The upheaval in the house became too much for Aunt Anne. Her rheumatism had rendered her immobile for some time now. The death of her last brother – she had once been one of eight siblings – may have robbed her of her will to live. Six months after Jeremy, she died at the age of seventy-one on 10 October 1836. We cannot say whether Anne cried at the loss of her favourite aunt or not, as at the time of writing her diaries from that period have been neither transcribed nor edited, and no letters have survived.
Her aunt’s death did not ease Anne’s financial problems, as she had always hoped; her expensive business ventures were not yet making any profit. She was constantly asking Ann Walker for money, including £285 to pay for her aunt’s funeral. On 3 January 1837, Anne was forced to take out a £15,000 mortgage on Northgate House at 4 per cent interest per annum. The bank refused to extend her any further loans, so Ann Walker gave her several sums of money and even paid Anne’s mortgage interest. Despite this, Anne felt, according to Phyllis Ramsden, bitternesses with AW about money – AW again refuses to help finance AL’s estate projects.70
With her debts in mind, Anne pressured her partner to have her will witnessed. Judging by Ramsden’s extracts from Anne’s coded diary passages, she must have worked on Ann Walker throughout the first half of 1837. AW cross when signing her will is mentioned – AW out of sorts and bad tempered – AL must keep AW in better order – AW’s bad temper; AL’s money worries – ditto – re AW’s will – AW upset.71 By mid-May, Anne Lister had finally persuaded Ann Walker. A– satisfied & the will republished.72
18 Shibden Hall, draft for an extension by John Harper, 1836. Only the terrace and the smaller tower in the background were actually built; West Yorkshire Archive Service, Calderdale, SH: 2/M/2/7. Shibden Hall is now open to the public.
That did not restore peace, however. AL in despair abt AW’s moodiness, etc. – talking to AW abt their feelings, problems, etc – more upsets. On 29 June, Ann had had enough. All her financial concessions could not buy Anne Lister’s love; just like Captain Sutherland, Anne would be satisfied only once Ann had signed over her entire fortune to her. AW leaves AL note saying she is going to leave Shibden. Was she informing Anne of her decision in writing so that her silver-tongued partner could not talk her out of it? The next day, there was a stern scene with AW, who cries, followed by more scenes. Anne estimated her money, calculating her income, etc. and forced another discussion with AW abt her leaving. Ann Walker meant it seriously. She was asking sister for use of Crownest, having rented out her own house, Lidgate, on a long-term lease. Ann was even thinking of visiting her sister in Scotland, despite their troubled relationship, as long as it got her out of Shibden Hall. But Anne did everything she could to foil her intentions; more discussion, more amicable. By 16 July, after nineteen days of arguing, Anne had talked Ann around: AW now inclined to stay at Shibden – AL drafts her a tactful letter to her sister,73 to cancel her visit and retract the request to live at Crow Nest.
But Anne had only managed to stop Ann breaking free from her; her basic problems continued. Only a month later, AL in tears and very worried abt the outcome. Once again, it was re AW’s possible departure, followed eleven days later by more of same.74 Ann Walker found it impossible to leave Anne Lister in the end. She needed emotional support, found it hard to make decisions and had no real alternative. Her relationship to her sister was in tatters, that with her aunt was difficult, and she had meanwhile argued so severely with William and Eliza Priestley that she was not likely to enter their doors again.75 And
so Ann stayed with Anne at Shibden Hall, in all her misery. AW not speaking, AL depressed – AL and AW fall out again.76
Anne Lister could always forget her worries when she was travelling. It seemed to be a good time for a trip: Northgate House had been converted and Anne had found a tenant via an advertisement in the Leeds Mercury, paying £300 a year as of 1 January 1838. Her second coalmine, Listerwick Colliery, was finished in April 1838. The seam was only about three feet wide but the coal was good quality. Anne decided to seize the day and fulfil her dream of visiting Russia, especially as Shibden Hall was even less comfortable than usual due to the building work. However, AW doesn’t want long sojourn abroad, but doesn’t want AL to be abroad without her.77 In the end, they agreed on another trip to France.
