by Anne Choma
Having done her sisterly duty, Anne left the hall to see Miss Walker. The women met at the half-way point between their homes, a junction called Hipperholme Lane Ends. As they walked back slowly to the chaumière together, Miss Walker commented that she had not been feeling well. It was the first time that Anne, who already knew a little of Miss Walker’s history of mental ill-health from Mrs Priestley, was able to note how it affected her physically. Today, Ann’s lack of energy was striking.
Once they had arrived, the two women remained inside the moss hut, locked in intense conversation, for six hours. Anne Lister had described their conduct in the previous days as liked that of ‘engaged lovers’, and, with Miss Walker more responsive than ever to her courtly attentions, it was a dynamic that was set to continue.
Their tête-à-tête began with Anne’s return to the subject of Shibden Hall. Her ancestral home, she ‘advocated skilfully’, countering Ann’s attachment to her own property, would be the perfect place for them to settle as companions. The ancient lineage of the Lister land would give Miss Walker not only a certain ‘éclat’, but a level of independence that she would never know under the watch of her tribe of relatives at Cliff Hill. Besides, Shibden could be run at a much lower cost.
From there, Anne was able to pivot the conversation onto even more intimate ground. Did Miss Walker think they could live a happy life together, and could she now ‘give up all thought of ever leaving’ her? Miss Walker’s response was breathtakingly candid, and not entirely what Anne had been expecting:
This led her into explaining that she had said she would never marry – but that, as she had once felt an inclination not to keep to this, she could not yet so positively say she would never feel the same inclination again. She should not like to deceive me and begged not to answer just now.
1ST OCTOBER 1832
Anne’s reaction, recorded in the long crypt-hand diary entry that now typified her accounts of days spent with Miss Walker, was complex. There was much to digest. On the one hand, it was disappointing that Miss Walker had not yet mentally erased the possibility of a relationship with a man from her future. On the other, the gravity with which she considered Anne’s question was encouraging. Her sincerity was important. It indicated, crucially, that Miss Walker had understood what Anne Lister was offering her: love, loyalty and long-term commitment. Anne had stopped short of proposing her version of marriage, but Miss Walker had received the message loud and clear.
Anne viewed her own relationships firmly within a heterosexual framework. It was, after all, the only one that society had provided. As a Christian, whose own same-sex desires she believed to be the dictate of God, Anne craved the permanency, and, ironically, respectability, of a romantic union solemnized in the same way as a marriage. She saw no reason that she and the woman she loved should not declare their commitment before God. It would have to be more discreet than a traditional wedding, but to Anne, the exchange of rings and taking of the sacrament together in church meant marriage.
Anne was sensitive to Ann Walker’s hesitancy. She knew it was early in their courtship for so serious a proposition, and decided to offer Ann until 3rd April the following year to make up her mind:
I said she was quite right – praised her judiciousness – that my esteem and admiration were only heightened by it – that no feelings of selfishness should make me even wish my happiness rather than hers, that I should give her six months till my next birthday.
1ST OCTOBER 1832
If six months felt like a long time, Anne’s approach demonstrated the confidence she felt in a positive outcome. Her patience, she hoped, would help to dispel any notion that her interest in Miss Walker was purely mercenary. In the months leading to her forty-second birthday, Anne would have the time to prove to Miss Walker the honourableness of her intentions. She was appropriating a familiar role in traditional (heterosexual) ideals of romance: the ardent lover at the mercy of their coy heroine.
Anne recognised, too, that the time Ann Walker would need to make up her mind could also be of benefit to her. She had suffered over the years at the indecision of women who had ultimately betrayed her. Patience was a virtue. She had waited for sixteen years for Mariana Lawton to commit to her; six months was nothing.
For her part, Ann Walker seemed slightly taken aback by the length of the term offered. She hadn’t bargained on Anne’s willingness to wait for her answer, but agreed, and told Anne that ‘she would give no answer till the time’ was up. Anne could not resist the temptation to write in her diary that, ‘in spite of her, I should find it out’.
