Gentleman Jack (Movie Tie-In)

by Anne Choma

  It emerged that until very recently, Miss Walker’s ‘affections had been engaged’ to a man. The suitor, whom Ann described simply as ‘one of the best men’, had died just three months earlier. Now, she was anxious that Anne should not expect her feelings to be ‘transferred so soon’.

  Anne appeared to take this on the chin. She found herself able to slip easily into a gentlemanly, gallant role, begging ‘a thousand pardons’ for her forwardness and describing her own conduct as ‘madness’ in the hope of allaying Miss Walker’s anxieties. She was satisfied with her performance; ‘All this was very prettily done . . . I shall now turn sentimentally melancholy and put on all the air of romantic hopelessness.’

  Privately, Anne was more analytical, and more confused. She was perplexed by the contradictions she had discovered in shy Ann Walker. She even felt that in encouraging her attentions, there had been an element of dissembling in Ann’s behaviour: ‘She certainly gulled me in that I never dreamt of her being the passionate little person I find her in spite of her calling herself cold,’ she wrote.

  Her instinct was beginning to pull Anne in different directions. On one hand, it told her to be ‘be cautious’ and ‘mind what I say’ to Miss Walker, but on the other, it suggested that ‘a little spice of matrimony’ might do Miss Walker good.

  The business of Miss Walker’s former suitor was a further complication. It had been a remarkable and surprising day. ‘I scarce know what to make of her,’ Anne mused, ‘Hang it! This queer girl puzzles me.’

  CHAPTER 6

  Miss Walker’s Mumbling Kisses and Nervous Inconsistency, John Booth’s Mistake and Suspicious Eliza Priestley

  ‘She let out today that there is some who would now be glad of her, & take her into a very different rank of life from her present one – some poor Scotch baronet?’

  While she had been at Lidgate on 4th October, Anne had learned that Miss Walker had been receiving anonymous letters. Though her diaries do not reveal their content, Anne noted that they had ‘much troubled’ Miss Walker, and the younger woman’s appeal for help demonstrates her growing reliance on Anne as someone to take on the burden of the issues that caused her anxiety. As Anne wrote, ‘she would get rid of all troubles of cousins, or letters, when with me’.

  Over the years, Anne Lister had also received strange letters in the post. Gleaning that her unusual dress and gentlemanly manner were linked somehow to a deviant sexuality, men had written with mocking proposals of relationships or marriage. Anne had grown used to this sort of attention, and seemed able to dismiss it as nonsense. For Miss Walker, whose sense of self was more fragile, it was more threatening.

  It seems likely that the letters Miss Walker received concerned her increasingly visible friendship with Anne Lister. Local eyes were open to the almost daily visits the two women were paying to each other’s homes – and Anne Lister was not without a reputation.

  It is entirely possible that the letters were a warning shot to Anne Lister, sent from inside Ann’s family. In contrast to the support Anne had from her loving and remarkably forward-thinking aunt and laid-back father, Ann Walker had no emotional safety net. She was closely guarded by a network of people – the Sutherlands, the Rawsons, the Edwards and the Priestleys – who had their own financial interests at heart. Within her tribe of relations, Mr Priestley and Mr Edwards were particularly mindful of Ann Walker’s wealth. As joint trustees of the Walker estate, they were duty bound to protect her money. Whether there was a local inkling of the nature of Anne and Ann’s relationship by this time or not, the fact was that one woman was spending a dangerous amount of time with their rich relative.

  Anne Lister remained troubled by what she had learned about Miss Walker’s late former love-interest. From her journal entry of 5th October, it seems as if she had resolved to follow her own advice and ‘be cautious’ of letting things develop too quickly:

  I explained how sorry I was. Would have been the last to have intruded on her feelings under the circumstances of such recent grief. But, my being hopeless now, no reason that I shall always be so, and we would leave things as they always were . . . wait the six months as agreed.