FRANCE
Anne and Ann set off on 2 May 1838, in their own travelling carriage and accompanied by their servant George Wood. After a dramatic crossing from London to Antwerp – 24 hours’ sea and 17 of them sickness – they went on via Brussels to Liège, where the first centre of heavy industry on mainland Europe was in the process of developing. Being an operator of two modest coalmines, Anne Lister went to the bottom of one of the deepest coal-pits, said to be 400 yards deep, so it might be. The descent by ladders was no joke. Ann, who had gone along, gave up when Anne’s lamp fell into the depths. At the bottom, Anne took a half-mile ride along a tunnel on the horse-drawn pit railway and crawled into the nooks and crannies where a hundred and fifty men were breaking the coal out of the seam with elbow grease, picks and crowbars. The ascent in the panier (great wooden box that will bring up 2 tons of coal at once) took six minutes, the steam-engine pulled us having forty-horse power. I came up dirty and delighted.
They stayed in Spa for four days, at Ann’s request, before Anne hurried them up the River Maas to Huy, Namur and Dinant. They viewed Reims Cathedral – but, after all, and as a Gothic building, I prefer York Minster to all I have ever seen1 – and visited the Moët champagne cellars in Epernay; they drank a whole bottle with their meal. They arrived in Paris on 29 May, staying at the Hôtel de la Terrasse again. But the next three weeks were not as enjoyable as their first stay together. Ann came down with a terrible rash on her face, collapsing in the crowded palace at Versailles. Still, Anne suspected much of AW’s ‘illness’ is humbug.2 Ann consulted an English doctor, who recommended the baths at St Sauveur and Barèges in the Pyrenees. That was fine by Anne. They hired a French maid, Joséphine, and set off for the south on 20 June via Chartres and Orléans, Tours, Poitiers and Angoulême, along the same route Anne had taken with Lady Stuart de Rothesay in 1830. From Bordeaux, however, Anne was on new territory. They travelled via Dax and Bayonne to St Jean de Luz on the Atlantic coast, not far from the Spanish border.
Spain had tempted Anne back in 1830, but France’s July Revolution had meant she could do no more than cross the border illegally in the mountains. This time, eight years later, France was at peace but a brutal civil war was raging in Spain over the succession in the House of Bourbon. Prussia and Russia had sent money and weapons to the absolutist ‘Carlists’, while Britain had sent 10,000 auxiliary troops to the aid of the more liberal widowed queen. Up to 1839, 120,000 soldiers and countless civilians lost their lives. Anne wanted to take a jaunt to this stricken country. As there was no getting to St Sebastian by land, she rented a little cockle shell of a boat and four rowers, who proved to be smugglers. Out at sea, the waves were so high that Ann Walker asked Anne to abandon the reckless outing. But Anne refused to be done out of an adventure. She ordered the rowers to land again at Socha and sent Ann back to St Jean de Luz, accompanied by a boy. She herself continued the trip with her servant George, reaching San Sebastian four hours later. Miserable doings – meat as of Pharaoh’s lean kine [cattle] – poulets half starved to death before they were killed – the people ruined; and all beyond the walls a heap of rubbish. Anne spent the night in modest accommodation. The next day, a corporal of our artillery marines walked with me over the slaughter-ground of Hernani, five miles inland from San Sebastian, a miserable town, then full of our miserable legion. Their route took them close past the Carlists’ enemy troops. ‘Whatever the Carlists do,’ said my Corporal, ‘the Christinos and British legion rob just as much; and I have often been ashamed even for our own artillery.’ (About 120 marines then at St Sebastian) ordered to go to the different villages, eight or ten miles off, and take even the beds where people slept on, and what was wors
e oblige them to carry their own things thus plundered, to St Sebastian!3
Anne returned to St Jean de Luz in the smugglers’ boat that same day. She received a poor reception from Ann Walker, who had been worried about Anne and at the same time angry at being dumped ashore so ungallantly from S. Sebastian trip. Anne wrote bitter comments in her diary. Two months after the start of their journey, which had been intended to bring them closer again, theirs was an unsatisfactory relationship4 just as before.
From 9 July, they stayed six weeks in St Sauveur, as it was in 1830, the prettiest, pleasantest spot in the Pyrenees.5 Ann Walker bathed in curative waters, but most of all, they went on excursions to the surrounding mountains, usually on horseback for Ann’s sake. They were accompanied by the mountain guide Pierre Jean Charles, with whom Anne had climbed Monte Perdido in 1830, and his friend Jean Pierre Sanjou. Their first tour took them to Mount Pimené (2,801 m), which can be hiked up to on foot apart from the last part of the ascent. They rode to Gèdre (1,011 m) with their guides the day before, spending the night at a simple hostel. On the morning of 24 July 1838, Charles woke them early. I had ordered breakfast, café au lait for A. only, therefore I only took a mouthful or two of bread and drank a little water, meaning to breakfast on the mountain. Thankful afterwards that A. had breakfasted. Off at 6:10. All clear, the views of the valleys & mountains charming.
