Full citation:Orr, Dannielle. 2006. A Sojourn in Paris 1824-25: Sex and Sociability in the Manuscript Writings of Anne Lister (1791-1840). (Doctoral Dissertation, Murdoch University)
The introduction begins with an overview of Lister’s life and a brief explanation of her importance to various aspects of history. [Note: I’ll skip the background details, as I assume readers are familiar with the general history.]
A key element of Lister’s extensive documentary record in journals and correspondence is her romantic and sexual interactions with women, beginning in her earliest diary during her school days when she began an intense romance with fellow student Eliza Raine, continuing with a more casual relationship with neighbor Isabella Norcliffe, an extended but ultimately unsatisfactory romance with Mariana Lawton, the brief affair with Maria Barlow that is central to this study, and her eventual romantic partnership with Ann Walker that lasted until Lister’s death.
For about a century, excerpts from Lister’s papers were published to illustrate various aspects of her life, but with the lesbianism carefully censored. Not until the 1980s was this aspect of her life made public, after which it became a focus of intense interest for queer and women’s historians. The explicit, detailed, and revealing descriptions of her sexual attitudes and activities upended the conventional view of 19th-century women’s same-sex relationships as being limited to conventional sentimentality and platonic affection.
But Lister’s sexuality continued to be interpreted in ways that failed to disturb existing narratives. She was a unique anomaly. She was an early example of the sexologists “congenital invert.” She could be interpreted in the framework of butch-femme culture. Some even considered the journals to be inauthentic. But all these approaches ignored the historic context of her life rather than using her to expand the understanding of early 19th century sexuality.
There were a number of possible models for same-sex relations that Lister could have “tried on” to understand herself. She explicitly rejects the label of “sapphist.” [Note: Although she appears to associate the word with specific behaviors, especially the use of a dildo.] Other possible identities include bluestockings (whose circles often included same-sex bonds of various types) or theatrical crossdressing up (given that she identified her preferred sartorial style as “masculine”).
The text reviews various takes on Lister by previous authors working with her material. These produced different views depending on the interests (and avoidances) of the researchers. Muriel Green- focused on Lister as a traveler and erased any mention of her sexuality. Liddington was most interested in her social and political context, while acknowledging her sexuality. Whitbread focused primarily on her sexuality but shaped her presentation of the material around the idea of Mariana as the central “great romance.” Others have presented a more integrated view of her life but worked from the existing published excerpts rather than returning to the original documents.
Orr cautions against using Lister’s life as a single cornerstone for new understandings of homosexual history, or trying to fit her life into existing categories, yet the value that Lister contributes to our historic understanding cannot be overstated.
Given this, Orr sets about to create an experiential understanding of Lister’s relationship to her world, in particular how she initiated and developed erotic relationships with women, as recorded in her own writings. The choice of Maria Barlow for this is due to several factors. The entire period of their interactions is well documented. It began at a time with Lister at extensive previous sexual experience. The relationship progressed significantly (unlike some briefer flirtations). And this particular relationship has not been seriously studied previously.
Barlow was a mature and experienced woman–a widow with a child. She was economically independent and met Lister on a relatively equal footing. The relationship is also of analytical interest in that it began within a female community (at a boarding house) that illustrates the everyday interactions and social connections against which it is differentiated. Another feature is that the relationship developed when Lister was displaced from her family setting (and from English culture entirely) allowing the highlighting of her sexual habits and textual practices against a neutral background.
This section describes the nature of the Shibden Hall archives and their history. It covers the history of the several times the cipher has been assailed, from John Lister and Arthur Burrell’s initial cracking of the code, through several researchers who chose to exclude the references to sexuality from their deciphered transcripts, up through Whitbread’s publication of that previously censored material. The nature of Lister’s sexuality was known as early as 1892 but was suppressed for almost a century after that, with each new researcher re-discovering and re-erasing it.
The discussion moves on to the history of Orr’s engagement with the material. Orr describes how each researcher presented the contents (and thus their version of Lister) differently. Although Whitbread published one volume focusing on the Paris trip, Orr views it as having marginalized the presence of Maria Barlow in favor of framing Mariana as Lister’s one grand passion.
Liddington drew from a wider variety of sources and focused on the larger social and political context of Lister’s life, as a mature woman. Liddington’s take on Lister’s sexuality has a negative tinge, touching on her manipulativeness and predatory reputation.
Green, who avoided touching on the explicit material, focused on Lister the traveler, drawing primarily from her correspondence rather than the focus on the diaries that others used.
Thus, previous work formed a patchwork, employing different subsets of the material and displaying different aspects of Lester’s life–ones that can almost seem to be different people. The section concludes by pointing out how this dynamic leaves space for a new, more integrated understanding of Lister that attempts to understand her within her own context, rather than fitting her into pre-existing theoretical frameworks.
Each of the major editions of Lister material focused on selected aspects of her social or sexual identity at specific life stages. This disjunction mirrors similar disjunctions within lesbian and feminist history. Operating in the context of queer and feminist academics of the 1970s and 1980s, Whitbread and Faderman tended to view Lister’s sexuality through a modern lens, applying sexological theories, or viewing her as transmasculine.
Faderman’s claim that Lister “would have recognized herself” in the sexologists’ category of “congenital invert” (a theoretical framework that was not created until decades after Lister’s death) as she considers Lister’s self-description as incompatible with the prevailing framework of (nonsexual) romantic friendship. But all of these frameworks – invert, romantic friendship, and whatever Lister experienced – are social constructs specific to a particular historic context. Orr notes that further analysis suggests that the “mannish lesbian” stereotype that flourished around the turn of the 20th century was not a product of sexological theory, but rather was an existing identity that emerged out of its specific historic context, and not some sort of universal constant that could be applied retroactively.
Others who have studied Lister’s life have tried to fit her into a butch-femme framework, seeing her as the only “true” lesbian within her various relationships and looking to apply the same dichotomy to other homoerotic couples she encountered. But this view privileges the visibility of Lister’s appearance and behavior, contributing to “femme erasure” and artificially reinforcing a binary view of lesbian identity rather than exploring potential continuity.
By looking for historic reflections of the cultural and behavioral features of modern lesbian identity, the illusion of absence is created, leading to projecting modern identities into that void. Lister’s unambiguous and explicit statements of her erotic orientation and practices were then considered evidence that “modern lesbianism” could now be pushed a century earlier than the sexology era. But this framing separates her from her own historic context–making her a precursor of modern identity rather than an ordinary exemplar of her own era.
If one steps away from the imperative to find a reflection of modern lesbianism, Lister begins to appear to belong solidly to her own time. Sedgwick argues that Lister could be “an almost archetypal Jane Austen heroine.” Many aspects of her life and loves fit solidly within the social and literary discourse of the long 18th century. But even those historians who connect her with 18th century themes fall prey to pigeonholing. Mavor associates her with the late 18th century “cult of sapphism,” ignoring the evidence that Lister was well aware of “sapphic practices” and disavowed that as an identity. [Note: We could use a closer look at exactly what Lister considered “sapphic practices.” Perhaps that will be covered later in this work. The specific aspect she notes is the use of a dildo, which seems an awfully specific thing to define an identity around.] Regardless of how she felt about the idea and label, she was clearly aware of it and the idea it was available to her in her own negotiation of identity. When Lister contrasts her own “natural” style of lovemaking to the “artifice” of the dildo-wielding sapphists, this distracts from how otherwise similar the two appear.
In her focus on education and self-improvement, Lister also has strong echoes of the bluestockings, but once again we have direct evidence that she was aware of that culture and considered herself separate from it. She has comments that seem to reflect an internalized misogyny–valuing her own learning but disapproving of women’s education for others and not valuing education in her own potential lovers. Here we see the conflict between Listers class identity (conservative, upper-class) and modern expectations of female or queer solidarity.
Lister had a variety of examples of other female romantic couples to compare herself to. She visited the Ladies of Llangollen while traveling in Wales and speculated on the nature of their relationship. More locally, she socialized with a female couple Miss Pickford and Miss Threlfall and recognized their couplehood as similar to what she inspired to. Yet she deliberately misled Pickford about her own sexual desires and experience, even as she elicited confessions from Pickford.
