Despite all this, Anne Lister was a beast of a woman. Like all her lovers, I could not escape this conclusion, and yet nor could I let go of her. All the sex in old-fashioned language was just too delightful. Then the thing was over.
Epilogue: Reading Anne Lister’s writing
In Italia seicento e quaranta;
In Alemagna duecento e trentuna;
Cento in Francia, in Turchia novantuna;
Ma in Ispagna son già mille e tre.
In Mozart and da Ponte’s tragedy Don Giovanni, the womanising hero’s servant, Leporello, explains with delightful comedy to poor Elvira that she is not alone in her suffering: Madamina, il catalogo è questo. Don Giovanni simply loves all women, tall and short, fat and thin, blonde and brunette, young and old, pretty and ugly, countesses and farmers’ daughters. And he, Leporello, keeps a loyal catalogue of his master’s conquests. Anne Lister resembled both Don Giovanni and, with her journal, Leporello.
Anne Lister began her journal as a list of letters from and to Eliza Raine and, like Leporello, Anne wrote to preserve her memories. Volume three, that part containing an account of my intrigue with Anne [Nantz] Belcombe, I read over attentively, exclaiming to myself, ‘Oh, women, women!’ I thought, too, of Miss Vallance who, by the way, is by no means worse than Anne, who took me on my own terms even more decidedly. The account, too, as merely noted in the index, of Miss Browne, amuses me. I am always taken up with some girl or other. When shall I amend? 1 Whereas Leporello merely listed the women, Anne Lister told stories – and yet believed she was noting things down exactly as they are, thus leaving them to the operations of my cooler judgement hereafter.2 With no distrust of language and writing, she considered her style neutral and objective.
Nor did Anne ever doubt herself. I am not at this moment conscious of having ever done a heartless thing in my life, she wrote, believing I had been more sinned against, than sinning.3 Tho’ bad, the best.4 All her life, she longed for someone whom I can respect & dote on, always at my elbow. Yet none of the women prepared to marry her ever seemed good enough, not Eliza Raine, nor Isabella Norcliffe nor Maria Barlow, certainly not Ann Walker or Mariana Lawton. Anne Lister’s great love was herself.
She lavished her entire attention on her ego, her being, her body and her world. That ego was the reason she wrote. ’Tis just before 6:05 as I am writing at this moment & in the last 2 ½ hours, I have gradually written myself from moody melancholy to contented cheerfulness.5 She did not need another woman by her side for that purpose; it seems made over to a friend that hears it patiently, keeps it faithfully, and by never forgetting anything, is always ready to compare the past & present & thus to cheer & edify the future.6 Her lovers knew that too. Every one of them was jealous of her journal, her great love letter to herself.
Obsessed with recording minute details of her life, Anne Lister worked incredibly hard on her journal, to the point of compulsion. She wrote before she got to her desk, she wrote as she was living life – I was beginning to make pencil notes as usual7 – experiencing reality with pen in hand. In her daily notes, she included not only extracts from her reading material, but also long excerpts from letters she had received; she put printed material or things handwritten by others into her own writing and incorporated it into her journal. Only what she dealt with in writing became true and significant to her. Her journal is a grand-scale attempt to compile her life in the form of text, thus doubling it. The looking over & filling up my journal to my mind always gives me pleasure. I seem to live my life over again.8
Unabbreviated, her notes are of questionable value, as far as the information in them is concerned, and far from entertaining. In their egocentric indiscrimination, they foreshadow the banal uniquity of the selfie. Anne Lister’s journal is anything but an opera libretto, it is not literature – it is a socio-historical occurrence in textual form, describing everything and anything. She had a particular interest in her own female body, focusing on it as no writer had done before, fascinated by its every stirring and considering it all worth writing down. This at a time when women’s bodies were becoming increasingly taboo, referred to in male-dominated discourse as an object for inspiring men’s lust but not thought to feel such a thing themselves. The German philosopher Johann Gottlieb Fichte put it in a nutshell: No sexual drive is expressed in the unspoiled woman, and no sexual drive resides within her, but only love; and this love is the natural drive of woman to satisfy a man. It is, however, a drive that strives urgently for its satisfaction: yet its satisfaction is not the sensual satisfaction of the woman, but that of the man; for the woman, it is only satisfaction of the heart.9
Anne Lister would have laughed out loud at her contemporary’s claim. On the eve of the Victorian era, she created an audacious work of female corporeity. The joys of her desires and the hardships of satisfying them shaped her life and thus also her journal. Writing took the place of, and extended or renewed, her desire. The pleasure of sex was repeated in the act of writing. Sexuality becomes textuality in her diaries; the body and life become script. As a desiring woman and a writing woman, Anne Lister literally created herself in her journal, her body in writing, the novel of her life.
