by Anne Choma
Having acquired a ‘good travelling carriage’ which gained her ‘several smart unknown bows’ from Copenhagen locals on 28th October – as well as a pleasing degree of personal independence – Anne’s pressing task was to find a suitable outfit for the Queen’s birthday ball.
It was not an easy one. Anne had always found dressing for society a ‘potheration’, and on this occasion her dress must be not only appropriately feminine, but white. The last time she had visited the palace, the court had been in mourning for the King of Spain. Now, as well as shedding the armour of her usual masculine great coat, pelisse and gaitered boots, she acknowledged that it would be ‘impossible to go to a birthday wearing black’. Gamely, she resolved to abandon her uniform (‘throw it off for the night’) and enlisted Eugenie to make her a white satin gown.
The evening before the royal birthday party, Lady Harriet de Hageman, Sophie Ferrall and her sister the Countess Blucher assembled and approved Eugenie’s efforts. Silk stockings and two birds of paradise feathers, to be affixed to Anne’s hair by a French coiffeur, would complete the look.
Amidst the excitement of preparing for the party, Anne’s thoughts turned to Ann Walker. Though she had received intelligence from her aunt that Ann was intending to return to Halifax – ‘though she had not mentioned it to Mrs Sutherland, on account of her (Mrs Sutherland’s) not being well’ (15TH OCTOBER 1833) – Anne had still not heard back directly from Ann’s sister in reply to her own letter from Paris. She was torn about whether to try again. ‘I have thought much about Miss Walker lately,’ she wrote on the afternoon of the ball, ‘In doubt whether to write again to Mrs Sutherland or not. What could I do with the poor girl?’ (30TH OCTOBER 1833).
That evening, Mr Brown called for Anne in the stylish carriage that would take them to the palace. Luckily, his wife was able to deal with a wardrobe malfunction en route. ‘One of my birds of paradise came down in the carriage,’ wrote Anne. ‘Mrs B arranged it on arriving.’ As they entered, the outfit was praised:
Princess Christian admired my headdress. I said I had had grand peur [great fear] about it. It had come down and Mrs Brown had arranged it. One of the Queen’s Maids of Honour observed my magnificent blonde [cape] and said it was not from Paris. Yes, but I had bought it here. Was in black and had nothing white with me. Could get everything good but stockings.
Though Anne began to worry that her address to the royal had been over-familiar – ‘I generally, on coming away, remember some gaucherie’ – she judged the rest of the evening a success. The palace and people were sharply observed in her diary:
Might be about 50 ladies in front and as many behind and perhaps half as many more. The Queen, the Princesses Christian (Caroline Amalia), and Caroline Princess Royal, and then her young sister Wilhelmina followed round the circle. Mrs Brown stood between Mrs Stuart Courtenay and myself, to present us to the King. As the Queen began with the Lady’s half circle, the King began with the gent’s half. Each went the whole round, and then to the ballroom, all following the Royal family. Dancing till 12, then 30 ladies and 30 gents drew lots for each other and all the rest of us went to the Grand Marshall’s table (in the King’s palace), up and down dirty narrow stairs and along long, low passages, at which his deputy, Mr. Crow presided. The ex–Dresden Minister’s wife on his right and I on his left . . . handed round supper, but nothing looking particularly good to eat but took some quince and some blancmange and a glass of goodish red wine and a glass of tolerable champagne, to drink the Queen’s and Princess Charlotte’s birthdays. The president gave their health. Drank in silence. A third birthday today but not mentioned.
We then went back to the salon, only 5 ladies besides Mrs Brown and myself, all the rest had gone home. Saw the Royal party again (except the King and Queen), and then got to our carriages as soon as we could. Set down Mr and Mrs Brown and home at 3.35. Everybody very civil to me, very well amused but now that I have seen the thing once, will not trouble the Marshall’s table again. Not fond of second tables, even in the houses of Kings. The party said to be unusually small. No diamonds but those worn by the Royal family. Princess Christian the finest woman in the room and Miss Ferrall the prettiest, best dressed girl. No magnificence of dress but everything assez bien. The palace moderately handsome. All the Princesses spoke to me conversationally. Particularly Princess Christian and the Princess Wilhelmina.
