Gentleman Jack (Movie Tie-In)

by Anne Choma

  Anne was becoming more relaxed around her new ‘high-ton’ (i.e., ‘posh’) friends, as she called them. Three days earlier, conversation between the two women had been more guarded. Anne, not wishing to demonstrate an intellectual prowess above that of someone of superior rank, had given Lady Stuart de Rothesay the last word on the subject of Creationism:

  Got onto the first chapter of Genesis. The light created before the sun. She talked some moments of which I, too civil to take any advantage, in spite of her saying the sun was created afterwards. She thought it not necessary to believe it not existing before the creation of our world. There were many suns and systems.

  27TH JULY 1830

  Having already forged connections with leading French scientists, Anne was in a position to treat her friends to some unusual cultural experiences in Paris. Now, at the invitation of the scientist Étienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, she took Vere and the Stuart de Rothesays to see the inside of a skeleton of a female whale. Lady Stuart de Rothesay, her two young daughters, Charlotte and Louisa, as well as Vere and elderly Lady Stuart, gamely followed Anne up the ‘carpeted ladders’ to take their seat inside the skeleton, ‘in which’ wrote Anne, ‘30 persons can sit’ among ‘tables and books and newspapers’. When Monsieur Saint-Hilaire had to leave the party temporarily, she took over the lecture with panache. ‘All listened with attention,’ she said, ‘And the thing went off well.’

  Vere, it seems, agreed. Anne reported their conversation in her diary: ‘Said she, “I do not know whether you will think it a compliment but the children [Louisa and Charlotte] said to me, “We wished Miss Lister would begin again for we understood her much better than Monsieur Hilaire”.’ Anne gave herself a pat on the back: ‘That will do well enough’ (10TH JULY 1829).

  Those children who had been so captivated by Anne Lister would go on to lead extraordinary adult lives themselves. Charlotte Stuart became Viscountess Canning when she married the son of the former Prime Minister George Canning. By 1842, two years after Anne’s death, Charlotte Canning was Lady of the Bedchamber to Queen Victoria. She achieved success in her own right as an artist of Indian landscapes.

  Charlotte’s younger sister Louisa Stuart, who became Marchioness of Waterford, also trained as an artist, under the tutelage of Dante Gabriel Rossetti. Her image was said to have inspired some of the Pre-Raphaelite painters. Augustus Hare’s 1893 biography, The Story of Two Noble Lives, gives great insight into the characters of the two women, and gives a flavour of the auspicious social circles in which Anne Lister had found herself moving by the 1830s.

  Vere was quick to offer Anne unsolicited pointers about how to behave in high society. Anne recorded more than one occasion in Paris when Vere indicated that she felt Anne’s inquisitive mind was getting the better of her in the company of people of rank. Vere only wanted Anne to make a good impression. It was not the ‘done thing’ to have asked Lord Cosmo Gordon to name his ‘favourite hero of antiquity’. ‘You will puzzle him,’ she said. Similarly, when Anne had asked Sir Charles Bagot, a member of the Privy Council who served as British Ambassador to Russia and to the Netherlands, why he ‘disliked Petersburgh people’ Vere was quick to tell her that such people ‘Cannot always answer such leading questions’ (18TH OCTOBER 1829).

  Initially defensive – ‘If people express a decided opinion, they subject themselves to a decided question as to why and wherefore’ – Anne, who was given to periods of introspection and self-analysis, went on to absorb Vere’s remarks about her behaviour. She was aware that she was used to being in a position of control. At Shibden, she took charge of running of her own estate and managing the people who lived and worked on it. There, she behaved in a manner befitting her rank, as landowner and employer of men. She was looked up to. It was becoming clear to her that she would need to learn a new set of behaviours if she was to succeed and be accepted in this social circle:

  But, thought I, there is a good hint – never ask a too decided or abrupt question. She little thinks how much I have had to learn – when to talk and when not. I was too new among such society to quite know how to manage for the best. I was anxious not to appear too familiar. My manner wants to be more easy and liante [sociable] without being too much so, but I do not fancy people see thro’ the real person. Better think me stupid and reserved and cold than the contrary . . .