Acknowledgements
I want to express again my gratitude and thanks to all the scholars who have brought Anne Lister’s world so vividly to light. Helena Whitbread and Jill Liddington deserve particular thanks. This book would not be possible without their work.
My research for this book began in Halifax at the West Yorkshire Archive Service, Calderdale, which at that time was housed on the site of Anne Lister’s hotel in the Northgate building. John Patchett presented me with hundreds of papers and documents – including an original volume of Anne Lister’s journal – unforgettably singing arias from Richard Wagner’s music dramas as he did so. I would like to thank Dan Sudron for the reproductions and rights.
The Robert Bosch Foundation bestowed me on me ‘border-crossers grant’ that enabled me to travel in Anne Lister’s footsteps in Russia, Georgia and Azerbaijan. In Tbilisi, I was able to give my first public presentation of my research on Anne Lister. Many thanks to Etuna Nogaideli from the Heinrich Böll Foundation, Natia Mikeladse Bachsoliani from the Goethe-Institut and Ekaterine Gejadze from the Women’s Fund in Georgia for that opportunity. The writer Tamta Melashvili and Nino Gamisonia from the Rural Communities Development Agency in Tbilisi answered my questions on Georgian history and geography.
My English publisher Serpent’s Tail has shown both courage and humour in publishing the biography of an Englishwoman by a German. Working together with Katy Derbyshire and reading her translation of this book has been a great delight.
I could not have written this book without Susette Pia Schuster. She rode a tandem through Yorkshire with me, she hiked through the Pyrenees with me, ate sweet bread in Sweden, arranged for a boat (though not a sledge) trip on the Volga, and fought tooth and nail for tickets for the right sleeping carriage to Baku at Tbilisi station. Surely no one ever doted on another as I do on her.
Timeline
1791 Anne Lister born in Halifax on 3 April to Jeremy and Rebecca Lister, the eldest surviving child of six.
1793 Family moves to Skelfler House in Market Weighton.
1798–1800 Attends a girls’ school in Ripon.
1801–1805 Divides her time between Market Weighton and Shibden Hall with Uncle James and Aunt Anne Lister senior. — Private tuition in Latin and mathematics.
1805 Attends Manor House School in York. — Love affair with Eliza Raine (1791–1860) until 1811.
1806 Moves to Halifax with her family. —Learns Greek. — 11 August 1806 to 22 February 1810: diary on loose sheets of paper.
1808 Develops secret code. — Affair with Maria Alexander until 1809.
1809 Stays with Eliza Raine at the Duffins’ home in York. — Further long stays there until 1815.
1811 Love affair with Isabella Norcliffe, ‘Tib’ (1785–1846) until c.1826.
1812 December: love affa
ir with Mariana Belcombe (1790–1868) until c.1829.
1813 February to May: visits Bath with the Norcliffes. One loose diary sheet on the holiday in Bath. — June: Anne’s favourite brother Samuel dies. The only living siblings are now Anne and her younger sister Marian.
1814 Eliza Raine put into Clifton Asylum in York.
1815 Anne moves permanently into Shibden Hall.
1816 Mariana Belcombe marries Charles Lawton on 9 March; Anne and Nantz Belcombe accompany the couple until August. — From 14 August: journal has survived without gaps until Anne Lister’s death, initially as exercise books 2 and 3. — Charles intercepts a letter from Anne and forbids his wife from seeing her. — Up to 1820, only brief encounters with Mariana. — November: affair with Nantz Belcombe.
1817 21 March: first of 24 bound journal volumes. — 2 September: visit to the Walkers, wearing all black for the first time. — 8 November: Uncle Joseph Lister dies. — 14 November: mother Rebecca Lister dies.
1818 Unrequited infatuation with Elizabeth Browne, up to 1819 — September to November: Isabella Norcliffe stays with Anne; they exchange visits lasting several months every year until 1824.
1819 May/June: trip to Paris and London with Aunt Anne.
1820 Meets Sibella Maclean (1785–1830). — Affair with Miss Vallance and flirt with Harriet Milne née Belcombe.
1821 January: new affair with Nantz Belcombe. — 12 June: flirt with Ann Walker. — July: renews her vows with Mariana Belcombe; Anne contracts a sexually transmitted disease from her.
