by Anne Choma
It was a preoccupation that carried into her business concerns, which offered a timely distraction from Ann Walker’s impending decision. Thirty minutes after returning to Shibden Hall, Anne found herself hosting Jeremiah Rawson. Mr Rawson, who had finally come to negotiate over the price of her coal beds, found himself at the receiving end of Anne’s sharp tongue. She was in no mood to bargain, and swiftly rejected his offer of £160 per acre:
I would not abate at all from what I asked when he was here before . . . that is, the middle price between the two prices at which my uncle had sold the lower bed to Messrs Oates, Green, Hinscliffe & Co.
Jeremiah was not prepared for such a firm response. He made the mistake of telling Anne he had expected that she ‘should have been more reasonable’:
If he knew me at all he would know that I should not swerve from what I said, but that in fact I had heard a good deal about the coal since I saw him, and so far from being better, should be worse to bargain with. Said that even if we agreed as to price I would only sell the coal in parts and parcels.
2ND NOVEMBER 1832
Faced with Anne’s confident understanding of the small print of a coal lease, Jeremiah continued to falter. Rejecting her request to go down his existing pit until he said, they ‘had made the bargain’ (presumably fearing she would discover their trespass of her land underground), he was met with a firm refusal to cooperate. ‘Very well,’ Anne told him, ‘I will not sell according to the quantity you can get, but according to the quantity I myself choose to dispose of, which I will take care shall be little enough at a time’ (2ND NOVEMBER 1832).
Despite knowing that she might eventually have to offer an abatement on her price, Anne remained non-committal. She revealed that she intended to leave for the continent in January, and was reluctant to make a decision until after her return. Her strategy to keep Jeremiah keen appeared to be working. Noting how ‘determined’ she was, he resolved to go away and ‘consider about it again’.
Anne Lister hadn’t been bluffing when she had told Jeremiah Rawson that she had learnt a lot about coal since his last visit. Having turned frequently to James Holt for his insights, she had been advised in no uncertain terms that she could expect to make a great deal of money by sinking her own pits and mining the land for herself.
However, it soon became apparent that the Rawsons were prepared to play dirty.
Later that week, Holt returned with some alarming news about their Machiavellian business practices:
James Holt came at 4.5/11 and had him till 6. Something must be wrong that Mr Jeremiah Rawson will not let [me] go into their works – probably they are stealing my coal already – Holt says I should not take less than £200 per acre, but if he was in their place he would not give £250 per acre. Said I had at last asked the price between the two leases (£205 and £230) = £217.10.0, but had said I should be worse to deal with now . . . owned afterwards it would be as well not to let him come lower than the Cunnery houses for if he got down to the brook he could throw a quantity of water upon us . . .
Holt would meet JR on the ground and see what he wanted . . . In making the agreement to have surface measure and the power to send down people into the works whenever I liked, and to have a clause to prevent JR damming or turning on water back into the old works after he had got the coal. Had I not better have a bond of indemnity again this? Otherwise he might drown me in water.
6TH NOVEMBER 1832
Anne asked Holt to give her ‘an underground plan of a pit in working’. Her intention was to gain a practical knowledge of mining by accompanying her coal steward underground. ‘I must understand coal-getting before I have done with it. Holt’s pit at Binns Bottom will be ready for working in two months,’ she wrote.
With the coal deal progressing, Anne turned to her travel plans. Unwilling to let the cloud of uncertainty around Miss Walker’s decision stall her, she forged ahead with her scheme to leave the country in the new year, her aunt’s health permitting.
But for this, Anne would need money. The tantalising wealth on offer via Miss Walker relied on her romantic commitment. Without it, Anne would need to explore other avenues.
A trip into Halifax was not wildly encouraging. ‘Went to the bank – got £50, and then the balance against me equals £14’, she reported on 3rd November 1832.
