mrs Ainsworth." [29]

London Courier and Evening Gazette, Tuesday 30 October 1832. Image source: British Newspaper Archive

"Due time" before the Reverend Mr. Thomas Ainsworth's proposal to Ann would typically have been after a mourning period of at least several months. But on Thursday 1 November, less than a week later, Ann received a letter from Mr. Ainsworth; Anne reported that "Ainsworth hopes Miss W— will not forsake him as a friend and begs her to write to him. . .Oh oh, thought I, all this is very clear." [30]

It became even clearer the following Wednesday when another letter arrived for Ann from Mr. Ainsworth in which he addressed her as "his affectionate Annie."

Wednesday 7 November 1832: Miss W— nervous, in tears perpetually. . .At last, from little to more, it came out. . .I pressed for explanation and discovered that she felt bound to him by some indiscretion. He had taught her to kiss. [31]

Ann hastened to reassure Anne that "they had never gone as far as she and I had done." But the next day Ann confessed that the Rev. Ainsworth, while married to Ann's friend, had not only kissed her, but "he had asked her to yield all, assuring her it would not hurt her." Anne's response was vehement: "I held up my hands and exclaimed, 'Infamous scoundrel!'" The floodgates of revelation now open, Ann disclosed that a carbuncle ring she wore was a gift from Ainsworth. Anne removed it, and told her "she would see nor hear of it no more." [32]

But despite Anne's outrage about Ainsworth's behavior—"My indignation rose. . .I reasoned her out of all feeling of duty or obligations towards a man who had taken such base advantage" (7 November)—Ann felt that she was committed to Ainsworth. "Thinks she has done wrong to say yes to me. Is remorseful. Thinks she was bound to Mr. Ainsworth" (9 November 1832). [33]

It's possible that the source of this idea was Ainsworth himself; Ann was very religious and, unlike Anne, guilt-ridden, and Ainsworth had undoubtedly detected and was preying on her vulnerability. But Ann's vacillation made Anne doubt her profession of sexual innocence; she suspected that Ainsworth had likely "deflowered and enjoyed her" (25 November 1832). [34]

Although the women continued their sexual connection, Ann remained unhappy—emotionally torn and subject to periods of "nervousness" and listless melancholy. Anne grew more and more disenchanted:

Thursday 6 December 1832: . . .I felt her over her chemise & this all but did the job for her. She owned that she could not help it & that now she had got into the way of it & did not know how she should do without it. . .Yet still she talked of her sufferings because she thought it wrong to have this connection with me. . .She will not do for me.

Saturday 8 December 1832: . . .she got into the old story of [how] she felt she was not doing right morally. . .yet let me grubble her this morning gladly enough. Said to myself as I left her, 'What a goose she is.' [35]

Anne spoke of her exasperation with Ann to her aunt at Shibden Hall:

Wednesday 19 December 1832: Miss W—. . .had everything to be wished for but the power of enjoying it. [36]

Anne began corresponding with Ann's brother-in-law in Scotland, Captain George Sutherland, husband of Ann's sister and co-heiress Elizabeth, on a plan in their mutual interest: removing the suggestible Ann from any contact, in person or by letter, with the Rev. Ainsworth. With Ann in Scotland with the Sutherlands, Anne would be free to go abroad (something, Ann had written, that she refused to do with Anne "till I have fewer torments of conscience than I endure at present"). In her New Year's Eve diary entry, Anne reviewed the past year:

Monday 31 December 1832: Parted in tears, both of us. I saying, I never did or could understand her. . .How different my situation now & this time last year. Quite off with Mariana, Vere married and off at Rome. . .Miss W—, as it were, come & gone, known & forgotten. . .What adventure will come next? Who will be the next tenant of my heart? Providence orders all things wisely. [37]

Next time: Reunion and commitment

Other posts in this series:

Sources for and works discussed in this series:

I Know My Own Heart: The Diaries of Anne Lister, [1816–1824,] Helena Whitbread, ed. Virago, 1988/2010 (as The Secret Diaries of Miss Anne Lister), 422 pgs.

No Priest But Love: Excerpts from the Diaries of Anne Lister, 1824–1826, Helena Whitbread, ed. NYU Press, 1992, 227 pgs.

Jill Liddington, Presenting the Past: Anne Lister of Halifax 1791–1840, Pennine Pens, 1994, 76 pgs.

Female Fortune: Land, Gender and Authority: The Anne Lister Diaries and Other Writings, 1833–1836, Jill Liddington, ed. Rivers Oram Press, 1998, 298 pgs.

The Secret Diaries of Miss Anne Lister, written by Jane English, directed by James Kent, starring Maxine Peake as Anne Lister, BBC, 2010, 92 mins.

Gentleman Jack, written and directed by Sally Wainwright and others, starring Suranne Jones as Anne Lister, BBC, 2019–2022, 16 episodes, 950 mins.

Anne Choma, Gentleman Jack: The Real Anne Lister, Penguin, 2019, 258 pgs.