  I must dress well, and having everything nice, and reading all the works of the day, and studying at the same time – nothing but this to bear me thro’. I must see to about having a carriage. I can then be useful to people and this will do something.

  TRAVEL JOURNAL, 18TH OCTOBER 1829

  Anne was painfully aware of the gulf that existed between her and her monied friends. Vere was somehow under the impression that Anne had an income of £5,000 a year, a piece of misinformation which Anne chose not to correct. ‘Oh, if they saw my father and Shibden and knew all’ she wrote in her travel journal on 15th October 1829, horrified at the prospect of them discovering her real circumstances.

  In other ways, though, Anne felt that she did belong in the company of the Stuarts, Hobarts and Stuart de Rothesays, writing that ‘I know not how it is that I am at heart so pleased with the really high ones of the land. Their stateliness and dignity suits me.’ She told herself that ‘medium people’ (meaning her family and, as time progressed, her provincial ex-lover Mariana Lawton) did not suit her any more. She put out of her mind the unattractive way in which the ‘high ones’ had poked fun at her manservant George Playforth and ‘all laughed at his stare’, with Lady Gordon telling Anne that she ‘could not have him in London – his vulgarity is too evident’.

  Though nothing overtly romantic developed between Anne and Vere during their time in Paris, the experience was eye-opening, particularly for Vere. She arrived in Hastings with a good understanding of what her ‘extraordinary’ friend Anne Lister was about. The expensive gifts, the secret code and the gentlemanly displays of attention had made the intended impact. Vere told Anne directly that their conversations ‘seemed to her more like that of a lover than a friend, so affectionate’ (2ND AUGUST 1829).

  What Anne did not know as she prepared to travel to Hastings in the autumn of 1831 was that Vere had an agenda for agreeing to stay in the country, besides dodging the cholera in Europe. She was keeping a secret from Anne about her own love life.

  Donald Cameron of Lochiel would have been a formidable love rival for anyone. Having distinguished himself in the Napoleonic Wars, and more recently for his heroic conduct as a lieutenant in the Grenadier Guards, he was soon to become the 23rd Chief of the revered Cameron clan in the Scottish Highlands. This man ‘was not to be sneezed at’ (20TH SEPTEMBER 1831). What’s more, he had the backing of the de Rothesays. Unbeknown to Anne, plans to marry him to Vere had been underway for some time.

  And it appeared that Vere herself had high hopes for the match. It fell to Lady Stuart de Rothesay to break the news to Anne that Vere had a ‘particular reason’ for not wanting to go abroad that winter: ‘not liking to be out of the way of a Captain Cameron (Donald) who had lately paid her decided attention.’

  Publicly, Anne Lister responded with sangfroid. ‘Ah,’ she said to Lady Stuart de Rothesay, ‘I will not say a word of this, but I am glad you have told, I now see my way clearly.’ In private, she thought Vere had been disingenuous in not telling her about the prospect of the match:

  Oh, thought I to myself . . . She might have been more candid and ought to have been. I have had my amusement in flirting and shall get off early. I may take the society this winter at Hastings, and then Lady Gordon will suit me much better.

  20TH SEPTEMBER 1831

  It’s clear that Anne was hurt, but she was not entirely surprised. Indeed, she remembered an instance in London in which Vere had spoken of a secret that, when pressed, she had refused to reveal.

  The news of Vere and Donald’s match did not deter Anne from setting
up rooms in Hastings with Vere. Though she admitted, initially, that any affection between them (by which Anne meant not only sex, but long-term commitment) seemed ‘out of the question’, the truth of the matter was that she did feel that she could compete with Captain Cameron. She had much to offer Vere. Vere, in turn, represented Anne’s ideal woman. She was engaging, clever and sophisticated, with connections to the social circles in which Anne aspired to move. Anne wasn’t about to let her slip away without a fight.

  In 1831, Anne was as determined as she had ever been to find a female life partner. She didn’t feel it was in her nature to live alone – the nature which also dictated that settling for a man was never going to be part of the plan. She was prepared to risk heartache and pain in pursuit of a happiness that she believed was as much her right as it was Captain Cameron’s. She was also acutely aware that time was not on her side. Anne was approaching forty, and no matter how much she told herself that she was ‘comfortably enough indifferent’ about the outcome with Vere, she was not. It was now or never. She would later write in her journal that ‘the woman that deliberates is lost’ (7TH FEBRUARY 1832). Anne was willing to gamble her own heart to win Vere as a companion for life.

