Gentleman Jack

by Katy Derbyshire

  Anne and her aunt continued on the road, reaching their secret destination that same day: Llangollen, the home of Lady Eleanor Butler and Miss Sarah Ponsonby. The ‘Ladies of Llangollen’ were originally from Ireland but had lived in self-imposed exile in this Welsh village for forty-two years. One rainy March night in 1778, they had tried to run away together but had been caught. After two months of negotiations, their wealthy families let them go but gave them very little money. Once in Llangollen, they rented a simple cottage, which they transformed over the years – adding dark carved oak inside and outside, leaded stained-glass windows and historical bric-a-brac – into an ornate olde-worlde home that they called Plâs Newydd, meaning New Hall. They were to live in the house and tend its gardens for fifty years. The orchard was planted with nectarines and melons, the flower garden boasted forty-four kinds of roses alone, the shrub garden was full of lilac, laburnum and dogwood. Gravel paths led to a little temple and a well, with wooden bridges crossing the small Cyflymen Stream. Cows grazed outside the house – and today only they are missing; everything else has been preserved or restored.

  The world had known all about the two women’s escape attempt and their life together in their rural paradise from 24 July 1790, when the General Evening Post printed their story. Miss Butler is tall and masculine, she wears always a riding habit, hangs her hat with the air of a sportsman in the hall and appears in all respects as a young man, if we except the petticoats which she still retains. Miss Ponsonby, on the contrary is polite and effeminate, fair and beautiful.6 The article was slightly free with the facts – Lady Eleanor was a pudgy fifty-one-year-old at the time – but it brought its readers fairly close to the overarching truth. The two did indeed dress in a significantly more conspicuous manner than Anne Lister. Both Eleanor and Sarah wore dark gentlemen’s jackets, starched gentlemen’s collars with ties, and black top hats. They kept their hair short but strongly powdered, a style long since out of fashion.

  11 The ‘Ladies of Llangollen’: Miss Sarah Ponsonby (left) and Lady Eleanor Butler (right), lithograph by an unknown artist.

  Such eccentric manners in a remote setting awakened visitors’ curiosity, and the women soon had a steady stream of them: Sir Walter Scott, Wordsworth, Mme de Genlis and the British aristocracy made a beeline for them. The German gardening enthusiast Prince Pückler called them the two most famous spinsters (certainly the most famous in Europe).7 Unexpectedly, the ladies pulled off a trick that ensured their physical and social survival: what was ‘out’ was suddenly ‘in’. They masked their actual poverty as a conscious retreat into a life at one with nature, inspired by Rousseau. And they styled their insubordinate love as an ideal romantic friendship, deeper, freer and thus nobler than any heterosexual marriage. What had begun as escape and exile developed into the epitome of a philosophically elevated, enviable ideal life, a magnet for visitors, and a business model. Their paradise was paid for by their guests; none ventured a second visit without bringing a contribution of carved oak, which was the regular passport.8 The Ladies of Llangollen became a top sightseeing destination, merging with their house and garden to form a singular work of art.

  Anne Lister had read about them in a newspaper article around 1810 & had longed to see the place ever since.9 Mariana had already been there and dreamed of living with Anne the same way. So Anne was very disappointed to hear from her landlady at the King’s Head Hotel, Mrs Davis, shortly after her arrival that the eighty-three-year-old Eleanor Butler had a bad cold and was not seeing visitors. Anne and her aunt nonetheless walked straight to Plâs Newydd, which is really very pretty, and then wrote the following note: Mrs & Miss Lister take the liberty of presenting their compliments to Lady Eleanor Butler & Miss Ponsonby, & of asking permission to see their grounds at Plâs Newyd in the course of tomorrow morning. Miss Lister, at the suggestion of Mr Banks, had intended herself the honour of calling on her ladyship & Miss Ponsonby, & hopes she may be allowed to express her very great regret at hearing of her ladyship’s indisposition.10 Having pulled out all the stops on the politeness scale, Anne was invited to view the grounds at 12 o’clock.

