On her remote island, Sibella was rather surprised to receive so much post from Anne. Six years her senior, she complained that Anne’s letters had no content, and forbade her from sending mere fine words. Surely you must fancy I flatter you more than I have the smallest intention of doing, Anne responded. I never say what I do not think. A sense of duty, and, perhaps, of something like your highland pride, makes me fear and scorn to be untrue, and bind me to sincerity as the brightest gem in honour’s crown.5 Confused by such answers, Sibella kept up her reserve towards Anne, insisting on being called ‘Miss Maclean’ when Anne would have liked to use her forename, and considered Anne a character, whose mind is not formed in the ordinary mould. For years, Sibella did not understand what Anne wanted of her, and asked her to write only what might be read aloud verbatim.6
In 1824 the two saw each other again for two days at the home of mutual friends. Anne told Sibella of her wish to share her life with a woman and gave her a brooch in which she had once kept a lock of Eliza Raine’s hair. I care not for wealth, nor honours, nor all the pomp of circumstance this world of shadows can bestow. Give me but one kindred spirit with my own, and a dinner of herbs would seem to me a meal at which the gods might dine. With such a one I could be happy in a palace or a prison.7 After this second meeting, Sibella found Anne all the more incomprehensible – an enigma you cannot solve. And so Anne went as far as she dared in writing. Perhaps I am ‘odd, very, very odd’. [...] You promised to indulge all my whims. Well might I exclaim to you or to myself – she knows not what she promises! ‘But I shall not visit you in Shibden till you tell me why I do not understand the promises I have made.’ I can tell you at once. If you do not understand my style of writing, how can you understand me, how the whims you have promised to indulge. [...] I cannot tell you on paper: it would require more explanation than you are aware. [...] There is something (but it breathes not of dishonour) that parts me from the world I meet with. Sibella required only that little key that would open all my letters, and all I have said to you. One little key would be enough; for few people are more simply natural than myself, or more generally consistent with themselves.8
An aggravating factor in Anne’s long-distance seduction attempt was the fact that Sibella found romance ridiculous. You do not, you cannot admire what is usually meant by romance, in any shape. Your good opinion of the person possessing such romance, must necessarily suffer more or less on this account.9 Anne tried to shake off Sibella’s sober principles. But inasmuch as romance may, in this day, mean affectation, I am unconscious of having any of it. That my feelings run on in a current peculiarly their own, increasing knowledge of the world makes me more and more aware; but that I never turn them from their natural course you will more and more believe as your acquaintance with me becomes more intimate and correct.10
That was precisely what Sibella did not want, at first. In 1825 she seems to have found the ‘key’: an acquaintance from York told her the gossip that was already making the rounds about Anne and her Scottish friend. She cancelled her invitation to Anne. Anne accompanied her aunt to Buxton instead and spent several lustful weeks with Mariana. Nevertheless, she went on sending Sibella letter after letter. By 1828 Anne had finally ground down Sibella’s defences. She could find no more excuses to turn down Anne’s wish for a joint tour of Scotland – or perhaps she wanted to find out once and for all what Anne wanted of her.
On 19 May 1828, Sibella welcomed Anne to Edinburgh, showed her around the city and introduced her to friends and relatives. The two of them spent two months of that summer exploring Scotland by steamer, coach, rowing boat and farmer’s cart. We have seen all the ruins, cascades, glens, castles, lakes, forts, &c., &c. We have visited twenty-one of the principal lakes, traversed the fertile Carse of Gowrie, and looked down from the top of Ben Nevis. We have been comfortable everywhere; and I have learnt to think Finnin haddock, Loch Fine herrings, barley scones, and mutton hams among the best of good things.11 There were some hikes Anne had to take alone, however; at forty-three, Sibella did not have the strength. She looks, and is, thin and delicate.12 And she had a cough that had not gone away for years.
