by Anne Choma
Anne’s determination to take Miss Walker to see Steph Belcombe also reflected the degree to which Miss Walker’s illness was starting to have an impact on her too. Her naturally optimistic character was beginning to be tested by the weight of Ann’s negativity. She found herself bothered by Miss Walker’s lack of self-esteem. Paying Miss Walker a compliment on ‘how nice she looked in her evening gown for dinner’, she was told that it was nothing but ‘proof . . . how blind love is’ (9TH OCTOBER 1832). She seemed to predict that such a lack of confidence would imperil their future happiness.
Meanwhile, Anne was still considering Eugenie Pierre as a maid. Eventually, after a thorough vetting from her high-class friend, Lady Stuart, the young Frenchwoman was deemed a suitable hire. It had been a long and thorough search. Eugenie accepted the job at ‘twenty-four pounds sterling per annum’ (‘six hundred francs’), but it would be many months until she and her mistress became acquainted.
As she became more deeply involved in Miss Walker’s life and affairs, it remained important to Anne to keep on top of her own. The structure of her days was vital to her mental well-being. Ordinary tasks like ‘mending pelisse sleeves’ or ‘planting out the hollies, shrubs, 6 Ragland oaks, and one gigantic weeping elm’ were daily personal achievements, recorded diligently in her journal.
Anne’s robustly productive days at Shibden were in contrast to Miss Walker’s at Lidgate. ‘Miss W . . . not well and lay on the sofa’ is a fairly typical phrase of Anne’s diary in this period. On 13th October 1832, the same day that Marian Lister had returned by stagecoach from her extended stay in Market Weighton, Anne’s attempts to give physical comfort to Miss Walker were brushed off:
She was very tender – I talked soothingly and affectionately, said how gentle I would be, expressed my anxiety for her health, and she said she would go with me to York this month.
13TH OCTOBER 1832
Despite this, Anne maintained that Miss Walker ‘seemed better tonight of late’. Indeed, ‘her affectionate manner did make me feel in love with her’.
There was a change in tone when Anne moved the topic of conversation on to money. Telling Miss Walker that she ‘only wished she had but a third of what she had, and no Cliff Hill, and then we might have managed all without difficulty’, she was confused by Miss Walker’s response. ‘Oh no,’ Ann said, ‘The difficulty would have been far greater.’ Unable to fathom Miss Walker’s meaning, Anne opened up a little more about her own life, about her inheritance, about her former debts, and about her time in Paris when she got into scrapes with women:
I told her my uncle aunt together had given me more than five hundred pounds one year, and my uncle Joseph had had once paid my debts, but if I had not been as I was [a capable land manager], perhaps neither I nor Marian would have had the estate. Mentioned having Cordingley with me in Paris, but did not say where we were. Told some of the queer stories, and said I had always been too great a pickle but was quite different now.
13TH OCTOBER 1832
Despite Miss Walker’s reticence around the subject of their living together as companions, and the resulting uncertainty about the direction of their affair, the two women’s physical relationship continued to develop. Anne Lister took this as a sign that Miss Walker was preparing to accept her proposal:
I undressed in half-hour, and then went into her room. Had her on my knee a few minutes and then got into bed, she making no objection . . . grubbling gently . . . She whispered to me in bed how gentle and kind I was to her, and faintly said she loved me.
15TH OCTOBER 1832
However, Anne’s accounts of Miss Walker’s continued uncertainty proved that it was by no means a done deal:
Her cousin came this morning, and I was most tender over her, till just at ten. I joked about our being just as good friends if she was settled at Cliff Hill, and I at Shibden. ‘Then,’ said she, ‘we must give up all this’ (meaning our fondling). ‘Could you,’ said I, ‘Give me up easily?’ This led to, her mind was not made up . . . I had my hand at her queer, spite of her cousin, and we had gone on just like a married pair, I telling her all sorts of things.