After three and a half hours of strenuous uphill riding, they came to a hut where a shepherd made them a thick porridge of sheep’s milk, maize and salt cooked over juniper branches. It tasted strong, but really very tolerable. A. liked it. I cautioned her not to eat too much, saying it was strong. Charles thought it could not hurt anybody. Although Anne was very hungry by that point, I did not take much, but more, as I found afterwards, than my stomach would bear. They continued up the mountain with some effort, first on the horses and then on foot. The two guides, one on each side of A., got her on very nicely, I following. In the end they reached the Pimené’s Petit Pic, granting them beautiful views on the snow-capped mountains around it. I saw that A.’s head would not, even if her legs would, carry her much higher, for the crete [the crest up to the Grand Pic] was indeed a crete, a giddy narrow ridge along which I felt my own head in its then aching state would be trop forte. My breakfast had disagreed with me & I had more or less of a bilious headache for the last couple of hours. Despite all that, Anne and her guides climbed to the peak in only seven minutes. It was a glorious sight to look upon – Vignemal and its glacier, the largest in the Pyrenees.
Anne’s descent was extremely risky; hikers are now advised only to climb the steep, narrow ridge if they are not at all afraid of heights. Not difficult climbing, but so precipitous my head would scarcely carry me. Charles walked down & bade me do the same, which I did, in fact he taking hold of my hand. [...] But on getting back to A. & looking down again I felt as if I could not tell how we had managed to get up, the crete is so narrow one can’t go along it without seeing down the precipice at each side. Poor A. turned her head away & could not bear to see us coming down.6 On the way back to Gavarnie, Anne vomited again from sheer exhaustion. As usual on her major excursions, she ate and drank far too little. They reached the hostel at Gavarnie at seven in the evening, after thirteen hours of climbing and descending.
Anne would have liked to ride on to Spain the next day, but Ann did not know how she should bear another hard day. So they merely viewed the Cirque de Gavarnie, had a picnic and drunk to the beautiful cascade, & A. began to sketch and I to examine stones & the guides lay down on a rock at a little distance.7 Anne only reluctantly took this rest day for Ann’s sake. She considered herself much more resilient. In retrospect, Anne thought it next to impossible8 that Ann had also come along with her not much later to the Pic du Midi d’Osseau (2,884 m) – a peak now more frequented by mountaineers than hikers, despite iron treads – and scrambled to the top. In fact, though, Ann Walker seems to have had a more realistic and wiser assessment of her own – considerable – physical strength than Anne Lister, who was convinced her body knew no limits.
For this reason, Ann Walker did not take part in Anne Lister’s greatest feat of daring in the Pyrenees. In Vincent Chausenque’s Les Pyrenées (1834), Anne read that the Vignemale (3,298 m), the highest peak in the French Pyrenees, was inaccessible du cote de France, but Charles told her a man from Gèdre has discovered the way to the top. Henri Cazaux and his brother-in-law Bernard Guillembet had in fact climbed the mountain for the first time the year before, on 8 October 1837. Both being guides, they now wanted to sell the official first ascent to high-paying tourists rather than claiming it for themselves. Although Cazaux and Guillembet had fallen into several crevasses, they assured Anne the route to the top of Vignemale was no harder than that to Monte Perdido, with no need to cross a glacier. All she had to do, they said, was ride four hours from Gavarnie to the last shepherd’s hut and on the next day climb for six hours. When Anne heard that, she planned to go further than the peak and continue to Panticosa (1,636 m) in Spain, on another twelve-hour hike.
Saturday 4 August was the big day, but the skies clouded over at nine and Charles called off the tour. At that point a competitor turned up, Napoléon Joseph Ney, Prince de la Moscowa, the son of Napoléon’s Marshall Ney. He hired Henri Cazaux to take him up the Vignemale that coming Thursday, be the weather fine nor not. As the weather had improved by Monday, Anne Lister summoned Charles and Pierre. The two of them collected Anne on horseback at three in the afternoon and took her to the hut, from where they would attempt the ascent the next day. Ann Walker stayed behind, but had persisted in my having my crampons (those I bought for Mount Perdu in 1830) with me. Nonetheless, Anne was puzzled when Charles borrowed crampons at lfr. per day, the wife of Cazaux having unexpectedly told Charles in passing through Gedre to provide us with these articles. How is this? Cazaux declared that we had neither glacier nor snow to pass. Charles had luckily brought a baton ferré for me.
