Betwixt The Sheets: The History of Sex, Scandal & Society - Anne Lister: The First Modern Lesbian?

Episode Date: June 13, 2023

It’s a rare thing to hear first hand the experiences of marginalised people in history. So often their voices are silenced, and their histories erased. Which is why Anne Lister’s diaries, which tell us in intimate details what it was like to be a proud lesbian in 19th century Yorkshire, are such an important resource. What was grobbling? What is Anne Lister’s legacy? And what do her coded diaries tell us about life as a lesbian during the industrial revolution? Join us today as we delve Betwixt the Sheets on the legacy of Anne Lister, with historian Anne Choma, the lead adviser on BBC One’s series of Anne Lister, Gentleman Jack, and author of ‘Gentleman Jack - The Real Anne Lister’.Produced and edited by Stuart Beckwith. Senior Producer Charlotte Long. Discover the past on History Hit with ad-free original podcasts and documentaries released weekly presented by world renowned historians like Dan Snow, Suzannah Lipscomb, Lucy Worsley, Matt Lewis, Tristan Hughes and more.Get 50% off your first 3 months with code BETWIXT. Download the app on your smart TV or in the app store or sign up at historyhit.com/subscribe Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Sign up to join me in locations around the world and explore the past. Just visit historyhit.com forward slash subscribe. Hello, lovely betwixters, it's me, Kate Lister, here once again to make sure that you're not listening in to things that will, well, frankly, unsettle you if you are of a sensitive, nervous disposition. This is your fair do's warning. Fair dues, everybody. This podcast is of an adult nature. It contains adults talking to other adults about adulty things in an adulty way, covering a range of adult topics. and you, you need to be an adult as well.

And if you're still with me after that little lot, well, then what can I say? I think we could be friends. Let's do this. Picture the scene betwixters. You are making your way down the cobbled streets of 19th century Halifax, Yorkshire. The Industrial Revolution is in full swing and people are hard at work everywhere you look. The air is rich with the smell of coal burning in nearby factories. Coal that's been dug from the surrounding areas, might I add.

Through the crowds walks a short, very slim, confident woman, dressed head to toe in black. This is Anne Lister. Self-assured, successful in business, and that coal that you can smell, while she created the pits that mined it. And, as it happens, I mean, no one's really interested in the pits. What we're interested in is the fact that Anne Lister is an icon. of queer history. And it seems that even at the time she was well known for it, because all those people that you just passed working really hard, while behind her back, and well actually to her face, they called her Gentleman Jack. Today we delve betwixt the sheets

to explore the life and legacy of Anne Lister. What do her many diaries tell us about life as a lesbian in the early 1800s, in Halifax of all places? And what is the legacy that she has left behind? What do you look for in man? Oh, money, of course. You're supposed to rise when an adult speaks to you. I make perfect copies of whatever my boss needs by just turning it up and pushing the money. Yes, social courtesy does make a difference.

Goodness, my beautiful time. Goodness has nothing to do with it, Dary. Oh, and welcome back to Betwixt the Sheets, the History of Sex Scandal and Society. With me, Kate Lister. It can be really hard to get a proper insight into the lives of marginalized people from years gone by. Sex history in particular is really, really difficult to get first-hand accounts of exactly what was going on betwixt their sheets, which is why it is amazing when an opportunity to hear it straight from the primary source presents itself. In the case of Anne Lister, her diaries, which she kept her whole life, which is a dedication I would aspire to but could never reach,

but there are some five million words that she wrote down of insight into everything from her many, many love affairs to what has been described as the first modern lesbian marriage in a church. Although the church themselves would definitely not have seen it that way. Most of Anne's diaries are actually heard going on about buying mutton from various shops or getting her boots reheeled. But no one's really interested in that. Somebody somewhere will be. Someone will be reading it thinking, all this lesbian stuff. Tell me more about the mutton.

But that's not what we're interested in. Anne Lister, coincidentally, is one of our most. requested subjects. So thank you to all you lovely betwixters out there who took the time to write in to request this one because you wanted to know more about this woman and her diaries, diaries that have been called the Dead Sea Scrolls of lesbian history. Joining us today is Anne Choma, the lead advisor on the BBC One series of Anne Lister, Gentleman Jack, and author of Gentleman Jack, The Real Anlister. Who was Anelister? What was she like as a woman? What was she like as a lover?

