After Anne first mentioned Isabella in a letter to Eliza, the abandoned lover attempted to gloss over her jealousy. I am delighted to hear you have got so pleasant a companion as Miss Norcliffe; I never doubted of your making friends wherever you went.6 I think me worthy of your attachment & kindness, she stressed, adding: I suppose you sometimes think of me & kindly wish me every good.7 Eliza’s flattery no longer elicited wild oaths of love from Anne, however. Eliza’s next move was to remind Anne that the day may come when I can at least offer a more substantial proof of gratitude than mere words.8 Yet neither the allusions to their sexual relationship nor her £4,000 prompted Anne to join Eliza in lamenting their physical separation; she felt so happy, so gay & so cheerful 9 in York, where she commuted between the Duffins’ house on Micklegate and the home of the Norcliffes at Petergate, by the minster.
The Duffins – both well into their sixties – liked Anne and took her along to their summer house in Nunmonkton outside York at the end of May 1810. With the group at the Red House was the unmarried Mary Jane Marsh, a woman in her early thirties who was the sickly Mrs Duffin’s companion and Mr Duffin’s mistress. Eliza soon joined the party too. The moment she received word to come to the school from Miss Mellin, she sent her belongings to Halifax under a rain of curses from Lady Crawfurd, and went straight to her foster parents and her lover. Anne, however, was bothered by Eliza’s downcast mood, of which she was partly the cause. Nothing more surprises me than that any person of sound judgment, and solid sense should be ill tempered. A bad disposition [...] is more frequently brought upon ourselves by bad habit and too weak an opposition to the worst of our passions, than inflicted upon us by nature; a malady, which most can prevent, and all can cure.10
When the time came for Anne to return to her parents in Halifax, she asked the ever cheerful Isabella to meet her on her way through York. Delighted, Isabella set aside a whole day for Anne. The two of them went up Clifford’s Tower, York’s medieval ruin, and exchanged intimacies. Anne let Isabella know she had been telling Eliza all about her. Isabella confessed to Anne that she had seen the only man who could make her happy. Remembering that day years later, Anne commented: How little did Isabel think what would afterwards happen.11
5 Mrs Duffin in York, watercolour by Mary Ellen Best from: The World of Mary Ellen Best by Caroline Davidson (Chatto & Windus, 1986)
Eliza had barely returned to York with the Duffins when Isabella Norcliffe paid a surprise call at the house on Micklegate to get to know Anne’s intimate friend. Immediately after their meeting, Isabella wrote to Anne: It was with difficulty I kept my countenance when I met her; the remembrance of the conversations you had had together about me rushed so forcibly into my mind, that I could think of nothing else; however I had sufficient command of myself not to let it be seen [...]. As you may imagine our conversation was chiefly about you, and her opinion so perfectly coincided with my own, that I could not help thinking her a very sensible discerning girl.12
Eliza in turn gave Anne a detailed report of the meeting as soon as she arrived in Halifax. We spent the day together charming away the hours in talking of you, Anne wrote to Isabella of the occasion. You had so often caused the conscious blush, and taught her a strange variety of sensations for which she was unable as perhaps unwilling to account. How in the world do you manage? For you have certainly the art, whether happy I know not, of working wonders in some people. To tell you the truth, you have been ever present to Eliza in ‘Midnight Slumbers and in waking dreams’. I can only laugh that she who would sit for hours moping in a quiet corner hearing and observing all without one single utterance of a sound, should thus on a sudden find such magic in a word or look from you. Indeed, Isabella, you are in some things the oddest girl I ever knew. In this instance you rather pass the powers of my comprehension: do, therefore, explain the arcana of those manners which render you to some at once so singular and so enchanting [...]. After what Eliza tells me of you I love you ten times more.13 Such sophisticated rhetorical advances rather overawed Isabella. She was reluctant to meet Anne’s request to write to her, being perfectly convinced that my letters are incapable of affording either amusement or instruction to any human being and more particularly to yourself who are so much my superior in everything.14 Yet Anne did not give up. I have known you but a short time. I love you God knows how well and how sincerely, she wrote to her. Tell me, as you promised, every secret thought, nor fear to confide in my bosom whatever you dare trust to your own. Write to me, Isabella, as you would talk to me [...]. Tell me, in short, anything and everything but that your letters are never worth the expense of postage to one who fondly dotes on that which Isabella does.15
