by Anne Choma
The two ‘Ladies of Llangollen’ is one of the best known examples of Georgian ‘romantic friendship’. Anne Lister had read about Eleanor Butler and Sarah Ponsonby, who lived together at Plas Newyd in the north east of Wales, in the society magazine, La Belle Assemble, as a young woman. ‘I am interested about these ladies very much,’ she had noted in her diary when an opportunity arose to meet them several years later. ‘There is something in their story, and in all I have heard about them here, added to other circumstances, makes a deep impression’ (23RD JULY 1822).
By the time Anne visited Plas Newyd in 1822, Miss Ponsonby and Miss Butler had lived together for forty-two years. The pastoral utopia that the upper-class women had created in rural Wales, along with their eccentric reputation, had attracted visits from some of the greatest writers of the day, including Shelley, Wordsworth, Lord Bryon and Walter Scott.
Whether an endless stream of curious visitors was a lifestyle that appealed to Anne, her visit to ‘the Ladies’ had a personal resonance. She seemed most struck by the gentlemanly presentation of ‘odd’ and ‘singular’ Miss Ponsonby, with her ‘shortish waisted cloth habit’, ‘plain, plaited, frilled habit shirt’ and ‘thick, white cravat’ (23RD JULY 1822). Her brilliant mind drew praise: ‘There was a freshness of intellect, a verdure of amusing talent which, with heart and thorough good breeding, made her conversation more time-beguiling than I could have imagined,’ Anne wrote.
Coming immediately after a disastrous visit to Mariana Lawton – who had been married to Charles Lawton for six years at this point and whose behaviour on this occasion left Anne ‘convulsed with smothering my sobs’ (17TH JULY 1822), the uncomplicated union she found at Plas Newyd seemed idyllic to Anne.
However, the Ladies’ path to personal freedom had not been straightforward. Anne knew that Lady Sarah and Lady Eleanor had fled their native Ireland to escape their respective families’ threats of forced heterosexual marriage or convent confinement. Anne recognised how lucky her own circumstances were. Family acceptance, financial privilege, her impressive intellect – all had given her the confidence to live as she wished to; the way she felt nature had intended. ‘The utmost I can bear is sometimes to dissemble feelings,’ she wrote on 10th July 1824. ‘When we leave nature, we leave our only steady guide, and from that moment become inconsistent with ourselves.’
The uniqueness of Lady Sarah’s and Lady Eleanor’s situation had a profound effect on Anne’s romantic imagination, and she could not help thinking that their relationship ‘was not platonic’ (3RD AUGUST 1822). The disparaging assessment of Emma Saltmarshe, a friend of Anne’s, that ‘they must be 2 romantic girls . . . it was a pity they were not married’ (10TH AUGUST 1822) demonstrates perfectly the contemporary distinction between platonic romantic friendship and marriage, which involved sex. As they were two women, Emma Saltmarshe assumed that the relationship between the Ladies of Llangollen must belong in the former category.
It was this thinking that might have worked in Anne Lister and Ann Walker’s favour, allowing them to enjoy the freedom of an intimate relationship without the risk of public scrutiny. But, while there were many who would remain ever ignorant to the true nature of their relationship, Anne’s distinctive image had implications for how their liaison would be viewed in society.
Physically, Anne Lister stood out. She did not fit into the image of femininity that romantic friendship had been constructed around. In fact, she defied categorisation. She walked like a man, dressed permanently in black, carried a fob watch and spoke with a deep voice. By virtue of her androgyny she unwittingly forced the people around her to consider their own perception of a ‘normal’ woman. The unusual figure she cut attracted attention, and her gender was the subject of speculation. Though the society she lived in had no language with which to accuse her of pursuing lesbian relationships, it did not mean that some people were not privately speculating about her love life.
Anne was aware that her ‘oddity’ was not invisible. While she appreciated the protection that the incomprehension of her sexuality provided, she knew that she was courting danger with her transgressive relationships. For their true nature to be revealed would be disastrous; she often talked about disclosure leading to ruination. In public, discretion over her attractions had become second nature.
