#wir:diaryshenanigans

[winteringinrome]

On Halloween in 1818

Anne wrote a suitably chilling entry in her diary index for that day:

Said I should be tired of her [Miss Mary Vallance] in a week. Adventures in Paris, etc. It was only weakness that made her suffer my conduct. Unsuccessful experiment with the scissors. Apologised & forgiven.

[winteringinrome]

Continuing my series of showing the real entries from Anne Lister’s journals that inspired the chapters of my Past Scrapes story and we’re onto Paris and Mrs. Barlow. It was fairly easy to come up with a theme for this chapter…

Past Scrapes – Chapter 3:

“What she liked most,” Anne pauses delicately and licks her lips, “was for me to kiss her between her legs.”

A flash of heat jolts through Ann, she stares at Anne wide-eyed.

“Between her legs?” Her voice comes out hoarse.

“Yes.” Anne leans forward, her eyes not leaving Ann’s face. “I would sit before her and put up her skirts and put my mouth to her queer.”

Ann feels almost faint with the idea. She has never heard of such an act. The thought of it makes her breath come out quick and shallow in the stillness of the room and she cannot seem to slow it.

“Mrs. Barlow was very fond of that,” Anne continues. “She used to beg me to come to her at all hours of the day. I would be there in broad daylight, in the middle of the afternoon, terrified that Cordingley would walk in to find my head buried in her petticoats.”

And all at once it is as though Ann’s mind has lost the ability to finish a full thought, it keeps looping feverishly back to Anne with her head buried... her mouth buried...

“Just kissing?” she asks faintly.

Anne’s teeth flash in the dim light.

“No,” she says, “it is not just kissing.

Aaand that is 100% was Anne was up to in Paris.

7 Jan 1825 - SH:7/ML/E/8/0113: I soon found she was becoming gradually excited and had soon my right middle finger up her and grubbled her well. Then, during a little cessation, she said I knew anatomy well or could not know how to create such great excitement…and I may say and do as I like, tho’, on offering to kiss her queer just before she left me, she prevented me. ‘May I not?’ said I. She answered, ‘No, not now.’

18 Jan 1825 - SH:7/ML/E/8/0117: Just before getting up finally she let me put my head under the clothes, kiss the top of her queer and look at her.

20 Jan 1825 - SH:7/ML/E/8/0118: I began grubbling and did it pretty well for her. Put my head under the clothes and kissed the top of her queer, she putting herself in whatever position I liked. She got up twenty minutes before me, during which time I lay and incurred a cross.

21 Jan 1825 - SH:7/ML/E/8/0118: She let me, just before we got up (both jumped out of bed at the same moment), throw down the clothes and look at her in the full light. I told her I had no idea she was so pretty there, it was the prettiest part about her. It really is very pretty, quite black and round and fat and very nicely formed. I have told her since that the prettiest part of her is quite hid.

24 Feb 1825 - SH:7/ML/E/8/0130: Got to grubbling again - what led me to it was her telling me not to give her any more kisses, she had not strength for them, however she bore it well, saying afterwards how astonished she was to have given me the kiss so soon again. I had put my face to her and saw her all the time and she had a very good one... I put my face to her and twice got queer into my mouth and just sucked the tip of it.

25 Feb 1825 - SH:7/ML/E/8/0130: This morning just before getting up, put my face to her, took a little bit in my mouth, sucked and licked it and let a little slaver fall into her.

26 Feb 1825 - SH:7/ML/E/8/0130: I began to handle her and look at her. Licked a little bit of her queer, opened her with my finger and slavered into her, then grubbled looking all the while and gave her a good excitement. Before all this she herself had awakened me, lain on me and tried to see how I could get myself near her. I played sometime with only my shift parting me from her lying just as I should do for a kiss – afterwards washed and half dressed went to her and, finding her inclined, looked at her while grubbling and gave her one or two more excitements.

😅😅

[winteringinrome]

Just going over some of the pages from Anne’s stay in Paris and came across this gem...

“Just before [Madame Galvani] came had been interrupted by Cordingley in the midst of incurring a cross thinking of Miss Vallance.”