But each of these intersections demonstrate that Lister not only was not temporally isolated in absolute terms, but was not isolated even in her own direct experience. Even if her experience and practices differed in detail from those of other women she encountered, she clearly existed within a continuum of homoerotic practice within her own historic context. This evidence of a “lesbian continuum” (to use Adrienne Rich’s term) around the turn of the 19th century contradicts the theories of historians like Smith Rosenberg and Faderman who saw a sharp dichotomy between nonsexual (though often sensual) romantic friendship and lesbian relations defined by genital sexuality. The problem is that–as we actively see in Lister’s own writing and negotiations–active management of sexual knowledge and representation mean that we could rarely know where the dividing line was between sexual and non-sexual relationships.
Among the other models of lesbianism that we know Lister had access to were classical texts like Juvenal’s satires and novels such as Belinda. She may even have been aware of the Pirie and Woods court case. Lister commented on medical texts discussing lesbianism that she found unhelpful in understanding herself. [Note: From context, it appears the central point was the myth of the macro-clitoral lesbian. Lister examined her own genitals and found no evidence of such a thing.]
Lester also used reading and texts as a way of engaging with other women, either using texts such as Byron to sound them out on their romantic receptiveness, or arranging for parallel reading as a practice reinforcing couplehood.
Although Lister sometimes described her own behavior in masculine terms, such as “gentlemanly” she does not–contrary to some historians’ claims–appear to have considered herself “a man in a woman’s body,” even though on one or more occaseven though on one or more occasions she records having fantasized about having a penis or about passing in order to marry. On one occasion she describes herself as “not all masculine but rather softly gentleman-like.” But the forms and nomenclature of heteronormativity were inescapable. She referred to her established partnerships as “like husband and wife.” [Note: This was hardly unique to Lister. Romantic correspondence between women regularly used husband-wife language from as early as the 17th century through the 20th.] The sartorial presentation that felt natural to her was a hybrid of specific masculine-coded garments and an avoidance of “femininity” via the use of sober colors and plain stylings. Some researchers have analyzed how Lister deployed shifting strategies of presentation to address the varied concerns of gender and class. Class was an extremely significant aspect of her identity that she was constantly constructing, negotiating, and defending.
Class becomes relevant in exploring how Lister built relationships with women that she was not romantically involved with. Further, her interactions were not always clearly distinguished between romantic and not. Many women shifted easily between the categories of acquaintance, friend, flirtation, affair, and romance.
Orr sets out that her purpose is not to “correct” previous conclusions about Lister’s sexuality, but to identify some that have become accepted knowledge and overwrite them with a more nuanced view that draws on her specific historic context, rather than evaluating her life in terms of anachronistic models.
In this section, Orr challenges the accepted ideas about the meaning and uses of Lister’s “crypt hand.” Most previous editors have presented excerpts from the diaries that do not clearly distinguish material recorded in cipher from that in ordinary writing. Whitbread notes the crypt hand was used to record Lester’s “intimate” (that is, sexual) life, creating the impression that her sexual and emotional observations were always encrypted and that crypt hand was used only for this purpose. But the crypt hand was also used in correspondence with her intimate partners–the sharing of the key was an almost ritual aspect of a shift in her relationship with someone.
Even so, the correlation of the use of crypt hand with content related to sexuality has helped produce a segregation in analysis and theorizing about Lister’s life, depending on whether a researcher utilized the encrypted materials or not. The encryption also helped enable censorship about her sexuality, beginning with John Lister’s published excerpts that drew only from the “public” portions.
When examined across writing modes (crypt versus plain) and genres (journal versus letters), Lister’s voice is notably consistent. With respect to the use of crypt hand, Whitbread concluded it was used for matters that Lister wished to keep secret–not only sexual matters, but thoughts about her clothing. Some researchers have identified the crypt hand a type of “closet,” enabling Lister to create a separation of her public and private identities. Yet Lister’s commentary on both her sexuality and use of the crypt hand do not reflect this idea. She expresses no stigma about her desires, considering them utterly natural. And her internal dialogues about her sexuality appear in both types of writing, intertwined with each other. Further, Listers “plain hand” had its own version of obfuscation, in a dense system of abbreviations and cramped writing. When she found Maria Barlow examining her journal she made no protest, suggesting she “make out what you can,” evidently considering the decipherment of even plain hand to be sufficient barrier.
The crypt hand had its own arc of evolution, initially used to record brief expressions of emotion and only later expanding to extensive passages; expanding from the use of Greek letters to a more extensive repertory. Handwriting was not the only technique used to create meaningfully distinct texts. When Lister first became involved with Mariana, she began a new journal specific to recording that relationship. Rather than her name being transcribed, Mariana was assigned a unique symbol within the text. By the time of her relationship with Mariana, Lister had developed her own sexual vocabulary, using “kiss” to indicate an orgasm, and ‘cross” or a cross symbol to indicate masturbation.
In Rowanchild’s analysis of the journals, she identifies the network of women with whom Lister shared the key to the crypt hand, representing a privileged “inner circle” of women who engaged in same-sex relations.
When focusing on the Paris era, Orr found that existing edited material was deficient. Although Whitbread’s No Priest But Love focused on a similar period, she included less than 1/6 of the journal material for that era. Green cataloged 30 letters from the era, but included only 17 of them. Liddington emphasized the importance of incorporating other documentary material–account books, etc.—for a complete understanding.
Is this section, Orr reviews the nature and scope of the documentary material covering the 1824–25 Paris trip, plus some additional material that provides context for the trip and its experiences. Orr also notes certain topics which she excluded from detailed analysis, such as a brief flirtation with a Miss Pope and an evidently platonic, if sometimes indecorous, relationship with her French language teacher who was not part of the residence at Place Vendôme.
Orr’s interest is in how we use sources like journals and letters to produce “women’s history.” They are often trivialized as primarily emotional rather than rational, autobiographical while not being intended for public consumption, and part of a personal analytic self-fashioning rather than a neutral record.
This section includes a lot of theory-talk about the interpretation of such sources. It then moves on to lay out Orr’s editorial practices, intended to find a balance between readability and preserving structural data, such as distinguishing crypt hand from plain hand. As the crypt hand included no distinction of case, no punctuation, and no word spacing, the edited versions adopt these formatting practices from how similar text was treated in plain hand. Indications of Lister’s corrections and insertions are explained. Abbreviations are generally expanded, except for personal names where the use of abbreviation can indicate degrees of familiarity. The handling of illegible text is discussed.
The section ends by laying out the three topics that are the focus of the work—textual issues, social context, and sexual practices—then reiterating the key reasons why Lister’s material is of importance to history.
As an illustration of how topics were handled, this section opens with “this treadmill business.” As part of her general curiosity about the world, and based on a recommendation by a friend, Lister decided to view and try out the penal treadmill at Clerkenwell prison. Public reaction to this event haunted her for some time. Evidently her proposed visit was so out of line for gender and class expectations of the time that not only was she required to get special permission from the prison magistrates, but the event was considered noteworthy and peculiar enough to be reported in London newspapers, and also the paper aimed at English ex-pats in Paris, where she was next heading. So she not only arrived in Paris to find gossip waiting for her, but she agonized over the possibility that the story would make it to Halifax.
In two journal entries, Lister notes having discussed the event with Mrs. Barlow and with her landlady Madame de Boyve. A connection is made between the public reaction to the treadmill event and reactions to Lister’s display of personal style and manners. While Lister regularly veered outside normative behavior, she disliked being viewed as straying outside class boundaries.
The treadmill incident appears in Lister’s texts in multiple ways, reflecting her various textual strategies. Most of her journal entries about it are in crypt hand, where she is exploring how she felt and reacted. But the journal used plain hand (as does her correspondence) to defend and explain her actions. Crypt hand was for internal processing, plain hand was for constructing a public representation of the event. Thus this one topic (and one not directly related to the more fraught issues of romance and sex) illustrates that the interplay of journal and letters, encryption and not, is more complicated than “crypt hand is for sex.”
