About Anne Lister's diary for 25-27 September 1832

Introduction

On 8 September, just two days after the previous passage, Ann Walker left for a lengthy visit to the Lake District with her young cousin, Catherine Rawson. Up until her departure, the two women had continued to exchange significant gifts, notably books.

With Ann Walker gone, Anne Lister then immersed herself energetically in estate business. Her steward James Briggs never recovered, and died in mid-September. So this was increasingly very practical work; coping with flooding, bogginess and land-slippage at the lower end of the estate down by Red Beck. Anne also continued her plans for improving Shibden: altering the library passage, extending her walk and putting the finishing touches on her thatched hut. In Ann Walker’s absence, Anne Lister grew almost obsessive about the estate detail she recorded in her diary: barrowing soil, replanting a holly hedge, carting stone – all work still undertaken by a small army of men, carts and horses.

Anne Lister also devoted long hours to letter-writing. Her correspondence with Marian Lawton, mainly concerning servants, makes it clear their relationship was definitely waning. Meanwhile, Anne did not stint when writing to her aristocratic women friends outside the West Riding, talking up the inflammatory politics of men joining trade unions and vowing ‘vengeance against machinery’. Her own reading continued to be both wide and practical: horticulture - plus mineralogy, for she was beginning to see how much Shibden’s mineral wealth lay coal.

Selected passage

This has been selected because, with Ann Walker’s return from her Lakes tour on Tuesday 25, we see how the diary entries move effortlessly between courtship of Ann Walker, negotiating with the Southowram stone delvers, Anne’s toughening political attitudes, and her ambitious house improvements. All these activities, crammed into any one day, form an organic whole.

The passage opens with Anne Lister reading gardening books to help inform her Shibden improvements. But once she and Ann Walker meet again on Wednesday 26, the progress of the courtship, with all its erotic and romantic potential, begins to dominate the diary. While some of Ann Walker’s relatives were delighted by this new friendship, others already entertained suspicions.

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