What on earth is grubbling? Well, I am ready if you are. Let's do this. Hello, and welcome to Betwixt the Sheets. I'm only talking to Anne Choma. How are you? I'm good, thanks, Kate. It's lovely to meet you,

and I hear you're a Leeds lass, like myself. I am. I'm actually from even further north, originally. I'm from Cumbria, but I've been here since I was 18, so I think Leeds has adopted me now. Are you a Yorkshire lass as well? I am, yeah, born and bred Yorkshire, from Leeds.

As a Leeds lass, a Yorkshire lass, we are talking about Anlister today, who is, I don't even know where you start with this incredible woman, who was a Yorkshire lass, but how did you come to her story? How did you first hear about her? It's interesting that you say what you said just now about, where do you start with Anlister? Because it's an impossible question, isn't it? It's just almost too much to say about Anlister. I mean, for me, my journey started with. Helena Whitbread's first book in late 80s, early 90s. And so that was my intro to Anlister. I got to know Helena very well, and we started doing little bits of research together. We started travelling and having Anlister adventures.

And I was like, everybody else is today. I was just obsessed with Anlister and just could not get enough of her. So the pool of people working on Anlister at that time was so tiny. I mean, Helena was leading the way. Whereas now there's a global community. It wasn't like that then. There's like global conferences on Analystor now. Yeah, there is, and there's online conferences,

and there's all sorts of things happening. The intensity I had then, I can see it in people today. Yeah, it was a long time ago for me, but the interest, of course, as people know, is still here. Absolutely. And for anyone that might be listening to this, who is sat here going, and who, can you give us like a sort of a potted history

of who this person was and what the fascination is with Analyst? Lister. Who was Anne Lister? In a very, very, very few short sentences. Anne was born in 1791 and she died in 1840. She lived at Shibden Hall, which is a beautiful period house in the valley in Shibden in Halifax, just sitting on the outside of Shibden. And Anne's famous for writing her voluminous diaries in which she wrote about her lesbian sexuality. And what makes her unique is that part of that diary was written in a secret code, which she devised. And she was hidden from history for many, many years. She just politically, culturally, it wasn't her time. It wasn't her time to be exposed, certainly in the late 19th century when John Lister, a descendant of

hers, who found the diarys and who was the last person to live at Shibden Hall of the Lister family and decoded the diaries. But since then, obviously, times 100, 200 years on, things have changed. Helena Wickbred came across the diaries and in the late 1980s and she started to transcribe and since then and life has become global basically and many books have been written plays, films, period drama Gentleman Jack that I was part of which has started a whole new phenomenon. When you say she wrote diaries, we're not talking about a couple of pages here. We're talking millions of words, aren't we? Like I can't even remember how many volumes there are, but she kept this throughout most of her life. Yeah, we're pretty certain that there's in excess of

maybe six million words the last time I was speaking to somebody. So when Angela Claire and I, digitising the diaries, we digitise about 7,200 pages. The thing about Anne's diaries, because I've read bits of them, is that when you come to them, you go in thinking, oh my God, this is a Regency era, Yorkshire lesbian who had loads of money and was like, this is going to be amazing. This is going to be so tant-lacing. And most of the diaries of things like went to Halifax to buy some mutton. to get a new heel on my shoe.

And it's mostly that. And then once in a while, there's just a few lines of just where she goes, lesbian! You do get big sections of the diaries where it is pretty much diet. It's really just about everyday stuff. And it is about her going about a business. It's really quite dull. And I think if you look at the earlier diaries where she was with Marianne Lawton,

I think they're heavily coded, those periods in their life then, they're just like, it's just solid code a lot of it. because she was going through so much trauma. And then you look at the later part of her life. I've just been reading the wrong bits then. She reinvents herself, Kate. And so basically from 1832 onwards, you know, she meets Anne Walker and things change in her life. And it's more about building her empire.

And so there's a lot of business in there. There's a lot of stuff about coal and just about establishing herself in the business world. And so it's pretty much, I mean, there is fantastic sections of code in there, but there's a lot of other stuff as well. She did say that about her journal. You know, she says, in these pages, I can see the good and evil of my life. Wow. It was for everything that journal.

It was the loyal friend in a way. I think what is particularly striking about, well, there's a lot that's striking about Analyst's diaries. But for me, it's the fact that when she's talking about the fact that she fancies women, it's never confusing for her. It's not like you would imagine it to be. She writes, I am attracted to, I can't remember the exact quote, is I love and only love the fair sex

and in return and beloved by them. She's really confident with this sexuality. It's not shy. It's not something... What do you think? Do you think she ever seems troubled by it? Because I was really struck by the fact that she's just like, yeah, I fancy chicks.

