Yorkshire Almanac Anne Lister seals a surreptitious mock marriage with fellow-landowner Ann Walker during the Easter Sunday service at Holy Trinity, Goodramgate, York

30 March 1834: Anne Lister seals a surreptitious mock marriage with fellow-landowner Ann Walker during the Easter Sunday service at Holy Trinity, Goodramgate, York

Jackson McHenry. 2019/05/07. 7 entries from Anne Lister’s diary that were key to writing Gentleman Jack. Vulture. New York: New York Media. Get it:

Unedited excerpt

If an excerpt is used in the book, it will be shorter, edited and, where applicable, translated.

[Italic denotes code.] Three kisses — better to her than to me. Very fine morning F49F at 8 ½ am. Breakfast at 8 ½. At Goodramgate Church at 10.35. Miss W and I and Thomas stayed the sacrament. Almost all the congregation stayed, and though the church too small to hold many, the service took 40 minutes. The first time I ever joined Miss W in my prayers I had prayed that our union might be happy. She had not thought of doing as much for me. Called for a minute or two in the Minster Court to say we could not dine there at 5 ½. Declined going to hear the fine anthem at 4 in the Minster. Walked to the village of Heworth and by the Stockton road back in an hour. And at Monk-bar church at 2 ½. The clergyman preached 25 minutes who read the prayers in the morning. I asleep and knew nothing of the sermon now or in the morning. Sat talking. Dressed. Off to Dr Belcombe’s at 5 ¼. Nobody but ourselves. Dined about 5 ½, coffee, tea. Home and 10.30. Sat up talking till 12 ½ tonight. Very fine day.

Easter Sunday is on 5 April 2026.

Order the book:

Subscribe to the free daily email:

To facilitate reading, the spelling and punctuation of elderly excerpts have generally been modernised, and distracting excision scars concealed. My selections, translations, and editions are copyright.

Comment

“Walker and Lister exchanged vows on 10 February 1834, the date they considered their union official, and exchanged rings on 27 February 1834 as a symbol of their commitment to one another” (Wikipedia contributors 2022). Lister’s attraction to Walker was based partly on lust:

She had determined on being with me at Shibden, yielding to all my reasons in addition to the former ones… I had my arm on the back of the sofa. She leaned on it, looking as if I might be affectionate and it ended in her lying on my arm all the morning and my kissing her and she returning it with such a long, confirmed, passionate or nervous mumbling kiss… I thinking to myself, “Well, this is rather more than I expected”… She certainly gulled me, in that I never dreamt of her being the passionate little person I find her, spite of calling herself cold… I shall now tum sentimentally melancholy and put on all the air of romantic hopelessness. If I do this well,’ may tum her to pity… I scarce know what to make of her. Is she maddish?… This queer girl puzzles me. She told me this morning of the weakness in her back for which she uses Mr Day’s ointment… I think a little spice of matrimony will do her good (Choma 1994/05).

But lucre also played a role:

Thought I, ‘She little dreams what is in my mind — to make up to her — she has money and this might make up for rank.’ We get on very well so far (McHenry 2019/05/07).

Walker is also being pursued by a Mr. Ainsworth, which gives rise to a splendid burst of Flashman-like hypocrisy on the part of Lister:

Spoke of Mr Ainsley … it came out that if she married him it would be from duly. I pressed for explanation and discovered that she felt bound to him by some indiscretion. He had taught her to kiss, but they had never gone so far as she and I had done… On Mr A’s account my indignation rose against the parson. I reasoned her out of all feeling of duty or obligation towards a man who had taken such base advantage (Choma 1994/05).