  1. Quotes from Anne Lister's diary from 1821, 1822, and 1824 are taken from I Know My Own Heart; those from 1826 from No Priest But Love. As in other posts, italicized sections of the diary (sometimes estimated) were written in code. ^Return
  2. Anne Choma, Gentleman Jack, p. 29.
  3. Gentleman Jack, pp. 23, 29.
  4. Gentleman Jack, p. 35.
  5. Gentleman Jack, pp. 37-38.
  6. Gentleman Jack, p. 39.
  7. Gentleman Jack, p.43.
  8. Gentleman Jack, p. 44.
  9. Gentleman Jack, pp. 46-47.
  10. Gentleman Jack, p. 42.
  11. Anne's walk with Ann Walker the year before had been initiated by Ann:

    Tuesday 12 June 1821: In the afternoon at 5 1/4 walked along the new road & got past the Pump when Miss Ann Walker of Crownest overtook me, having run herself almost out of breath. Walked with her as far as the Liget [Lidgate] entrance to their own grounds & got home at 6.40. Made myself, as I fancied, very agreeable & was particularly civil & attentive in my manner. I really think the girl is flattered by it & likes me. She wished me to drink tea with them. I hoped for another walk to Giles House & the readiness she expressed shewed that my proposition was by no means unwelcome. She has certainly no aversion to my conversation & company. After parting I could not help smiling to myself & saying the flirting with this girl has done me good. It is heavy work to live without women's society & I would far rather while away an hour with this girl, who has nothing in the world to boast but good humour, than not flirt at all.

    Ann would later tell Anne that "she had always a fancy for me" (Monday 8 October 1832; Jill Liddington, ed., Female Fortune, p. 66). ^Return
  12. Jill Liddington, ed., Female Fortune, p. 37.
  13. Female Fortune, p. 60.
  14. Female Fortune, p. 61.
  15. Female Fortune, p. 62.
  16. Female Fortune, p. 63.
  17. Female Fortune, p. 64.
  18. Gentleman Jack, p. 122.
  19. Gentleman Jack, p. 123.
  20. Gentleman Jack, p. 124. If Fraser had died three months earlier, it would have been around the time of Ann Walker's first call on Anne Lister in early July. ^Return
  21. Gentleman Jack, p. 129.
  22. Gentleman Jack, p. 132.
  23. Gentleman Jack, p. 140.
  24. Gentleman Jack, p. 141.
  25. Gentleman Jack, p. 134.
  26. Gentleman Jack, p. 148.
  27. Gentleman Jack, p. 168.
  28. Gentleman Jack, p. 134.
  29. Gentleman Jack, p. 154.
  30. Gentleman Jack, p. 155.
  31. Gentleman Jack, p. 166.
  32. Female Fortune, p. 67; Gentleman Jack, p. 169. It's not clear when Ainsworth's sexual predation began or how long it continued. It is known that Ann was visiting the Ainsworths for two weeks in February 1830, and that during her visit the Walker family learned of the death of Ann's brother John. See Deb Woolson, In Search of Ann Walker: William Priestley Letters, 27 May 2022. ^Return
  33. Gentleman Jack, p. 169.
  34. Gentleman Jack, p. 172.
  35. Female Fortune, pp. 67-68.
  36. Female Fortune, p. 69.
  37.  Female Fortune, p. 67, 70; Gentleman Jack, p. 182.

Sunday, August 14, 2022

"I was now sure of the estate": Anne Lister, part 3

Anne Lister by John Horner, ca. 1830s. Image source: Calderdale Museums: Shibden Hall Paintings

A continuation of "It was all nature": Anne Lister, part 2

"I was now sure of the estate": Anne inherits Shibden Hall

On the morning of Thursday 26 January 1826 Anne's uncle James Lister, the owner of Shibden Hall, collapsed on the floor of his bedroom and died.

The Red Room, the master bedroom in Shibden Hall. Image source: Calderdale Museums: Shibden Hall Paintings

Later that day, in the presence of her father, her sister, and her aunt, Anne read his will aloud. It was a remarkable document, because it left James's "real and personal Estates whatsoever and wherever. . .to my Niece Anne Lister. . .absolutely for ever." [1]

The estate was not entailed on any distant male relatives, as was more customary, but belonged solely to Anne (and was hers to bequeath however she wished in turn). This was especially noteworthy because by this time Anne was in her mid-30s, and it was abundantly clear to everyone in the Lister family that Anne would never have a husband or children.

Anne's desire to have a female companion come share her life at Shibden had been announced to her uncle and aunt four years earlier, just before her visit with her aunt to see the Ladies of Llangollen (see "I only love the fairer sex": Anne Lister, part 1 for details of that visit):

Thursday 27 June 1822: Talking, after supper, to my uncle & aunt about M— [Anne's married lover Mariana Lawton]. One thing led to another until I said plainly, in substance, that she would not have married if she or I had had good independent fortunes. . .& that I hoped she would one day be in the Blue Room, that is, live with me. . .My uncle, as usual, said little or nothing, but seemed well enough satisfied. My aunt talked, appearing not at all surprised, saying she always thought it [Mariana's marriage to Charles Lawton] a match of convenience. [2]

James must have realized that bequeathing Shibden Hall and its lands to Anne risked having it, and the economic, social and political power that land ownership produced, leave the Lister family when Anne herself died.

Shibden Hall. Image source: Calderdale Museums: Shibden Hall

On the night following her uncle's death, Anne wrote in her diary,

Thursday 26 January 1826: On coming upstairs to my room to dress, after seeing my poor uncle, looked into my heart & said, 'Lord, I am a sinner. There is not that sorrow there ought to be.' Felt frightened to think I could think, at such a moment, of temporal gains—that I was now sure of the estate. 'Are others,' said I, 'thus wicked?' and knelt down and said my prayers. Oh, the heart is indeed deceitful above all things. He was the best of uncles to me. Oh, that my heart were more right within me. I shed a tear or two when my father & [sister] Marian came & stopt once in reading the will. I am grave and feel anxious to do, & seem, all that is decorous but there is not that deep grief at my heart I think there ought to be. Oh, that I were better.