  5TH OCTOBER 1832

  However, pulling back from the relationship was easier said than done. Ann Walker was growing increasingly dependent on Anne’s practical advice as well as her emotional support. She looked to Anne for guidance on estate matters, the Walker rent rolls, and how to spend the £1,000 of her £2,500 a year income she had at her immediate disposal. She may not have considered that it was becoming confusing for Anne to be kept at arm’s length in some ways, at the same time as being relied upon for affection and so thoroughly implicated in Ann’s future plans in others. It is clear from her diary that Anne was beginning to wonder if inconsistent Miss Walker was going to be more trouble than she was worth.

  Anne’s assessment of this ‘queer girl’ and her erratic behaviour reflects the disparity in the two women’s abilities to process their liaison. It was more than the fact that Anne Lister had experienced lesbian relationships before. It was that she had engaged in years of introspection and analysis to understand her place in the world. Anne’s diary, and particularly her crypt-hand, had long provided the comfort of a space in which she could explore her deepest emotions and form her complicated identity. She had resolved her Christianity with her sexuality. She had found precedents for her own desires in studies of classical literature. As much as she was led by her heart, the decisions she made were painstakingly weighed up, considered and rationalised. Her journal was a form of daily therapy. It gave her the space to challenge her own behaviour and that of others. It was an important tool that helped to smooth her path to personal happiness.

  Ann Walker relied on no such method to untangle her inner-most thoughts. The joy of her new experiences competed freely with her anxiety, her desires tussled with her deep religiosity and trust in the Almighty God.

  Anne and Ann spent 5th October 1832 together at Lidgate. By just after 10.30am, Miss Walker had given Anne her first ‘mumbling kisses’ of the day and lay ‘languid’ on Anne’s arm. Anne felt that she ‘might have done what she liked’ with her, that is, initiated sex. Miss Walker had, after all, been so keen for her to ‘stay all night’ at Lidgate.

  Her restraint on this occasion reflected in part Anne’s reluctance to take their affair to the next level with ‘no hope’ of Miss Walker confirming their long-term commitment. Miss Walker’s assurance to her that she ‘thought I [Anne] had hope’, was not enough.

  Miss Walker was suffering with back pain, a frequently recurring affliction, and Anne suggested taking her to see Dr Belcombe in York. Ann’s response speaks volumes about the extensive medical attention she had received in the past for her nervousness and depression and their physical effects: ‘She said he would only laugh. All doctors would say is “what was the matter with her?” Meaning, that she wanted a good husband.’

  Though Anne privately wondered if a diagnosis of hypochondria could be ‘near enough the truth’, she convinced Miss Walker that a visit to Steph should be arranged for the end of that month.

  By now, Anne Lister believed that Ann Walker was ‘head and ears’ in love with her. However, her own enthusiasm for the relationship was increasingly tempered by the conviction that Miss Walker was less innocent than she had led Anne to believe. She found Ann’s anecdote about the poems of George Crabbe particularly off-putting:

  Catherine [Rawson] maintained they were not fit to be read. Miss Walker was not so particular. Not fit for young girls, but very well for herself and Catherine. ‘Oh, oh’, thought I, ‘this is a new light to me’ . . . She casually said the other day, she should now know better how to flirt than she used to do. It has struck me more than once she is a deepish hand.

  5TH OCTOBER 1832

  The ‘deepish’ (i.e. worldly) hand that now led Anne Lister upstairs supported her theory that Miss Walker had been
holding back the truth about her level of experience:

  She took me up to her room. I kissed her and she pushed herself so to me. I rather felt and might have done as much as I pleased. She is man-keen enough. If I stay all night, it will be my own fault if I do not have all of her I can . . . she wishes to try the metal I am made of, and I begin to fear not being able to do enough, and to doubt whether even fun will be amusing or safe . . . shall I, shall I not give into fun with her, stay all night and do my best for her without caring for the result?

  5TH OCTOBER 1832

  Such a show of insecurity was rare, and Anne Lister’s doubts about her ability as a woman to sexually satisfy ‘man-keen’ Miss Walker indicate her wider misgivings about her potential partner. On her return to Shibden that evening, she confided her feelings in Aunt Anne: ‘Said how I was cooled about the thing – yet still that I would wait the six months for the answer. If it was no, I should not grieve much’. The next day she would add that she ‘felt as pleased that it was over as I had done when it began’.