The conversation continued in its romantic timbre. Anne hoped that her ‘thorough love speeches of anxiety and impatience’ did not seem foolish to Ann Walker. This was false modesty; Anne was blessed with an abundance of self-esteem and privately considered her own behaviour that day ‘too agreeable to be found any fault with’.
It seemed that Miss Walker was playing her part to perfection too. Her natural shyness made her appear coy and demure, and it appealed to Anne, who liked ‘her all the better for it’. As the life-changing afternoon drew to an end, Anne’s conclusion was prophetic: ‘She is in for it, if ever a girl was, and so am I too.’
The following day, having stood at her desk ‘writing the whole of yesterday’ in her journal, Anne returned to domestic and estate matters. She breakfasted with her father, conversed with her aunt, and was out on the land by quarter past ten.
All measure of work was going on across Tilly Holm bridge, Calf Croft and Pit Hill. Anne’s workers were carting soil, barrowing loads of stone and breaking ashes to shore up banks and improve the existing roads and walks. Charles Haworth and his son James had begun painting the back of the house. Pickles, sadly, was out of action:
In lifting a heavy stone yesterday strained his back very much. Went home early in the afternoon, and had twelve leeches and a strengthening plaster put on his back.
2ND OCTOBER 1832
Taking advantage of the tranquillity of the moss hut alone, Anne treated herself to thirty-four pages of French vocabulary exercises. She was drawn back to Shibden in the afternoon by concern for her aunt, who was ‘not quite well’ again. This time, Dr Sunderland was called, and asked to attend to elderly Jeremy Lister too.
Afterwards, there was a newsy letter to enjoy from Isabella Norcliffe, which included ‘Thanks from Burnett for the gown I sent ages ago’ and detail of a recent trip to Avranche in France. ‘1600 English’ were living there, Tib had written, and the tour ‘cost less than a hundred and sixty pounds’. She had enclosed with her delivery ‘2 brace of partridges’.
Born in 1785, Tib was six years older than Anne. As young women, they had been lovers, but polar differences in temperament had been among several factors that had prevented their coming together permanently. They had remained close and affectionate friends, and Anne’s diaries demonstrate a lifelong loyalty and tenderness towards Tib.
As two distinctive-looking – and by the standards of the day, strikingly ‘un-feminine’ – women, Anne and Tib had been the subject of occasional rumour. On 12th September 1825, Anne had written of a miniature scandal that took place in York surrounding their sexuality. Mariana’s ‘tipsy’ husband had been gleaning insights from a local Mr Lally. ‘You do not know what is said of your friend,’ Charles had, somewhat ironically, told Mariana. Mr Lally had commented that, ‘He would as soon as turn a man loose in his house as me [Anne]. As for Miss Norcliffe, two Jacks would not suit together.’
Mr Lally’s insight that two ‘Jacks’ (that is, butch women) could not make a romantic match, while not necessarily true, offered a surprisingly nuanced comprehension of lesbian sexuality.
The incident also prompted a noteworthy moment in Mariana’s complicated relationship with Anne. It was rare for Mariana to offer any defence of Anne’s ‘oddity’, but now, she supported her: ‘the world might say what it pleased’.
By the afternoon, Mr Sunderland had examined Jeremy Lister. He did not think, as Anne noted with relief (and some satisfaction) in her diary, that ‘he was so fast declining as Marian does’. This was the same Mr Sunderland who Anne had been walking with when she had become aware of Christopher Rawson’s gamekeeper’s trespass on her land in September 1831. She took the opportunity to move the conversation on to blood sport weaponry, quizzing Mr Sunderland on ‘the subject of shooting and guns’. ‘He promised,’ she wrote, ‘to lend me Colonel Aker’s Sportsman’. The gun was, to her mind, ‘the best Sportsman in England’ (2ND OCTOBER 1832).
It was not unusual for Anne to lead her conversation with male visitors into a realm that would have been considered firmly masculine at the time. Her enthusiasm and curiosity for subjects such as business, science and invention made her an engaging conversational partner and, more often than not, she and her opinions seemed to be accepted on a level plane to that of her male peers.