James Lister by John Horner, ca. 1826. Image source: Calderdale Museums: Shibden Hall Paintings

Although Anne inherited Shibden Hall, there were some conditions. Anne's father Jeremy and her Aunt Anne, James's brother and sister, were both granted the right to live at Shibden for the rest of their lives. This meant that Marian, who lived with her father, would also be a part of the household.

In addition, her aunt and her father were each granted one-third of the rental income from Shibden's tenants, while her aunt also received dividends from shares in the Calder and Hebble Navigation canal. Those shares had appreciated over time and were now worth £6000, so the dividends probably amounted to several hundred pounds a year.

Anne Lister's aunt Anne Lister by Thomas Binns, ca. 1833. Image source: ArtUK

After splitting the rents with her father and aunt, Anne's other sources of income from the estate derived from stone quarrying and coal mining. These were small operations that would not generate a great deal of money. (In a later post I'll talk about the grim working conditions and the use of child labor in coal mining during the 1830s.) In total Anne received about £800 a year. While that was a substantial sum, Anne had expensive plans. She wanted to undertake extensive renovation projects at Shibden, and her sojourn in Paris the previous year had whetted her appetite for foreign travel; she had dreams of visiting Italy and Russia. (For details of her 1824-25 Paris visit and her affair with Maria Barlow, see "It was all nature".)

Reunion with Mariana

In mid-March 1826 Mariana Lawton arrived at Shibden Hall. The tensions between Mariana and her husband had reached a breaking point, and Mariana was apparently hoping that Anne would invite her to separate from Charles and stay with her permanently at Shibden.

Sunday 12 March 1826: 'Tis plain enough she would leave Charles for half a word but I will not give it. She must weather it out. I am attached to her & have no thought but of being constant—but she must wait. I like not the idea of having another man's wife.

Maria Barlow might contest Anne's assertion that she had "no thought but of being constant" to Mariana Lawton. Nonetheless, Anne's reunion with Mariana was a happy one, and as always their sexual connection remained strong:

Thursday 16 March 1826: Went to Mariana four times, the last time just before getting up. She had eight kisses and I counted ten. Charles worse tempered than ever. . .I urged her going [back], at least for a time. My uncle's death was so recent it would look as if she took this opportunity of parting from him to come to me. She was for [separating from Charles and] going back to her own family. I objected to this. Charles might not live long & then all would be right.

Mariana soon travelled on towards York and beyond to see her family and friends, where she got no more support than she had from Anne for the idea of separating from her husband. (Neither Mariana's father, whose household included three unmarried daughters, nor her brother Stephen, who had a family of his own, were eager to support Mariana if she left her husband.) 

At the end of April Mariana came back through Halifax and stopped at Shibden. She was on her way back to Lawton Hall in Cheshire to reconcile with Charles, but was clearly in no hurry and wound up staying with Anne for a month. On the first Sunday in May the two women took communion together, a ritual which seems to have had special significance for Anne:

Sunday 7 May 1826: We went to the old church. Got there just after the service had begun. . .Mariana & I staid the sacrament—the first time we ever received it together in our lives.

Anne would later participate in the same communion ritual with Ann Walker.

Charles Lawton seemed as concerned with maintaining appearances as Anne did. This led to a series of short trips and visits involving Anne, her aunt, Mariana, and Charles, where the respectability of Anne and Mariana's relationship could be publicly affirmed by the presence of Mariana's husband. In private, Charles' jealousy and suspicion of Anne had apparently subsided into acceptance, or at least complaisance.

Saturday 17 June 1826 [Royal Hotel, Chester]: All quite at our ease. . .Charles retired at 10. My room next to theirs & Mariana & I came in in 5 or ten minutes. She undressed in my room. So did I, quite, & in half an hour we had been in bed, had two or three kisses & Mariana was gone to Charles.

Sunday 18 June 1826 [Mrs Briscoe's Hotel, Parkgate]: . . .room next to Mariana & Charles' and their's so hot Charles glad to have it to himself & Mariana slept in mine.

Tuesday 11 July 1826 [Waterloo Hotel, Liverpool]: Charles seemed inclined to let Mariana sleep with me. However, she went to him after she got into bed to me for a few minutes & given me a tolerable kiss. We heard him snoring all the while [in the room next door]. Mariana dresses in my room, which gives us opportunity.

Waterloo Hotel, Liverpool, late 1800s. Image source: Liverpool History Society

Thursday 13 July 1826 [Mona, Wales]: Charles. . .hardly spoke & left Mariana & me & we sat up twenty minutes & then went to bed, Mariana sleeping with me.

It seems unlikely that Charles can have been entirely unaware of why his wife was spending so much time in Anne's room.

Return to Paris

In August 1826 Anne, her aunt, and Mariana (without Charles) left on a trip to Paris. Callously, Anne had asked Maria Barlow, with whom she had had a passionate affair in Paris two years earlier, to make lodging arrangements for the travelling party.