For me, I mean, it's my personal opinion, but I don't think she struggled at all. I think that's what makes her so unique. And actually, that's what makes her really modern to us as lesbians, as a lesbian reader. It's that she had this enlightened concept. of who she was of the self. And she managed to sort of merge public and private spheres

so that she didn't have to be anything other than who she felt she could be as a lesbian. Obviously, the word lesbian wasn't around when she was a woman. But I think it's those elements of a life that make her modern to us because she was so self-assured. She had this enlightened concept of who she was. If we think about her in terms of having any doubts about sexuality, I think she knew that she always had to be discreet. She just couldn't really go out there.

Technically in her head, she married three women. She married Eliza Rain, she married Marianne Lorton, and she married Anne Walker. So she still lived her truth. She still owned her pain and her trauma. You know, she did all of those things that we might do today as modern women, but within the confines of Georgian society. She said that she knows she's got to be discreet, and she does because she's writing in code. Like she has to kind of be secret about it.

But the other thing that really surprised me about the diaries was that it doesn't seem like it was that much of a secret because people knew. They knew enough to, I think at one point they're shouting at her in the street. They're calling her a Tom and they do call her gentleman Jack or Captain Tom. And so even though she's receiving abuse for it, which is terrible, but that does suggest that people knew about this, which I thought was quite surprising for that time period. I think she couldn't escape who she was because of the way she looked. So she presented differently to other women. She was so masculine.

So when she walked down the streets in Halifax, this small industrial town where people really didn't move out of and there was great poverty, how eccentric she would have been, how unusual. I don't know if you've been to the Shibden Valley Cape, but it's probably not changed that much since Alwis here. I mean, certainly, you know, the Shibden Hall, there's lots of the houses that she owned as part of her estate,

it's still here. I live above one of them. You know, I can step out of my cottage and see Shibden Hall and I can see Beacon Hill. So, I mean, the landscape is still the same. But obviously the population there was much smaller. So this really unusual woman, this completely eccentric woman who dressed in black, is going to be presented very differently to people who are just going about their business and trying to survive in a world that was really had everything stacked against them. But the strange thing was, you know, when she decided, post 1832 when she was going to settle down with Anne Walker and she'd suffered the heartbreak with Via Hobart.

She decided, and she often said this, it wasn't just at that time, that Halifax was the place that really knew and understood her. You know, she'd referred to Halifax as they are my own people and they understand who I am. Wow. She obviously felt somehow, felt secure in this small place called Halifax. She felt ultimately that this was her home.

This was her spiritual home. Wow. Of all the places in all the world, Halifax. Of all the places in all the world, it kind of has that pull actually, to be honest. It does, doesn't it? Halifax sort of keeps its claws in you and somehow. It kind of moves on to this idea about finding a place

where you feel that you can live truthfully. Because although she travelled a lot and she always wanted to think that she could be with somebody that was a really high-bred person, but I think she came crashing down to Earth after via Hobart and realise that actually that's not everything, that isn't everything about life. It really is about just living in the moment and doing what you do best. And she was doing what she did best in Halifax by building her empire.

When you said that she's eccentric walking through Halifax, what are we talking here? You could like transpose us back to 18, 20, something other, when she's walking around Halifax and she's building a coal mine in Empire, which is already quite unusual, and she's a landlord, and she's really outspoken, and she's a lesbian. But what does she look like? What would have been the apparition walking towards you?

I think she was about five foot three, five foot four. I can't quite remember the statistics. And she was just over eight stones. So she's very slim. And I think Marianne... It's a little dinky thing. Yeah. There's a bit in the diary where she talks about Marianna describing her

having kind of like, you know, male hips and virtually no breasts. You know, she very flat-chested. Of course, we know that she wore black and she wore a tiny hat. She didn't wear a top hat. That was just for dramatic purposes in Gentleman Jack to make a stand out. But I think in terms of going about her business in Halifax, she would have struck a cord. You know, she would have just stood out and wearing her great coat. And some of the things that she did, you know, I mean, like when she was developing a coal pits later on,

she went down a mine and came out filthy. She went down a few from what I've read. Yeah. Yeah. Yes, that right middle finger did travel quite a lot. Kate, you know. We got her into some trouble. We should talk about her love life though,

because there'll be people listening to this going, stop talking about the pits. We want to know. Who was the first grand love of Anne Lister? Who was it? Again, subjective, but for me, it's always going to be Mariana. It has to be Mariana Lawton.