In private, she had taken risks. At a house party at Langton Hall in 1818 that bore little resemblance to the stiff provincial soirees of Regency literature, Anne and Isabella Norcliffe had entertained a young woman called Mary Vallance into the early hours of the morning. Also the setting of Anne and Tib’s affair, the secluded corridors of rural Langton had provided a discreet backdrop for the exploration of a female subculture.
Experimenting at a party at twenty-six was one thing, conducting a lesbian affair on home ground as a middle-aged woman was another. For Anne’s relationship with Miss Walker to survive, she knew it must be carried out as carefully as possible.
On the morning of 8th October 1832, Anne shook off the previous night’s worry that Mrs Priestley would ‘think something in the wind’ and decided to pay another visit to Ann Walker at Lidgate. In typical style, she had a long list of social and business matters to attend to first, starting with a call on elderly Mrs Rawson of Stoney Royd.
In spite of their age difference, Anne had been a friend of Christopher and Jeremiah’s mother for many years, since around the time she had moved to Halifax as a young woman. On this occasion, she was greeted with a warm welcome and some interesting local intelligence:
Breakfast over but brought in again for me – Mrs R very glad to see me – sat with her till 10.10. Miss Clarke took with her a fortune of five and twenty thousand pounds. Christopher Rawson was told by her, just before the sale of the Walker navigation shares, she would not marry.
Mrs Rawson had a good sense of humour about her sons. She was amused to hear that Jeremiah (who was yet to give Anne an answer about the price of her coal), had offered his services to Anne as land steward:
Jeremiah Rawson commissioned Mrs R to tell me he should be glad to steward for me. Said we should have got on very well together, but he was too late, and laughed and said Miss Walker had provided me so that I had never seemed to be without steward. Joked and told her to take care of Frank Rawson – against Kennys and Clarkes – as I meant to take the best I could of my sister.
After Stoney Royd, Anne judged that there was time for four more visits before heading to Lidgate. After dropping in at the newly established Halifax Philosophical and Natural History Museum on Harrison Street to ask about paying her yearly subscription (‘1st time of my ever going there – only one room fitted up but nice enough’) there was a quick social call on her friend Mrs Veitch. Anne’s third call was to Mrs Briggs, the widow of her recently deceased land steward (‘Stayed 1/4 hour and was as kind in my manner as I could’) and her last to Throps, the plant merchant (‘Two hours there giving him a tolerably large order for evergreens and shrubs and a few trees to be sent to Shibden by noon tomorrow week’).
Miss Walker was waiting for Anne at the end of her forty-minute hike up the hill from Halifax. Having only meant to stay at Lidgate for a few minutes, Anne was offered lunch and would be ‘kept’ by Miss Walker until past six in the evening. Part of the reason for the intended brevity of Anne’s visit was the arrival of her period (or ‘cousin’ as she called it). The preparation, washing and burning of bloodied rags was a time-consuming inconvenience. On this occasion, Anne had also hoped that it might serve as an excuse to put some space between her and Miss Walker over the coming days:
On getting up this morning saw that my cousin was come very gently, but put nothing on, and determined to put off breakfasting with my friend for two or three days . . . She thinks me overhead and ears in love with her, as indeed my manner indicates. She is evidently pleased by my attentions.
8TH OCTOBER 1832
In the event, the afternoon was
to be a significant one. As the two women settled into ‘a good deal of talk’, their discussion turned to the nature of happiness. ‘Happiness,’ Anne told Miss Walker, ‘was, in well-bred minds, more mental than in others.’ Flattering Miss Walker that she possessed such a mind, Anne asked if she felt she could be truly happy with her, and more specifically, whether she could ‘give up the thought of having children’.
Anne Lister was broaching the subject of commitment again. She wanted more than a casual sexual liaison. She needed to be sure that Miss Walker was not the same as the other women who had enjoyed her friendship and sex and then abandoned her for wealthy men. Miss Walker’s seeming indifference to her assurance of ‘there being no chance of my marrying’ frustrated Anne. ‘I saw she did not quite enter [understand] this,’ she wrote, ‘in spite of all the hints it seemed safe to give.’ Either Miss Walker was unable to interpret Anne’s declaration of her lesbian sexuality, or she was unwilling to engage with the intensity of the conversation.