Saturday 2 September: Off for Paris [from Versailles] at 5. . .We had got into the Rue di Rivoli when Mariana saw a little figure in white dart out of the Hôtel de Terrasse (No. 50) & call out to the post boys to stop. Said Mariana, 'Mrs Barlow.' There was [her 15-year-old daughter] Jane, too. Mrs Barlow pale as death. I felt a little less so. Jumped out of the carriage. Met her. . .she had taken us a rez de chausée [ground floor room] for my aunt and lodging rooms à la entresol du premier [on the first-floor mezzanine] for us at the Hôtel de Terrasse.

No. 50 Rue di Rivoli today. Image source: Google Maps

. . .I walked home with her [Mrs Barlow was still living in the apartment she had rented the previous year with Anne at No. 15 Quai Voltaire, on the Left Bank of the Seine across from the Louvre] & went upstairs to her salon for a few minutes. In crossing the Tuileries gardens, mentioned Mariana's being with us. Mrs Barlow agitated. Said I had behaved dishonestly not to tell her before.

As well she might, having been asked to make arrangements unknowingly for the person she considered to be her rival for Anne's affections. But Anne was no less unthinkingly cruel to Mariana:

Monday 4 September 1826: I had suddenly said, when dinner was half over,. . .'Perhaps I might go to Mrs Barlow,' & this had spoiled poor Mariana's appetite—but she would have me do whatever seemed best. I said I had said it suddenly, without thought, & it would not do. Should think of it no more.

Mariana stayed with Anne in Paris for a month. There was another awkward moment when Anne and Mariana met Mrs. Barlow and Jane unexpectedly in the street:

Tuesday 3 October 1826: At 1-50, went to the top of the column in the Place Vendôme. . .Beautiful view of Paris. . .In returning from the column to the Rue St Honoré, met Mrs Barlow & Jane. Stopt to speak and shake hands. Mrs Barlow's lips trembled. Mariana set wrong & nervous by the meeting but all behaved very well.

The Place Vendôme by Henry Parke, 1820. Image source: Sir John Soane's Museum

Mrs. Barlow must have seen that the women were coming from the Place Vendôme; the pension at No. 24 Place Vendôme, of course, was where Anne and Mrs. Barlow had met and begun their affair.

On Saturday 7 October Anne and Mariana left Aunt Anne in Paris and travelled to Boulogne to meet Charles. He arrived on the 12th and the next day he and Mariana left for England. Anne returned to Paris, and to Mrs. Barlow, with whom she lost no time in renewing her affair. 

In 1827 Anne, Mrs. Barlow and her daughter took a months-long trip to Switzerland and northern Italy while Aunt Anne remained in Paris. But if Maria Barlow hoped the sojourn would result in Anne finally committing to her, it had the opposite effect. By the end of the trip Anne was convinced that Mrs. Barlow was not the life companion she sought. 

Back in Paris Anne soon met a beautiful young widow, Madame de Rosny, who was a part of the aristocratic set surrounding the French king, Charles X. (Anne had been in Paris when Charles X succeeded to the throne on the death of his older brother Louis XVIII in September 1824; after a short and unhappy reign, he would be deposed during the events of the July Revolution in 1830.) Anne and Madame de Rosny embarked on a sexual affair, intense enough that Anne left the apartment she shared with her aunt and moved in (as a lodger) with Madame de Rosny. Although Anne was not presented at court, attending social events with the curdled cream of the French aristocracy was a heady experience.

Anne had clearly moved on from Mrs. Barlow, but she was not above continuing to exploit her feelings. In March 1828 Anne returned to England to visit Mariana, whom she hadn't seen for almost 18 months, leaving her aunt in Paris under Mrs. Barlow's care. But the reunion with Mariana was not a success. The contrast with the graceful, fashionable, socially connected and younger Madame de Rosny was too great:

Sunday 23 March 1828 [Lawton Hall]: . . .I had been so long absent from Mariana I did not know what to do with her. She looked tall and big. She seemed to have grown taller. I felt awkward & said to myself, 'Why, what have I to do with having such a woman?'

True to Anne's usual form, though, the slow death of her relationship with Mariana would drag on for years. In 1830 she would travel to Europe with her again, and as late as June 1833 while travelling with Mariana to London, Anne recorded a sexual encounter (possibly their last). But Anne was now fixed on finding a wealthy younger woman who might elevate her social status and enhance her financial means.

Other posts in this series:

Sources for and works discussed in this series:

I Know My Own Heart: The Diaries of Anne Lister, [1816–1824,] Helena Whitbread, ed. Virago, 1988/2010 (as The Secret Diaries of Miss Anne Lister), 422 pgs.

No Priest But Love: Excerpts from the Diaries of Anne Lister, 1824–1826, Helena Whitbread, ed. NYU Press, 1992, 227 pgs.

Jill Liddington, Presenting the Past: Anne Lister of Halifax 1791–1840, Pennine Pens, 1994, 76 pgs.

Female Fortune: Land, Gender and Authority: The Anne Lister Diaries and Other Writings, 1833–1836, Jill Liddington, ed. Rivers Oram Press, 1998, 298 pgs.

The Secret Diaries of Miss Anne Lister, written by Jane English, directed by James Kent, starring Maxine Peake as Anne Lister, BBC, 2010, 92 mins.

Gentleman Jack, written and directed by Sally Wainwright and others, starring Suranne Jones as Anne Lister, BBC, 2019–2022, 16 episodes, 950 mins.

Anne Choma, Gentleman Jack: The Real Anne Lister, Penguin, 2019, 258 pgs.