19TH OCTOBER 1832
It was 11.20 by the time Anne appeared back at Shibden that night. Cordingley, who had stayed up to await her return, told Anne ‘how uneasy’ her aunt had been about her staying out so late again. Indeed, when Anne went in to say goodnight, she could see that Aunt Anne was ‘vexed’. She decided to put a positive spin on her progress with Miss Walker. ‘All had gone on well,’ she said, and:
Miss W had considered me, and made me stay, and talked and treated me exactly as if her mind was in reality made up to take me, and I felt almost sure, and no two people could get on more lovingly and well.
19TH OCTOBER 1832
The account she gave her aunt conflicted with feelings Anne had expressed about Ann Walker elsewhere in that day’s journal entry. Walking home in the dark, she had felt distinctly ‘annoyed’ at their stalemate, and resolved that she ‘had best care little about her’.
It was a feeling that persisted over the following days. The more Ann Walker prevaricated, the more Anne Lister faltered herself, while at the same time maintaining the pressure on Ann to commit:
Joked, and said I knew Miss Walker meant to say no, that she would break my heart at last, but she would never hear of it . . . Then, said she, ‘I must say yes, or give you up entirely.’ Said [I], what else could she expect – people who feel moderately might act so. How could I do so? I had nothing for it but one extreme or other . . . I know she would like to keep me on so as to have the benefit of my intimacy without any real joint concern.
20TH OCTOBER 1832
If her feelings about Ann Walker were increasingly conflicted, it didn’t prevent Anne from pressing ahead with the plan to seek advice from Dr Belcombe. On 14th October she had written to Mariana, informing her of the upcoming visit to her brother, and asking for her discretion. ‘My taking Steph such a patient,’ wrote Anne, ‘would not be taken very well hereabouts, if known’. The stigma around Miss Walker’s affliction roused a protective instinct in Anne. Of the nature of her ‘friendship’ with Miss Walker, she revealed nothing to Mariana.
At 11.35am on 22nd October, Anne and Ann set off from Halifax by carriage, and five and a half hours later they arrived in York. For respectability’s sake, two rooms had been booked at the Black Swan Inn on Coney Street. Though the circumstances of their first joint trip away from Halifax had little to do with pleasure, Anne would not miss out on the opportunity to catch up with friends. As well as Mr and Mrs Duffin of 58 Micklegate, and Tib’s sister Charlotte Norcliffe, she dropped in on Mariana’s sister, Harriet Milne.
Anne and Mrs Milne had undertaken a love affair some years previously, and, while Anne was wary of Harriet – who had developed a fixation on her following the end of that relationship – they appeared immediately to resume flirting on this reunion:
Mrs Milne rallied me about Miss W, but we made ‘foot love’ under the table. Appeared uncommonly glad to see them, and nothing could get on better – would willingly have spent the evening with them if I could.
23RD OCTOBER 1832
But there were other visits to be made in York. Having popped to Barber and Cattle silversmiths for a seal, Anne ran a few errands for Miss Walker, including trips to Myers the coachmaker for carriage repairs and to the Will office to see ‘about getting copy of Will of the late Mrs Priestley of Kebroyde for Miss Walker’.
Dr Belcombe began his consultation with Miss Walker soon after their arrival. Rather than at his practice directly behind York Minster, he attended to Miss Walker from the lodging rooms at the Black Swan Inn. The final verdict on her illness was confident and swift. It was delivered to Anne, with the patient herself absent:
Nothing the matter with her but nervousness. If all her fortune could fly away, and she ha
d to work for her living she would be well. A case of nervousness and hysteria. No organic disease. Thought I should be sadly bothered with her abroad unless I had the upper hand, and ought not to pet her too much. But going abroad would do her good.
23RD OCTOBER 1832
Dr Belcombe’s diagnosis was simple. Miss Walker had too much money and too little to do, and had managed to think herself into being ill. Tincture of henbane was among the treatments he prescribed, along with the advice that Anne should maintain the ‘upper hand’ by not unduly indulging her patient’s nervous complaints. It was a diagnosis typical of its time, reliant on the gendered concept of hysteria to explain away symptoms of mental illness.
There is no record of Miss Walker’s response to her diagnosis. It is clear that, in spite of Dr Belcombe’s dismissal of the underlying cause of her physical symptoms, her pain persisted. The following day, Anne’s crypt-hand reveals ‘no grubbling last night – she was sore’ (24TH OCTOBER 1832).