The next day, Anne received a letter from Mariana Lawton. Charles ‘had had a severe attack of the cholera’ she reported, ‘but his health and spirits the better for it’. Moving swiftly on, Mariana told Anne that she had met a Miss Smith on her behalf (Eugenie having not yet been finally settled upon as Anne’s maid), but had judged her a ‘flippant a sort of girl’. A pity, as ‘she spoke really well’ (3RD OCTOBER 1832).
A surprise parcel from Mr and Mrs Edwards of Market Weighton containing ‘2 brace of pheasants, 2 ditto partridges, and a hare’ meant that Anne, suddenly, was awash with spoils of the hunting season. John Booth was dispatched to deliver surplus game to the neighbours. Mrs Rawson of Stoney Royd, the elder Ann Walker of Cliff Hill, Anne’s solicitor Mr Parker and Mr and Mrs Sunderland all got partridges. The hare was awarded to Mr and Mrs Priestley at New House. The pheasants Anne kept back for herself.
With typical efficiency, Anne spent the afternoon replying to her friends’ letters (from the kitchen, owing to the fact that a plasterer was currently white-washing her bedroom). First was Tib, to whom she appealed ‘for a cutting of double yellow rose’, and her thoughts on Joseph Booth. The son of her trusted servant John, Joseph was currently working for a family near Langton, and Anne had begun to wonder whether he would be ‘at all likely to do for me’. Anne liked to dispense advice as well as receive it, as demonstrated in her response to Isabella’s qualms about the recent match of a family member:
We ought to congratulate or condole with other people, according to their failings, not our own – be pleased (as far as satisfies the demands as kindness and propriety, without compromising our opinion or sincerity) . . . Thus I have congratulated Mrs N on Esther’s match ‘because I have reason to believe she is not displeased, and the match will be a comfort to her’ . . . If Esther is happy, all her friends will rejoice at her being so. So long as her parents are satisfied, her not having chosen exactly according to your taste or mine, is in no respect reprehensible.
3RD OCTOBER 1832
Turning next to Mariana’s letter, Anne expressed her gratitude for the information about Miss Smith, but agreed that she would not do as a lady’s maid. Eugenie was still the front runner. In fact, Anne was still reeling from the departure of her most recent maid, Cameron. Mariana’s sister, also named Anne, had been surprised to hear of Cameron’s departure from Anne’s service. Anne Lister wrote:
Perhaps she [Anne Belcombe] does not know how unhappy the poor girl was. Surely Eugenie will understand me better. Somehow or other, I never dreamt of anybody being unhappy with me. How little we know ourselves! You did me a lasting service by telling me. Everybody will gain by it. All I dread is changing, and the prospect of this is the worst of Eugenie – but, she may lead me by the nose – she may stay, and save me the trouble of hunting hereafter for the steady woman you talk of.
3RD OCTOBER 1832
All of this activity was not to say that Miss Walker had been forgotten. Among the domestic challenges and busy correspondence, she had been dominating Anne’s thoughts:
I really do get more and more in love with her . . . Not perhaps a little heightened by the having to wait her answer for the next six months. She has really behaved very judiciously, for I believe she likes me.
3RD OCTOBER 1832
‘She asked me to dine with her at five and stay all night’
Miss Walker had proven herself remarkably open to Anne Lister’s charms. In spite of her nervous disposition and hitherto sheltered existence, she had swiftly become not only comfortable around but enamoured of Anne, and entirely complicit in their intimacy. She had begun to crave Anne’s attention almost as much as Anne desired to give it. Now, only three months after their chance re-acquaintance at Shibden Hall, Anne was to find herself on the sofa at Lidgate, with her hand up Miss Walker’s petticoat. Over the next few weeks, she would gain intimate knowledge of Miss Walker, and become party to some surprising insights in the process.
On 4th October, Anne arrived at Lidgate a little after ten in the morning, having trusted John Booth to oversee the removal of a window in Shibden’s new library passage. After the usual small talk, Miss Walker herself raised the subject of where they should live, should she accept Anne’s offer. She was, Anne was pleased to note, finally coming round to the idea of letting out Cliff Hill and moving in to Shibden.