  1. Jill Liddington, editor, Female Fortune, p. 21. Many of the details of James Lister's will and Anne's financial situation are drawn from this source.
  2. Quotes from Anne Lister's diary taken from Helena Whitbread, editor, I Know My Own Heart/The Secret Diaries of Miss Anne Lister and No Priest But Love. As in the other installments in this series, diary entries in roman type represent Anne Lister's "plain hand," while those in italics represent her "crypt hand"—the sections written in code.

Saturday, August 6, 2022

"It was all nature": Anne Lister, part 2

Anne Lister by John Horner, ca. 1830s. Image source: Calderdale Museums: Shibden Hall Paintings

A continuation of "I only love the fairer sex": Anne Lister, part 1.

Paris and Mrs. Barlow

Anne Lister had first travelled to Paris with her aunt for five weeks in May and June 1819. In 1824 she resolved to return for a longer stay, one in which she would be fully independent.

She also wanted to consult French doctors about the venereal disease she had contracted from her married lover Mariana Lawton (née Belcombe). Although their sexual connection continued whenever they had the opportunity ("She knows how to heighten the pleasure of our intercourse. . .All her kisses are good ones"—Thursday 22 July 1824), and Anne still considered herself engaged, she was no longer as emotionally committed as she once had been. [1]

On Tuesday 24 August 1824, Anne left Shibden Hall accompanied only by her maid Elizabeth Cordingley. After a brief stopover in London they arrived in Paris eight days later, on Wednesday 1 September. Anne had arranged to stay at the pension of Madame de Boyve in the Place Vendôme in the First Arrondissement, just a few blocks from the Tuileries Gardens.

The Place Vendôme by Henry Parke, 1820. Anne Lister stayed at 24 Place Vendôme, the building in the left foreground. Image source: Sir John Soane's Museum

One of her fellow guests at the pension was the 37-year-old widow of a British army officer, Mrs. Maria Barlow, who was staying there with her 13-year-old daughter Jane. Anne's first impression was far from positive.

Monday 20 September 1824: Mrs Barlow. . .is vain & swallows all the flattery I give her readily. I hardly know what to make of her—whether she is rather puff & cheat or simply a foolish, silly little woman. . .I begin to rather flirt with her but I think she has no consciousness of it, or why she begins to like [me].

However, after a series of evening parties at the pension and visits to one another's rooms, Anne's flirtation grew more overt, and began involving hand-holding, knee-stroking, and kissing. In one conversation Mrs. Barlow hinted about Marie Antoinette, accused of "being too fond of women" (Thursday 14 October). She seems to have come to a quick understanding of the nature of Anne's interest in her, but continued to allow her small but significant liberties.

Sunday 7 November 1824: Came upstairs at 10:50 with Mrs Barlow. Stopt a few minutes talking to her in her anteroom. Kissed her in a little dark passage as we came out of the dining room. She lets me kiss her now very quietly & sits with her feet close to mine.

A night at the opera

On Tuesday 9 November Anne and Mrs. Barlow joined party of other guests from the pension attending a performance at the Théâtre-Italien. The mezzo-soprano Giuditta Pasta was appearing in one of her signature roles, that of title character in Giovanni Paisiello's 1790 opera Nina, o sia La pazza per amore (in her diary Anne called it "Nina Mad for Love," but perhaps a more accurate translation would be "Nina, the girl driven mad by love").

Madame Giuditta Pasta in the stage costume of Nina. Image source: Brera Pinacoteca

After returning from the opera that night Anne wrote,

[Madame Pasta] was certainly very great. Her voice & singing very fine; she, very graceful. Mme Galvani some time ago said she was decidedly a very much better singer than Catalani.

Aside: Angelica Catalani and the Yorkshire Music Festival

Anne had seen Angelica Catalani sing at the first Yorkshire Music Festival in September 1823. The concerts primarily featured the music of Handel, and were held as a benefit for the hospitals in York, Leeds, Hull and Sheffield. "Morning concerts" (starting at noon) of sacred music were held in York Minster; evening concerts, primarily of opera arias and popular songs, took place at the Great Assembly Rooms.

Madame Angelica Catalani by Rolinda Sharples, ca. 1821. Image source: Art UK

Although nearing the end of her career, the 43-year-old Catalani was still perhaps the world's leading soprano. In a contemporary account of the Yorkshire Music Festival John Crosse wrote,

Endowed with the most extraordinary natural gifts, the image of resistless power and overwhelming magnificence, the first notes of Madame Catalani’s voice can never be forgotten by those who have heard it burst upon the astonished ear. With this voice,—extending in its most perfect state from G to F in altissimo, full, rich, and grand in its quality beyond previous conception, capable of being attenuated, or expanded into a volume of sound that pierced the loudest chorus,—she has borne down by force the barriers of criticism, and commanded the admiration of Europe. [2]

The criticism referred to by Crosse related to the perception that Catalani relied on her dazzling technique rather than attempting to express emotional meaning. But for many dazzling technique was more than sufficient. A later 19th-century writer commented,

It is not a marvel that the public was captivated with Catalani. She had every splendid gift that Nature could lavish—surpassing physical beauty, a matchless voice, energy of spirit, sweetness of temper, and warm affections. Her whole private life was marked by the utmost purity and propriety, and she was the soul of generosity and unselfishness. [3]

Not so filled with generosity and unselfishness, however, that her husband and manager Paul Valabrèque didn't demand the highest salary yet paid to a festival performer for her appearance at the Yorkshire Music Festival, despite its charitable purpose: 600 guineas, triple the fee of the next-best-paid singer, Eliza Salmon. Although Catalani's fee was high, it was certainly justified by the thousands of tickets to the festival that were sold.