This section concludes by laying out the contents of the chapter: an analysis of the format and contents of the journal, a similar analysis of letters, and an exploration of how the two are interconnected.
Anne’s Journal Volume
This section analyzes the nature of Lister’s journal and its contents, more in a structural sense than a narrative sense (which will be covered later).
She wrote a journal entry for every day of the Paris stay although, as will be discussed later, some entries were written up retrospectively. The physical volume that includes the Paris trip begins a month and a half before she traveled and continues for four months after her return to England, with about 2/3 covering Paris.
The physical specifications of the journal are described. The pages were blank and unlined, meaning that any formatting of the text was entirely by Lister’s choices. In addition to the daily entries, the journal contains three other types of content: a summary of letters received and sent, an index of books read, and an index to the journal entries that included brief summaries of their content and a number of symbols used to highlight content of particular interest. Orr notes that while previous researchers have undoubtedly used these indexes, they have not previously been analyzed for content.
The summary of letters comes first. Material from the letters was sometimes recorded in daily journal entries but would not then be included in the journal entry index, thus keeping structural separation between the two indexes.
[Note: I may have missed it – or the information may come later – but I don’t see a reference to whether Lister allocated a certain number of blank pages to the correspondence index before beginning the daily journal.]
Next in the volume come the daily entries. The index to the daily entries appears in the back of the volume with the book turned upside down so that the text progresses in standard fashion from the cover inward. (In theory, the volume would be full when the daily entries and the index met in the middle, but in actual fact a section of unused pages was left.)
Although Lister noted at one point that the index would be useful “should I ever publish” and although she used it when rereading older material, she never did create any sort of comprehensive or retrospective summary of her life and experiences.
The literary index, also located in the back of the volume, was written almost entirely in plain hand, one exception being a 16th century book of erotic poetry. The daily index used a mixture of crypt and plain hand. In general the writing mode in the index matched that in the entries, but there were exceptions.
The length of the entries and index notes was variable due to several factors. During the courtship of Mrs. Barlow, entries increased in length due to the amount of description and analysis Lister devoted to this topic. During particularly busy times not related to her romances, the entries might be relatively short, such as during her initial days in Paris, or when preparing to move or travel.
The journal index not only summarized key topics but signaled degrees of interest, especially using two symbols. The “cross” symbol (+) flagged sexual events. Within the journal entries it often indicated a session of masturbation, linked to the specific time of day and context. While text might describe this as “incurring a cross” a plus sign would be placed in the page margin to flag that content.
But the plus sign was not limited to recording masturbation. It also occurs in conjunction with references to reading sexually stimulating material. In all cases, a plus sign in the journal entry would be echoed by one in the relevant index, whether of the daily entries or literature.
A different symbol, the section mark § (also known as a silcrow), was used to flag content of particular interest. This was used in sets of 1 to 3 symbols appearing in both the journal entry and its index entry. A single mark was most common. A double mark was somewhat less frequent and marked topics that Lister might want to review in the future. The rare triple mark indicated experiences of intense emotion, whether positive or negative. There is a discussion providing examples of the types of content that each might appear with. There is a correlation between the number of markers and the amount of crypt hand in the associated passages.
The next part of the section describes in detail changes in the length of journal entries and the use of crypt hand relative to the events in Lister’s life. Factors that might result in postponing the writing up of entries are also considered. In some cases, an entry might note an event that interrupted the writing process, describing it in a footnote.
A separate writing practice enabled these delayed write ups to retain their accuracy and detail. Lister wrote up “memoranda” on slips kept in a “pocket casebook” kept close. These would record the details in real time that would be expanded in later journal entries. They might also be used for drafting entries or letters when particular care in composition was desired. [Note: possibly these memoranda were discarded after being written up in a more permanent form.]
[Aside: Completely unrelated to Lister, her practice here reminds me of a similar one my great-great-grandfather describes in the context of his Civil War diaries and letters from the 1860s. He would write up daily memoranda that would later be the basis for more detailed letters to family. But in his case the memoranda were written up in a notebook, which he would then mail home when it was full, and not on discardable slips of paper.]
Lister’s purpose in creating such a detailed record of her life is alluded to in an entry from 1821.
“By unburdening my mind on paper I feel, as it were, in some degree to get rid of it; it seems made over to a friend that hears it patiently, keeps it faithfully, and by never forgetting anything, is always ready to compare the past and present and thus to cheer and edify the future.”
The section concludes with a summary of the types of topics that Lister recorded in her journals.
This section explores the nature and structure of the Lister’s correspondence. Although the correspondence index in the journal lists the full number of letters sent and received, and some note of their contents, the actual number of surviving letters is much smaller and selective. The nature of the content is also distinct from the journal, even apart from the restriction in which items survive. Letters carefully construct the self that Lister wished to present to the world, as well as managing her social relationships with her correspondents.
Published editions of Lister’s correspondence are found only in the two works by Green, who focused on Lister’s social life and environment while traveling. The surviving letters from the Paris trip constitute 19 items out of 30 indexed, primarily those written to her Aunt Anne, but also several to a friend, Miss Maclean. No letters to Mariana or Isabella survive. (To survive as part of the Shibden archives, the letters would need to have been returned there. This may have happened at the death of Miss Maclean. Aunt Anne’s correspondence, of course, had been sent to Shibden in the first place.)
The index lists 37 letters received by Lister, many from Aunt Anne, half a dozen or so each from Marianna, Isabella, and Miss Maclean, and three from miscellaneous sources. None of these survive except as index summaries and occasionally in larger transcribed extracts in the journal. As none of the surviving correspondence is with Lister’s lovers, and as the record is not otherwise representative, Orr’s analysis focuses on how the correspondence illustrates Lister’s social interactions.
Correspondence was sufficiently important to Lister that she had a portable writing desk, which features in journal references to its placement and arrangement. There are journal records of sourcing writing paper and of writing “small and close” to be cost-effective with respect to postage, but Lister’s handwriting in these is more carefully readable than her journal and uses few of the abbreviations that the journal is rife with. She notes making rough drafts before composing the final form of letters, often over a space of multiple days. Compared to the journal content, the letters often expand the detail of events and observations over the same material in the journal.
A great deal is made about how the sentimental, romantic language found in letters between female romantic friends was “just how everyone wrote back then,” but an examination of Lister’s writing practices find that the reality is more nuanced than that. While all of her letters used sentimental and affectionate language, distinctions can be identified in the language used toward Aunt Anne and that written to her friends and lovers. Sentiment was an important index to personal relations. Lister relates reading one of Mariana’s letters to Mrs. Barlow and the two commenting that it failed to match the tone of Lister’s letter to her (quoted in the journal) but rather was unrevealing of anything more than “what might be read to all the world.” This is a clear indication that the sentiments expressed in letters to lovers were expected to be different in quality from ordinary levels of sentimentality and might be entirely too revealing to third parties.
Much of the content of her letters might be thought of as maintaining webs of connection – providing and requesting updates on the health of friends and relatives, and the like. These networks included Lister’s close friends, her lovers, her immediate family, and close friends of family members such as Aunt Anne. Given the nature of the content, Aunt Anne at the very least was aware of the nature of Lister’s romantic relationships and accepted them.
The topics in Lister’s correspondence differ from her journal in some systematic ways around class. While the journal describes her encounters and interactions with a wide variety of people, from French nobility to tradespeople, her letters tend to focus more narrowly on relations with servants, such as her maid Cordingley.
Another function of letters that emerges from analysis is how they functioned in a similar way to “references” in communicating and supporting the reputation people had in their community. Mrs. Barlow read to Lister a letter from a friend back home to demonstrate the good character she had there. Lister similarly read to Mrs. Barlow letters from Mariana and Miss Maclean to demonstrate the same. The potential for letters to break as well as build relationships is illustrated by an anecdote in which Mariana’s husband read one of Lister’s letters to Mariana and it destroyed any further amicable relations between Lister and the man.
This section looks more closely at the interplay between the journal and the correspondence. The two neither duplicate content exactly nor represent entirely distinct content.