Though Steph’s level of understanding about Anne and Ann’s relationship is not clear from Anne’s diary, the fact that they were offered to extend their stay in York at the Belcombe residence hints at acceptance. In the event, they declined, leaving York on 25th October. The long journey back to Halifax was punctuated by a stop at Leeds and a little ‘grubbling’ in the carriage. ‘Felt her queer’ Anne wrote later, ‘it being dark.’
It appears that the two women were becoming carried away in their conversation, too. They would, they decided, buy a bed together out of their joint income, each bring their own crockery to the partnership, and spend only two thousand a year on travelling.
They were talking as if all ‘seemed quite agreed’ Anne wrote, ‘tho’ without any decided “yes” on her part. She is evidently much attached to me.’
‘We talk and act as if all but “yes” were said’
Despite the warning signs, Anne Lister was, by now, cautiously optimistic about her future with Miss Walker. There was an attraction and understanding between the two women that overrode her doubts about Miss Walker’s inconsistency and nervous disposition. In many ways, she found Miss Walker’s dependency on her appealing. As their affair progressed, Anne’s emotional stake in Miss Walker was becoming ever greater.
However, on their return from York, Ann Walker was greeted by news which was to trigger a deterioration in her mental health and would prove a significant obstacle to happiness with Anne Lister. Paying a call at Cliff Hill on 26th October, Ann was handed a black-edged envelope by her aunt. It contained the news that her friend, Mrs Ainsworth, had died ‘in consequence of being thrown out of an open carriage’. The letter, Anne reported, dropped from Miss Walker’s fingers to the ground as soon she had read it.
Her pragmatic response to the death of the friend whose visit she had anticipated in the new year – ‘Well now there is no obstacle to our getting off [abroad] in January’ – belied Miss Walker’s true feelings. Anne Lister was able to perceive that she was in fact ‘much affected’. It would, however, be several days before Anne would realise the extent to which the bereavement was affecting Miss Walker, and why.
In the meantime, Anne and Ann settled back into life in Halifax. As October drew to a close, Anne described a healthy sex life (‘lay in bed grubbling and love-making till our linen was almost as wet as yesterday morning’) and a ‘comfortably cosy’ routine of overnight stays at Lidgate (27TH OCTOBER 1832). She seemed to be making headway with Miss Walker’s family, too. Having taken the opportunity of ‘agreeabilizing to the old lady [Ann’s aunt]’ during another visit to Cliff Hill, a social call of Mrs Priestley’s to Lidgate on 28th October served to reassure Anne that the ‘supressed rage’ in which she had last seen Ann’s cousin had subsided.
Mrs Priestley made no comment upon finding Anne Lister in Ann’s company again. There was no allusion to her disastrous last visit to Lidgate. It may have been that, without the language with which to accuse the two women of a lesbian relationship, Mrs Priestley felt unable to confront them. Nor would the resulting scandal have reflected well on the family, if she had.
Reporting on their trip to York, Anne told Mrs Priestley about the consultation with Dr Belcombe and his advice that ‘Miss Walker ought to get off and leave all pother [sic] behind’. Despite her perceptive reply that ‘she would take it with her’ wherever she went, Mrs Priestley did seem reassured that in seeking medical advice on her behalf, Anne had Miss Walker’s best interests at heart. They parted, Anne wrote, ‘very good friends’.
With their own friendship more visible than ever, Anne appreciated the need to maintain her popularity with Miss Walker’s family. The charm offensive continued with her attention to the gardens of the Crownest estate. Unfortunately, the gardener at Lidgate proved himself to be somewhat lacking:
Took Sykes the gardener and looked over the Lightcliffe plantation for laurels. Sat about an hour with Miss [Aunt] Walker of Cliff Hill. Gave Miss W one of the fine large, common laurels growing at the Stags Head, and Sykes the gardener and Eastwood went for it, and just got it planted here (Lidgate) before dark. Sykes positive and stupid about it, and I got annoyed and gave him a set down. He had not got it up well.