Of the morning concert on Tuesday 23 September Anne wrote, "The Minster very full. . .400 performers formed an excellent orchestra [of 180 musicians and chorus of 273 singers], the stands so arranged as to make the whole thing have a very fine effect opposite the gallery. Madame Catalani seemed tired & not well & her singing, tho' wonderful, did not quite equal my expectations." (According to the Music Festival Database, Catalani sang "Gloria in excelsis Deo" by Pietro Guglielmi.) In the evening concert, "Madame Catalani sang beautifully, particularly [Thomas Arne's] 'Rule, Brittania.'"

The next day the morning concert was Handel's Messiah in Mozart's arrangement. "Isabella [Norcliffe], Charlotte [Norcliffe], the 3 Daltons [probably Esther, Isabella, and their mother Maria] and I went at 10, just before the doors opened. A desperate crowd. Pushed thro' with difficulty & by dint of perseverance & management, got into the nave, the 5th bench from the orchestra. . .Our seats were excellent—much better than yesterday. The music & singing capital. The Messiah. Madame Catalani sang 'I know that my Redeemer liveth' better than 'Comfort ye.'" 

It was highly unusual for a soprano to sing Messiah's opening recitative "Comfort ye, my people," and the following aria, "Ev'ry valley shall be exalted"; they were both traditionally sung by tenors. Catalani had threatened to withdraw from the festival if she were not allowed to sing them, transposed up an octave and down a step from E major to D major. [4]

Wednesday 24 September 1824: ". . .The 'Hallelujah Chorus' exceptionally fine. . .About 5000 people in the Minster." View of York Minster during the Yorkshire Music Festival, 1823.
Published by John Wolstenholme, engraved by Edward Finden. Image source: Forum Auctions

On Thursday 25 September, "after tremendous crowding & pushing, we all got well in. . .partly on the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd benches from the orchestra. We fancied ourselves rather too near, but perhaps we were not. Catalani sang with rather more spirit this morning & much better. . .Miss Travis, Mrs. Salmon, and Madame Catalani were each encored. . ." According to the Music Festival Database Catalani sang arias by Cianchettini ("Domine labia mea") and from Handel's Theodora ("Oh worse than death indeed. . .Angels ever bright and fair").

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HnmxokJjIoo

In the recording above Lorraine Hunt is the soloist, accompanied by the Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra conducted by Nicholas McGegan.

Anne also saw Catalani at the evening concert Thursday night, though she did not comment on her performance specifically. At that performance Catalani sang  another transposition: "Non piu andrai," Figaro's aria from Act I of Mozart's Le nozze di Figaro, transposed into the soprano range from its original bass-baritone range. It was one of her most famous concert pieces.

At the morning concert the following day, which brought the festival to a close, Anne reported that "Catalani sang 'Luther's Hymn' and was encored." According to the Music Festival Database Catalani also sang Guglielmi's "Gratias, agimus tibi," "Sing ye to the Lord" from Handel's Israel in Egypt, and Cianchettini's "Benedictus."

Anne actually met Angelica Catalani in person. Madame Catalani had accepted an invitation to dine with the Belcombes on Sunday 28 September. Anne had stopped by at 4:50 pm that day to say goodbye to her lover Mariana and the other members of the family (she was returning to Langton Hall near Malton with the Norcliffes), when Madame Catalani arrived unexpectedly:

Madame Catalani went to dine there at 5 instead of 6, & nobody being ready, I staid & had a little tête-à-tête till Mrs Belcombe came & then M— and [Mariana's sister] Mrs [Harriet] Milne. Madame Catalani is certainly a very handsome, elegantly mannered & fascinating woman. I stammered on in French very tolerably.

Meeting the star of the festival clearly left an impression on Anne.

Giuditta Pasta and Nina

A year later in Paris, Anne had her first experience of Giuditta Pasta's singing. In his Life of Rossini (1824) Stendhal wrote of Pasta, "this remarkably rich voice. . .exercises an instantaneous and hypnotic effect upon the soul of the spectator." Pasta was also acclaimed for her acting. In 1826 a reviewer in The Harmonicon stated, "It is all nature. . .She does not act the character—she is it, looks it, breathes it. She does not study for an effect, but strives to possess herself of the feeling which would dictate what she is to do." [5] This is perhaps why Anne's French tutor Madame Galvani rated Pasta the better singer than Catalani; clearly a concern with naturalistic acting on the opera stage did not originate in the late 20th century.

Nina's Act I aria "Il mio ben quando verrà" (When my beloved comes), in which she mourns her absent lover, whom everyone else believes is dead:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gdA_MLil2Gg

The singer in this recording is Teresa Berganza accompanied by the Orchestra of the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, conducted by Sir Alexander Gibson.

In her entry about seeing the opera at the Théâtre-Italien Anne wrote,

M. Dacier paying attention to Mlle de Sans, to which she shews no dislike, & I to Mrs. Barlow. Under our shawls, had my arm round her waist great part of the time. Felt a little excited by the music, etc., & she surely knew it full well. I think she felt something herself. Had my arm round her waist, too, as we returned.