Letters received or sent were recorded in the correspondence index at the beginning of the journal volume. This also kept track of the reciprocity of the letters – all were answered, those to Aunt Anne and Mariana within a few days, others less promptly. The index (if I’m understanding correctly) was relatively bare-bones, simply including the date and correspondant. Then within the daily journal entries themselves, the existence of the letter was flagged with an “L” in the margin and the letter would be summarized, with more important content being transcribed in quotation marks. This was the case for both letters received and sent. In many cases, these extracts and summaries are the only evidence for the content of the letters that have not survived. (More on this later.) Examples are given of the interplay between the letters and journal entries covering the same events and topics.
None of the surviving letters use the crypt hand, but the journal extracts from them may use it. This complicates conclusions about the purpose of the crypt hand as it clearly does not always signify things kept secret, if those matters were written openly in the letters. Crypt hand extracts included discussions of clothing, finance, servants, and relations with other residents at Place Vendôme – though all these matters might also appear in plain hand.
As noted in a journal entry, letters to Mariana were (always?) written in crypt hand. (See the previous note about her husband reading their correspondence.) Lister was selective about who she shared the key to the crypt hand with. She had previously given it to another lover, Miss Valance, but there is no indication she ever shared it with Mrs. Barlow.
Destruction of letters was a regular and systematic aspect of correspondence. When they parted, Lister obtained a promise from Mrs. Barlow that she would destroy her letters after reading. Lister sometimes comments about reviewing older correspondence and sorting out some for destruction, especially letters that she felt might reflect badly on her – those from romantic contacts she no longer had relations with, poetry from a rejected male suitor. This process, combined with the journal extracts and the selective use of crypt hand, enabled her to retain content of interest while managing access to knowledge about her sex life.
In a few instances, Lister kept a full copy of letters she sent as a separate document from the journal, and in rare cases she notes keeping the original of a letter received, as well as extracting it to the journal. In one case she notes “I shall keep and read it by way of stimulus” suggesting the possibility that reading it was an erotic act.
The pact with Mrs. Barlow about burning letters gave Lister more freedom to be candid and explicit in their contents. She records:
“I should then write more at my ease assured that she would destroy all that it might be imprudent to keep this is sanction enough to my writing what I like observed that many things I said it would not be prudent to write if she kept my letters.” [Note: as this is written in crypt hand, there is no internal punctuation therefore I have not added any.]
The active role of letters within a relationship is evidenced in multiple ways, in addition to those noted above. The sharing of letters from and to third parties to the Lister-Barlow relationship formed complex literary romantic triangles, shaped by management of which letters to share and which to withhold or delay sharing. Lister regularly shared quite personal letters from Mariana with Mrs.Barlow. It’s unclear if Mariana knew her letters were being shared (though it appears this was an expected practice) but she was clearly aware of the relationship from Lister’s correspondence with her. Mrs. Barlow, on her side, had been engaged in an amorous correspondence with a male suitor, whose tone shifted to an offer of marriage. Lister was aware of the correspondence, but the specific content was not shared initially. Mrs. Barlow kept her suitor dangling without a clear yes or no up through Lister’s departure, but the existence of the continuing relationship (and Lister’s disapproval of the man’s character) contributed to the disruption of their partnership.
This section concludes with a summary of the main themes covered.
This section opens with several encounters Lister had with figures from (recent) French history that presumably had resonance for her personally in some way. She and Mrs. Barlow visited the prison where Marie Antoinette had been kept. Orr connects this with Marie Antoinette’s homosexual reputation (true or not) and with the fascination she held in that regard in the 19th century. The two also examined the writings of Madame de Sévigné, the famous salonnière known for her intimate female friendships. Another set of records that Lister and Barlow took the opportunity to examine were those related to Joan of Arc. Orr speculates that Lister and Barlow may have discussed the possible intimate history of these two women as well (though it appears there’s no positive record of such discussion) as women who stepped outside gender expectations, and who attempted to manage their sexual reparations related to that. Orr also connects this topic to Lister’s thoughts about the Ladies of Llangollen. The interest, Orr asserts, was not in the truth or falsity of claims about these figures, but an interest in how they actively managed the way in which society saw them. In particular, the Ladies and Lister’s neighbor Miss Pickford presented examples of how a public reputation as romantic friends could be maintained in conjunction with an erotic partnership.
This chapter as a whole examines how Lister interacted socially with the other residents of Place Vendôme and her strategies for managing her own and others’ reputations. Soon after arriving, Lister began speculating on the romantic potential of several of the residents, as part of a larger assessment of the character of her fellow lodgers. [Note: I may have previously described the boarding house as being specifically for women, which isn’t the case. I was misled by the fact that Whitbread’s excerpts focus entirely on the female residents. As will be seen, the male residents make part of the sexual dynamic of the whole.]
Within the house, residents made visits between their rooms in the same way that one might visit other houses, and these are recorded in the journal with the same notation as external visiting, providing evidence for interactions. Lister was quite curious and opinionated about her fellow guests and was often sarcastic and slyly witty in her descriptions. Her commentary maps out her views on normative acceptable behavior.
Orr provides a catalog of key figures in the residence. In addition to the proprietor Madame de Boyve (and her husband who makes very little appearance), there were two English widows with teenage daughters, Mrs. MacKenzie and Mrs. Barlow. An Anglo French woman, Mademoiselle de Sans was briefly the object of Lister’s romantic interest. Another key figure was Mr. Franks, an Irish man that Madame de Boyve was trying to matchmake with Lister.
Anne at the Place Vendôme
This section maps out the social dynamics of the Place Vendôme community.
Lister’s closest social circle consisted of other English expatriate women of a similar social class. They shared advice about Paris life, visited each other, and accompanied each other on social outings – an essential function in an era when single women going about unaccompanied could be considered odd.
There was also a more extended network of people not resident there who participated in evening entertainments and outings. For the most part Lister socialized with other English ex-pats, although she did have some regular interactions with French women, such as her French tutor Madame Galvani. In addition, there was another layer of vendors and servants that came and went and might be commented on.
Madame Galvani – although not discussed extensively in the dissertation – was a source of “salacious gossip, sexual information, and illicit and erotic book[s].”
Many of the casual callers at the residence were men, invited by Madame de Boyve who was an enthusiastic matchmaker.
Apart from Lister’s eventual close relationship with the Barlows (mother and daughter), she also became close with the MacKenzie mother and daughter pair (with whom she exchanged a visit after returning to London later). The two widows befriended Lister and made her part of their daily activities, visiting each other and going out shopping and sightseeing. Lister speculates on the possibility of “attaching” the 16-year-old Miss MacKenzie – an attraction that Mrs. Barlow was aware of and commented on. But the attraction was more of intellectual interest than romantic. Miss MacKenzie was unusually well read, including in history and the Classics, and was not above the occasional risqué comment.
And the women were useful on occasion by relaying gossip that other residents shared about Lister. MacKenzie related that Madame Galvani had initially thought Lister was a man, and Barlow noted that MacKenzie had had similar thoughts, based on her “gentlemanly” manners, including kissing women’s hands. Lister records surprise that someone could think this. [Note: It is far from the only time that Lister is oblivious to how others might interpret her behavior.]
Miss MacKenzie’s classical education is evident in her comment – on observing Lister’s romantic talk to Barlow – “êtes-vous Achille?” (are you Achilles?) In reference to the story of Achilles being hidden in the women’s quarters dressed as a girl. Lister discussed the matter later with her privately.
Lister, MacKenzie, and Barlow became something of a social unit, helping each other and socializing as a group. But by the time the MacKenzies left in early October, Lister was a bit relieved, as Mrs. MacKenzie had become jealous of her growing friendship with Mademoiselle de Sans, who had joined their social group.
[Note: Orr uses Lister’s abbreviation “Melle de Sans” for M[ademois]elle de Sans, which had me confused at first that “Melle” was a given name! I’m shorthanding her simply as “de Sans.”]