What else happened in Scotland is still unknown; Anne Lister’s diaries from 1827 to 1831 have yet to be decrypted and published. There are typed summaries of the coded passages held at the West Yorkshire Archive Service, Calderdale, in Halifax, which were made by Vivien Ingham and Phyllis Ramsden when they read through all the diaries between 1958 and 1969. According to these, Anne told Sibella about her earlier relationship with Mariana on 2 June. On 4 and 5 June, Anne wrote a long passage about Sibella which remains encrypted, and then on 7 June another five lines. From 16 to 29 June Anne wrote extensive passages which Phyllis Ramsden also neglected to paraphrase but instead described as personal or of no interest.13 Ramsden gave an involuntary explanation of what she meant by that in 1970, in an essay about Anne Lister: everything Anne had written in code was of no historical interest whatever and excruciatingly tedious to the modern mind.14 Thanks to the many coded passages from other years, which Phyllis Ramsden also paraphrased, and which have since been transcribed more fully and published by Helena Whitbread and Jill Liddington, we can translate Ramsden’s judgements very precisely. Personal refers to expressions of Anne Lister’s lesbian desire and of no historical interest whatever means descriptions of sex. In other words, Phyllis Ramsden turned Anne Lister’s secret alphabet into her own code, communicating what was unspeakable without speaking it. Ramsden’s summaries of the long encrypted passages written in the second half of June 1828 suggest that Anne made her progress with Sibella step by step. As with Maria Barlow, the approach had taken up more time than Anne’s enjoyment of her success.
The moment Anne had achieved the primary goal of her journey, she suggested Sibella should spend a while living with her and her aunt in Paris. Seeing as her father had no objections, Sibella agreed; a winter in a warmer climate could only do her good. They intended to set off as soon as Anne had dealt with her tasks at Shibden Hall. A new road to Bradford and Leeds was being built nearby. Anne admired Godley Lane, cut deep into the hillside and laid out on high embankments: a stupendous piece of work, it will be the greatest possible improvement in the roadway to the whole neighbourhood.15 However, it was not to run too close to Shibden Hall, so Anne demanded that the authorities change its route. She also began work on the old house itself. To minimise damp and draughts, she had drainage laid down to the foundations and part of the exterior wall rebuilt. The windows in the downstairs rooms were also re-fitted, which had to be done with the utmost care due to the valuable old panes. The sloping surface in front of the main entrance was levelled to form a spacious terrace. These changes led to arguments with the building’s other inhabitants. My father and Marian and I have certainly few sentiments and opinions in common, Anne sighed in a letter to her aunt in Paris. My patience is nearly exhausted, tho’ I know not of how much I may have need even yet. [...] Our return either to Shibden, or to England, is very little advisable under the existence of present circumstances.16
To put some distance between herself and Jeremy and Marian, Anne went to visit Mariana at Lawton Hall at the end of October, even though Sibella Maclean had been waiting for her in London since 29 September. But Anne did not want to go to Paris until she had received the money for the sale of the land at Northgate House. Anne confessed her affair with Mme de Rosny to Mariana and was granted her forgiveness, as ever. She failed to mention there was a woman waiting for her in London whom she imagined at the other end of her table at Shibden Hall. Yet even after the formalities for the land sale were finally notarized on 20 January 1829, Anne did not go to Paris. Instead, she spent three weeks taking the air at Scarborough with Mariana, through whom she had infected herself again, having been free of symptoms in the meantime. When Anne returned to Shibden Hall for three weeks in March, she hoped to tie everything up so she could stay away for another two years.
On 21 March 1829, Anne travelled with Cha
rles and Mariana Lawton and Lou Belcombe down to London, where Sibella Maclean had been waiting for her for six months. Sibella had taken the opportunity to seek the treatment of a Mr John Long, who correctly diagnosed her constant cough as tuberculosis but deployed disconcerting methods to try to cure it. He told Anne about his grand discovery: three piglets squashed to death by their mother had been thrown onto the dung heap; one crawled down again, brought back to life by the warmth of the fermenting dung. This observation convinced Mr Long not only of the curative powers of warmth in general, but also of this particular variety: he wished he could bury his patients in a dunghill. For Anne, it was clear on their very first meeting the man must be mad.17 Sibella, however, placed great hope in him. He predicted she would die if she were to go to Paris and forgo his expensive treatment.
The charlatan Mr Long was not the only point of contention between Sibella and Anne. Sibella presumably made accusations; instead of living with her in the mild temperatures of Paris, Anne had preferred to spend the cold winter months in Yorkshire with Mariana, who played a role in Anne’s life that Sibella could not divine. According to Phyllis Ramsden’s excerpts from Anne’s coded journals, they argued every day. In the end, Sibella decided in favour of Mr Long and against Anne. For the first time ever, a woman left Anne.