Okay, tell me about Mariana. Well, she met Mariana, I believe, around 1810 or 12, but Mariana was part of the Tib Norcliffe Social circle. Mariana was the daughter of a doctor and she was from York and part of the Belcom family. but in 1816 she broke hands heart by marrying Charles Lawton and it was kind of like the longest goodbye because really their relationship didn't finish physically until 1834 but God the pain the pain involved in that relationship. For me it was just the intensity of it. On paper everything

should have worked the universe said that that relationship should have worked. it physically they were fantastic together. Mentally, they were well suited. Mariana was incredibly clever. You know, she was an intelligent woman and she could really spar with Anne intellectually. And I just think it was that moment in Anne's life where she met somebody who she really, really truly wanted to live

and have a life with. And because I live so close as she'd done all, I often think of the pain she went through when she was sat there in that blue room writing the dairies and feeling so lonely about not being able to be. with her. But of course, Marianna's circumstances were so different and she chose to marry a man because of circumstances and social circumstances. But there were times where she actually left Charles lot. And the idea was that Charles was much older than Marianne. He was going to die.

We're going to die soon so they could be together. Because that never happened. Yeah, because he didn't die. But there were the couple of times in Marianna's life where it was a marriage convenience. He was rich. What did he get out of it? I mean, did Charles love Mariana? Was he aware of the fact there was an affair going on? Yeah, he was. He found out and he intercepted one of their letters. And then I think in the letter he read that, you know, they were hoping for his early demise.

Oh my God. So, I mean, that was a bit of a body blow for him, wasn't it? Just not my microphone out the way I'm so shocked. Yeah, that made things very difficult for them for a long time. But the funny thing is, of course, Charles Lawton knew that Anne was never going to go away. So they kind of found a way to understand each other. In some respects, you know, Charles Lawton was, probably controversial thing to say, but it was actually quite an enlightened kind of guy because

he was a worldly enough guy to know that, you know, they were sleeping together. And in fact, when they went to, the three of them went to Dublin together, I think in 1826, and I had a brief holiday there. And that's just a fantastic episode in the diaries because, you know, it was almost like they shared a bed and he was somewhere else, you know. You'd just love to get all three of them together, wouldn't you? And just properly, Dr. Phil it and just what on earth is going on? Yeah, the thing Kate, I kind of look at their lives together and I think there were a couple of times where Mariana left Charles and wanted to come and live with Anne. This was like quite a few years after they'd got together and there's been a lot of pain and anguish and upset and turmoil.

And Anne said no, she sent Mariana back. There's lots of reasons why that might have been the case but, you know, the main one and I think it's something Helena Whitbread says is that she'd grown so much as a person by that time in terms of ambition and where she wanted to go in life that she didn't like the idea of having somebody else's wife. It was almost like the shame of it would have been not good. But I think, looking at it now, I think, Annie, you made a mistake there. You should have taken man. Yeah, you should have let her come and you'd have had an amazing life together.

What was Mariana risking by leaving Charles? She was risking a lot because, I mean, certainly there was big questions over inheritance in terms of from the Belcom family. she was going to get nothing, which is why she had to marry to free up potential money for the rest of her sisters. That's my take on it anyway. But she wanted to leave because she was unhappy with Charles. Miserable for a lot of time. But I think at first, you know, she liked the idea of the big, beautiful house that she was living in. It's a really sad case, but I just think it was sad that, even sad of that, and just at that point said, you know, God, she's done this.

She's actually left him come and be with me. And I just think it was then the longest goodbye. And I do believe that Mariana truly adored Anne Lister. Again, it's controversial, but I think if you read across the years, and especially read up to 1834 where it all culminates into abject pain and horribleness, it's just one of the greatest love tragedies, I think. I'll be back with Anne Choma and Anne Lister after this short break. Sing muses. Sing to me a history of Olympus.

And the deathless gods who govern Earth's Seas. and sky. That is Zeus's command. It's the ancients from History Hit. I'm Tristan Hughes, your host, and every month on the podcast we're taking a deep dive into the Olympian gods. None of them are as simple or as single facetate as we've kind of reduced them to in our heads when we think about the gods of the pantheon who do one thing each. With world-leading experts, we'll be telling the dramatic story of who they are. Aphrodite was the goddess of love and sex and passion and specifically she was considered often to be love itself. Their myths and their meanings.