De Sans joined Place Vendôme at the beginning of October, at a time when Lister’s courtship of Barlow was in process. Lister quickly began dividing her attention between the two and dithering in her journal over which she wanted to pursue. De Sans was French, but born in England and fluent in both languages. She was in somewhat poor health (an issue with the bowels) which gave Lister a context for doting over her and paying her attention.
After an initial misunderstanding, Lister initiated conversation and regular visits, increasingly involving flirtation. They began exchanging poetic mottos, referencing love and friendship. Barlow commented on Lister’s “new friend” with a jealous tinge. De Sans seemed receptive to the flavor of Lister’s attentions, including an episode of kissing that teetered on the boundary between social and erotic. She signaled her awareness of the eroticism by telling Lister “if [you] were a man I know not what would be the end of all this.” They went for a carriage ride during which Lister “made love” to her and de Sans “coquetted.” [Note: This does not imply genital sex, but more likely verbal flirtation, perhaps with kissing and fondling.]
Lister sounded out her financial situation and possible interest in living in England. She gave the conversation a double “silcrow” sign in her index. She discussed her divided interests with Barlow and spent a fair amount of journal space considering pros and cons of the two. But eventually Lister’s focus shifted more and more to Barlow and the flirtation with de Sans tapered off. Where once the three had engaged in handholding and physical affection as a group, now de Sans became a spectator to Lister flirting with Barlow.
In late October, de Sans experienced a series of “hysterical fits” during which she requested the attendance of Barlow and made no reliance on Lister. In Lister’s journal entries, the more intimate reference format of “Melle de S-” became the more formal Melle de Sans.” De Sans began encouraging the attention of gentlemen suitors.
Later, de Sans became an active mediator when the household politics exploded in December. (More on that later.)
Even after their cooling off, Lister would sometimes toy with the idea of starting up again with de Sans at times when she was having rough patches with Barlow, although the intent seems to have been to make Barlow jealous rather than to seriously switch partners. But Lister continued to write love poetry to de Sans into early January—an event that precipitated another “hysterical” fit. But by mid-January, Lister and Barlow has moved out into their own place (more on that later). They still visited with de Sans, and Lister even abetted de Sans’ meetings with a male suitor whom she eventually married months later. After de Sans left Paris, they corresponded only once, though Barlow later provided the news of de Sans’ marriage.
There were a lot of romantic goings-on at Place Vendôme. As noted previously, de Boyve was an enthusiastic matchmaker, and as will be discussed later, her housekeeper was said to procure less formal arrangements for the male guests.
De Boyve set out to encourage a match between Lister and Mr. Franks, by including them both in group outings that were carefully paired to thrust them together. Lister appears to have been oblivious to the matchmaking for a long time. In her letters, she mentions Franks only briefly on first acquaintance, and they never engaged in formal visits. She saw Franks as useful for masculine information, such as a recommendation for a tailor, but there is never any of the socializing that she engages in with women.
Franks upped his game by inviting Lister to visit him in Ireland. Initially she expressed interest, turning the subject to her brother who had died in Ireland. But when Franks then turned the discussion to marriage, Lister’s response made it clear that she would never consider that position and the invitation was dropped. They had no further contact after leaving Paris.
As noted previously, the proprietor Madame de Boyve loved matchmaking and spent a lot of effort trying to set Lister up with Mr. Franks. But initially, Lester interpreted de Boyve’s attentiveness to her as more personal. Lister recorded that she “seems to have taken a fancy to me” and Lister responded with “something of flattery of manner she is not used to from ladies.” Franks departed with nothing to show for de Boyve’s efforts, after which de Boyve turned toward trying to drive a wedge between Lister and Barlow.
Lister and de Boyve seem to have crossed signals regularly. On one occasion, de Boyve “took [Lister] around the waist” prompting Lister to kiss her noisily. And Lister perceived some of de Boyve’s interactions with Barlow as flirting. De Boyve had certainly become aware of Lister’s interest in women, but whether from sexual jealousy or moral disapproval, de Boyve entered into a campaign to convince Lister that Barlow was of questionable morals – recounting Barlow’s past interactions with men that she considered to have been sexually questionable, such as entertaining a man alone in her room. When Barlow had a chance to rebut this, she pointed out that “alone” included the presence of her maid.
But de Boyve’s gossip initially unsettled Lister and generated a number of critical observations on Barlow in the journal. In addition to the male visitor, there was a third-party allegation the Barlow had a one night stand with a man not resident in the house.
Someone hypocritically, Lister noted that Barlow’s response to her own advances could be considered support for the allegations of sexual impropriety with men. There is a discussion of how subtle differences in how Lister referenced de Boyve in her journal corresponded to different contexts for the interaction. Evidently another charge that de Boyve laid against Barlow was that Lister and Barlow spoke English rather than French together, and that this had been a pattern with the men who were friendly with Barlow – that they stopped speaking French.
Lister eventually settled on taking Barlow’s side, deciding that de Boyve was lying about the improprieties. Part of this shift was due to learning about the allegations that de Boyve’s housekeeper had a sideline providing and procuring sexual services for the male guests. This not only cast doubt on de Boyve’s morals for allowing it, but also made continued residence untenable for anyone who didn’t want to be associated with that immorality. The journal recounts an extended period when all these allegations – mostly shared privately between individuals – drove the residents to take sides. Lister wavered sometimes, on one occasion helping to try to trick Barlow into revealing the “truth” of her past behavior. De Boyve tried to use reports of Barlow’s initial doubts about Lister’s gender as a wedge, but in the end Lister concluded – as Barlow did – that further residence at Place Vendôme was untenable. (Orr provides an extended blow-by-blow account of the household conflict that I haven’t attempted to render in detail.)
The quarrel came to a public crisis at the end of November. December journal entries show a fixed interest in the relationship with Barlow, as they determined to move out and get their own place together.
Reflecting 19th-century attitudes toward reputation, Lister seems less concerned with establishing the objective truth of claims about various people’s behavior as she is with determining who had the better “character.” Hypocrisy again enters as Lister condemns de Boyve’s “worldliness” and inappropriate knowledge of sexual matters. A respectable gentlewoman would not know about the things she accused Barlow of or, if she did know about them, would not allow Barlow to continue living there if she believed the accusations to be true. That de Boyve allowed someone she believed to be immoral to continue living in her house was evidence of de Boyve’s bad character, not of Barlow’s character. This also worked in the opposite direction: for Barlow to leave the house in the face of the accusations might hurt her reputation, but to stay would definitely hurt it.
It was settled that Lister and the Barlows would move out. But that decision made de Boyve aware of how the event would reflect on her reputation and she exerted some effort to reattach Lister to her side. Other lodgers were dragged into the negotiations, having different stories and perhaps with access to different versions of the facts. De Boyve even claimed that all the negative things she said had been intended as joking.
At the beginning of January, the move was accomplished (after Lister dithering a bit whether she would actually move or only visit Barlow regularly). Curiously – or perhaps simply in line with the social manners of the day – de Boyve made a social call at the new residence on Quai Voltaire, as did many of the Place Vendôme residents. Lister was cool to her but did return the visit, though they did not return to full sociability.
This section concludes with a summary of the main themes of the analysis regarding social practices and dynamics.
The chapter opens by reviewing Lister’s several purposes for the Paris trip. A primary one was to seek specialized medical advice and treatment for her venereal disease (More on which later). But other reasons were to improve her French, and to get away – in several senses – from some emotional upsets of a year before.
Lister had a habit of shorthanding significant disturbing events with a nickname, as she had with the “treadmill business.” A year previously, in haste to meet Mariana coming to visit, she had walked out along the road to meet the mail coach and – when it halted for her – climbed up so precipitously she was perceived as having leapt the three steps into the coach in a single bound. This startled and embarrassed Mariana (along with Lister’s somewhat unkempt appearance) and became a subject of gossip that Lister shorthanded “the three steps.” Mariana’s reaction was a turning point in Lister’s acceptance that they had no hope of a future permanent relationship.