The next morning Anne apologized to Mrs. Barlow for her forward behavior and unguarded speech:

Wednesday 10 November 1824: Said how ill I had behaved last night. The opera had set me all wrong & I would go no more.

Perhaps the figure of Nina, driven mad by the loss of her lover, had "set [Anne] all wrong" by reminding her of her enforced separation from Mariana.

Having patched things up with Mrs. Barlow, Anne now redoubled her efforts to seduce her. These sections make for uncomfortable reading, as Anne takes every opportunity to attempt to grope Mrs. Barlow against both her stated wishes and her physical resistance.

Sunday 14 November 1824: From little to more. [I] became rather excited. . .Tried to put my hand up her petticoat but she prevented. Touched her flesh above the knee twice. I kissed her warmly & held her strongly. She said what a state I was getting myself into. She got up to go away & went to the door. I followed. Finding that she lingered a moment, pressed her closely & again tried to put my hand up her petticoats. Finding that she would not let me do this but still that she was a little excited, I became regularly so myself. I felt her grow warm & she let me grubble [rub] & press her tightly with my left hand whilst I held her against the door with the other, all the while putting my tongue in her mouth & kissing her so passionately as to excite her not a little, I am sure. When it was over she put her handkerchief to her eyes &, shedding a few tears, said, 'You are used to these things. I am not.'. . .She blamed herself, saying she was a poor, weak creature. I conjured her not to blame herself. It was all my fault. I loved her with all my heart and would do anything for her. Asked her if she loved me a little bit. 'You know I do,' said she. I still therefore pressed her to let me in tomorrow before she was up, when Mrs Page [Mrs Barlow's servant] was gone with Miss Barlow to school. She would not promise. Asked me what I would do. I said teach her to love me better. Insinuated we had now gone too far to retract & she might as well admit me.

Despite Anne's actions bringing her to tears, Mrs. Barlow continued to allow Anne to visit her in her room, and also came to visit her, both mornings and evenings.

Eliza Raine

Anne attempted to justify her behavior by suggesting to Mrs. Barlow that her sexual attraction to other women was something that she had experienced from a young age, and that it was "all nature":

Saturday 13 November 1824: [In 1805 at age 14] went to the Manor school [in York] & became attached to Eliza Raine. Said how it was all nature. Had it not been genuine the thing would have been different.

Eliza Raine was the daughter of William Raine, an East India Company surgeon; Jill Liddington suggests that her mother was Indian. William Raine had died in 1800, and Eliza had accompanied Raine's surgeon colleague William Duffin and his wife when they left India to return to York. She was sent to the Manor School, a boarding school for the daughters of well-to-do Yorkshire families, where she and Anne shared a bedroom and became lovers. Although Anne left the boarding school after a year and returned to her parents' home, she continued to visit and correspond with Eliza over the next eight years. In fact, the code which Anne used in her diary was developed so that she and Eliza could write secretly to each other, and she may have begun to keep her diary to record Eliza's visits and letters. [6]

In August 1810 Eliza was visiting the 19-year-old Anne and her family, then living in Halifax. Although there are gaps in Anne's diary around this time period, Jill Liddington discovered that Eliza Raine's diary has somehow survived among the Shibden Hall papers (and also uses the same code):

Thursday 9 August 1810: I dined at Mrs J[eremy] Lister's & heard an account of the amiable I[sabella] N[orcliffe]

Through Eliza, Anne had met the Duffins, and through them, their friends the Norcliffes. In 1810 Anne became lovers with the Norcliffe's eldest daughter Isabella, then 25, which may have been what occasioned the series of arguments that Eliza records during this visit:

Tuesday 14 August 1810: Dear L & I had a reconciliation. . .

Thursday 16 August 1810: . . .L & I had a difference which happily was made up before the conclusion of the day but left me e[x]ceedingly ill

Friday 17 August 1810: . . .my husband came to me & finally a happy reunion was accomplished.

Eliza may have regretted introducing Anne to the Norcliffes, as Isabella regretted introducing Anne in 1812 to the five Belcombe sisters. Anne's passionate interest soon became focussed on Mariana Belcombe, who was just a year older than Anne. By 1814 they had become lovers, and Mariana had displaced both Eliza and Isabella in Anne's plans to set up a household with a life companion. Anne's open flirtations and sexual infidelities with other women caused Eliza intense emotional distress.

Anne was remarkably open about her relationship with Eliza when discussing it a decade later with Mrs. Barlow in Paris:

Saturday 13 November 1824: . . .I told her, when speaking of Eliza, we had once agreed to go off together when of age but my conduct first delayed it & then circumstances luckily put an end to it all together.

"Luckily" because in 1814 Eliza was declared insane, and spent the rest of her life under the observation of attendants (for four decades in the asylum of Dr. William Belcombe, Mariana's father, later taken over by Mariana's brother Stephen). It's not clear to what extent suspicions of Eliza's sexuality figured in her diagnosis, but women who were considered sexually disordered, emotionally unstable, or simply inconvenient could be diagnosed with "hysteria" or "lunacy" and confined.

Mistress versus wife

Early in Anne's acquaintance with Mrs. Barlow she learned of her limited means: "Her widow's pension, she told me yesterday, is eighty pounds a year & government pays her, besides this, two hundred & fifty pounds per year" (Monday 20 September 1824). Mrs. Barlow had a few other sources of income, including the rent from a house on Guernsey; altogether she could count on around £400 per year. Although this was ten times the income of a skilled worker, it was only just sufficient to maintain a middle-class woman and her daughter in comfort and respectability.