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Listen and follow on the ancients from History Hit wherever you get your podcasts. There's no doubt in how much they absolutely adored each other. And it's so sad that it just couldn't happen. But tell me about Anne Walker, who was she? because one of the things that you hear about An Lister is that, you know, it was the first modern lesbian marriage. But her relationship with Anne Walker is a little bit more cynical, it seems to me, than that. I'm going to defend Anne Walker and I'm going to defend An Lister because in terms of what you've just said, Kate, because I think, you know, we go through periods of our lives, don't when we,

and we reassess where we want to be and what we want from life. And especially as we mature in years, shall we say. And we know from the diarism, from Gentleman Jack and from books that have been written and essays and all sorts of things that Anne wanted to reinvent her life post 1832. And so she set about doing that. And we want to sort of say as much in praise of Anne Walker's relationship with Anne as I do with Marianna's relationship with Anne because they were coming at different points in time in Anne's life and offering different things. And it doesn't devalue either with them. Okay. Anne Walker was the one that ultimately wanted to commit to and moved into Chibdun Hall.

And so she did. I think the mental health issues that Anne Walker had impacted massively on their relationship and threw it into doubt many, many times. She knew that there was going to be troubled path ahead if she continued her life with her. Because she did. I mean, they travelled together and sadly Anne died, but who knows what would have happened post coming back from Russia. You know, there's this accusation thrown at Anne listed that when she wanted her for her money.

You know, I've said many times before, I don't... I don't really believe it because, you know, there's a point that in the diary is where Anne says, give me mind rather than money. You know, I've heard that Anne Walker was like second best. I don't believe Anne Walker was second best. I think she gave Amlister a great sense of security, not just financial security. She did offer that. But there was a sense of purpose in Anister's life in the sense that she knew that she had her wife there at Shibden Hall.

And that meant security and that meant comfort. that she'd never had before. And the other thing I want to say, Christmas 1834 is a famous episode in the diary where it's the thing that had to happen between Anne Lister and Marianna. It had to have a full stop in that relationship, and it happened in December 1834,

where Anne goes to have Christmas at Lotton Hall, Anam Walker's left back at Shibden, and it's basically to finalise things, and they end up having sex, and Anne's full of remorse, Anast is full of terrible remorse about it, and Marianna feels like she's having... some kind of victory, but it's a bit of a Pyrick victory for Mariana because she knows

it's really, that's it's finished. It's my theory that I think Anne Walker knew what was going on at Lawton Hall in Christmas 1834. And I think it shows you the stature of Anne Walker's character that she permitted that. That's my feeling. There's just some little hints in the diaries that suggest that Anne Walker was really playing the big person there. She was showing great emotional maturity that she allowed whatever needed to happen between. between Anne and Mariana to happen. I like that reading of her more because it's easy to view her as this kind of very frail, very sickly person that was almost held hostage at Shibdenhall by Anne Lister,

who just wanted all of her money. So I'm much happier to think of them as lovers. Yeah, I'm offering an alternative, Kate. I like your alternative. It's my take on it. And I think there's a lot of good things to say about Anne Walker's relationship with An Lister. It was certainly problematic and difficult. Yeah, and we know she.

She was a flirt and all that kind of stuff. But, you know, the big moments in a life were really big and really, really real and often painful. Speaking of the real moments, like I said, they're described as having the first gay marriage. But obviously, gay marriage wasn't a thing back then. So what happened? What did Ann Lister and Anne Walker do that to An Lister's mind, we're married now? What was it? What happened?

This is another, I mean, everything is my take on. this and people will disagree but in Anne's mind, Anlister's mind, they had a ceremony at the Holy Trinity Church in Goodrum Gate in York. When I say ceremony, literally they just attended a church service. It was a Sunday service. It's mentioned extremely briefly by Anne in the diary and it says, you know, I prayed for her in token of our union. And then she says after that in the same passage that I doubt if Anne did the same for me, kind of. So it's all of it. I know, that's the reality. they have to read that. Was it more in Unlister's head that this was a marriage?