But, as noted previously, the practical reason for the Paris trip was seeking treatment for the venereal disease she had caught from Mariana (passed on by Mariana’s husband). Paris was considered preeminent in medicine and Lister was able to consult multiple doctors and to try a wide variety of treatments. She also tracked her symptoms (a discharge) and treatment with a special set of symbols in the journal. This is offered as yet another example of how Lister constructed, monitored, and recorded aspects of her sexuality.
One of Orr’s recurring points is that Lister’s construction of her sexual identity is not some isolated unicorn of an experience but is solidly embedded in early 19th century culture. Orr once again critiques how previous historians have approached the material aspects of this topic, and lays out her plan for the chapter. First she will review Whitbread’s treatment of the Paris material. Next she will review the later period of Lister and Barlow’s relationship, which Whitbread covered more antily. And finally she will analyze the active negotiation of the courtship and romance.
Anne and Mrs Barlow
This section, reviewing Whitbread’s treatment, is fairly short. Orr feels that Whitbread skewed the material by taking as a given that Mariana was Lister’s one great romance and that all other relationships fell short in some way and were in authentic or mercenary. Whitbread concludes that Barlow was something of an “adventuress” and that regardless of her feelings for Lister, the nature of the relationship made her nervous and neurotic. Orr, in contrast, emphasizes the need to examine all of Lister’s relationships as a whole, rather than assigning them to a hierarchy of importance or authenticity.
This section uses Listers discussion with Barlow of her sexual history to lay out both that history and the context in which she shares it, and how that reflects the progression of the Barlow romance. Some of the filtering of the information is marked by how Lister describes her sharing as “the story,” “nearly the whole story,” “nearly the real story,” and similar qualifications. “Story” did not imply a fiction but simply referred to a communication. Such stories were shared with a gradation of specificity. Usually an initial version withheld any clear indication of the person involved, referring simply to “a friend,” but perhaps later adding specifics that allowed Barlow to connect the events with the names she knew from non-sexual stories. Lister sometimes referred to her “three favorites” (most likely Eliza Raine, Mariana, and Isabella Norcliffe) but also discussed sexual relations with others beside these.
This intimate sharing began in mid October when Barlow acknowledged Lister’s courtship of her. In the journal, Lister refers to her affairs as “my gaieties” and similarly ambiguous language is used. Lister sometimes worried that she had been too open, and when de Boyve caused her to have doubts about Barlow’s character around the end of October, the sharing cooled for a while. But Lister’s explicitness gradually returned by mid November, when she had resolved to take Barlow’s side in the dispute.
The earliest story was of her boarding school romance with Eliza Raine, her “first and best and dearest love,” beginning when she was 14. Lister notes of this, “I had had no theory till of late years, it was all practice.” That relationship continued for eight years, well past their school days, with visits and a plan to “go off together.” But Lister’s inconstancy – flirting with other girls – caused problems. Lister presented this to Barlow with a claim that she was more settled now. [Note: Although you certainly couldn’t tell that from her behavior!] She still remembered Eliza fondly, claiming that if Eliza could be cured of her insanity (she was institutionalized in her mid-20s) the two would get back together.
It is likely that Lister first met Mariana through Mariana’s brother, who was treating Eliza. It became an uneasy triangle, for Eliza disliked Mariana, but ceded her place to her. (Barlow, in turn, clearly was not impressed by Mariana, from what she learned of her.)
Lester and Mariana became lovers a year or so before the latter’s marriage, but even setting aside the obvious, there were several barriers to the two being able to share their lives. Money was the biggest problem. Even though Lister’s brother had recently died, making her the heir (and relieving her of the obligation to marry for her own future support), she had no substantial income of her own at that point – not enough to live independently, and certainly not enough to support a partner.
Yet when Mariana received a proposal of marriage from Charles Lawton, Lister believed the two women had an agreement that she would not accept it. She felt betrayed when the proposal was accepted and the marriage arranged during a brief period when Lister was away on a visit. In this context, Lister made it clear to Barlow that she would not accept a similar situation if Barlow felt inclined to accept her male suitor’s proposal.
After Mariana’s marriage, Lister and Mariana’s sister Anne Belcombe resided with the newlyweds for half a year. [Note: As described by Smith-Rosenberg (1975), this was not at all an unusual arrangement at that time.] (More on Anne Belcombe later.)
During this period, Lister developed a very negative opinion of Lawton because of his extramarital affairs, including with household servants. She and Lawton quarreled about it and an exchange of harsh letters marked the end of anything resembling amicable relations. It also put an end to Lister visiting their home for some years, though she and Mariana are met in other locations.
Lister was very conflicted over her continuing attachment to Mariana. Being romantic herself, she didn’t understand how Mariana could have married, if love weren’t involved, but if Mariana loved her husband, why did she continue to maintain a bond with Lister? And that bond had formal aspects: they had exchanged rings and sworn that if Mariana became a widow they would live together. Lister considered herself “engaged” despite her regular affairs with other women, and Barlow seemed to understand that this was a loose end that could be a problem for her own potential commitment to Lister. Lister several times lamented about the possibility of refusing a more suitable partner in favor of the “shadow” of a possible future with Mariana.
Lister’s stories to Barlow also included the affair with Mariana’s sister Anne, who had also stayed in the Lawton household for a while after the marriage. Evidently Lister was the one being pursued this time, after initially disliking her. Anne Belcombe would come to her bedroom and stay till all hours “amusing [her]self” and offering a “curious present” made from her pubic hair. The affair lasted a few months at that time. [Note: I believe there were additional encounters later, but this is based on how it was related to Barlow.]
Another more extensive courtship was related, with a Miss Browne, who was given a special nickname and crypt hand symbol in the journals. The matter never went further than a kiss, but Lister proposed that they live together. Miss Browne refused, citing the difference in their stations. [Note: In the journal entries from that time, Lister spills a lot of ink on how vulgar Miss Browne’s friends and relations are and how loath she is to invite them to Shibden.]
Another serious relationship shared with Barlow was the one with Miss Vallance, which overlapped the end of the time with Miss Browne. Lister presents Vallance as having been the pursuer at first, which she considered surprising as Vallance had been engaged twice. [Note: This suggests a theory of exclusive sexual orientation on Lister’s part, although she may simply be projecting her own attitude.] Vallance was more her equal in class and was financially sound. Lister clearly still had erotic feelings for her, noting on several occasions that she was thinking of her when she “incurred a cross.” She suggested to Barlow that if they didn’t work out, she might approach Vallance again – though this may have been a ploy to inspire jealousy. Vallance was one of the limited insiders to whom Lister gave the key to the crypt hand. Their relationship was sexual, though Lester only implied this to Barlow, without stating it outright. (There are multiple points in the “stories” where Lister notes details that were withheld from the versions Barlow heard.)
Barlow sometimes expressed her anxiety about the history Lister was sharing with her. One occasion when this is documented was when Lister shared her history with Isabella Norcliffe: how they had first had sex due to Lister “having been made tipsy,” and how Isabella regularly teased Lister about all her lovers, and how she could sometimes say inappropriate things in public. But Isabella primarily figured in discussions with Barlow in terms of friendship and news from home, rather than in a romantic context.
Orr’s discussion of Isabella segues back to the question of Lister’s commitment to Mariana. Isabella had told Lister that Mariana’s marriage had nullified any commitment between them. But when this was relayed to Mariana, it precipitated a demand that Lister renew their commitment. Lister had resisted, considering their original commitment to still hold, but eventually she agreed to participate in a marriage-like ceremony with her – one that she told Barlow she repented of. [Note: One wonders how much impact this had on Barlow’s hesitation to commit herself fully to Lister.]
In late November, Lister shared the details of her venereal disease. Barlow was able to recommend one of the doctors Lister saw for treatment, so the candor was quite useful. Barlow had clearly been aware of Lister’s condition before being told. Although Lister didn’t identify the “lady” she had contracted it from, she was at pains to make clear that she herself had not had connection with the sort of “low” person who had that sort of infection, but that it came through a man’s infidelities at second hand. But these details weren’t shared until very near when Lister was to leave Paris. At that time, she related more details of her relationship with Mariana, only omitting that their sexual relationship continued after Mariana’s marriage. This sharing included the break due to “the three steps” and Mariana’s indication that she would take her back if she would make her “figure and appearance more like other people.” At which Lister protested “then I should be different altogether.” Mariana had come to be embarrassed by Lister’s eccentricities but Lister was not willing to compromise them.