  I quite agree with M– (vide her letter), the place ‘is a beautiful little bijou’, shewing excellent taste, Anne noted after a tour with the gardener the next day. They kept no horses but milked 6 cows. Said I, ‘Can they use the milk of 6 cows?’ ‘Oh, they never mind the milk. It is the cream.’ Anne’s expectations were more than met. It excited in me, for a variety of circumstances, a sort of peculiar interest tinged with melancholy. I could have mused for hours, dreampt dreams of happiness, conjured up many a vision of ... hope,11 because two women had managed to make a home together and be happy with one another for an entire lifetime. Plâs Newydd in Llangollen became a utopian place of consolation, not only for Anne Lister but for many women who love women up to the present day.

  Strengthened and crestfallen at the same time, Anne continued on her tour of Wales with her aunt. On 15 July 1822, they climbed Mount Snowdon. The ascent was much easier than I expected. There was no danger attending [...] and the exertion required was more on account of the length of the way than anything else. Anne had not expected her aunt to go to the top and therefore took a boy with us to conduct her to Llanbellis. Along the way, though, two gentlemen joined them and Aunt Anne took one of their arms, enabling her to get up to the top. Arrived there we looked about a few minutes, and then, foolishly, sat down in the little hut, on the stone benches. All the party felt chilled, and took a little bread and brandy except myself. Indeed the two gentlemen drank all of the two pint bottles of brandy our guide had taken. As it was late, they took a shorter but extremely steep path back to the valley. Had I had any idea what it was, I should not have thought of my aunt doing it. However, by dint of patient labour, and constant hold of the guide, she got down, frightened as she was, yet apparently less so than Mr Reid. They did not reach the small inn at Llanberries until twenty to ten. I know not that ever I was more heated. I had scarcely a dry thread about me.12

  After ten days of Anne steering Percy and the gig without accident through wild valleys, past ruined castles, along cliff tops and all the way to the sea, they returned to Llangollen. Anne immediately asked Mrs Davis about Lady Eleanor’s health and was told they had feared for her life during the night. The damp this bad account cast upon my spirits I cannot describe. [...] There is a something in their story & in all I have heard about them here that [...] makes a deep impression. She was just entrusting her disappointment to her journal when she received the unexpected news that Miss Ponsonby will be glad to see me this evening to thank me in person. Anne spent two hours preparing for this meeting with the sixty-seven-year-old ‘Mariana’, washing & cutting my toenails, putting clean things on.

  At ten past seven, Anne knocked at the door of Plâs Newydd and was asked into the breakfast room, waiting one or two minutes for Miss Ponsonby. A large woman so as to waddle in walking but, tho’, not taller than myself. In a blue, shortish-waisted cloth habit, the jacket unbuttoned shewing a plain plaited frilled habit shirt – a thick white cravat, rather loosely put on – hair powdered, parted, I think, down the middle in front, cut a moderate length all round & hanging straight, tolerably thick. The remains of a very fine face. Coarish white cotton stockings. Ladies slipper shoes cut low down, the foot hanging a little over. Altogether a very odd figure – Anne used the adjective she often applied to herself. Sarah Ponsonby may well have gained the same impression of her guest, who looked equally unconventional. Yet she had no sooner entered into conversation than I forgot all this & my attention was wholly taken. [...] Mild & gentle, certainly not masculine, & yet there was a je-ne-sais-quoi striking.

  Anne politely complimented her hostess on the beauty of the place and asked after Lady Eleanor. She had been through three operations and was at risk of going blind but her partner was still confident; Eleanor did in fact live another seven years. According to Miss Ponsonby, she was a great connoisseur of the sixteenth-century Italian poet Torquat
o Tasso and had written elucidatory notes on his obsolete manners and phrases. That gave Anne Lister the courage to ask apparently innocently, but with ulterior motives, if they were classical. ‘No,’ said she. ‘Thank God from Latin & Greek I am free.’ Following this disappointing response, I observed that she might think all the classics objectionable – Yes! They wanted pruning. Having not got far with classical authors, Anne tried her luck with contemporary writers. As she had once quizzed Miss Browne, she also asked Miss Ponsonby whether she had read Byron. She was most afraid of reading Cain, tho’ Lord Byron had been very good in sending them several of his works. I asked if she had read Don Juan. She was ashamed to say she had read the 1st canto. Sarah Ponsonby did not let her guard down in front of Anne, maintaining the pose of a chaste spinster. Anne allowed herself one last insinuation when Miss Ponsonby asked her which Mr Bankes she had referred to in her note; the great Grecian, Anne responded, to give Miss Ponsonby an opportunity to react to her ribaldry. When that fell flat, Anne tried a more forthright approach in the garden, in an attempt to find out more about the relationship between Miss Ponsonby and Lady Butler. I envied their place & the happiness they had had there. Asked if, dared say, they had never quarrelled. ‘No!’ They had never had a quarrel. Little differences of opinion sometimes. Life could not go on without it, but only about the planting of a tree, and, when they differed in opinion, they took care to let no one see it. On their walk together, Anne talked a little about herself and Shibden Hall, but not about her dream of growing old with a woman too. Sarah Ponsonby understood her nonetheless. At parting, shook hands with her and she gave me a rose. I said I should keep it for the sake of the place where it grew.13