30TH OCTOBER 1833
Minor criticisms aside, which included having to sit at the ‘second table’ next to the King and Queen rather than the top table with them, Anne was relishing her stay in the Danish capital. Her intellect, energy and charisma were quickly recognised, and her company sought after. ‘I am invited everywhere,’ she wrote happily to her aunt on 9th November 1833.
Madame Hage, another of the de Hagemans’ set, took a particular shine to Anne. She asked Anne if she ‘knew Latin and Greek’ and if she ‘had read Virgil, Horace, Homer in their originals’, to which Anne replied, ‘guilty’. Anne told Madame Hage that poetry was not her strength, leaving the latter feeling somewhat deflated. Madame Hage seems to have imagined herself as a possible travelling companion for Anne, saying how she ‘envied’ Anne’s talk of journeying to Russia. ‘In fact,’ said Anne, ‘she would gladly go with me if I gave this the least encouragement’ (11TH NOVEMBER 1833).
If her friendships were going from strength to strength, Anne’s relationship with her servants was not so harmonious. Neither Thomas Beech nor Eugenie had reached the level of skill or devotion that Anne had been expecting. At times they were incompetent, losing her clothes and misplacing their keys. Eugenie, Anne noted, ‘seemed to think it hard to hem a towel and duster’ (24TH NOVEMBER 1833). She was also taken to going out at night without Anne’s permission:
Eugenie came back at 9½. I see there is no trusting her. Her excuses are ready enough, but that she only went out when I went out to dinner was an untruth. She did not seem to care a great deal (though very civil as to servant like propriety in saying not much). I told her I should try to take better care of her in future, and if I could not manage her, should send her back to her parents. Said I had a right mind to write to her mother, but this seemed to make no great impression.
11TH NOVEMBER 1833
Her manservant unwillingly corroborated the facts – ‘Thomas did not like to say much but owned to her being out ½ a dozen times or more.’
On 19th November, news from home signalled a premature end to Anne’s stay in Copenhagen. A worrying letter arrived from Marian about Aunt Anne’s ‘exceedingly precarious state of health’. The first two pages had been written by Dr Kenny:
Both legs have been more or less oedematous for some time past but one in particular became very much so within the last few weeks, and a small ulcer which latterly formed upon it has assumed a most unhealthy aspect. Indeed, within the last few days it has increased rapidly in extent by a gangrenous state of the surrounding skin and cellular membrane. At present, it has a defined margin, but the slough has not yet wholly separated.
In this enfeebled state in which your aunt’s general health is found at the present day, it is impossible to say whether the gangrene may at any time extend rapidly beyond the present limits and lead to a fatal termination. With so much constitutional disturbance, the pulse is, as might be expected, constantly above 100.
If I were to hazard an opinion, which might tend to influence your plans, it is whether you should or should not return to the country at present, it would be this. Gangrene possibly, may upon any day, extend rapidly and destroy life long before you could possibly arrive in this country. On the other hand, the gangrene, having at present set limits to itself the sphacelated part may slough away, leaving an ulcer which need not of necessity destroy life, though I do not anticipate under any circumstances its evidencing a disposition to heal soon, if ever.
19TH NOVEMBER 1832
Anne found herself conflicted. Th
ough she suspected that Dr Kenny – who, along with Marian, she had long branded as an ‘alarmist’ – was being melodramatic, her aunt’s health was too dear to her to run the risk.
A week later her decision had been made. The newly rented flat at 158 Amaliagade, where she had intended to live until the following spring, was let go, and plans were made for her immediate return journey to England. Despite the ‘real and flattering kindness’ that she would leave behind, and the inhospitable winter weather that she knew she would encounter, there was only one thing on Anne’s mind. ‘Deeply anxious to be home,’ she wrote, ‘in time to see my poor aunt alive’ (28TH NOVEMBER 1833).