The section ends with a summing up of how these stories shared with Barlow map out her own understanding of her sexuality and how it had evolved. But the patchwork of information provided and withheld also maps out how she wanted to present herself in the context of exploring the possibilities for a relationship with Barlow.
Lister’s habit of using code phrases for meaningful events and concepts is particularly evident in language around desire. One especially colorful expression was “going to Italy.” Whitbread interpreted this as indicating a fully sexual relationship, but Orr opines that the evidence for this is not included in the excerpts in No Priest But Love, and that the meaning is more nuanced. The other method of signifying especially noteworthy progress in the relationship was with a triple Silcrow symbol.
From the beginning of her Paris stay, Lister perceived the attraction with Barlow to be mutual, and she records various flattering comments from Barlow in support of this. From mid-September Lister visited her daily, with the visits increasing in length. This pattern was disrupted somewhat in early October as Lister turned her attention to de Sans. Barlow communicated her jealousy, but specifically over Lister’s romantic interactions, not over other purely social ones. By such signals, Lister indicated the flavor of her interest and Barlow indicated her awareness of it and willingness to receive that interest. These interactions were performed in front of their close friends, such as the MacKenzies.
After the MacKenzies departed the residence, Lister and Barlow’s conversations turned more overtly to the topic of the sexual possibilities of women’s friendships, referencing the rumors about Marie Antoinette. Lister disingenuously implied that she had never been sexual, but suggested to Barlow that she “should like to be instructed in the other (between two women) and would learn when I could.” Barlow produced a book of poetry including “one woman intriguing with another” and they read it together while sitting in contact. After that, Lister expressed her desire for a permanent companion to live with her and share her bed, but again holding back with “to go as far as friendship can go.”
In the journal, Lister recorded wanting to kiss Barlow. Barlow cautioned that they should avoid quite so much physical display when others were present, but in return Lister pressed forward in private and kissed her several times. The two agreed they were courting. This was around mid October. An initial flurry of indexing symbols was followed by a week of scantier entries that ended with a note referring to “going to Italy.” Earlier, Barlow had made a comment that “Italy would not do for me.” Orr reviews evidence that Italy was peculiarly associated with female same-sex desire in the 17th and 18th centuries, based on both classical and contemporary references, as well as a more general reputation for licentiousness.
The references to Italy seem to initially have had a safe ambiguousness. They joked about the climate, and when Lister suggested she “would go to Italy and try the experiment, that is, get a woman there,” the statement balances between the literal and metaphorical, allowing her to test the idea with Barlow.
All this was before Lister became candid about her sexual history. Barlow suggested that Lister was experienced but Lister refused to confirm it, concerned about disapproval. It was at this point that Barlow inquired about the two rings Lister wore that had been exchanged with Mariana. Barlow correctly suspected that they indicated an existing bond. Barlow indicated that she might be willing to marry Lister, but not to live with her on lesser terms. Lister speculated that if she remained constant as a friend for two or three years, then Barlow might agree to “go to Italy.” [Note: Given her past history, this strikes me as beyond Lister’s powers of self-control.] They continued exploring the practical considerations, but for Barlow it was either platonic friendship or marriage.
Their flirtation and physical affection continued into November even as the trouble with de Boyve was at its height. This included fondling Barlow’s genitals through her clothes. But Lister continued to suggest scenarios in which they might go further, such as traveling together, which would require sharing a bed. Barlow held out for marriage.
This was the context in which Lister related more details of her history with Mariana, and Barlow in turn provided information about her previous marriage, as well as her version of her relations with her current male suitor, Mr. Hancock. Lister was not very comfortable hearing about Barlow’s heterosexual relations, but the discussions helped them explore their feelings about each other. Both of them concealed aspects of their pre-existing ties. Lister avoided admitting that she has been sexual with Mariana after Mariana’s marriage, lest Barlow see it as a current commitment, and Barlow for quite some time refused to share the letters she had received from Mr. Hancock, which would reveal that he had been named as a correspondent in an adultery trial.
At the end of November, Lister someone accidentally let Barlow know about her venereal disease (due to a reference in the letter she was sharing) and then quizzed her on whether it made a difference in the relationship. Lister noted in her journal that she had planned to explain the issue before they became intimate in a manner that could put Barlow at risk. This was the first experience Lister had with such a discussion: Mariana had not warned her, and she had not warned Isabella (to whom she had passed it). Barlow, being familiar with such matters from conversations with other guests, was able to recommend a specialist for treatment.
This marked something of a turning point in the progress of the relationship. Barlow continued in her attentions but cautioned Lister not to be too precipitous in making a commitment to her. But they negotiated certain behavioral requirements, such as that Lister was not to dress in front of anyone else (i.e., be undressed).
In early December, in the face of de Boyve’s reputational campaign, Barlow determined to leave Place Vendôme. Lister’s journal comments focused strongly on how Barlow was a “virtuous” woman, with Barlow’s refusal to accede to anything less than marriage as supporting evidence. At the same time, Lister indicated to Barlow that their behavior had gone too far for a retreat to mere platonic friendship. As they searched for a new residence for Barlow, Lister continually talked of sleeping with her there and met no overt objection. [Note: In context, this appears to refer to literally just sleeping in the same bed, based on later comments.] Lister pressed for further intimacy and towards the end of December succeeded in kissing and sucking Barlow’s breast. Barlow still did not give herself wholely, protesting that Lister was still bound by her pre-existing engagement. But now she allowed that perhaps they might “go to Italy” in six months.
Lister began to ruminate on the practicalities of keeping Barlow safe from her venereal disease if/when they went further. Barlow indicated that her previous willingness to “sleep with” Lister has been predicated on it not being sexual, but now she realized that such an arrangement would not be possible.
At the end of December, on the day Barlow leased her new residence, Lister was allowed to fondle Barlow’s genitals under her skirt and to penetrate her with her fingers. (This received a triple sign in the index.) This, still, did not constitute “going to Italy.”
Lister had not yet moved in at Quai Voltaire, but wrote in a letter to Mariana that she had decided to. Descriptions of “grubbling” sessions lasting over an hour became frequent in the journal. In mid January they both moved to the new residence. They had a long and energetics “grubbling” session that night. Lister has been asking to see and kiss Barlow’s genitals (which Lister referred to as her “queer” – see Lanser 2003) and a few days later was permitted this. The assertiveness was not one-sided. On one occasion, Lister records that Barlow placed Lister’s hand on her genitals as a prelude to grubbling. Lester clearly felt that once she had been permitted a specific activity, it would not be refused in the future. She began to refer to their sexual sessions as “kisses” in the same way she used for encounters with Mariana and Isabella. Lister made a distinction in her records between “kisses” (roughly meaning orgasms) and “excitement,” with further intensifiers used to indicate levels of satisfaction.
There is a long discussion of the nuances and variations on how Lister describes her sexual events. There is a clear distinction between “kiss” used in a coded sense (where it also seems to specify something along the lines of face-to-face bodily contact) and descriptions of oral sex (which are rare) and involve references to the face or specifically “kissing her queer.” Orr connects the dual usage of “kiss” to similar dual senses of French “baiser” and Latin “basia.”
Yet in all this, Lister was still careful about transmitting her disease. In one particularly specific description, Barlow lies on top of her “the tops of our two queers in contact,” but avoiding fuller contact to avoid infection. They also experimented with keeping a layer of fabric between them, and or intertwining their thighs in combination with manual stimulation. But Lister was frustrated when these work-arounds didn’t allow for simultaneous pleasure (which appears to be part of Lister’s definition of a “kiss”). Lister was quite aware of how venereal diseases could be passed, and he had developed various techniques, including cloth barriers, to prevent it.