Can you call it a marriage if the other person doesn't know they've got married to you? Well, I mean, there was an exchange of rings before that, of course. Oh, was that? Right, okay. Yeah, there was an exchange of rings and, obviously, it could not be a legal marriage. It was impossible, but Anlisted did everything in her power to imagine herself as wife. And so there was an exchange of rings. There was a Christian ceremony that were both in attendance at. They both took the sacrament extremely important for Amlister and prayed in front of God.

So to her, that was her marriage, as good as it could have been at that point in time in her lifetime. They also exchanged pubic hair, didn't they? I quite like that bit in the diary. Yeah, they did. I mean, that was a common thing, you know. It seems to have been, doesn't it? Like, that's quite, yeah, that was quite a romantic thing to do. Yeah, I think she referred to Anne Walker's as her golden lock, I'm not sure.

Could be. Nice. Yeah, a little memento, I suppose. those of mementos goes, and it's pretty unique. But it is, isn't it? One of the most interesting things that I've learned about Annalister, and maybe I've got this wrong, was that, right, we're going to get a bit graphic and gruesome now,

but if I can't do that with you, who can I do it with? But An Lister had a venereal disease that she'd contracted from Mariana. Yeah. So she didn't like to be touched sexually. So she did all the action. She was the giver, never the receiver. Yeah.

She contracted VD. Today I think it would be gonorrhea, but Charles Larton gave it to Marianna. So Charles. Boo Charles. Yeah, boo Charles. Oh, and it actually changed Analystor's life. It was, all of their lives were blighted by that horribleness of trying to find a cure. But she was cautious about what she did with people when she knew that she was in the throes of that horribleness of that VD.

But in terms of not wanting to be touched by women, I think, you know, that was more about her expression of her sexuality. She was butch and she wanted to. remained kind of like the lead in the relationships sexually. So, for example, when Maria Barlow, Parisian, touched her breasts. She didn't like that. She said, this is womanizing me too much. So I think we need to separate out why she might not have wanted to be touched or whatever, because of a disease.

That makes sense. As opposed to how she would operate normally within relationships sexually. I always think she felt guilty about potentially giving it to Tibb and then she thought she'd giving it to Anne Walker and yeah it was really awful things I remember reading an extract when mariana came over to Halifax and mariana was in such pain because of this venereal disease that she couldn't walk up the old bank and Anne had to push her up because she had such pain pelvic pain so it really was horrible you know and then trying to find these cures for it which were just hideous and having to use syringes and you know just horrible do we know if Anne Walker

contracted it from Anne Lister. There's a moment where Anne thought she'd given it to Anne Walker, and I think she referred to it as the whites, but I think they assumed that that hadn't happened. They really did go through the mill, didn't her? They really did, yeah. You sort of forget, don't you, about what it must have been like back then before antibiotics,

before any treatment, that when you contracted a disease like that, that was kind of it. That's that now, for the rest of your life. Yeah, and it says a lot. I mean, we know so much about female sex. and lesbian sexuality because of Anlister, because she wrote it down explicitly that we know the kind of sexual practices that she had.

You know, we know that they were taking risks. Well, you've got to tell us, you can't tantalise us like that. If you were going to go to bed with An Lister, what would you be in for? What kind of night would you be expecting? I'd expect a good time with Anist. I put this thing on Twitter recently, and I said, I asked this chat bot.

I was in stupid mode one morning, and I asked this chatbot, would Anist have been any good in bed and it came back with all this stuff, you know, this robotic stuff about, you know, how we can't pry into people's personal lives and all this kind of stuff. And we have to be respectful. But I felt that she gave women a good time sexually because she was so assured herself sexually. We know about grubbling and about fondling about things like that. Oh God, yeah, that word grubbling. Yeah. Tell us what that means grubbling. Well, I mean, I understand grubbling to be sort of like heavy petting, sort of feeling, you know.

So bringing a woman, bringing herself to orgasm or bringing another woman to orgasm. But beyond that, you know, we know that she practiced oral sex. And we have explicit extracts of her with Mary Valance when she was at the house party in Langton Hall. So we're thankful to our enlisted that she shone the spotlight and what was happening between the sheets, Kate, in the 1800s. But that's amazing though, isn't it? Because like, where else are you going to get that kind of information about what people were doing in bed at? that time, let alone women with other women. Yeah, it is amazing.