Anne wrote to Isabella from her kennel, having moved back in with her parents. Eliza took rented rooms in the neighbourhood and regularly came for dinner. There was some tension in the air. On 14 August, Eliza wrote in her diary: Dear L & I had a reconciliation, only to note two days later: L & I had a difference which happily was made up before the conclusion of the day but left me exceedingly ill. The next day, Anne made up for everything. My husband came to me & finally a happy reunion was accomplished.16
The fact that Anne preferred to visit Eliza rather than helping in the parental household led to all jealousies & broils about so often going to see her.17 Anne did not mention the unpleasant scenes at Home18 in her letters to Isabella, nor her difficult relationship with Eliza. Although she favoured long walks, she wrote to her new horsewoman friend about the very spirited (little) horse her father had bought her, which was quite as much as I can manage. The moment one mounts it begins prancing and capering, and as I am not a very steady cowardly scientific rider I dare say like Homer’s heroes I shall lick the dust.19 She failed to mention her studies of mathematics and Greek with Mr Knight in her letters to Isabella, who had no interest in academic matters, claiming I trust I shall not on my emission smell so strong of the lamp as to be at all ungrateful to the delicate olfactory nerves of my darling Isabella. Believe me I pray most fervently that I may never be deservedly ranked among that odious class of animals commonly called Learned Ladies.20
In January 1811, Anne contracted scarlet fever. Eliza nursed her lover and requested medical advice from William Duffin in York. When the convalescent wrote to thank him in February, the Duffins invited Anne to stay, but not Eliza. Anne was only too glad to turn her back on Halifax, her parents and Eliza, and returned to live in York in April 1811, under the care of Miss Marsh. She is really a mother to me.21 Above all, though, she enjoyed her reunion with Isabella. I love the darling Girl with all my heart.22
The two became a couple that spring. Anne’s wooing had had the desired effect on Isabella, and York society encouraged their closeness. Now twenty, Anne Lister was regarded as a very sensible woman. She led an exemplary life and preached to her friends I hope you will take a long walk every day get up early in a morning and go to bed regularly at an early hour.23 The twenty-six-year-old Isabella was told by her: Heaven has given you much more than falls to the common lot of mortals. Put out your talents to interest, and you will soon be rich.24 Anne even advised Isabella to be prudent about her eating, as she ate heartily and drank freely25 and treated pains of all kinds with a slug of brandy. There are more who die from eating too much, than too little,26 wrote Anne, for whom two meals a day sufficed – a late breakfast and dinner in the late afternoon. Nor did she allow herself all the freedom of a man27 like Isabella, who was even more boyish than Anne and often cursed – albeit in such an original manner that Anne wanted to make a list of her swear words. Aside from that, not being suspected of relationships with men, Anne seemed to Miss Marsh to be the saving of Isabella, which Anne herself considered to flatter me too much.28
6 Isabella Norcliffe (far left) and her family in Langton Hall, watercolour by Mary Ellen Best from: The World of Mary Ellen Best by Caroline Davidson (Chatto & Windus, 1986)
Meanwhile, Eliza was being taught to dance the quadrille by Anne’s father in Halifax and went on
spending time with the Listers; your mother last night would not pay you the compliment of saying she felt yr loss, upon which we had a good-humoured quarrel.29 She even took tea alone with Samuel, as Aunt Mary, the second wife of Uncle Joseph of Northgate House, was quick to report to her niece in York. I get quite attached to him, he is so like you and his temper is benevolent and amiable,30 Eliza wrote to Anne. Mainly to escape the disagreeable work at home,31 Samuel, the Listers’ only remaining son and the heir to Shibden Hall, was considering signing up to the military as his father had. Your mother is really dejected about Sam, they often quarrel about his taste for the army, they think oppositely as you may imagine, the Lad is more and more eager and his Mother as much so miserable.32 Rebecca did not get her way. In the autumn of 1812, Samuel Lister gave Eliza Raine a lock of his hair, sailed for Ireland and reported for duty with the 84th Regiment in Fermoy, near Cork. He sent best wishes to Eliza in every letter to his sister Anne.