However, the visit to town did give Anne the opportunity to undertake some business on Miss Walker’s behalf. Still hopeful for their joint future, she remained fiercely protective of Ann’s interests and asked her solicitor to draft a request for compensation from Miss Walker’s tenant Mr Collins, whose latest misdemeanour was to steal Ann’s hay. While she was with Mr Parker, he informed her that:
Hinscliffe wants to buy more coal off her [Miss Walker]. He wants a clause inserting to allow him to burn the shale on the land to enable him to sell it for road making – after burning it and making a great nuisance in the field.
3RD NOVEMBER 1832
Anne made a crypt-hand note to herself to follow up the matter on decision day: ‘She [Miss Walker] will wait till she has consulted me on Monday morning.’
Mr Parker had intelligence for Anne, too. Jeremiah Rawson had paid the office a visit directly after his call at Shibden Hall ‘to inquire about the particulars of my [Anne’s] coal leases’. Anne was gratified to learn that, sharing her suspicion of the Rawsons’ methods, her long-standing and trusted solicitor had given away nothing to Jeremiah. Having told Rawson that he had no access to Anne’s leases and ‘knew not much about them’, Parker warned Anne to maintain caution in her negotiations. Her plan to drive the brothers’ interest appeared to be working. They ‘seemed so anxious to have my coal’, she noted (3RD NOVEMBER 1832).
Arriving back at Shibden that afternoon, Anne wrote to Miss Walker a long, advice-filled letter. She appeared to be channelling her nervousness about Ann’s final decision into practical management of her estate. It also served as a way to prove her credentials as a partner and protector:
I am not quite certain whether you wished me to keep Messrs Parker & Adam’s letter to Collins, till Monday or not. You will seal it, fill up the direction, and I hope, send it by the servant or give it in charge of Washington to be delivered as soon as possible. You had best explain the thing to Washington as soon as you can, inquiring if he knows of anything more taken from the premises than the straw we saw on Thursday, and adding that, as Collins has so clearly given you to understand it is his intention to get all he can out of the land, you have made up your mind too [sic] avail yourself of all the protection the law affords.
3RD NOVEMBER 1832
The only hints at the complicated situation between the women came in Anne’s sign-off: ‘I am very anxious to hear you are better than when I left you, a verbal answer will be quite enough to tell’ – and her affectionate note under the letter’s seal. ‘Il rest un siècle de trois jours’ (‘there remains a century of three days’) was a romantic framing of the eternity she felt she would have to wait to see Miss Walker again.
But Anne did not have to wait long for a reply. At nine o’clock a note came back to Shibden. ‘I feel your kindness,’ Miss Walker had written, ‘it is consistent with all your actions.’ She continued:
I cannot resist the temptation of writing a line or two, for I so truly feel with you ‘il rest un siecle de trois jours’ . . . Words are powerless to express my thanks [for dealing with her tenant]. Suffice that it is your gift . . . I have been better today because I have been employing myself for you, but I am still very nervous. I dare not add more. Gratefully and affectionately yours, A.W.
Anne looked to her diary for answers about Miss Walker’s intentions, asking herself:
Now is this or is it not like a person who is going to refuse me? What will be the end of it? Does she or does she not know her own mind already? Or will she really be undecided until the last moment?
Anne resolved to do what she often did in such situations, and put her trust in God to allow her to ‘be happy and satisfied and happy either way’.
News that Donald Cameron’s father had died, delivered in a note from Lady Stuart the following day: ‘Donald must return to England – Lady S hopes he will leave Vere where she is, for it will never suit her to winter in the Highlands instead of at Naples’ (4TH NOVEMBER 1832).
It prompted Anne to reflect on the ‘extraordinary fate of things’. It was exactly a year since she had arrived at 15 Pelham Crescent in Hastings, full of hope for a match with Vere Hobart. Now, her mind was full of an entirely new dilemma, ‘Wondering, what will be mine tomorrow. Will Miss W take me or not?’