Ann’s other preoccupation was less promising. She had started to worry about Anne Lister’s ‘intimacy’ with the Priestleys. She was, correctly, as it would turn out, concerned that the two women’s closeness with the inhabitants of nearby New House would lay them open to scrutiny. Anne reassured her that it would be ‘easy’ for her to distance herself from Mrs Priestley if their liaison were to become official.
Anne, being practised in the art of seduction, preferred to keep the conversation focused more firmly on her intended than her intended’s elderly relatives. She dispelled Miss Walker’s fears, telling her that it was only the ‘pre-engagement of her heart’ that mattered to her. The remark was intended to flatter, but it also hinted at an early anxiety of Anne’s: that there could be a Charles Lawton or Captain Donald Cameron lurking in the background with designs of his own on Miss Walker’s heart.
Anne’s account of the day is intriguing. Her full diary entry veers from simple delight at the speed of her progress, to more distanced analysis of Ann Walker’s character and behaviour. She appears by turn a calculated seducer and a sympathetic suitor with an increasing emotional stake in the object of her desire.
Any insecurity that existed may have stemmed from Anne’s feeling that she was on ‘probation’ with Miss Walker. In the six-month trial period, she had inadvertently given Ann the power to keep her guessing about her own future. As Anne Lister pushed, Ann Walker’s insistence that her mind was ‘quite unmade up’ stoked Anne’s ‘fear of disappointment’.
Anne was becoming increasingly cognisant of what she saw as contradictions in Ann Walker’s character. Their crux, ironically, was to be Miss Walker’s surprising sexual confidence. That afternoon, the relationship had entered a new phase:
I had my arm on the back of the sofa. She leaned on it, looking as if I might be affectionate and it ended in her lying on my arm all the morning and my kissing her and 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’.
4TH OCTOBER 1832
Miss Walker’s willingness to respond to her sexual advances thrilled Anne (to whom physical compatibility was imperative in any relationship), but it shocked her too. In many ways, Anne Lister was a conservative woman, and her surprise at Ann’s lack of restraint – on 4th October and beyond – reflected the double standards of the society in which she lived. Femininity and modesty were inseparable concepts. She had expected Ann to uphold the decorous image of respectability that her shyness had suggested, for a while longer at least. Instead, Miss Walker ‘a
sked me to dine with her at five and stay all night’.
Anne, of course, accepted. When she returned to Lidgate at 5pm, Ann Walker had changed into an evening gown. The early, formal dinner, waited on by James Mackenzie, was quite different to the more casual suppers Anne usually enjoyed at 6.30 or 7pm at Shibden Hall. After the meal, which had been accompanied by polite conversation about the Highlands, the atmosphere changed considerably. As soon as Ann’s manservant left the room, the two women drew nearer:
She sat on my knee, and I did not spare kissing and pressing, she returning it as in the morning. Yet still, I was not to hope too much.
4TH OCTOBER 1832
Amidst the kissing and ‘pressing’ Miss Walker had mumbled something about Anne being infatuated with her, and that when the novelty wore off she would soon forget her. ‘Waived all this’, wrote Anne, determining to reject any coquettishness on Miss Walker’s part. Moving from the stiff surrounds of the dining room to the more comfortable sofa, where they sat ‘most lovingly’, Anne’s ensuing talk of her aunt and Eugenie Pierre had the ring of procrastination. Lidgate was cosy, intimate and far enough from the surrounding Walker properties for the two women to feel safe from interruption. As darkness fell outside, the two women took advantage of the dimming light:
I prest [sic] her bosom. Then, finding no resistance and the lamp being out, let my hand wander lower down, gently getting to queer [vagina]. Still no resistance. So I whispered surely she could care for me a little? ‘Yes.’ Then gently whispered she would break my heart if she left me.
4TH OCTOBER 1832
However, their lovemaking was interrupted when Miss Walker began to cry. Breaking away, she told Anne that she was afraid she would think her ‘cold’ and unfeeling (‘How the devil could I?’ Anne thought to herself) for the admission she was about to give.