Anne feared that one reason for Mrs. Barlow's interest in her was her wealth. But despite her suspicions, in her attempt to seduce Mrs. Barlow Anne brought all of her weapons to bear:

Wednesday 17 November 1824: Told Mrs Barlow this morning I thought I should have two thousand a year [i.e., when she came into her inheritance; currently Anne was still largely dependent on her uncle.] Asked how she could live on that—if it should be enough to keep her a carriage & satisfy her not to marry. She gave no very decided answer. Said the mode of living must depend on myself. But 'tis evident enough she would not refuse to try. We sat on the bed a little tonight. She said she was tired. I kept her feelings constantly excited & this tired her.

By degrees Anne won Mrs. Barlow over:

Wednesday 22 December 1824: Very soon after she came [into Anne's room], she lay on the bed. . .She got in and I had my arms round her. . .she let me grubble her over her petticoats. . .after being quiet a while, she half-sighed and said, 'Oh, I think I could do anything for you.'

The next month the two women moved out of the pension and into a Left Bank apartment at 15 Quai Voltaire, on the riverfront "looking on the Louvre gardens" (26 December). But the freedom of greater privacy did not always bring them greater intimacy. Mrs. Barlow complained to Anne that she felt more like a mistress than a wife, while from Anne's perspective, Mrs. Barlow had neither the fortune she hoped for nor the demeanor she preferred in a life companion. And Mrs. Barlow made the fatal error of attempting to reciprocate Anne's sexual attentions:

Saturday 19 March 1825: A strong excitement last night just after getting into bed. She said again this morning it was the best she had ever had. Had a very good one an hour before we got up, slumbering all the while afterwards. In getting out of bed, she suddenly touching my queer, I started back. . .'I can give you relief. I must do to you as you do to me.' I liked not this & said she astonished me. She asked if I was angry. No, merely astonished. However, I found I could not easily make her understand my feeling on the subject. . .This is womanizing me too much.

Anne, perhaps wishing to bring her relationship with Mrs. Barlow to an end, had made plans to return to England at the end of March.

Thursday 31 March 1825: She clung round me at the last & when I wanted to go, saying staying did no good, 'Oh, no,' said she, 'stay till the last minute.'. . .She sobbed convulsively & as I went out of one door she hurried out of that into her own room. . .[in the carriage] I thought over my whole acquaintance with Mrs Barlow. I was sorry to leave her but yet, somehow my sorrow was not so deep as I expected. I felt no inclination to shed another tear about her. . .She does not satisfy me in several little things & the connection would be [financially] imprudent. Besides, she lets me see too much that she considers me too much as a woman. . .I fear this is the worst scrape I have been in. How I have deceived her & myself, too. . .

Anne was eager to try to revive her plans to live with Mariana—which would founder on the inescapable fact of her marriage to a man who stubbornly refused to die. And Anne's "scrapes" rarely ended with clean breaks; she would discover that she could not free herself of Mrs. Barlow quite so easily.

Other posts in this series:

Sources for and works discussed in this series:

I Know My Own Heart: The Diaries of Anne Lister, [1816–1824,] Helena Whitbread, ed. Virago, 1988/2010 (as The Secret Diaries of Miss Anne Lister), 422 pgs.

No Priest But Love: Excerpts from the Diaries of Anne Lister, 1824–1826, Helena Whitbread, ed. NYU Press, 1992, 227 pgs.

Jill Liddington, Presenting the Past: Anne Lister of Halifax 1791–1840, Pennine Pens, 1994, 76 pgs.

Female Fortune: Land, Gender and Authority: The Anne Lister Diaries and Other Writings, 1833–1836, Jill Liddington, ed. Rivers Oram Press, 1998, 298 pgs.

The Secret Diaries of Miss Anne Lister, written by Jane English, directed by James Kent, starring Maxine Peake as Anne Lister, BBC, 2010, 92 mins.

Gentleman Jack, written and directed by Sally Wainwright and others, starring Suranne Jones as Anne Lister, BBC, 2019–2022, 16 episodes, 950 mins.

Anne Choma, Gentleman Jack: The Real Anne Lister, Penguin, 2019, 258 pgs.


  1. Quotes from Anne Lister's diary before 1 September 1824 are from I Know My Own Heart; quotes from 1 September 1824 and after are from No Priest But Love. Italicized sections were originally written in Anne's personal code, while sections in roman type were unencoded. After 1 September 1824 I am guessing at which sections were coded, as No Priest But Love does not indicate the coded sections and prints all excerpts from the diaries in roman type.
  2. Quoted in Charles Edward McGuire, "John Bull, Angelica Catalani and Middle-Class Taste at the 1820s British Musical Festival," Nineteenth-Century Music Review, Vol. 11 (2014), pp. 3-31. doi:https://doi.org/10.1017/S1479409814000135
  3. Quoted in McGuire. 
  4. Information from McGuire.
  5. Quoted in Susan Rutherford, "'La cantante delle passioni': Giuditta Pasta and the Idea of Operatic Performance," Cambridge Opera Journal, Vol. 19, No. 2 (July 2007), pp. 107-138. https://www.jstor.org/stable/27607154
  6. Jill Liddington, Presenting the Past, pp. 26-30; source of all quotes from Eliza Raine's diary.