‘I have written the words on a slip of paper and put them in the purse. I have implicit confidence in your judgement . . . the paper you draw out must be the word’
Anne Lister’s shock and anger at the method her lover finally employed to deliver her answer is not hard to fathom. On the morning of 5th November, after weeks of prevarication, a note arrived nestled in a basket of fruit which placed the future of their relationship in the hands of fate. Ann Walker asked Anne, or her aunt, to choose at random either ‘yes’ or ‘no’ from a purse:
I have endeavoured to express myself in the most gentle and delicate manner possible . . . I would rather have been silent for the present, until grief had become more subdued . . . nevertheless . . . I find it impossible to make up my own mind. For the last 12 months I have lived under circumstances of no common moment and with my health impaired, and with vivid regrets of the past, I feel that I have not the power fairly to exercise my own judgment. My heart would not allow me to listen to any proposal of marriage, and this is in effect the same. I would simply go on and leave the event to God . . . I have written the words on a slip of paper and put them in the purse. I have implicit confidence in your judgement . . . the paper you draw out must be the word, or if you prefer, let your good aunt draw . . . you may think this an evasive termination of my promise. Forgive me, for it is really all I can say. Having heard you say that in one case [if ‘no’], I must give you up as a friend, I find myself incapable of consenting to this, as I am under my present feelings what is to be my future course of life. Whatever the event, I shall always remain your faithful and affectionate A.W.
Having opened the note ‘in agitation, little expecting to find it a mere evasion’, Anne Lister was not impressed. ‘All between us as undecided as ever’, she wrote impatiently. Within ten minutes she was on her way to Lidgate, armed with the purse, the insulting slips of paper still inside.
She was to find Ann Walker awaiting her. ‘We kissed and she was as affectionate as usual’, Anne wrote, waiting until after the interruptions of visits from Ann’s cloth merchant, Mr Outram, and friend, Mrs Dyson, to address the contents of ‘the memorable note’.
‘I told her I had not been prepared for her note this morning,’ wrote Anne, having reminded Miss Walker of the of lock of pubic hair she had given her on 2nd November. ‘Said she had misled me . . . Did not blame her – it was an unlucky inadvertence that had led to all our present difficulties.’ Anne was alluding to the death of Mrs Ainsworth. But now, warned Anne, ‘There had been too many endearments and too great a tie between us for me to go back to what I had been.’ She and Miss Walker had gone beyond the point of friendship and she was losing patience. The time had come, Anne felt, to ‘put an end to our travelling together so long as she is undecided’.
Ann Walker did not seem to have considered the prospect of the withdrawal of Anne’s affection and support. ‘But, said she, she could not now stay at home and be bothered with Mr Ainsworth’s letters, and be without protection.’ Realising she was at risk of losing Anne Lister altogether, Miss Walker’s hesitation all but vanished. As Anne remarked drily, ‘She would gladly enough travel with me now.’ Walking back to Shibden, guided by the ‘fine moonlight’, she dwelt on Miss Walker’s repeat vacillations:
On leaving her I repeated myself, ‘Come nerve yourself up and never mind’, and on getting home, said ‘Well, it is an arrow and perhaps a lucky escape. Thank God for all his mercies’ . . . I have asked myself once or twice – is this a sort of spell breaker? Should she even say yes at last? Should I value it as much as if it had come more freely?
5TH NOVEMBER 1832
Anne remained conflicted herself. She turned to the comfort of her journal to straighten out her thoughts. ‘Dined at 6.45 and afterwards till 9.30 wrote all but the first six lines of today,’ she wrote, ‘much better for it – my mind more composed.’ Tomorrow would bring a renewed determination ‘to have all ready to be off in January’, leaving Miss Walker and her indecision behind.
In an attempt to put the matter out of her mind, Anne attended to business at Shibden. On 6th November, Anne’s land steward Samuel Washington was instructed to prepare ‘all the bills next week for weaning mystal at Southolme’. A joiner was consulted about the new library passage. Marian was called upon for her opinion on flannel for Anne’s new ‘waistcoats and drawers’, and there were visits to the vicarage and Whitley’s bookshop in Halifax.