‘Terrible night, tremendous wind and rain, could not sleep for the noise of this and the water dashing against my head and the vessel striking every now and then against the wooden break water’
The journey was as treacherous as Anne had feared. On board the Columbine, the ship that was to bring her party home following several days on the road through Germany, Anne did not need to be warned that there was ‘a tremendous sea outside’ by Captain John Corbin. ‘Our vessel heaved about so much before the tide raised her quite off the ground’ she wrote. ‘I was really sick and got rid of all my tea and bread and butter . . . I can’t stand all this motion.’ (11TH DECEMBER 1833). On 8th December the wind had severed the bowsprit from their ship leaving them stranded at the port of Cuxhaven. Other vessels had fared even worse:
The water muddy looking, great deal of muck, seaweed floating about and several floating logs and boards of vessels. Passed the wrecks of two brigs, the last with half of her mast standing up out of the water was the Hamburg brig lost on Sunday morning in the gale that broke our bowsprit at 12 on Saturday night.
12TH DECEMBER 1833
Anne’s sea-sickness continued as the journey progressed:
The rough water made me sick immediately. Threw myself on the hard covered bench at the foot of the cot and sick and retching almost incessantly for the next 11 hours . . . Tho’ somehow about ten at night crawled in the dark into the water closet and had a tolerable motion. So far a good effect of my sickness. The wind was soon getting out of the river in our favour towards evening the vessel rolled so tremendously, nothing not very fast could keep its place. My table and stool were turned upside down to slide about that way. My candle would sit in a basin jammed in the table bottom that the candlelight danced about so in the basin I could scarce help laughing. Cooler on the bench than in the cot and more convenient for being sick so there I lay in my cloak and my travelling cap with my travelling bag for a pillow.
12TH DECEMBER 1833
Between the bouts of sickness that punctuated the two-week voyage, Anne attempted to spend as much time as possible alone. She found the company of her fellow passengers tedious – particularly the American merchant who said ‘nothing worth hearing’ – and the conversation of the ship’s captain lacking – ‘after one or two insufficient answers to my observations [he] said no more’ (10TH DECEMBER 1833).
She preferred to read. Having made her way through the ‘first large edition of all Lord Byron’s works’, she moved on to a pamphlet on handy household hints. To cure a corn, she noted, one must ‘roast a clove of garlic on a live coal in hot ashes and bind it on the corn on going to bed. This should be repeated 2 or 3 times in the 24 hours’ (8TH DECEMBER 1833).
Thomas and Eugenie were not good travellers. They were wet, tired and struggled to withstand the rigours and hardships of the inclement weather. Anne branded her manservant ‘sadly soft and cowardly about himself, and a great lout’. He was worse even than George Playforth. ‘It seems to be my fate to have louts about me,’ she lamented on 4th December. Eugenie, told that she was ‘headless and useless’ by a mistress who had been considering giving her the sack throughout the journey, promised to try harder. Anne agreed to keep her on.
On 15th December 1833, fifteen days after leaving Copenhagen, a weary and dishevelled Anne, Thomas and Eugenie disembarked the Columbine at Gravesend docks. Their return to dry land was welcome. Apart from having splashed her face with cold water, Anne had not washed, or removed her clothes, for the last fifteen days.
The Ship Tavern at Gravesend was a ‘sad, dirty place’ with rumpled bedsheets, but there was at least ‘good, thickish broth (mutton) and toast’ and soap for a ‘thorough scrub’. Relieved to be back on terra firma, Anne slept for five hours, with a towel for a pillow case, dressing gown as a top sheet, and her damp, filthy great coat for a nightshift.
Of the five days following her return to England, Anne wrote nothing. The blank pages of her diary, presumably left so for her to return to, stand out in a volume in which every other inch of space is tightly and meticulously filled with letters and symbols. The missing days encompassed a visit to Mariana at Lawton Hall, and a letter that Anne received two days after her return to Shibden hints at what may have passed between them over the 16th–20th December. ‘I think she begins to be sorry for herself. Likes me better than Willoughby Crewe, and thanks me for my uniform kindness and generous conduct’ (23RD DECEMBER 1833). It sounded as if Anne and Mariana had been going over the old, painful ground of their past relationship.