Something to say? Get in touch

Comment

She had determined on being with me at Shibden, yielding to all my reasons in addition to the former ones… I had my arm on the back of the sofa. She leaned on it, looking as if I might be affectionate and it ended in her lying on my arm all the morning and my kissing her and she returning it with such a long, confirmed, passionate or nervous mumbling kiss… I thinking to myself, “Well, this is rather more than I expected”… She certainly gulled me, in that I never dreamt of her being the passionate little person I find her, spite of calling herself cold… I shall now tum sentimentally melancholy and put on all the air of romantic hopelessness. If I do this well,’ may tum her to pity… I scarce know what to make of her. Is she maddish?… This queer girl puzzles me. She told me this morning of the weakness in her back for which she uses Mr Day’s ointment… I think a little spice of matrimony will do her good (Choma 1994/05).

But lucre also played a role:

Thought I, ‘She little dreams what is in my mind — to make up to her — she has money and this might make up for rank.’ We get on very well so far (McHenry 2019/05/07).

Walker is also being pursued by a Mr. Ainsworth, which gives rise to a splendid burst of Flashman-like hypocrisy on the part of Lister:

Spoke of Mr Ainsley … it came out that if she married him it would be from duly. I pressed for explanation and discovered that she felt bound to him by some indiscretion. He had taught her to kiss, but they had never gone so far as she and I had done… On Mr A’s account my indignation rose against the parson. I reasoned her out of all feeling of duty or obligation towards a man who had taken such base advantage (Choma 1994/05).

Something to say? Get in touch

1 August 1833: At Kelfield (East Riding), Hannah Beedham fails to fulfil her prophecy of her own death

1 February 1829: Jonathan Martin’s attempt to burn down York Minster is frustrated by a frolicsome chorister

12 June 1578: Edwin Sandys, Reformation Archbishop of York, cracks down on fun

18 September 1858: The Spectator is bowled over by the new Leeds Festival chorus’s singing of the Messiah – “the music text-book of the West Riding”

26 December 1570: Edmund Grindal, Puritan archbishop of York, orders the removal of rood-lofts (and their superstitious images), and the erection of pulpits

12 April 0627: In a triumph for his Kentish wife, Edwin of Northumbria is baptised on Easter Sunday by Paulinus, in the latter’s wooden oratory on the site of York Minster

7 January 1397: On the longest of the 42 days of his carnivalesque reign, boy-bishop John de Cave of York goes on a 200-mile begging spree

5 August 1605: Debauched and ruined, Walter Calverley is crushed to death today at York for the murder of two sons at Calverley Hall (Bradford), but is revived by 1830s schoolboy ghost-raisers as the Rev. Samuel Redhead (age ca. 55)

2 August 1680: William Dolben, perhaps reluctantly, condemns Thomas Thwing to death at York for his part, without co-conspirators, in a fictitious conspiracy – the Popish Plot

Order the book:

Subscribe to the free daily email:

Comment

This is a Jesuit hagiography, and I don’t know to what extent the source reflects the substance of Dolben’s remarks. Wikipedia takes a more benevolent view of him:

In the aftermath of the Popish Plot, Dolben tried many of the accused, including Sir Thomas Gascoigne, 2nd Baronet and Sir Miles Stapleton; due to his impartial trait of pointing out inconsistencies in the prosecution’s evidence, both were acquitted.[4] At the trial of Mary Pressicks, who was accused of saying that “We shall never be at peace until we are all of the Roman Catholic religion”, Dolben saved her life by ruling that the words, even if she did speak them, could not amount to treason.[5] As a result of this and his opposition to Charles II’s removal of the City Corporation’s writs, he was “according to the vicious practise of the time” dismissed on 18 April 1683. Again working as a barrister, Dolben prosecuted Algernon Sidney in November 1683 before being reinstated as a Justice of the King’s Bench on 18 March 1689. Records from 29 April show him “inveighing mightily against the corruption of juries [during the Glorious Revolution]”,[1] and he continued sitting as a Justice until his death from an apoplectic fit on 25 January 1694,[6] and was buried in Temple Church.

Vulgar almanacs glory in death sentences and executions, but I suppose one (1) is called for.

Something to say? Get in touch