But Anne found that she couldn’t stay away from Lidgate for long. Arriving at the gate, she was met by Samuel Washington, who had called to enquire about Miss Walker’s health. She was, Washington told Anne, ‘much better and in good spirits’ at the prospect of Anne’s visit.
Though Ann Walker did seem pleased that Anne Lister had returned to Lidgate a day earlier than she had promised, the resulting meeting did not satisfy Anne:
Talked of the agreeable surprise of seeing but yet seemed more inclined to talk of business than love. I appeared in more than good spirits. She would think them all put on, and perhaps believe me feeling more acutely than I really did. I kissed her but in a common way, and she did not push herself to me as yesterday, and was more guarded.
She will not give me much reason now either to hope or despair. Her self-possession will probably be undisturbed enough. I left her with no pleasant feeling, saying to myself damn her. It is an arrow and perhaps lucky escape. I do not think her answer will be yes, and the more easily reconciled I am the better. Shall I dislike her by and by? At least I shall be more at liberty without her.
6TH NOVEMBER 1832
‘I reasoned her out of all feeling of duty or obligation towards a man who had taken such base advantage’
The unfavourable terms in which Anne Lister was beginning to write about Ann Walker reflected her growing sense of foreboding for the relationship. Mrs Ainsworth’s death and the threat of her widower’s interest had cast a dark cloud over Miss Walker’s already fragile mental health and impaired her ability to make decisions about her future. Her procrastinations, always an irritant to decisive Anne, had become offensive.
If Anne Lister had begun to suspect that there was more to Ann’s refreshed inability to commit than Ann was telling her, she would soon be proven right. On 7th November, Ann received another letter from Reverend Ainsworth. It appeared that Anne Lister’s early prediction had been correct. Here, in Ainsworth’s floral language and address to ‘his affectionate Annie’, was unambiguously romantic intent. The letter prompted a confession. Miss Walker revealed that her relationship with Ainsworth had not been platonic:
Miss W nervous, in tears perpetually . . . At last, from little to more, it came out . . . I pressed for explanation and discovered that she felt bound to him by some indiscretion. He had taught her to kiss.
7TH NOVEMBER 1832
It was unclear exactly how intimate Miss Walker had been with Mr Ainsworth. Though she told Anne that ‘they had never gone as far as she and I [Anne] had done’, Ann was tormented by her implication in what she considered the worst kind of adultery. She had lived the few days since Mrs Ainsworth’s death in terror that in consequence of what had gone on, she was morally bound to commit herself in marriage to her fr
iend’s widower.
Anne Lister was quick to condemn Ainsworth and defend Ann:
My indignation rose against the parson. I reasoned her out of all feeling of duty or obligation towards a man who had taken such base advantage.
7TH NOVEMBER 1832
Anne’s confident reassurance that Ann was not bound to marry Mr Ainsworth appeared to lift the enormous weight that had been pressing on Miss Walker. Amazingly, it was at this moment that she finally accepted Anne Lister’s proposal:
She said there was now no other obstacle between us and she would be happier with me . . . I asked if she was sure of this. ‘Yes quite’ . . . She asked if I would take her and gave me her word . . . hoped I should find her faithful and constant to me. Thus in a moment that I thought not of was I accepted and the matter settled.
7TH NOVEMBER 1832
It is an extraordinary passage, nestled within a long and ranging crypt-hand diary entry. After months of prevarication, indecision and doubt, Ann Walker was committing to a future with Anne Lister.
The fraught road to their engagement served to subdue the emotion of what might otherwise have been a joyful moment. Privately, Anne Lister was circumspect. She took Miss Walker’s admission of her connection with Mr Ainsworth as proof that she had been deceiving her about her level of sexual experience. Her confession, Anne felt, explained the moments of surprising confidence Miss Walker had displayed among her hesitancy. In the weeks leading to Ann’s revelation, she had questioned Ann’s virginity:
I said there was a great deal of relaxation, and at last, said that but for her word to the contrary, I should have believed she could no longer pretend to the title of old maid. She took all very well – denied, but yet in such, sort as left me almost doubtful. She said she did not deny that she had been kissed.