Abandoning talk, Anne and Miss Walker began ‘kissing and pressing’ on the sofa. Though Miss Walker had had the foresight to pull the blinds down (‘Lucky. James had come in on trivial errands twice’) they had not counted upon anyone else materialising at the door of the drawing room. In the midst of their entanglement, just after four o’clock, Mrs Priestley walked in. She had opened the door without knocking.
I had jumped in time and was standing by the fire but Ann looked red and pale and Mrs P must see we were not particularly expecting or desiring company. She looked vexed, jealous and annoyed.
8TH OCTOBER 1832
Whether or not Mrs Priestley’s timely visit to Lidgate had been inspired by John Booth’s mistaken call at her house the previous evening, there was no doubt that she now had the measure of what the two women were up to. She asked, ‘in bitter satire’, if Anne had been at Lidgate ever since she had left her there the day before. The conversation continued icily:
‘No’, said I, ‘I only ought to have been. My aunt had been in a host of miseries [about her staying out late]’. Mrs P said, as if turning it all on this, ‘Yes, she [aunt Anne Lister] was quite vexed with me.’ I laughed and said ‘I really did not intend on doing so [causing aunt Anne worry] again. ‘Yes,’ she replied angrily, ‘You will do the same the very next time the temptation occurs’.
8TH OCTOBER 1832
Anne’s jokey suggestion that the best way to calm Aunt Anne’s fears about her walking home in the dark might be to stay all night at Lidgate infuriated Mrs Priestley further. She left in ‘supressed rage’. ‘Plain proof,’ thought Anne to herself afterwards, ‘of what you think and what you smoke [suspect] a little’. Mrs Priestley’s fears had been confirmed. She had witnessed the affair between Anne and Miss Walker with her own eyes.
Anne’s observation that her friend appeared jealous as well as annoyed is an interesting one. Whether Mrs Priestley feared being locked out a friendship into which she had poured many hours, was affronted to have appeared naïve about the two women’s intimacy, or was simply horrified by it, the friendship would never really recover.
If Anne worried that Mrs Priestley’s interruption would put an end to her liaison with Miss Walker, she needn’t have. In a surprising show of impetuousness for someone so inclined to anxiety, Miss Walker ‘laughed and said we were well matched’. The threat of exposure could be returned to another day. For now, they picked up where they had left off:
We soon got to kissing on the sofa . . . At last I got my right hand up her petticoats and after much fumbling got thro’ the opening of her drawers, and touched (first time) the hair and skin of queer. She never offered the least resistance.
8TH OCTOBER 1832
As dusk approached, Ann aired her question about who had taught Anne Lister to kiss. Judging that it was not the right moment to reveal her romantic history, Anne stayed quiet about Mariana Lawton, Vere Hobart, the flirtation with Mariana’s sisters Harriet Milne and Anne Belcombe, her affair with single mother Maria Barlow in Paris, experiences with Isabella Norcliffe and Mary Vallance and her passion for Vere’s aunt Sibella Maclean. ‘Nature’ she maintained, had taught her to kiss.
Anne left Lidgate at 6.25pm. Miss Walker had given her a tartan cloak to wear, owing to the heavy rain, and a ‘strong, driving wind’ tried at least six times to blow her off the causeway as she walked. So strong was the wind that she struggled to get inside the gate at Shibden Hall. After changing her clothes, she went to her trusted aunt and told her about what had happened with Mrs Priestley:
Three or four minutes before dinner and immediately afterwards with my aunt and father – told them the adventures and news of the day, and how I had been at Lidgate yesterday and today. Told my aunt how cross Mrs William Priestley looked, and that I really thought Miss Walker was veering about a little and might perhaps give up Cliff Hill.
8TH OCTOBER 1832
All that remained was to record the events of the day and get ready for the next. ‘Sat up preparing for my cousin’ Anne wrote in her diary, ‘And washing out stains done since dinner’ – an ordinary end to what had been a truly extraordinary day.