Vere
1829–1832
While Anne was arguing with Sibella Maclean she did, however, make friends with Sibella’s aristocratic relatives in London, particularly with the widowed Lady Louisa Anne Stuart. Anne had always got on well with older ladies. Lady Stuart’s rather impressive Pembroke Lodge in Richmond Park was also home to Sibella’s niece Vere Hobart, the sister of the fifth Earl of Buckinghamshire. The orphaned Vere was supposed to spend the summer with Lady Stuart’s son, the British ambassador to Paris, Charles Stuart, first Baron de Rothesay. As an unmarried young woman, however, she needed a suitable travelling companion. Now thirty-eight, Anne Lister was only too happy to take Vere along to Paris. Anne left a note at the British Embassy the day after their arrival, whereupon the ambassador’s wife, Lady Elizabeth Stuart de Rothesay, a daughter of the third Earl of Hardwicke, paid a personal visit to Anne and invited her to a soirée at the embassy on 30 April. There was no greater honour for an English traveller in Paris.
The evening became a social pinnacle of Anne’s life to that date. Wearing a newly tailored black ball gown, enrobed by a dresser hired especially for the occasion, and equipped by a hairdresser with a chapeau de bal with bird of paradise plumes, Anne savoured the glamour of the two thousand guests; never was I so entourée de noblesse. [...] Titles English and foreign, stars, garters, &c., &c., a brilliant assemblage. Anne admired Lady Stuart de Rothesay, a blaze of diamonds,1 with the sovreign nack [sic] she has of always having something apt and agreeable to say to everyone.2 Her ward Vere Hobart danced with Ferdinand-Philippe, Duc de Chartres, the son of the later citizen king Louis Philippe, but it was impossible to get near her; and I literally had never an opportunity of speaking to her.3
Over the subsequent months, Anne was invited not only to official functions at the embassy, but also to private circles, particularly once the dowager Lady Stuart had arrived from Richmond in June. She suggested they spend the summer together in Belgium and Germany. Anne was all the more glad to take her up on the offer, seeing as Vere Hobart was to join them. From June on, Anne was trying to flirt w. Miss H., although Vere was rather flippant, in fact rather a goose, as Anne pronounced after they visited a museum together. Not that that made the young single woman with aristocratic relatives and the prospect of an impressive dowry any less attractive in Anne Lister’s eyes.
They set out in two carriages on 14 August. This time Aunt Anne let her niece have the use of their travelling carriage along with their servant George and maid Cameron; Lady Stuart travelled in a second coach with Vere. Over the next few days and weeks, Anne noted down moments in code, which Phyllis Ramsden paraphrases as follows: flirting with V. H. – walking with V. H., – talking to V. H. – discussing V. H. – flirting with Miss V. H. – slight disagreement with V. H. – on better terms with V. H. – criticising V. H. There were five lines on 21 August considered by Ramsden of no interest.4
The group arrived in Brussels to cool and rainy weather on 22 August. A disappointed Anne recorded: Never in my life did I see such a parcel of narrow, winding, crooked streets – there is nothing to form a fine capital.5 They viewed the battlefield at Waterloo and went on to Namur, through the Maas Valley to Liège for a few days in Spa. In comparison to Anne’s travels in Scotland with Sibella Maclean or Switzerland with Maria Barlow, Lady Stuart went to far greater expense, visiting acquaintances at every turn and acting more formally, which appealed to Anne Lister but not to her budget.