And I've said it before in other interviews, I've done that, with Saran Jones when we were doing research for Gentleman Jack in series one, and I met Saran. And the early discussions we had were about Anne's sexuality and about sex. And we felt that it was really important that Surin got to grips with how Anne was sexually and what she did and the practices that she engaged in with other women. Of course, we had this fantastic material to go for. from the diaries, nothing was imagined or made up. It was just all there. Nope. I think she was so

self-assured, I'm lister sexually. She was active from fairly young, you know, I mean, she was exploring a body, she was masturbating. She knew what gave her pleasure. So then she could pass that pleasure on to other women and was confident in doing that. And thank God she did and then wrote it down. And then wrote it down, yeah. I think it's interesting going back to Marianna Lorton, And I think that period of her life, when you read the diaries, it's full of code. And she's hugely sexually active with Mariana. And then you see the transition as she gets older and it becomes in the diaries. It's not that she's not having sex with Amwaka.

It's just that somehow, you know, other aspects of her life are taking precedence in the diary. So it's more, again, I keep calling it, building the empire. But I think, I mean, obviously when you're younger, it's always very different, isn't it? Oh, absolutely. Then you get older and you've got to open coal mines and go travelling around. We've got to do. You've got to lay foundation stones and build casinos and things. Absolutely you do. Yeah. And then the sex gets slotted in somewhere in between.

A bit of grubbling. And you have been amazing to talk to. My final question to you, all I could just sit and talk to you forever, is, because this is a tricky one. Because everyone who studies Annalister has to grapple with this. They come to the material thinking, this is the most incredible person, and she was. but she's also a bit of a dick. Like, you can't get around it. Like, there are points of it where she isn't a very nice person. And that's quite difficult when you read it

because you want her to be lovely, but you kind of read it. And there are points of it where she's downright nasty. How do you deal with that? Do you like Anne? Kay, I'm such an apology for Anlister. You're asking the worst person. I'm going to have to dig deep into my little pocket of dislikes of Amlister.

What could there be? I think she, at times, you know, when she spoke to servants and things, you know, I sort of cringe a little bit, but I think that's just the way it was then, wasn't saying it was right. True. But then she had great loyalty as well to some of them. She has a great sense of how to behave with people and how to not behave as well at the same time. She was such a divided split character and socially. I think when she was with her posh friends, of course, you know, she knew what she had to do to impress people. But I think in terms of, like, like, you know, building her empire and building pits and sinking mines and things. And the people who worked in those minds, she's being criticised for that because children went down the mine. But, you know, children went down and walked as mine as well. I think, you know, we're all a product of our time, aren't we? This is true. You can't judge her from 2023 perspectives because nobody would survive that test, would they?

You know, I go back to that first thing I say, okay, about, you know, in these pages I'm aware of the good and evil things that I've done. You know, these pages represent that about me. And, you know, this enlightened concept of self that she had, I think she was aware of her own failings. Yeah. She would always pray to be better, a better person. And when she broke a woman's heart, you know, her own heart was broken as well. And she would dissect those moments in her life and think, gosh, you know, why did I do that?

You know, why I am this kind of person? I'll know better in future. I'll know how to conduct myself better. But of course, like all of us, she kept on making mistakes and kept at times not being a nice person. I know I said that it was going to be my last question, but my last last question, why do you think that she resonates so much with the modern audience? Why do you think that interest in Amlister has exploded in the last few years? What is it about this woman?

Gosh, it's a question that is so difficult to answer. She just lived her life as truthfully as she could, and she took no shit from people, did she, enlisted? She took no prisoners. No, she did not. And I think she shows people what it is to be brave and to have courage. Absolutely. Especially people who are struggling. Perhaps today even now with her sexuality, she's a beacon of hope.

And I think that's why she's made such an impact in the world. Absolutely. And you have been wonderful to talk to. If people want to know more about you and your work and Analystor, where can they find you? Yeah, they can find me on Twitter. They can find me on Instagram. And give the book the full title? Gentleman Jack, Marie.

landlister. Thank you so much. You have just been a delight to talk to. It's been lovely talking to you, Kay. Really nice. Thank you for listening. And if you like what you heard, please don't forget to like, review and subscribe wherever it is that you can get your podcasts. And if you want to explore a subject, or if you just want to reach out and say, hello, then you can now email us at betwixt at history hit.com. To wet your whistle of what's coming up, we have got episodes on everything from Shakespeare's sex life to the history of breastfeeding all coming your way. This podcast was produced and mixed by Stuart Beckworth. The senior producer is Charlotte Long.

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