Supporting Roles to the Leading Lady : Comment
There has been an upsurge of interest in the Yorkshire landowner and diarist Anne Lister (1790-1840), tumbling out of the recent HBO/BBC series called Gentleman Jack. This beautifully created and executed (based on real diary entries) fictionalised account of the seduction of Ann Walker, by Anne, brought the life of the latter to a global audience. Hitherto this remarkable 'Spireted Yorkshirewoman' as Muriel M Green described her in her unpublished PhD back in the 1930’s remained essentially a person of local or academic interest.
There is no doubt that Anne was, and remains almost 200 years later, a fascinating if somewhat troubling person to research. Today, her sexual encounters with women could be seen as controlling or predatory. On the wider sphere her manipulation of the people around her seems cold, often ruthless. Look back to the early 1800s and Anne was however a product of her time. This was the time of class, social rank, ancestry and money; men ruled, women were provisioners of offspring, all of which was spinning around the lives of the wealthy people. Today we could use a term from natural history; it was The Survival of the Fittest. Royalty and the wealthy were predestined to produce a male heir and a spare [1]. Any additional sons often became a nuisance. Marriages were often made along convenient business lines, the handsome dowry made for fortune not love. Male spares could be found employ in the clergy, the armed services or as farmers, hands-dirty trade then still being a taboo career for the gentry. Unmarried females were at best a financial burden who needed to be married off quickly, think Austen’s Bennett family in Pride and Prejudice and you get the idea. Or worse, women were locked away in asylums, or the law of Chancery was unleashed to run fast and loose, all aimed at releasing their inheritance to the baying family, however distant. Well it was of course never as simple as that.
Anne Lister’s world was part of that world. Descended from minor landed gentry, in her early years money was always a problem. Her father was not good with finances. However as she became financially more independent thanks to her uncle securing her inheritance in the Shibden Estate, her freedom to live her life unburdened by the norms of the day released her spirit, she prospered. Though never to the financial heights she desired. Her 4 million word diary is testament to her freedom and also her sexual appetite. “She likes the ladies” as Christopher Rawson snarled in the television series to his brother. Much has been written about Anne, and much will be written about her in the coming years. I am fascinated by her but for me whilst reading the often dry, humdrum details of the diary entries, academic research papers or the books about her life, it is the support-act women in her world who elicit a fascination in me.
To this end I have recently begun what I fear may be a long haul, to find out more about these real lives, waiting in the wings of Anne’s well-choreographed stage performances.
I feel there is a cold often ruthless side to Anne’s ways of thinking, which no doubt is partly as a result of trying to work out who she really was as a homosexual woman of elevated rank, something to which she had no contemporary reference points. Partly too this was her personality, a driven personality which obviously fascinated the women she seduced. Old, young, wealthy, poor, intellectual, but always genteel, once in Anne’s sights escape was often impossible. But this charismatic person doesn’t seem to have had much fun. The bulk of her diaries are about what she did, who she met, sexual encounters and endless references to how long it took her to get somewhere. But I feel there is something missing. Something previous researchers have covered but in no great depth and that’s why the supporting cast need their voices to be heard.
In 1872 Rosa M Kettle published a novel, 'The Mistress of Langdale Hall'. This researched novel was the result of Kettle and John Lister discussing Anne Lister, Shibden Hall and the area. Dr John Lister inherited Shibden Hall near Halifax from Anne in 1855 – following a convoluted legal process after Ann Walker’s death in 1851 in an asylum and her brother-in-law inheriting Shibden from her. In doing so John Lister was to become the finder, partial transcriber and subsequent guardian of the Anne Lister diaries. He and Kettle discussed Anne and in fact The Mistress of Langdale Hall is dedicated to John Lister.
First account novels often can provide a nuance of description to a real person in fictional form. Kettle describes the buildings and landscape of Shibden well; I can sense the landscape only a few decades after Anne’s death. Anne had little interest in natural history, yet Kettle writes of the noise from the rookery around the Hall. Kettle also has it seems a keen knowledge of Anne the woman and her influence on the heroine of the novel, Maud Langdale;
‘...in her usual costume, a dark cloth riding habit and high black beaver hat, holding the long skirt up with one hand, and carrying her whip in the other” [2]
It’s known Anne Lister wore ‘gentleman or manly’ clothes, mostly in black, which made her an oddity around Halifax. Some researchers though do suggest this manly way of dressing, was more to do with practical outdoor clothing of the time, i.e a riding habit and outdoor shoes, perfect for a woman who walked miles in a day. Anne’s personality certainly attracted attention, positive, negative and romantically. Yet as Kettle also writes
“Maud was kind to the poor, and to dumb animals; but any one who exercised independence enough to dispute her will, soon ceased to be in favour of her” [3]
A fictional account yes, but this also comes across when reading about Anne. Did John Lister pass on this knowledge to Kettle? The actress Suranne Jones who played Anne in the television series knew this and developed a likeable persona for Anne, otherwise the viewer would be distracted from her other qualities.