His decision made Anne aware of the limitations placed upon her as a woman. She could neither study nor take up a profession and she depended on invitations from benevolent strangers to evade her depressing home life. Never till this moment did I feel a wish to be freed from that petticoat slavery that but ill subdues a mind superior to its tyranny. But alas! discontent were folly, and to murmur would be to arraign the decrees of Heaven which gave the fiat. Sometimes I could envy you, if it were not impious and unjust,33 she wrote to her brother. Being his older sister, she did not skimp on unasked-for advice. Pray be punctual and attentive in writing to them all – meaning their better-off uncles and aunts at Shibden Hall and Northgate House – this is the best way of insinuation into their good graces.34 By all means keep a journal. Whatever trouble this plan may give you at first, count it as nothing, when compared with the delight and, satisfaction, which it will always afford your friends, and, at some future period, yourself. Though writing is irksome, and perhaps difficult whilst we are unaccustomed to it, yet practice will soon gain us a facility, which will amply compensate the trouble, and mortification of acquiring it. [...] Let me advise you to finish your notation of the events of the day, every night, before you go to bed.35
No diary of Anne’s has survived from these years. The first notes we have of hers, ten loose, closely written sheets, end in February 1810. She is likely to have kept to this method, as we have a further loose sheet from March 1813 that is clearly out of context. Her diaries survive in full only from 1816 on.
So we have little evidence of the first years of Anne and Isabella’s relationship. From later comments, we can conclude that they were happy to begin with. In May 1812, still living with the Duffins in York, Anne wrote to her brother that she and Isabella were inseparable, spent whole days together and went to the theatre in the evenings. In October 1812, Anne visited Isabella for the first time at Langton Hall near Malton, which remains to this day a sleepy hamlet in the Yorkshire Wolds. Isabella’s father had just had the family’s country home expensively refurbished. Anne had never stayed anywhere as elegant before.
For the last two weeks of the visit, they were joined by Isabella’s most intimate friend, Mariana Belcombe, who made the last fortnight of our stay there doubly interesting. On 1 December 1812, a jaunty Isabella, her sister Charlotte, Mariana Belcombe and Anne took the Norcliffes’ coach to their house at Petergate in York, laughing and giggling into the evening. The first night, much to the merriment of our party, we all crammed ourselves (in two beds tho’) into the same room.36 Anne went on joking with her new friend Mariana for two weeks in York while Isabella visited relatives in the countryside. Then on 14 December Anne went to Halifax with Isabella, having been away for a year and a half. I fear our house is not the most regular,37 she may have warned Isabella.