Barlow was still uneasy about how far their physical relationship had progressed while still considering Lister to be engaged to someone else. She still spoke of “going to Italy” in the future tense. Barlow came to a comfort level with what they were doing if it were considered preliminary to marriage, referencing heterosexual practices considered appropriate for engaged couples. More detail on what “going to Italy” meant is provided by Lister’s note: “I found she would be satisfied if we were what we call really going to Italy, if I could acknowledge her as my own and give her my promise for life.” Barlow, in turn, wished that Lister could be her “acknowledged protector” (although this is language typically used for a mistress).
But these discussions of the logistics of a more established relationship caused them both anxiety as they stretched on through February and March. The journal entries become shorter and showed no change or progress in their positions. Mariana and Mr. Hancock continued as the spectres at the feast. Hancock was ready to offer Barlow marriage, and both Barlow and Lister knew that if Mariana called, Lister would answer. Lister expressed confidence that if they “went to Italy” everything would resolve itself, but Barlow had no such confidence. Barlow was also concerned that if Mariana came to know of the relationship, it would destroy Barlow’s reputation. (And how could she not realize it if Barlow returned to Yorkshire with Lister?) Lister stopped talking about “going to Italy” in the journal, and the journal entries make clear they are beginning to disengage from future plans. This was hurtful to Barlow as it made clear she had allowed herself to become a mistress rather than a future wife. Lister speculated about checking in with each other in two years time.
Another, perhaps minor, incident came between them in mid March. On rising in the morning, Barlow touched Lister’s genitals, saying she would “give her relief” as Lister did for her. Lister reacted negatively, which Barlow interpreted as being due to her being a virgin (pucelle). But Lister complained in her journal “it is womanizing me too much.” [Note: There is, of course, an anachronistic impulse to see Lister in terms of being a “stone butch” based on this reaction and comment.]
In early April, Lister left Paris and Barlow behind, with a vague notion that they might reconnect in the future. They continued to correspond after that.
Orr connects Lister’s experience with a longer tradition of English women seeking sexual liberty and financial ease in Paris. But even more, it allowed Lister to explore what it was she really wanted from a romantic partner.
This section, naturally, sums up the author’s purposes and results. Lister’s records had multiple functions. [Note: One hesitates to call them “purposes” as the functions likely emerged from the practice, rather than being a design feature.] The detailed and structured record of her activities, thoughts, and experiences create a type of autobiography, while at the same time not being designed as a literary work or coherent narrative. The function of her correspondence was to create and maintain a social network that included family, friends, and lovers.
Lister had multiple audiences for her writing, with different aspects being made available to different audiences. In the background – though not realized by Lister herself – was the idea of a publication for a general audience. [Note: Though Orr doesn’t point it out, that publication has been occurring over the last century, but with different filters than Lister would likely have applied.] Her family was a second audience, receiving news of Lister’s socializing and the carefully framed versions of her experiences that she had developed as her public face. Lister’s circle of lovers was a third audience, sharing various degrees of access to Lister’s letters and journal entries, either by Lister reading to them, or being given material to read, or in the most complete version, being given a key to the crypt hand – a privilege shared with only a few. Finally, Lister’s primary audience was herself. Content was recorded not only for the sake of having a record, but designed to be re-read, reviewed, extracted for other purposes, and enjoyed (sometimes erotically) at a later date.
These audiences cut across the different formats. Letters were not only private communications to share information, but could be used as personal references to indicate character, or to embody the degree to which her life was being shared with a third-party. The ways in which letters were extracted in journal entries mirror her never-realized thought of writing an epistolary novel about her relationship with Mariana.
The journal similarly cut across functions and audiences. Journal entries were expanded into letters. Selected journal material was read or shown to intimate friends. And the use of crypt hand recognized the reality that other eyes might view her journals and that she wanted to control what they had access to.
In summarizing her study, Orr reiterates that her interest was in Lister’s social and sexual practices, and in the ways the structure of Lister’s writing recorded information. This accounts for Orr’s interest in the physical objects (journals, letters) as well as the organization of different types of information (indexes, narrative, symbols, types of reference). Orr emphasizes that previous studies have not addressed the format-related aspect of the records, beyond a simplified understanding of the purpose of the crypt hand. Orr also emphasizes the interconnection between the different genres of Lister’s writing, in contrast to how previous researchers had focused on a single genre, be it journal or letters.
Lister’s deployment of crypt hand was complex in systematic ways, but it was not the only technique she used to add layers of meaning and interpretation to the written record. The various symbols used in journal entries and reflected in indexes tied together their several functions and created a graphic chart of her internal journey.
By exploring the dynamics of Lister’s social environment and interactions in Paris, we can place her romantic and erotic activities in their historic context, hoping to avoid viewing them through an anachronistic lens when isolated. Lister’s romantic adventures emerged out of a larger homosocial environment in which sociability, flattery, and flirtation could merge seamlessly into each other. In counterpoint, we see Madame de Boyve’s efforts to create and enforce boundaries of sociability and sexuality (with the latter more obviously concerned with male-female relations), and how this deployed strategies of reputation and respectability.
In turn, Lister’s concerns around Barlow’s reputation and behavior perhaps inadvertently demonstrate the asymmetry of reputational concern: evaluating whether Barlow was “respectable” enough to engage in a relationship that, by its nature, was itself unrespectable.
An important part of the analysis is the very detailed chronology of the progression of Lister and Barlow’s relationship, and how each of them viewed the nature and dynamics of that relationship as they negotiated it. Each had pre-existing relationships that affected their willingness to commit and considerations that shaped how much they were willing to cede.
The enactment of a homosexual relationship, from initial flirtation to the never-realized “going to Italy” had many intermediate steps, each with its own vocabulary and behavioral definitions. And Lister was not the only one who initiated such explorations. Barlow was the first to raise the issue of lesbianism in conversation, with her reference to Marie-Antoinette’s reputation. Miss MacKenzie used her classical education to inquire about Lister’s gender presentation. Lister’s briefer flirtation with de Sans was meaningful enough that they continued corresponding after Paris. Although Lister and Barlow’s relationship did not produce the marriage that both indicated they wanted, Barlow joined the select set of lovers that Lister continue to correspond with regularly. Orr rejects the image that she finds in Whitbread’s writings of Mariana as Listers’ one true grand passion, after which all other relationships were cynical and mercenary. Rather, in Lister’s relation of her sexual history to Barlow, Orr sees in an array of different relationships that reflect Lister’s changing understanding of her own desires, both sexual and social.
Finally, Orr draws parallels in Lister’s textual self fashioning to literary genres of her own era, such as the journalistic and epistolary novels of Rousseau or the autobiographical poetry of Byron – both of whom figure in Lister’s reading lists. Lister’s writing reflects both the Romantic movement in its focus on sentiment and eroticism, and the Enlightenment in its fascination with measuring, recording, and analyzing the details of her history and experience. All this works to reinforce an understanding of Lister as rooted in her own time and place, and not some aberrant precursor of 20th century lesbian identity.
There is a brief coda, noting that Lister and Barlow did meet again in two years’ time, as promised, on the occasion when Lister (now the inheritor of Shibden Hall) traveled to Paris with her Aunt Anne. Lister spent a year and a half in Paris on that trip, in the midst of which she and of the Barlow’s (mother and daughter) literally “went to Italy” as well as visiting Switzerland.
Orr finishes by suggesting topics worth further study, such as tracing Lister and Barlow’s later interactions, studying Listers’ “safer sex “” practices (which evidently were successful in preventing her from transmitting her disease to Barlow, or later to Ann Walker), studying the dynamics of Lister’s lifelong friendship with Isabella Norcliffe, a study of Lister’s reading (carefully recorded throughout her journals), and a more comprehensive study of Lster’s symbols and marks used to index content of interest.
The appendices consist of several types of information. The first section covers technical reference data:
The second section contains a technical description of Lister’s journals (all of them, not just the Paris volume) and a table giving the basic information about each volume’s contents.
The next section describes the nature and contents of Lister’s account books and her accounting practices. These are entirely separate from the journals. A table of examples of expenses is provided.
Finally, there is an extensive selection of examples of the original documents, accompanied by transcripts. These include:
The dissertation finishes with a bibliography of works cited.