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Helena Whitbread
Posted on
December 19, 2017
- Diary excerpts
From Anne’s diary, Friday 10th August 1832 (age 42)
[The first time that Anne Lister put her thoughts in writing about the possibility of courting Ann Walker, the young heiress who lived at Lidgate in the neighbourhood of Shibden.]
‘… Thought I, as I have several times done of late, shall I try & make up to her?’
From Anne’s diary, Sunday 5th January 1834 (age 43)
[After eighteen months of an on-and-off courtship, Anne was unsure about whether or not there could be a permanent relationship between them.]
‘…Miss W[alker] talks as if she would be glad to take me – then if I say anything decisive she hesitates to. I tell her it is all her money which is in the way. The fact is, she is as she was before [i.e. indecisive], but determined to get away from the Sutherlands and feels the want of me. But [I need to] take someone with more mind and less money. Steph [Belcombe – i.e. Mariana’s brother] is right: she would be a great pother [sic]. [I] have nothing serious to say to her – she wants better manning than I can manage.’
[See also Jill Liddington’s Female Fortune. Rivers Oram Press. 1998. p.85.]
Christmas in Paris with Anne Lister
The Christmas of 1824 finds Anne, along with her maid Elizabeth Wilkes Cordingley, in Paris. They were staying at a modest guest house or pension at 24, Place Vendome. The proprietors were a M. & Mme de Boyve. Anne’s journal entry for Christmas day illustrates the difficulties of something which we all take for granted–that of taking a bath.
Public bathhouses were the norm for many people of that era–at least for those who took baths at all! Anne, while in Paris, frequented the Bains Chinois, so-called because of its style of architecture, in the Boulevard des Italiens. However, on Christmas day, having left it too late to book a time for her bath there, she decided to take a bath in her own room at the guest house.
How problematic was that! She first had to ask permission of Mme de Boyve, who then had to recruit her maid and menservants to undertake the physical tasks necessary to accommodate Anne’s decision to bathe at home, including no doubt, the lugging of many pails of hot water up a number of flights of stairs. Anne’s room was 187 steps up from the ground floor!
Anne writes: ‘Madame de Boyve sent her maid to order me a bath here at 6 … The bath being ready in Mrs Barlow’s room (the men had tried in vain to get it into mine–the doorway too narrow), got into it at 6½, staid [sic] in just an hour and in 20 minutes had returned to my room & got into bed & had my dinner–my soup & a little fish-pâte & a little French plum-pudding having been kept warm for me on my hearth.’ [Journal entry 25.12.1824]
What’s been the most uncomfortable /inconvenient bath you have experienced?