The timing was carefully planned – Eliza Raine had left Halifax a good two weeks previously. Without Anne and Samuel, there had been nothing to keep her there. Samuel had not stated his intentions to her and she still would have preferred his sister. She had sent Anne a glum reminder of their anniversary and of her twenty-first birthday, once a date they had dreamed of. But Anne had grown tired of Eliza. She no longer needed her and her £4,000 to liberate her from her parents. Thanks to her charm, wit and intelligence, she had achieved what Eliza had not: she had been taken in by the Duffins in York, and also by the Norcliffes. Compared to the vivacious Isabella and her wealthy family with a house in the city and a country home, the illegitimate half-Indian orphan Eliza seemed a poor prospect. Anne deliberately overlooked Eliza’s reminder of their dreams of a future together. Eliza never had any parting words from her. It has never yet occurred to me to like any one person less, because of liking any other person more, Anne wrote of herself; all my other friends would most exactly keep their places, and still be dear to me as ever.38 When Eliza realised there was no point waiting, she moved to Hotwells in Bristol to spend the winter in a milder climate and kept herself occupied with deep philosophical works.39 Upon the whole, her leaving our neighbourhood is rather a good thing for me, Anne wrote to her brother; home is, by this means, made considerably more agreeable.40
Even without Eliza, though, the family home was not all that cosy. Anne regretted her father being so unlike a gentleman.41 Her relationship with her mother was worse. Rebecca felt estranged from her oldest daughter. She was hurt that Anne had not wanted to live with her even as a child, and she showered her with reproaches. Jeremy also caused a lot of problems for Rebecca – she is oftener right in some things than my father chooses to allow42 – and with money always tight and grieving the loss of three children, Rebecca had taken to drink. My mother tipsy 25 nights.43 Anne had little pity for her. At all events, it is not so precarious as my father used to imagine; nor do I think hers a worse life than any other in the family.44 After five weeks with the Listers, Isabella returned home ahead of time. Anne forced herself to stay another three weeks with the family, returning to Isabella in York on 1 February 1813.
The generous Norcliffes also felt Anne was a good influence on Isabella, and invited her along on a trip to Bath. Their four-day journey took in Sheffield, Derby, Birmingham and Worcester with all the attendant sights, and in particular all the porcelain factories, along the way to the spa town, one of the most beautiful […] in England.45 As Anne wrote, it was the first time she had left Yorkshire. Under the wings of the well-travelled Norcliffes, in Bath Anne learned the rules and manners of privileged society, cultivating her conversational skills and internalising the differences between an upper-class accent and her native Yorkshire dialect. I am, and have every reason to be, as happy here as my dear Sam’s most sanguine wishes can desire.46
Before their return to Yorkshire, Anne and Isabella were allowed to spend a week travelling alone in May 1813. They viewed Salisbury Cathedral, the Earl of Pembroke’s painting and sculpture collection at Wilton House, and Stonehenge. This first trip with a lover gave Anne a taste for such excursions, which she was often to repeat when the opportunity arose. She loved exploring new places and enjoyed the freedom afforded in unfamiliar settings – two women travelling together naturally took a shared room in guesthouses and had more privacy than in their family homes.
The Norcliffes headed north at the end of May. On the way back they visited Warwick Castle – the finest thing of the kind in England – and the ruins at Kenilworth. In fact I shall return home quite a traveller.47 It was not hard for Anne to return to York, however. For there awaited her no small pleasure in seeing again Miss M. Belcombe.48
Mariana
1813–1817
In retrospect, Isabella Norcliffe may have cursed herself for introducing Anne to her darling & almost adored Mariana […]. Most sincerely do I wish you knew more of her; in my opinion it would be impossible for you not to like her. Added to a very strong understanding, she has the most Heavenly disposition I ever saw, a most affectionate and feeling heart, & an attachment to her Friends, which I am sure nothing but death can terminate.1 Isabella was to be wrong about that. She was
right, however, when she compared Mariana and herself. Never were two beings so perfectly unlike; she is milder than any thing I ever saw, & you know what I am.
Mariana Percy Belcombe was a year older than Anne and lived with her family on Petergate, one of York’s main roads that passes the minster, as did the Norcliffes when they were in town. Mariana’s father, Dr William Belcombe, practised as a doctor. He and his wife Marianne had one son, Stephen, who was also to become a doctor, and five grown daughters: Anne, called ‘Nantz’, Henriette or ‘Harriet’, Mariana, Louisa – ‘Lou’ – and Eliza, ‘Eli’. Her sisters are very nice Girls, but in my opinion not one of them is in the slightest degree to compare to her.2 Anne shared Isabella’s high opinion of Mariana. She is indeed a charming girl, and, from the real worth of her character, has gained no mean portion of my esteem and regard.3 Yet all mental good qualities aside, your friend is a sweet looking girl.4
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