CHAPTER 7
A Trip to York and Bad News for Miss Walker
‘If I can only manage her tolerably the first night’
The next morning, Ann Walker appeared largely untroubled by the potential ramifications of Mrs Priestley’s impromptu visit to Lidgate. She did, however, jump at an opportunity that presented itself to open communication again with Anne. Her tenant, Collins, had removed his cows without permission from her land to a plot in the neighbouring village of Wyke. Her note asking for Anne’s advice on the matter began:
How little did I imagine when we parted last night that I should so soon have had the pleasure of addressing you my dear friend. Under other circumstances I should not have dared to take up my pen, but the plea of soliciting your advice seems at least a tolerably fair excuse.
9TH OCTOBER 1832
Recognising that Ann was seeking assurances following the previous evening’s intimacy, Anne Lister knew exactly how to pitch her response. Having thanked Ann for the grapes she had sent to her aunt, and for the loan of the tartan cloak (‘Except among Alps and Pyrenees, I know not when I have been out in such a storm of rain and hurricane of wind, which last was so strong against me that I was literally blown off the causeway five or six times’) her language shifted to address the real motive behind Miss Walker’s letter:
Your note, my love, surprises me, but surprise is not the only or the uppermost feeling which engrosses me. I leave you to imagine what I mean. For surely you already know me too well to wrong in any surmise you may wish to make . . . Forgive me if I can hardly regret even your vexation about Collins. Remember that it is to him I owe your note, and to him I owe this present unexpected pleasure of assuring you.
9TH OCTOBER 1832
It was amorous and direct. ‘I wonder what she will think of this’ Anne mused afterwards. ‘In fact,’ she continued, ‘she will soon I think put me less and less in competition with Cliff Hill – if I can only manage her tolerably the first night.’ So far there had been only fondling and kissing. Anne was yet to stay the whole night at Lidgate, and remained somewhat insecure about her ability to sexually satisfy Miss Walker.
By way of a distraction, Anne turned to her books. After ten pages of French vocabulary, she read the first hundred of Sketches of India by Captain Skinner. She was ‘enthralled’ by a passage that described the country’s magnificent architecture:
Tomb of Acbar, near Agra, and also near there the Taaja Mahal, the crown of Edifices, the mausoleum of Shah Jehan (father of Aurungzebe) . . . ‘they tell you . . . that it is the most superb mausoleum in the whole world.’
12TH OCTOBER 1832
Planning her next foreign adventure was a constant preoccupation for Anne. If things with Miss Walker were to sta
nd any chance of lasting success, Miss Walker must be willing to accompany her abroad. It was not yet clear whether Ann had either the inclination or the disposition for travel, but she certainly had the financial resources. And if she didn’t want to spend her money, it seemed that there were plenty of members of her family who would be happy enough to spend it for her:
She then showed me the letter from her cousin Mr Edward Atkinson, thanking her for her offer of lending him five hundred, but asking the loan of three thousand. Wrote her a copy of answer which she wrote verbatim, saying she had meant to give him the five hundred but could do no more, straitened by her late purchases, etc., for the present. The magnitude of her expenses uncertain for the future.
11TH OCTOBER 1832
The letter to cousin Atkinson was the first of many that Anne would dictate for Miss Walker over the coming months. Her written articulacy and verbal guidance were increasingly relied upon by Miss Walker, who, Anne noted, consulted her ‘about her concerns’ in both estate affairs and personal matters (17TH OCTOBER 1832). Perceiving that Miss Walker had nobody else to defend her corner, Anne was glad, for now, to be depended upon for help.
Her top priority was to arrange the visit to Dr Belcombe in York. Mindful perhaps of a conversation she had once had with Mrs Priestley about Miss Walker’s religious melancholy and ‘tendency to mental derangement’ (30TH AUGUST 1828), she sensed that Ann’s recurring lower back pain was somehow linked to her anxiety and nervousness. She felt that Steph, at the cutting edge of medicine, would be the man to unpick how Miss Walker’s precarious psychological state fed into her physiological ill-health.