Equipped with this iron-tipped walking stick, Anne and her guides rode via Gavarnie (1,360 m) and reached the Cabane de Saoussat Débat at five past eight, meeting up there with Henri Cazaux and Bernard Guillembet. The five shepherds who lived in the bare cabin in the summer made them a sheep’s milk paste, which Anne again did not eat. She stuck to her bread, two hard-boiled eggs, 2 biscuits in the breast of my dress9 and a flask. She had brought along a bottle of the best eau-de-vie she could get in St Sauveur for her four guides. In Halifax, she would not even have shaken hands with the nine men with whom she spent the night; here on the mountainside, they reminded her of the Idylliums of Theocritus, and the Eclogues of Virgil. The shepherd of the high mountains is still nearly what he was 2,000 years ago. The shepherds of Arcadia had even fewer comforts than the shepherds of the Pyrenees; and, trust me the antres [caves], of the former, were little worse than the cabanes [cabins] of the latter.10 When Anne lay down side by side with the others on the bare rock floor, she found it not comfortable enough to cheat one into sleep.11
Anne Lister would have liked to set out at ten to midnight, but when she woke Cazaux he put her off until five to two. For the first tourist ascent of the Vignemale, Anne was dressed as I have been ever since my arrival here, for riding, and as I was when I ascended the Mont Perdu – flannel waistcoat, and drawers & light small merino loose sleeves (as for the last 20 years), chemise, stays, short cambric muslin, several petticoats, a light lined top with high collar & long sleeves – broadhemmed 3 frilled muslin fichu and over this double muslin handkerchief & double dark silk do, & then my black merino dress, lightly padded and lined with silk. The dress sleeves were cuffed with white muslin, for cleanliness – as usual – and a double pelerine lined with persienne to the dress, & crossed over my chest a light black China crape shawl. I had had tape loops put round the bottom of my dress & strings at the top & just before setting off, had my dress tied up all round me just about or above the knee. I wore white cotton socks & black spun-silk legs with tape straps, & strong leather quarter-boot shoes
with nails in (made here for the purpose) & black sateen gaiters. I had my white cotton night-cap in my pocket and my clasp-knife of London 1826. I had in my breast pocket a whole black twilled silk handkerchief & ½ a light coloured foulard (the one I went to the top of Ben Nevis in 1828) & Charpentier’s map of the Pyrenees, & my little rough note-book containing my passport. Yet I was lightly equipped & my heart was light. She also had with her a sleeping bag, thick wool socks with twenty five-franc coins hidden in their toes, one pair of lighter shoes, a woollen cape lent by Charles and a Maclean tartan coat from her long-deceased lover Sibella, a change of shirt and a nightshirt, which she had not worn the previous night.
Off at 2 ¾ – am. Sent back horses at 4:55. After breakfast, they went on by foot at 5:20. Contrary to Cazaux’s claims, they did cross snow and did need the crampons. Anne vomited from the exertion along the way, as on Mount Pimené; instead of the promised six hours, they reached the peak after ten hours, at one in the afternoon. Anne wrote on a sheet of paper her own name and those of her companions: Henri Cazaux and Bernard Guillembet, Pierre Jean Charles and Jean Pierre Sanjou. She put the paper into a bottle she had brought along, sealed it well, and the men carefully piled stones over it – the first cairn on Vignemale.
At the peak, Anne abandoned her plan to continue to Panticosa. They viewed the glacier and began their descent at ten past two. They were back at the cabin at five past eight, after over seventeen hours of walking. Tired, but would have pushed on to Gavarnie, but Charles said it would be dangerous to attempt such a road in the dark. Drank a good deal of boiled milk but did not eat more than a mouthful or 2 of bread. My dress quite damp from the brouillard on the col. Wrapt myself up in my cape and lay down about nine, the rest sitting over their soup. Anne, however, not wanting to spend another night with nine men in the cramped shepherds’ hut, got her way after all. At half past eleven, she, Charles and Pierre walked back to Gavarnie, arriving at the hostel at 1:15 in the morning. There, Anne got her own room and bed, shook out her clothes, washed her feet and slept well.12
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