"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:

• "I only love the fairer sex": Anne Lister, part 1
• "I was now sure of the estate": Anne Lister, part 3
• "Who taught you to kiss?": Anne Lister, part 4
• "Captain Tom": Anne Lister, part 5
• "No historical interest whatever": Anne Lister, part 6

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.