  Despite these displays of indifference to her aunt, Anne had by no means completely given up on Miss Walker. Her determination to pursue Ann’s hand is reflected in her continued efforts to ingratiate herself with her wider family. It appeared that her endeavours to convince Mrs Priestley of her ‘agreeableness’ were paying dividends:

  She had walked with me as far as or beyond the blacksmith’s shop, and I returned with her . . . She hoped I would breakfast there on Monday, as she was never busy till ten. Very good friends. She said inclination would have led her to turn with me again, had she been able. Either my telling her this day week of her being called fascinating had had a good effect on her, or she made up to me on Miss W’s account.

  6TH OCTOBER 1832

  But Mrs Priestley’s next comment – that Anne and Miss Walker appeared ‘very thick’ with each other – worried Anne. Even expressed innocently, Mrs Priestley’s observation that the pair had been spending every day together was concerning because it meant that people were becoming aware of their closeness. Anne was keen to play down the relationship: ‘Yes, we were very good friends. I had not been every day – not Tuesday or Wednesday . . . I should not go there today.’

  True to her word, Anne did not go to Lidgate that day. Having left Mrs Priestley, she returned home and filled the day with jobs around Shibden, giving orders to Pickles about the new road through the Trough of Bolland wood, and to Charles Howarth about the library passage outside her bedroom.

  On the morning of Sunday 7th October, having taken breakfast at 8.20, Anne walked down the steep Old Bank to Halifax parish church to hear the morning service. She was joined by her father, who had made a good recovery from his recent stomach complaint. The curate, Anne wrote, preached (for ‘28 mins stupidly’) from the second epistle of Corinthians:

  We have renounced disgraceful, underhanded ways; we refuse to practice cunning or to tamper with God’s word, but by the open statement of the truth we would commend ourselves to every man’s conscience in the sight of God.

  Anne quite often fell asleep during sermons, finding them either over-long or simply boring. Curates, vicars and priests were a frequent target of her cutting observations, being stupid, ‘impedimented’ or daring to have dirty nails.

  Today, despite her criticism of its delivery, the words of the epistle would have resonance for Anne as someone who lived her life very consciously ‘in the sight of God’. Anne had personalised her relationship with God, unafraid to confess her frailties and faults in their daily communication. The confidence with which she was able to view her place in the world was thanks, largely, to Him. She lived her life by the dictates of her nature, a nature ordained and sanctified according to God’s holy will.

  While Anne observed the rituals of Christian doctrine – prayer and worship – she did not always attend the Sunday service at church or take the sacrament. As she saw it, if she had read the prayers at home she had ‘done the business’. Nor did she necessarily devote herself to the bible for hours on end. Holy days could be filled with estate work and business meetings, and sex was not off the cards either. Sundays were not a day of abstinence for Anne Lister.

  On that Sunday, while Anne had been occupying the Lister pew in Halifax, Miss Walker had failed to attend Lightcliffe church. As a committed member of the congregation, her unusual absence was noted by Mrs Priestley, who informed Anne. Having observed herself that the blinds had been closed when she had passed Lidgate earlier that day, Anne walked with Mrs Priestly to the house to check up on Ann.

  Anne wrote that Miss Walker seemed ‘very glad’ to see her. Mrs Priestley did not stay long, leaving the two women to take a tea of ‘cold tongue, bread and butter, and wine’ together.

  This was not the first time that a visit to Lidgate had been marked by Anne’s concern for Miss Walker’s health. On several occasions she had arrived to find Ann still in bed, and would have to rouse her and encourage her to eat or take exercise. In this instance, the conversation quickly revealed that Ann’s suffering was mental rather than physical. Her non-appearance at church reflected her anxiety about what answer she should give to Anne’s proposal:

  [She] began again about wishing me to have no hope, but that she now said enough, and would say no more about it. I had declared I had given up all thought of the thing. Had positively no hope at all. In fact, considered the decisive ‘no’, as good as said. ‘No,’ she replied, ‘I did not say that. I will think about it, but don’t go on hoping.’ I declared on my word I [would] not do so. Thinking to myself after much pretty talk, I care little about it anyway.