Almost butterfly-like Anne moved between women. She aimed high, and often reevaluated her current interests, and if an interest was becoming irksome, she moved on – often on long travels both in Britain and the Continent, or a new female conquest able to elevate her social connections. There is no doubt she was a social climber and many of her female lovers I feel were pawns in a game of Lister chess, manoeuvring her towards what she craved, check mate, a female companion for life to live with. And that’s fascinating. Anne was Anne, driven to explore new areas of interest, yet wanting a settled traditional life at home; it’s why she captivates people who discover her. And presumably what captivated those women she met. Yet her female friends and lovers outwardly often came from traditional families, to Anne's pain married men for social status or financial security, or originated from conservative social hierarchy. Not always though.
Two women in particular intrigue me. Ann Walker, the declared wife of Anne Lister and Mariana Lawton (nee Belcombe) who was the love of Anne’s life it seems. I plan to research Ann Walker more fully in due course; after all she ‘outed’ herself as we’d say today to marry a woman and in doing so polarised her family, friends and Halifax society. It is however Mariana who I find equally fascinating, as there has been to my knowledge little research into her long life.
Anne first dallied into what is now termed lesbian activity at school, with Eliza Raine, a mixed race Anglo-Indian. Eliza had money, but as an alien, no social status. Maybe a simple schoolgirl romance for Anne, but for Eliza, her life never recovered from Anne’s change of heart. Anne’s affections moved onto Isabella Norcliffe. It was Isabella who introduced Anne to Mariana Belcome in October 1812. The actual introduction is sketchy, though it is thought Mariana employed a well-known allure device of the time, dropping her handkerchief to attract a male suitor’s attention, or in Mariana’s case, Anne. They quickly became lovers, poor Isabella like Eliza side-lined to the wings.
This is why Mariana is in my view worthy of some research effort. Anne and Mariana remained close between 1812 and Anne’s death in 1840, and despite Mariana’s marriage to a wealthy landowner (though a £10,000 dowry helped [4]), and many female lovers by Anne, the pair remained sexually close until 1834 [5] around the time Ann Walker committed to Anne Lister in their sacramental marriage in York. I wish to know about Mariana, who she was, how she felt and from initial research it seems she had, after a promising start, a fairly sad life. She died at her sisters home in Belsize Park, London aged 80. And that’s not the only intriguing fact I’ve dug out. She died on the 31st October 1868. Yet many of the published works give her birth date as 1790, and age at death 78. However her Marriage bond [6] gives her age as 28, in 1816. Working back, that is 1788.
Jacob Schweppe first had an idea to create sparkling water as a way of treating minor ailments such as pains or stomach upsets. Scheweppes together with someone called Nicolas Paul and the above William Belcombe founded a "Fabrique d'eaux minérales artificielles" [7] in 1790. It seems that once established, William returned to England, partly as his wife was unwell, in 1790, and became an advocate (some cite agent) for this new ‘mineralised water cure’.
It stands to reason then that as Mariana was born abroad, on returning to England, she might have been registered as an English citizen in 1790. Currently I've no proof or record of this but it makes sense if she was around 2 years of age when she returned? [8]
Unravelling this personal history 200 years ago will be challenging, but from other research which I’ll put in my diary to write about at some future point, Mariana is proving a very interesting course to take. For now, the more I unearth the more I feel Mariana was a very kind and generous person, who really did love Anne, yet, due to the prevailing time of class, social rank, ancestry and money, I feel she failed to (or was unable to) follow her heart and for me that is quite sad. Certainly her marriage to Charles Lawton seems not to have been harmonious.
And that’s why I wish to know more. It’s early days but with research trips being lined up, maybe soon Mariana Belcome will start to speak to me as Anne Lister does from her diaries. After all, romance is a two way conversation, at the moment we only seem to have Anne’s voice in the room.
Limited bibliography.
[1] I use the term colloquially. The origin of Heir and a Spare is lost in time, but may hark back to before the 12th Century when the concept of primogeniture (inheritance by the first born) which we operate by in the West today came into law. Before that all sons had an equal right, often settling their inheritance through hand to hand fighting, the strongest being the Heir. Later, during times of conflict and war, the death of an eldest son was quite common. The second son, the spare, provided that bloodline continuance of inheritance. Henry Vlll (Arthur Tudor heir apparent) and Charles 1st (Henry Frederick) are often given as examples of the spare becoming the heir.
[2] pp 25. Kettle, Rosa M. The Mistress of Langdale Hall, Samual Tinsley 1872. Print on Demand
[3] pp 31. Kettle, Rosa M. The Mistress of Langdale Hall, Samual Tinsley 1872. Print on Demand
[4] pp 125 Euler, Catherine A (1995) Moving between worlds : gender, class, politics, sexuality and women's networks in ... PhD thesis, University of York.
[5] pp 157 Euler, Catherine A (1995) Moving between worlds : gender, class, politics, sexuality and women's networks in ... PhD thesis, University of York.
[6] Image on posting. Original held in the Borthwick Institute for Archives, University of York
[7] Les eaux minérales artificielles, 1680-1825 : Noël G. Coley, The preparation and uses of artificial mineral waters (ca. 1680-1825) Revue d'Histoire de la Pharmacie Année 1986 and simplified in the Geneva Tourism website https://www.geneve.com/en/topicblocks/schweppes-and-its-genevan-origin/
[8] Births were registered in various ways before the passing of the 1836 Act for the Registering of Births, Deaths, and Marriages in England. Eliza Raine had also been registered on arrival to England, despite being born in India.
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