30TH OCTOBER 1832
The receipt of another brace of pheasants from Isabella Norcliffe provided an opportunity for Anne to air her positivity about the affair. Without revealing the extent of her feelings to Tib, she mentioned the ‘really nice girl’ Ann was turning out to be.
Anne demonstrably felt the relationship to be on a good track. She wrote that she was even beginning to consider taking up residence at Lidgate, if and when Ann accepted her proposal. On the last day of the month, she convinced Miss Walker to reduce the term of their arrangement:
At last got her to shorten the time of waiting for her final answer from 3 April to 1 January. She seemed satisfied this would be better . . . she seems less and less likely to say no. In fact we talk and act as if yes was all but said.
31ST OCTOBER 1832
If this seemed like good news, Anne’s hopes for the relationship were not to last long. On the day Miss Walker had received the news of Mrs Ainsworth’s death, Anne Lister had made a passing remark to her diary: ‘It instantly struck me. She would in due time succeed her friend and be Mrs Ainsworth’ (26TH OCTOBER 1832).
Unfortunately for Anne, her flippant comment was to prove remarkably perceptive. On 1st November, Ann Walker’s confidence in their relationship began to unravel, triggered, in part, by the emergence of the widowed Reverend Thomas Ainsworth as a rival for her hand.
CHAPTER 8
The Reverend Ainsworth, Miss Walker’s Insulting Purse Offer, Attacked by a Thug, and an Uncertain End to the Year
‘She must now decide between Mr Ainsworth and me’
On the first day of November, Anne Lister was shown a letter that convinced her history was set to repeat itself. It seemed to Anne a cruel twist of fate that she should once again be about to lose the object of her affection to a man. A letter from Reverend Ainsworth to Ann Walker had arrived that morning:
She begged me to stay till she had read her letter from Mr Ainsworth and this occasioned us such dolefuls [sadness] that I offered to stay till tomorrow . . . Ainsworth hopes Miss W will not forsake him as a friend and begs her to write to him . . . Oh oh thought I, all this is very clear.
1ST NOVEMBER 1832
What was clear to Anne was that Ainsworth’s letter was more than an informative dispatch on the particulars of his wife’s death. From the tone of his appeal for Miss Walker’s friendship, Anne surmised – very incisively, as it would turn out – that he had romantic intentions. She predicted that this note marked a prelude to a request for Ann’s hand:
I candidly told her what I thought. She owned [admitted that] she could not misunderstand him . . . This led to my saying that she must now decide between Mr A and me . . . Convinced her of this, and it ended in her re
solving to give me her final answer on Monday.
1ST NOVEMBER 1832
Anne’s brisk tone concealed the depth of her feelings. Behind her call for action was a desperation to know where she stood with Ann. Despite her frequent claims that she cared little what Miss Walker should decide, her long crypt-hand diary entries in the days following Ainsworth’s letter record a period of intense emotional turmoil. For Ann Walker, bereaved now of a close friend as well as a former suitor, and grappling with her own sexuality, the letter was even more affecting:
Sat by her on the sofa, both of us perpetually with silent tears trickling down our cheeks. She quite undecided, fearing she should not be so happy with him as she might have been. Never knew till now how much she was attached to me. Should make comparisons to[o] in poor Mr Fraser’s favour . . . Torturing herself with all the miseries of not knowing what to do, she said how beautifully I behaved . . . She said there was as something in me she liked better than in him. Felt repugnance to forming any connection with the other sex.
1ST NOVEMBER 1832
The following day, Miss Walker agreed to give Anne a token of her lasting affection: a ‘golden lock’ of her own pubic hair. Anne, having ‘kissed her queer’, handed Ann the scissors to cut it herself.
She threw herself on the chair by me. We wept and kissed. I thanked her and she left me . . . She hung upon me and cried and sobbed aloud at parting. A pretty scene we have had, but surely I care not much and shall take my time of suspense very quietly.
2ND NOVEMBER 1832
Anne’s protestation that she should be ‘easily reconciled either way’ demonstrated not just bravado but a characteristic desire to retain an outward dignity.