  7TH OCTOBER 1832

  Though Miss Walker’s anxiety and indecision were beginning to take their toll on Anne, her declaration that she had given up hope for the relationship rings hollow. For a start, she remained determined to get inside Miss Walker’s ‘thick knitted drawers’:

  She kissed me and lay on my arm as before, evidently excited, tho’ talking of her coldness, which I never contradicted. Said a little French countess had taught me much of foreign manners, and court scandal. My aunt afraid of her for me . . .

  I kissed and pressed very tenderly, and got my right hand up her petticoats to queer, but not to the skin – could not get thro’ her thick knitted drawers, tho’ she never once attempted to put my hand away. She held her thighs too tight together for me. I shall manage it the next time. She said she had now begun with fires in her room. Said I would sit by it with her. Laughed, and said the dressing room door should have opened into the bedroom, and finding my conversation needed not be so strait-laced as for Catherine Rawson, hinted at the only use of pocket holes abroad, etc., etc.

  7TH OCTOBER 1832

  In pocket holes, Anne was alluding to a practice she had observed during her time in Paris. Telling Miss Walker about the public masturbation techniques of French men was a way of pushing their conversation into a different space, creating a very different atmosphere to the polite chit-chat Ann would have known with ‘strait-laced’ Catherine Rawson.

  It was also designed to make her laugh; Anne relied on humour and anecdote to impress women. To Ann Walker, who had spent all of her life in Halifax, outlandish stories like this one came from another world, and the woman who relayed them was equally exotic.

  The ‘delightful moonlight night’ was soon to be spoiled. Having been dispatched to collect his mistress from Lightcliffe after the upset Anne’s late-night return had caused on 29th September, John Booth had mistakenly knocked on the Priestley’s door. Quickly realising that he had come to the wrong Lightcliffe property, John left, but not before unwittingly revealing to Mr and Mrs Priestley that Anne had been spending another cosy evening with Miss Walker.

  Despite Anne’s inner reasoning that Mrs Priestley had no reason to doubt the respectability of her calls on Miss Walker, her instinct told her that this would not end well. The
Priestleys’ suspicions would be roused. ‘They will talk us over and think something in the wind,’ she wrote to her diary that night. She was right.

  ‘If you never had any attachment, who taught you to kiss?’ I laughed and said how nicely that was said – then answered, that nature taught me’

  Anne Lister’s conviction that Miss Walker was somehow sexually experienced pervaded the pages of her diary in the early stages of their liaison. Having kept conveniently quiet about her own past encounters (‘I had said I was at no time likely to marry. How far she understood me I could not make out’), she was able to laugh off Miss Walker’s question about who it was that had taught her to kiss. ‘Nature’ was her tried and tested reply (8TH OCTOBER 1832).

  Despite her own evasive answer, Anne remained preoccupied with the idea that Miss Walker had been practising on someone else. ‘And who taught you?’ she found herself tempted to respond. Having mentally explored the possibility that Andrew Fraser, Miss Walker’s late sweetheart, had had his way with her, Anne’s mind wandered to a more fantastic possibility over the next few days: Catherine Rawson. After all, Miss Walker had admitted that ‘Catherine Rawson had often said she would like to live with her’. It was enough to make Anne write that she ‘fancied that Catherine’s classics might have taught her the trick of debauching Miss W’ (11TH OCTOBER 1832).

  It seemed unlikely that shy Ann Walker and ‘strait-laced’ Miss Rawson had been lovers, but clearly, lesbian relationships were taking place under the radar of a society that rendered them invisible. Sexual relationships could be hidden behind the veneer of ‘romantic friendship’, a contemporary conception of platonic same-sex intimacy often used to describe co-habiting, financially independent, female companions.