On her return to Shibden, Anne discovered that she had been right about Dr Kenny and Marian’s alarmist impulses. Aunt Anne’s demise did not, thankfully, appear to be as imminent as she had been led to believe. Writing to Lady Stuart, Anne recounted:
Found my aunt a great deal better than it was possible to expect from the very alarming accounts I had received. She is certainly in a precarious state and suffers a great deal, but, if I might venture to depend at all upon my own judgment, I would say the danger was less imminent than it had been represented and that life might be prolonged for a considerable time, at least for many months. I have no fear of her not getting over the winter unless there should be some sudden change, which I do not at present see any reason to apprehend.
21ST DECEMBER 1833
Anne found the time to admonish Dr Kenny for summoning her back in the mid-winter. ‘Told him it was unfair and absurd to send for me under such circumstances. I had come at this risk of my own life and that of my servants,’ she wrote. Dr Kenny masterfully passed the buck. ‘He said it was not his doing, he wished Marian not to send for me but she did it in her fright’ (23RD DECEMBER 1833).
But Anne could not stay angry for long. Nor could she truly regret coming home. Her aunt’s health, and her delight at their reunion, meant everything to Anne. ‘I shall never repent not having hesitated about it,’ she wrote on 21st December 1833, and reflecting to Lady Harriet de Hageman a few months later:
My poor aunt suffers a martyrdom and may well survive some months. It was her arms that first held me – hers was like a mother’s care, and to her liberal kindness, were owing half the comforts of my early life. I see her sinking slowly, painfully into the grave, and at such a time the heart even of a casual bystander would not be hardest, nor his spirits lightest. I shall feel lonely when she is gone.
9TH MARCH 1834
She acknowledged that she had done right to leave her life in Copenhagen behind. ‘My coming made her happy, and I am satisfied.’
GENTLEMAN JACK
Finale – Standing Before God
‘Miss Walker returned to Lidgate!!! Fred, is this to be your fate?’
On 27 December, Anne Lister received a letter from Ann Walker. It conveyed a remarkable coincidence. Ann was not in Scotland, but at Lidgate. She had arrived on Christmas Eve, just a few days after Anne’s own return to Shibden. She had known nothing of Anne’s serendipitous homecoming until she had called at the hall, to see Anne’s aunt and uncle.
Anne was fifty miles away, at the Norcliffe’s estate near York, when she received the news. She and Miss Walker fell into a correspondence immediately, making plans for a reunion in the first days of January. Anne was hopeful that she would find Ann much recovered after her perio
d of recuperation in Scotland:
My letter altogether a kind one, she should cheer up now as she had so much reason to hope all she could desire. Will do all I can for her, never to think of repaying me. Once well again, her health and happiness would be enough and all that I desired.
30TH DECEMBER 1833
Ann Walker was as eager as ever to see Anne Lister. She promised to ‘count each day and hour’ until her arrival.
‘How extraordinarily my return and hers too so close and unexpected on each other!’ wrote Anne in her diary (27TH DECEMBER 1833), and it was not long before she relayed the news to Mariana. Her former lover suggested that Anne’s destiny was preordained:
Miss Walker returned to Lidgate!!! Fred, is this to be your fate? How strange her return this time. It puts me in mind of the gypsy’s prophecy to me, and the thought would almost persuade me that we are not free agents.
4TH JANUARY 1834
Anne was more circumspect. ‘Miss W’s return is indeed odd,’ she replied. ‘Your surprise could not exceed my own, but do not let your conclusion run on too rapidly’ (7TH JANUARY 1834).
On the 4th January, Anne made the familiar brisk journey on foot from Shibden to Lidgate:
Miss Walker delighted to see me, looking certainly better in spirits than when I saw her last, but probably this improvement is merely the result of the present pleasure and excitement on seeing me.
After ten months apart, the two women had a lot to discuss:
Much talk last night till 4 this morning and then not asleep for a long while. She repented having left me. Longed to go after me to Copenhagen. Had had Mr Ainsworth writing and offering again. Once thought she ought to marry, lastly refused him. Her sister told him she was not able to judge for herself, but he did not mind that, so both Captain and Mrs Sutherland got annoyed at him. I suppose saw through him.