  ‘Her high opinion of me is evident’

  One of the first things Anne did after arriving in Hastings was write to her beloved aunt at Shibden Hall. She was keen to tell her how well she and Vere were settling in, and how cosily they were getting on together:

  We are sheltered here by an enormous, perpendicular, sand rock cliff, close behind us, and circling round a little on each side, so as to keep all winds but due South. We are even close upon the sea than at St Leonards. Yet they say, [we] shall not be so incommoded with the spray in winter. In fact, after all, Hastings is well and picturesquely situated, is a nice little town, and might be a comfortable residence were it possible to get a well built, air-tight house, and dry the atmosphere a little . . . The box contained all I expected – Miss Hobart liked the Parkin – [we] walk for a couple of hours before breakfast – breakfast at 11 or 11¼ – dine at 6½ or 7 . . . then music – tea at 9, and go to bed about 11½. Our 2 bedrooms over our drawing room and dining room . . . 4 flights of stairs from the kitchen. We have soup, one dish of meat, 3 dishes of vegetables, and a pudding or tart every day, and are, so far, from 1st to last of us, very harmonious and agreeable. Must begin, and stick to my writing soon.

  9TH NOVEMBER 1831

  It is a typically detailed account. Even away from home, one of Anne’s preoccupations was the structure and order of her days. She was keen to maximise her time in Hastings, and made regular visits into town on her own. She took the opportunity to expand her burgeoning library, spending a massive 19 guineas on ‘Boydell’s Shakespeare in 9 volumes’ at a local book auction, in what she called a bout of ‘temporary insanity’. She instantly regretted the expense, and started thinking of ways that she might be able to re-coup some of the money. She wondered about writing a book of her own, about a recent visit to the Pyrenees:

  Thinking to write my tour there, and afterwards if that answers, a sort of sensible, popular travels. The buying of Boydell’s Shakespeare has roused me to think of making money . . . I must try . . . May go again to make my words more perfect?

  16TH JANUARY 1832

  The as yet unwritten ‘Wanderings of Viator, Pyrenees 1830’ would, she fancied, be dedicated to Lady Stuart de Rothesay.

  On Sundays, the vicars of Hastings bore the brunt of Anne’s critique. One unfortunate preacher was deemed ‘affected’ and ‘slightly impedimented’ as he delivered a sermon from the Epistle of St John. Anne visited medical men and apothecaries, making sure to record in detail the special trip to order ‘sulphur electuary’ for Vere’s persistent piles. Back at Pelham Crescent, her greatest indulgence was reading. Books were reviewed on a regular basis. Edward Bulwer-Lytton’s true-crime novel Eugene Aram was ‘Powerfully written, at least the last volume’. Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein was a ‘strangely odd, genius-like cleverly written thing’.

  Meanwhile, there were some domestic issues to deal with. Anne’s servant Cameron was proving incompetent. Vere was the first to notice:

  Miss Hobart not satisfied with the grocer’s bill, and with good reason – Cameron for any good she does in these matters is not worth her meat – she is indeed an uncommonly great noodle, and my heart fails me at the thought of taking such a person by way of being trusted to abroad.

  10TH JANUARY 1832

  This didn’t prevent Anne and Vere from enjoying each other’s company. They spent their days reading, walking on the sea front, shopping and attending church together. In a letter to Lady Harriet de Hageman, Vere’s half-sister in Copenhagen, Anne described ‘a degree of quiet, comfortable wholesomeness’ that ‘can’t fail to do us good’ (21ST NOVEMBER 1831).

  As the days passed, there was a return of the flirtation that had characterised Anne and Vere’s relationship in Paris. Though there was a hint of childishness on Vere’s part that made her intentions hard to decipher – pushing for attention and sulking when it wasn’t adequately delivered – it was behaviour that gave Anne hope. She saw the potential for more serious affection.