The group eventually arrived at Aix la Chapelle, at that time a sophisticated spa town that Anne liked much better than I expected.6 But when the dowager Lady Stuart decided to take the waters there, Anne grew bored. The nearby Rhineland was of more interest to her, much praised by English tourists at that time. To Anne’s regret, Vere refused to go along, despite speaking good German. An acquaintance of Lady Stuart’s, Lady Caroline Duff Gordon, a very agreeable person,7 proved more adventurous. It was only with her that Anne came to the extensive viewings and long hikes she had hoped for on the journey. Lady Gordon thought her contemporary Anne sensible, agreeable, and to the purpose.8 Anne in turn valued her constant good humour in travelling. Had we gone from pole to pole, I really do not think we should have sparred one single instant.9 She did not note anything ‘of no interest’ on their travels together. They got as far as Darmstadt, where they experienced the opera’s admirable orchestra, beautiful scenery and dresses, but bad singing. Francfort is a capital town; and we all regretted not being able to stay longer than two days. They liked the spas of Wiesbaden and Ems but had problems with the language. It is absurd to say that French is spoken everywhere on the Rhine. Merely a few Innkeepers speak it, and one has all the difficulty in this world to get on with German.10 The famed landscapes of the Middle Rhine elicited little enthusiasm from Anne. From Coblentz to Cologne, in returning, we went in the steam boat, and liked it well enough. We did not go more than 6 or 7 miles an hour, and had therefore time enough to see the views. What a pity to hear a very great deal of praise of anything before one sees it! We were all but disappointed with the Rhine scenery taken collectively – taking it by piecemeal, there are, it must be allowed, some very fine things.11
Returning to Aix la Chapelle, Anne then accompanied Lady Stuart and Vere Hobart through constant rain across the Netherlands and northern France to their ship’s pier at Calais. During these last three weeks, Anne attempted to move her relationship with Vere along – (v. dull) talking etc to V. H., as Phyllis Ramsden notes at several points in her summaries.12 Once Vere was back in London and Anne back in Paris, they exchanged only pleasantly polite letters, however. With no reason to hope Vere was the woman who would give her access to the upper echelons of society, Anne toyed with the idea – for the first and last time in her life – of whether she should marry some old nobleman on her own terms, to get ‘rank’.13 No suitable candidates announced themselves.
As always when Anne could find no one to fall in love with and seduce, she devoted herself to her scientific interests. She attended lectures by Georges Cuvier, the founder of palaeontology, at the Collège de France in the winter of 1829–1830; she was fascinated by his Recherches sur les ossemens fossiles des quadrupèdes (1812). Thanks to a letter of recommendation from one of her new aristocratic acquaintances, he received her at the Jardin des Plantes. Stayed a few minutes with this first naturalist of his age – very civil and gentlemanlike, & gave me a student’s ticket to the cabinet d’histoire naturelle.14 She attended Professor Audoin’s lectures on comparative anatomy. He put Anne in contact with a medical student by the name of Julliart, with whom she undertook dissections. On the first occasion, Julliart brought a dead rabbit to the Listers’ apartment, then a live one; felt a bit
queerish to see the poor animal killed & then begin cutting it up directly – but as M Julliart said one must get accustomed to these things. They soon moved on to dissecting a human hand. No smell, but somehow the cutting at a hand so like one’s own had an odd effect on me.15 Anne’s next dissections were of a human ear and then a woman’s head. It is not known where the head came from. Anne, who had kissed so many women, took on the dissection of the face. She preserved the bits in rectified spirits and kept them in a cabinet she obtained especially, which also contained a skeleton and several skulls.
Did Aunt Anne find these exhibits unpleasant? Did her niece want to lead a student life at the age of thirty-nine? Anyway, Anne rented a room in another house in the Quartier Latin at 7, rue St Victor. Aprl. 16. For the first time I am at my desk here writing my journal. How light & airy my little apartment – I shall do very well here, much better for study than rue Godot. I look into a court & a little garden at the bottom – the sparrows are chirping – I hear the clock of the Panthéon church of St. Geneviéve. I am quite comfortable & have brought my letters to answer.16 A hundred years before Virginia Woolf ’s 1929 essay, Anne Lister had a room of her own in which to work and think.
In May of 1830, Lady Stuart de Rothesay enquired as to Anne’s plans for the summer. Said I thought of going to the Pyrenees – she hoped she could see me there, said I should be delighted. And I know not which first proposed going together, which she said she should like very much. Anne thought so too. However, such a high-class travelling companion caused considerable costs even before they set off. Anne had her travelling coach refitted, renewed her wardrobe, bought six pairs of shoes, had a new livery made for George Playforth, and paid her maid Cameron to take lessons in hairdressing so that Anne would look good on the road. Before their departure, King George IV died, which meant Cameron also needed a black silk dress and George a black suit. But Anne regarded all this as an investment in her future: Me voilà en train (I am coming on).17
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