[winteringinrome]

Warning for a bit of a self-indulgent post ahead, but I recently wrote a Gentleman Jack story where Anne tells Ann about her previous relationships (but in like a sexy, romantic way…? I hope) and the little snippets she gives Ann on each woman were inspired by real entries I’d read in Anne’s diaries (either from the published excepts, or from the amazing #AnneListerCodeBreakers or from stuff I read myself).

If anyone is interested I’m going to go through, over the next few days, and set out which entries inspired which chapters...

Up first is Vere Hobart. 

In Past Scrapes, Anne tells Ann:

"I made a fool of myself for far too long. I used to hang over her as she played the piano and sing – try to sing. Good Lord, you must never let me sing, Ann – but it was worth the humiliation for it meant I could watch her hands...

“Other evenings she would fall asleep with her head in my lap.” Anne laughs. “Can you imagine? It was intolerable. I would sit there, pretending to read the paper and not see a single word. All I could think of was the weight of her in my lap. I would feel her cheek pressed against my upper thigh and her breath hot on my skirts. I would think, if she would just move a little, or if I were to move a little... I never did, of course. I just sat there – in exquisite torment."

The vague theme for that chapter was ~unrequited love in the parlour~. From what I read, Anne did a lot of fruitless sweet-talking by the fire, a lot of sitting too close to Vere on the sofa, a lot of listening longingly to her playing sentimental songs on the piano. And a lot of getting absolutely nowhere.

13 Oct 1829 - SH:7/ML/E/12/0096:

Miss H– playing and singing to me till after 12 – looked pretty and sang prettily … She said while singing [that] my thoughts were far away – I denied it – she asked if I heard the words – I simply, but significantly and gravely, answered, yes, they were pretty love ballads and I felt in love.

28 Dec 1831 - SH:7/ML/E/14/0170:

Hearing Miss Hobart sing, went downstairs for above half an hour…she would have my candle put out. The dim firelight only made the darkness visible. The songs were sentimental. She ceased for a moment and came and kissed me gently, as I sat leaning over my chair and, somehow, I could not stand it – I think she did not perceive this and, not choosing to await the glare of candles, I rather hurried off without lighting my own, just before she had done her song, and came up – my eyes brim-full and more.

10 Feb 1831 - SH:7/ML/E/15/0024:

She had bit her lips till sore – said I, you know the punishment and must submit. I got up to kiss her lips, but she squalled etc. good humouredly, and I desisted. Immediately after dinner, she sat down on the sofa – I asked her to put her feet up – ‘yes, if you will put them up’ – and I did. I stood by her and, after looking for a moment as if I intended the thing, took the kiss, to which she made no resistance, and I pressed her lips thrice – once with mine rather open.

12 Apr 1832 - SH:7/ML/E/15/0051:

Sat by her on the sofa… when I rallied her this morning about not letting me have my kiss last night, she said, at last – she liked me to long for it and not get it. 

-

Also when Anne tells Ann that Vere married some “dolt of a Scotsman. You should have seen him. He had the thinnest arms.” that was based on the following incident which Anne made sure to recount in her diary…

15 Apr 1832 - SH:7/ML/E/15/0052:

Odd enough, we had scarcely gone out of the house this afternoon when we [came] along [a] small man at a distance before us and she said ‘how very far that man's arms are from his sides’ (one saw the light between the upper arm and side) ‘I don’t like that’ – when, who should it be but Captain Cameron.

Oop at Vere accidentally negging her future betrothed.

[winteringinrome]

Christmas with Anne

If anyone is interested in what Anne got up to on Christmas day throughout the years, I’ve compiled a list of the relevant diary pages below:

1817 - SH:7/ML/E/1/0066

1818 - SH:7/ML/E/2/0093

1819 - SH:7/ML/E/4/0016

1820 - SH:7/ML/E/4/0114

1821 - SH:7/ML/E/5/0089

1822 - SH:7/ML/E/6/0080

1823 - SH:7/ML/E/7/0092

1824 - SH:7/ML/E/8/0105

1825 - SH:7/ML/E/9/0043

1826 - SH:7/ML/E/10/0035

1827 - SH:7/ML/E/10/0122

1828 - SH:7/ML/E/11/0114

1829 - SH:7/ML/E/12/0137

1830 - SH:7/ML/E/13/0129

1831 - SH:7/ML/E/14/0168

1832 - SH:7/ML/E/15/0169

1833 - SH:7/ML/E/16/0152

1834 - SH:7/ML/E/17/0129

1835 - SH:7/ML/E/18/0150

1836 - SH:7/ML/E/19/0171

1837 - SH:7/ML/E/21/0018

1838 - SH:7/ML/E/22/0087

1839 - SH:7/ML/E/23/0159

[winteringinrome]