  When the Listers took the same rooms in Chester as they had on their way out, Anne doubted more than ever that she and Mariana might turn Shibden Hall into their own Plâs Newydd. I sat musing on M–, thinking I wasted my life in vain expectation, hoping for a time which she is too delicate to like to calculate. Somehow I cannot get over this. It took her seven glasses of wine to fall asleep. ‘I was unhappy,’ said I, ‘the last time I was here. I cannot be worse now.’ 14

  Back in Halifax, her loneliness felt more painful than ever. As she had done in the past, Anne wrote letters to revive her feelings for Mariana. Again seated quietly in my own room at Shibden, where the happiest hours of my life have been spent with you, she wrote to her. You have a shrine in every thought, & every feeling is an altar of remembrance. Interest in your welfare pervades the whole temple of my existence, & anxiety for your happiness is the high-priest that does the service of my soul. God grant that an affection so deeply rooted, so intensely strong, may be a comfort to us both, & form one bright spot in our lives on which the shadows of misfortune never rest.15

  Mariana was very grateful for Anne’s description of her visit to the Ladies of Llangollen. ‘Tell me if you think their regard has always been platonic & if you ever believed pure friendship could be so exalted. If you do, I shall think there are brighter amongst mortals than I ever believed there were.’ A child of her time, Mariana regarded all sexual desire – not only lesbian – as a sinful weakness that admirable individuals were able to resist. Anne, however, did not believe in abstention. I cannot help thinking that surely it was not platonic. Heaven forgive me, but I look within myself & doubt. I feel the infirmity of our nature & hesitate to pronounce such attachments uncemented by something more tender still than friendship.16

  While Anne was in Wales, Mariana and Isabella had been in Buxton at the same time, though not together. They met on social occasions – and both tried to show the other in a poor light in their letters to Anne. Mariana wrote that Isabella ‘looks fat & gross. She danced on Wednesday & looked almost vulgar. I could not keep my eyes off her or my mind from you.’ They had a squabble on Friday evening, just before M– began to write.17 Isabella, meanwhile, emphasised maliciously that Charles Lawton is certainly better looking than I expected, & is certainly very gentlemanly in his manners, but his figure is dreadful. [...] Just before he took his leave, he said that he never saw anything so extraordinary as my likeness to you; upon which M– exclaimed with a silly face, that it was paying me a very great compliment; on any other occasion I should have said the same thing, but I was so astonished at hearing him mention your name, that I was (as we say in Yorkshire) perfectly dumbfounded.18 Others, too, noticed the similarity Charles Lawton had commented on between Anne and Isabella; one Mr Lally from York thought that was the reason for their altercations. Two jacks would not suit together.19

  On Anne and her aunt’s return from Wales they found Jeremy and Marian Lister ensconced at Shibden Hall, although Skelfler House had not sold; in the generally poor economic climate, no one wanted to invest in a run-down estate. Jeremy had auctioned off the cows, sheep, horses and pigs, however, along with all the farm machinery and his own household goods. His brother James had offered to rent him Northgate House at a price Jeremy could not afford. Otherwise so tight-lipped, Anne’s uncle told her how embarrassed he was by Jeremy’s behaviour, and that Marian too is like my mother & my uncle would not trust her. James and Anne agreed that the two of them would be best off going to France,20 where they could lead a better, cheaper and more comfortable life, all in all, than in England. They could not come up with any more elegant way to get rid of Marian and Jeremy, so Anne said she was willing to find a place for her father and sister to live in France. At least this meant she could return to Paris.