  In the evenings, Vere played the piano and gave Anne German lessons. Anne presented Vere with an amorous poem – ‘When in my hand thy pulse is prest I feel it alter mine, and draw another from my breast in unison with thine.’ Vere was not aware that Anne had originally written the verse in 1824, for a woman she met in Paris.

  The following day, Anne upped the ante by reading to Vere from William Collins’s ‘The Passions. An Ode’. Vere’s response was difficult for Anne to interpret; she swung between laughing at and seeming to appreciate the ‘beautiful’ passage.

  Vere recognised that Anne was a brilliantly clever woman, and increasingly enjoyed her company. When Anne asked if she should read some of Gibbon’s Decline and Fall aloud, Vere told her that she ‘liked her talking better than reading’, because it was ‘better than Gibbon’. Anne relished the compliment and reported in her diary that ‘her high opinion of me is evident’ (11TH FEBRUARY 1832).

  Vere also trusted Anne’s medical opinion. She took advantage of Anne’s interest in bodily functions and disease to ask for her thoughts on the ‘suspicious greenish dark indurated phlegm such as she spits up occasionally’. Anne readily ‘took the opportunity of observing’. Trust and intimacy between the two women was growing.

  Anne knew that her love of science was unusual and intriguing. In fact, she told Vere more about her experiences under the tutelage of the renowned natural philosopher Georges Cuvier than she had ever disclosed to other friends or lovers:

  3 hours talk anatomical . . . told her of my having Juliart and of my dissection. She really seeming interested about it, and not sorry to find I had never named it even to M [Mariana Lawton], she said as if thoughtlessly, ‘What pleasure you will have some time in dissecting me.’ I merely said, ‘Oh, no, even if I felt it a duty to have her opened, I should not, could not, be there to see. No one dissected those they had loved or had even much known.’ But I took no further notice. I think the idea of being with me eventually is somehow getting more familiar to her mind. She really begins to flirt a little with me and looked very pretty when playing this evening. Well strange things happen – she may like me after all.

  14TH NOVEMBER 1831

  The discussion resumed over breakfast the next day. It was an uncommon seduction technique, but Anne’s use of her scientific knowledge to deepen Vere’s interest in her is telling. There were no shared conventions of lesbian love available to her to call upon. She had to rely on her intellect and wit to court women. And with Vere it seemed to be working. Anne had taken a risk in telling Vere about her transgressive studies (although she assured Vere that she had ‘never assisted in dissecting adult corpses’); Vere’s suggestion that Anne should enjoy ‘dissecting’ her too demonstrated that she
was interested in playing along.

  Though later Anne privately indulged some of her less optimistic thoughts about what Vere might really be thinking of her – ‘The fact is,’ she wrote on 26th December, ‘she thinks me odd – more as she once let slip – like man than woman’ – she was, in general, confident that the relationship with Vere was on a good track as 1831 drew to a close. As midnight struck on the 31st December, Anne kissed Vere gently on the lips. Vere looked at her but didn’t say anything. ‘Will she, can she, suit me?’ was the question on Anne’s mind as the new year chimed in.

  ‘She is not worth a heart or friendship like mine . . . she said she always told me I cared too much for her . . .’

  Unfortunately, the year got off to a poor start. Anne found Vere increasingly critical of her, and the atmosphere at Pelham Crescent quickly became cold and tense. It appeared that Vere struggled particularly with Anne’s lack of femininity:

  She certainly treats me oddly, and so she thinks of me too. For yesterday morning on my saying something that the occasion brought forwards about petticoats, ‘Indeed,’ said she, ‘I think from your difficulty in getting accustomed to them, you must have spent a great part of your life without them.’

  2ND JANUARY 1832

  Looking back, there had been warning signs. Before they had arrived in Hastings, Vere had indicated that she sometimes felt stifled by Anne’s manner and could not ‘bear’ her looks (3RD NOVEMBER 1831). As they settled into co-habitation, she found Anne ‘tiresome’ and imposed allotted times in which she could visit her rooms. It was a blow for Anne’s self-esteem. Vere was ‘le jeu ne vaut pas la chandelle’ – not worth a candle – she wrote frustratedly in her journal (26TH NOVEMBER 1831).