Anne “queen of the backhanded compliment” Lister:

“[Mrs. Farrer] - a very weak woman but having decidedly the manners of a gentlewoman, which exceedingly palliate, if not entirely excuse, a thousand wants of general information and talent.”

[SH:7/ML/E/2/0046]

[winteringinrome]

Hi! I jus came across your tumblr and I have to say it’s just amazing!! 😍 I wanted to ask you how / where you read Anne Lister‘s Diary? I’ve been looking for a bit but somehow nothing really worked out and I usually just found small excerpts of a few days. Would be greatly appreciated if you could help me out! ☺️

Hey thanks so much! There’s a really helpful website called Packed with Potential which lists out all the different places to read excerpts from Anne’s diaries. The Book Concierge page lists all the published books that contain entries and the Diary Transcript page lists all the websites/blogs of people that are reading the diaries for themselves and posting their transcriptions online.

I went in HARD when I first got into Gentleman Jack so I read all the published books within a few months and now I’m onto reading the diaries directly. If you didn’t know they are all digitised and available online through the West Yorkshire Archive Service, which means - if you can muddle your way through her handwriting (and code! though that tends to be the easy bit) - you can read as much as you want, whenever you want!

Hope that’s helpful. If you’re interested in a particular time period or looking for something in particular, let me know and I can try and give you more of a steer.

[winteringinrome]

In this week's Unnecessary Gentleman Jack Deep Dive...

may I present to you my illustrated research paper on Anne Lister's height.

I've noticed a few posts about this quote from Anne Choma and Sally Wainwright's companion book on Anne's stature:

So at 5 ft 4 ½ inches (1.63m) Real Anne was quite a bit shorter than TV Anne (Suranne is 5 ft 8 inches (1.73m) and also makes herself look extra tall by 1. always looking down on everyone (exhibit A) and 2. spreading her limbs over every surface (exhibit B)).

But was Anne short for her time?

Well, people were shorter in the past. I know this from banging my head on door frames in lots and lots of National Trust properties over the years.

And according to Jacob P Weber's paper on Patterns in British Height: 1770-1845, the average height of (his sample of*) British women born in 1791 (when Anne was born) was around 5 ft 1 inches (1.55m).

So while Anne would obviously still be small to us now actually, at 5ft 4 ½ (1.63m) she was about 3 ½ inches (9cm) taller than the national average and would have been relatively tall to her peers. Today she would be an equivalent of about 5 ft 7½ inches (1.71). So good news 'big Anne' fans, she was still kind of big!

*the sample set from this paper comprises British male and female offenders transported to Australia during the 18th and 19th centuries. I thought this could skew the height stats slightly (criminals perhaps less likely to be wealthy, therefore less access to good nutrition etc.) but Weber does a good job in arguing his sample is sufficiently representative (see p.2-3)

[winteringinrome]

i like to think abt comparing ann walker's diaries (if we had them) to anne's like "recieved a letter from M- today, A- read it, but i swiftly convinced her she is merely an old friend. A- none the wiser, i am such a smooth operator" and "asked about anne's letter from mariana lawton. tried telling me she is /just/ a friend. i locked her out of her study"

Ahaha yesss. It’s one of my favourite things to think about too. Anne ALWAYS reckons she is being so sneaky and I bet half the time everyone sees right through her.

I was reading through the entries about her stay in Langton Hall with the Norcliffes and when she’s getting with Miss Vallance behind Isabella Norcliffe’s back, Tib keeps on bursting into their bedrooms unannounced. Anne is always like “Luckily we were under the covers and I had just about stopped panting so Isabella is none the wiser!” and it’s just… why do you think she was bursting in there in the first place, Anne??

[winteringinrome]

On this day Anne Lister…

is me.