  On the evening of 29 August 1822 they drove to Kingston-upon-Hull and boarded a steamship for the first time in Anne’s life, arriving in London on the 31st and staying two days. Anne noticed a great deal of construction work in comparison to 1819 but was distracted by her father: I am shocked to death at his vulgarity of speech & manner. Everything about him was too loud, too vulgar or too jovial. The fact that she looked conspicuous herself did not stop her from criticising her wildly gesticulating and occasionally spitting father. I am perpetually in dread of meeting anyone I know.

  12 Anne Lister’s diary, 15 September 1822. Anne Lister often switched from uncoded to encrypted writing mid-sentence; West Yorkshire Archive Service, Calderdale, SH: 7/ML/E/6

  In Dover, the sailing ships on which Anne and her aunt had crossed the Channel three years previously had been decommissioned. They chugged across to Calais in only two hours and fifty-five minutes. Jeremy had barely set foot on French soil before he had digestion problems and talks of being dead in two or 3 days. Instead of continuing to Paris, they stayed in Calais for the time being. I always say to myself, temper, temper, temper, i.e. keep your temper.21 Anne walked on the beach on her own and enjoyed the food at their hotel, washing it down with more wine than usual. Marian found the women’s caps ‘frightful’, and the potatos [sic] too long and sweet, and bespeaking that the people do not know how to cultivate them.22 Of her father, Anne wrote: I do not think he likes France hitherto. He told me this morning he thought we should all go back together for he is sure Marian is tired already. I think my father is, whatever she may be. He is constantly saying Frenchmen are what they were 50 years ago i. e. what he knew them in Canada & he seems neither to admire them or anything about them. Jeremy had barely left his room, however. What can he mean to do? He cannot be long at Shibden nor afford to live at Northgate. The prospect seems darksome but he appears to take it very quietly. He must order for himself & I shall fidget myself not more than I can help.23

  After a week, they did travel on to Paris. While Anne wore her feet out in search of a home for Jeremy and Marian, her father’s complaints returned and he declared he had never intended to stay longer than the money lasted he had in his pocket, and said at Calais he had seen enough of France already. He claimed he had only come to Paris for Marian’s sake. What he really wanted was to board and lodge in some clergyman’s family in some retired pleasant part of England, saying he had read such advertisements in the Yorkshire Gazette before their departure. Oh! That I could have guessed or divined this before we set
off!,24 Anne sighed in a letter to her aunt. She was not entirely innocent in the whole fiasco, however, having intended to persuade her father to try out a life that would not suit him. With Jeremy and Marian not appreciating the sights of Paris and Anne unable to enjoy them in their company, they broke off their stay on 28 September. Back in Halifax, Jeremy did not in fact look for lodgings with a clergyman’s family; he was neither willing nor able to bring order into his failed existence. Out of brotherly concern and fear of gossip, James had no other option but to let Jeremy and Marian live in the large Northgate House with its expensive upkeep.

  Anne escaped to Isabella Norcliffe at Langton Hall, staying almost a month. Isabella was much improved, Anne thought, unlike Mariana’s envious description. She takes much less wine now, she wrote, only four glasses a day. They continued their sexual relationship where they had left off. Better kiss last night than Tib has given me for long. In the morning, Isabella found Anne injecting medicine into her vagina for her persistent discharge. I denied, but won’t use the syringe again, however gently, when she is in the room.25 Nonetheless, she dared to do something she had not in Halifax or York, for reasons of discretion. In the neighbouring village of Malton, where nobody knew her, she went to a doctor and told him I had caught it from a married friend whose husband was a dissipated character. I had gone to the cabinet water-closet just after her. Without a physical examination, his diagnosis was as vague as Stephen Belcombe’s. He prescribed mercury pills, which were not helpful. Anne’s perpetual horrors for fear of infecting Tib did not stop her from having sex, though. I had a very good kiss last night. Tib had not a very good one.26

  On this stay too, We talked about M –. Isabella had noticed that her attempt to put Mariana down had had no effect. Now she claimed she likes her as much as ever. Nothing can ever make her dislike her again. If she lived with me, Tib would come & see us &, tho’ M slept with me, Tib would not dislike her.27 Anne’s diary does not reveal whether she saw through Isabella’s tactical self-denial. She returned to Shibden Hall at Christmas.