1822 4 February: Aunt Mary Lister dies; Northgate House falls to Anne’s uncle, James Lister; Anne receives £50 p.a. from him. — March: sale of Skelfler House falls through. — July: trip to Wales with Aunt Anne, visit to the Ladies of Llangollen. — September/October: trip to Paris with father and sister; the two of them move into Northgate House. — Anne infects Isabella Norcliffe.
1823 February/March: Francis Pickford. — June: trip to the Yorkshire Dales with Aunt Anne. — August to October: unhappy reunion with Mariana Lawton.
1824 July/August: trip to the Lake District with Aunt Anne. — Late August to late March 1825: Paris — November: love affair with Maria Barlow, until 1827.
1825 January: moves into shared apartment with Maria Barlow. — August/September: trip to Buxton with Aunt Anne; renews her vows with Mariana Lawton. — December: flirts with Harriet Milne, Miss Duffin and Lou Belcombe.
1826 26 January: Uncle James Lister dies, Anne inherits Shibden Hall. — May: Anne sends Mariana back to Charles Lawton. — June to August: trip to Liverpool, Dublin and Lawton Hall with the Lawtons. — September: trip to Paris with Mariana and Aunt Anne. — Jeremy and Marian move into Shibden Hall. — October: after Mariana’s departure, Anne continues her love affair with Maria Barlow.
1827 June to October: tour of Switzerland and northern Italy with Maria Barlow. — End of the year: affair with Mme de Rosny.
1828 17 March: leaves Paris. — May to July: tour of Scotland with Sibella Maclean. — Winter in Yorkshire with Mariana Lawton; she infects Anne again.
1829 March: London; Sibella Maclean leaves Anne. — April: trip to Paris with Vere Hobart. — August to October: tour of Belgium, Aix-la-Chapelle and northern France with Vere Hobart and Lady Stuart. — September: trip along the Rhine with Lady Caroline Duff Gordon.
1830 Studies anatomy and other subjects in Paris. — August to October: tour of southern France with Lady Stuart de Rothesay; misses the July Revolution in Paris, climbs Monte Perdido. — 16 November: Sibella Maclean dies.
1831 23 May: return to Shibden Hall with Aunt Anne. — August: tour of the Netherlands with Mariana Lawton. — September: first train ride, from Manchester to Liverpool; tour of southern England. — From November: lives in Hastings with Vere Hobart.
1832 15 April: Vere accepts Donald Cameron’s marriage proposal. — May: Anne returns to Shibden Hall; constructs a landscape garden. — August to January: affair with Ann Walker (1803–1854).
1833 February to end of year: Ann Walker in Scotland. — July to November: Anne Lister travels from Paris to Copenhagen via Germany.
1834 4 January: reunited with Ann Walker, who is treated by Stephen Belcombe in York until June. — 10 February: ‘wedding day’ with Ann Walker. — May: tour of the Yorkshire Dales with Ann. — June to August: with Ann to Paris, around France and to the Alps. — September: Ann Walker moves into Shibden Hall.
1835 January to April: ‘marriage announcements’ and threatening letters. — August: London, Buxton. — 26 September: foundation laid for the extension to Northgate House. — November: Walker Pit dug.
1836 26 March: Halifax Guardian accuses Ann Walker over Caddy Fields. — 3 April: Jeremy Lister dies. — Marian moves to Market Weighton. — May: Anne and Ann grant each other life tenancy in their wills. — Start of construction work at Shibden Hall. — 10 October: Aunt Anne dies.
1837 January: mortgage on Northgate Hotel.
1838 April: Listerwick Colliery dug. — May to November: tour of Belgium and France with Ann. — 7 August: climbs the Vignemale.
1839 Conversion work at Shibden Hall. — 20 June: departure for London. — July to September: Copenhagen, Gothenburg, Oslo; tour of Norway and central Sweden; Uppsala, Falun, ship’s passage from Stockholm to Åbo, tour of southern Finland, Helsinki. — 17 September to 7 October: St Petersburg. — 12 October to 5 February: Moscow.
1840 February/March: via Nizhny Novgorod, Kazan, Saratov, Astrakhan to Vladikavkas, Georgian Military Road. — April to June: Tbilisi; in May to Azerbaijan, Baku. — July/August: Kutaisi; tour of Racha-Lechkhumi; Zugdidi. — 11 August: last journal entry, written in Jgali. — 22 September: Anne Lister dies in or near Kutaisi. — Ann Walker transports the coffin to Halifax via Moscow.
1841 29 April: burial in Halifax Parish Church. — Ann Walker lives in Shibden Hall.
1843–1845 Ann Walker put into Clifton Asylum in York against her will.
1845–1854 Ann Walker lives a withdrawn life at Cliffe Hill, Lightcliffe.
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