About Anne Lister's diary for 10-12 February 1834

Introduction

In the eighteen months since the last passage (late 1832) the relationship between Anne Lister and Ann Walker has, after much ambivalence and fluctuation, taken a step further. By late 1833, Anne Lister had returned to Shibden from a lengthy visit to Paris and Copenhagen, and had received an unexpected letter from Ann Walker. They met up again at Lidgate at New Year, but the old equivocations on the part of both women remained, with Ann Walker hesitating if Anne Lister suggested anything decisive.

However by mid-January, it did seem as if their renewed intimacy could be confirmed – with a round of formal family visits and serious discussion of how each would alter her will to benefit the other. Anne Lister, aware of Ann Walker’s health problems and melancholia, arranged for Ann to become a patient of Dr Steph Belcombe – who found her very discreet lodgings near York; and before Anne Lister left Ann there, the two women took a trip through the East Riding together.

With Ann Walker staying so long away from Halifax and her family, the suspicions of her many relatives were roused. Then in early February Ann Walker heard that one of her Atkinson relatives was ill, and hurried back from York. Anne Lister walked over to Lidgate, Ann’s house on the edge of the Crow-nest estate, to call on her.

Selected passage

I have selected these three days because they record how the relationship between the two women, after all the prolonged hesitations, now took a very definite step forward with talk of travelling abroad together. We see Anne Lister exerting some pressure, and Ann Walker at last casting her lot in with Shibden. And we also see the language with which they discussed this very unusual 'marriage' - in terms of one woman being under the authority of the other, and with will-making to the fore. Anne Lister was – understandably – preoccupied with formalizing her ‘union’ with Ann Walker, though never to the exclusion of correspondence with other elite women or dealing with other estate business.

View the original document and transcription