FEATURES: WORLD WRITES NEW CHAPTER IN STORY OF GENTLEMAN JACK – PAGE 13
Aseventsare held to mark 180 yearssince the death of Anne Lister, LauraReid looks at therisein global significance of the diarist’sstory and the Gentleman Jack effect in Calderdale.
Gentleman Jack fans worldwide are discussing their plans to visit Halifax and the Calder Valley on social media – they’re talking with real affection and excitement about us as a destination. Laura Johansen of Calderdale Cultural Destinations
STANDING CLOSE to the tombstone of Halifax diarist Anne Lister, the Rev Jane Finn spoke of a steady stream of flowers and tributes left by visitors moved by her story. It had been several months since the airing of the final episode of Sally Wainwright’s TV drama Gentleman Jack, based on Lister’s life in the 1830s, and the tale of the landowner who once called Shibden Hall her home was drawing interest from all over the world.
Born in 1791, Lister was a pioneering mountaineer, intrepid traveller and entrepreneur. She was also a lesbian and engaged in a number of passionate relationships with women throughout her life. “People feel like they’re pilgrimaging here and they have to leave something ( in tribute to Anne),” explained the Rev Finn, who is the curate at Halifax Minster where Lister is buried. Speaking last November, she continued: “( Gentleman Jack) really touched a deep chord... I think ( Anne) has given people a lot of courage to be somebody they know they are.”
Tomorrow, September 22, marks 180 years since Lister’s death. She passed away in Georgia in 1840, whilst travelling in Europe with her ‘ wife’ ( their marriage wasn’t legally recognised) Ann Walker. A programme of digital events, under the banner of # AnneLister180: Celebrating Her Legacy, has been planned to mark the occasion, with people from all over the globe expected to tune in online. So just how did Lister become a figure of such international significance?
Lister wrote a detailed diary of her daily life, leaving behind an estimated five million words. Around a sixth of the entries were written in crypthand, a code of her own devising. She used it to describe her deepest emotions, private affairs and her relationships with a number of women, romantic interests that would almost certainly have been deemed transgressive in the society in which she lived.
A descendant named John Lister discovered the diaries at Shibden in the decades after her death. Dr Jill Liddington, a historian and author who has studied Lister’s journals and written about her life, says he wrote a number of articles based on what they contained, publishing them in the local newspaper between 1887 and 1892. “At last at least part of Anne Lister’s life and diary became well known. But he couldn’t crack the code.”
John enlisted the help of a friend, Arthur Burrell, who worked out two of the coded letters, and the pair eventually deciphered Lister’s crypthand. Shocked by the lesbian encounters detailed, John hid the diaries away behind a panel at Shibden.
“John Lister didn’t do another word about Anne Lister from then until his death in 1933,” says Liddington. “Male homosexual activity was criminalised harshly. Although the law didn’t touch women, there was a culture of silence.”
That silence continued for the best part of a century, despite work on the diaries after Shibden transferred to the local authority following John’s death. Things began to change in the 1980s, when historian Helena Whitbread became intrigued by Lister’s story, initially examining a series of letters she had written before learning about her diaries. She spent years researching and translating entries written between 1817 and 1824, before publishing I Know My Own Heart in 1988, sharing extracts of the diaries that detailed Lister’s series of lovers.
Then came the Local Government Act of 1988, with Section 28 prohibiting local authorities from “promoting homosexuality by teaching or by publishing material”. “It ( shaped) what Calderdale authority could actually say about Anne Lister,” says Liddington. “That restriction on promoting homosexuality again led to a culture of silence... However, the act could not touch independent publishers.”
Whitbread’s second book on Lister’s diaries followed four years later and Liddington herself, interest sparked by Whitbread’s work and a Guardian article on Lister’s diaries, got stuck into her own research and transcription. In 1994, she published Presenting the Past, a look at how Lister’s diaries survived the years, and Female Fortune, focusing on Lister’s story between 1833 and 1836, then followed in 1998. Sally Wainwright was given a copy of the latter by a mutual friend, Liddington recalls.
“Sally was absolutely gripped [ by Anne’s story] and very much wanted to start writing script proposals for a drama series straight away... We started working very hard together, walking around Shibden, going to visit some of the houses and places Anne Lister knew in Halifax and feeding ideas and research into a script proposal... This was about 18 years ago. Sally put forward various proposals and they got nowhere – at that stage, she wasn’t an established script writer.”
In 2011, Lister’s diaries gained greater cultural significance when they were inscribed into the UNESCO UK Memory of the World Register. But it is with the airing of Gentleman Jack last year that her story was truly thrust into the global spotlight, brought to life by Wainwright, the BBC and HBO. She became a household name almost overnight, striking a chord with audiences across the world.
Calderdale too was put firmly on the map, experiencing a tourism influx from fans keen to walk in Lister’s footsteps. In 2019- 20, 60,000 people passed through the doors of Shibden Hall, triple the usual yearly average.
“It’s unbelievable what impact the programme has had,” says Bobsie Robinson, Cultural Services Manager at Calderdale Council. “Footfall before the lockdown was off the scale. Shibden Hall has seen so many visitors and a growth in international visitors from places like America and Australia.”
Laura Johansen of Calderdale Cultural Destinations sets out Lister’s legacy. “( Through her diaries), she gives us an unrivalled sense of what daily life was like in the Georgian and early Victorian era. She is particularly significant because she gives an honest, emotional and detailed account of her life as a woman who loved women, giving lesbians a place in history. Gay women who discover her story feel seen and represented in a way they haven’t before, which is a very special and meaningful thing.”
Ideas are already being formed to mark the 230th anniversary of Lister’s birth in April and there are hopes that a festival will become part of Calderdale’s annual calendar. Robinson wants to further capitalise on ‘ the Gentleman Jack effect’, picking up on themes such as diversity through an educational programme at the area’s museums. Though Covid- 19 has presented challenges, Robinson is confident visitor numbers will pick up again, with # AnneLister180 allowing people to come together virtually to mark Lister’s life in the meantime.
“I think we can expect to see the research, awareness and events grow and grow, especially after Gentleman Jack series two airs,” Johansen agrees. “Fans worldwide are discussing their plans to visit Halifax and the Calder Valley on social media – they’re talking with real affection and excitement about us as a destination.”