Are You Classical?
In 1822, Anne Lister wrote to her lover Mariana Lawton, speculating on the relationship status of two celebrities she had just visited. Anne and Mariana had been lovers for years. Although Mariana was married, she and Anne dreamed they might some day live alone together as did these Ladies of Llangollen (pronounced something like K’lan-gowth-lin).
Anne wrote to Mariana:
Charmed as I am with the landscape and loveliness of the country, I do not envy it for a home. I should not like to live in Wales—but if it must be so and I could choose the spot, it should be at Plasnewydd at Llangollen, which is already endeared even to me by the association of ideas.
Mariana replied:
The account of your visit is the prettiest narrative I have read. You have at once excited and gratified my curiosity. Tell me if you think their regard has always been platonic and if you ever believed pure friendship could be so exalted. If you do, I shall think there are brighter amongst mortals that I ever believed there were.
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| Plas Newydd, home of the Ladies of Llangollen |
Anne’s reply is recorded in her diary:
I cannot help thinking that surely it was not platonic. Heaven forgive me, but I look within myself and doubt. I feel the infirmity of our nature and hesitate to pronounce such attachments uncemented by something more tender still than friendship. But much, or all, depends upon the story of their former lives: the period passed before they lived together, that feverish dream called youth. It excited in me, for a variety of circumstances, a sort of peculiar interest tinged with melancholy. I could have mused for hours, dreampt dreams of happiness, conjured up many a vision of hope.
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| Plas Newydd is now a public park. |
Something More Tender Still Than Friendship
Anne and Mariana wanted to find other lesbians. They were not looking just for women who had sex with each other. They wanted to know if it were possible for women to be friends and lovers and partners in life without male supervision.
I thought my generation were the first to dream this dream, until I learned about Romantic Friendships. In my twenties, I read Lillian Faderman’s Surpassing the Love of Men, her historical study of friendships between women. Work by other historians followed.
The official guidebook for Plas Newydd at Llangollen quotes Faderman’s description of The Ladies:
“The relationship was considered not only socially permissible, but even desirable… Their society was happy to see them as the embodiment of the highest ideals of spiritual love, and the purest dreams of romantic friendship.” Faderman goes on to observe that it was the novelty of Eleanor and Sarah’s relationship that endeared them: had their way of life been an option for many women, they would probably have been regarded as threats to the social order and “models for a dangerous new lifestyle.”
Anne waited years to arrange an introduction and visit Eleanor Butler and Sarah Ponsonby, who arrived in Wales forty years before, two Irish aristocrats, famous for escaping the requirements of their sex and class.
I too have been fascinated about the Ladies of Llangollen since reading The Ladies, a novel published in 1984 by Doris Grumback in my twenties.
How thrilling it was to read the adventure story of two women in love, their escape from Ireland, making a home in Wales, and living fifty years together, exactly as they had dreamed. It seemed like every young lesbian I knew wanted to live with her girlfriend on a little farm. (Although we would have done it with a dozen other women, because we also thought we invented intentional communities and nonmonogamy.)
Lesbian ancestors are hard to find. We find them in rare surviving diaries and letters. We find them in the descriptions of their enemies. We find them deductively, scrutinizing women who lived together, masquerading as sisters. We find them in women supporting themselves in the stereotypical lesbian professions of nursing and teaching. Sometimes we find them as the factotum behind a successful man, like President Roosevelt’s Labor Secretary Frances Perkins.
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| Our house |
The homes of the Ladies of Llangollen and Anne Lister are now museums. What would it be like to walk in their footsteps, into the bedrooms and gardens of the long-ago lesbians?
I realized I could drive there.
The “Early Lesbians of Nineteenth-Century Ireland, Wales, and England” Tour and What Happens When We Find Them
Back in 2019, after watching Gentleman Jack—the HBO series about Anne Lister—my pal Hilary and I planned a trip to Halifax and Wales the following April.
We didn’t know we were part of a worldwide phenomenon of fandom and personal transformation described later in the book The Gentleman Jack Effect by Janet Lea.
Hilary and I set off on the tour three years later. (We augmented our lesbian pilgrimage with a Beatles weekend in Liverpool, but that’s another post.)
The uncited quotations below regarding Eleanor Butler and Sarah Ponsonby are from The Ladies of Llangollen, a Study in Romantic Friendship by Elizabeth Mavor, published in 1971 (republished 2011). Mavor analyzed every extant journal and correspondence by or about the Ladies.
Unless more records come to light, it is the most reliable source. I thoroughly marked up my copy, noticing anecdotes of their lives that seem typical for a lesbian couple and a circle of friends: money troubles, friendship drama, gardening, pet cats, adoption of faddish intellectual trends, privileged discussions of labor politics, philanthropy for the neighbors.
Ties That Bind
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| Butler Castle, and Butler Stables to the left. |
The story of Eleanor Butler and Sarah Ponsonby begins in Kilkenny, Ireland. Kilkenny has always been independent, cosmopolitan, and rich. It was the seat of the Butler dynasty, a name chosen to honor their traditional royal service, that of boutillier, the Cup Bearer. Eleanor’s family were devoted to the English crown from medieval times. In return the Crown granted the Butlers the tax on wine imported to Ireland.
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| Butlers through the ages. |
Butler women, like all women of their class, lived in castles and mansions behind high walls. They served their families as the bearers of the next generation, and as mature women preserved family wealth through advantageous marriages. They devoted themselves as keenly to marriage plots as their men fought wars and colonized islands.
Eleanor was never going to be that kind of woman. When still a child, her mother sent her away to be educated in a French convent school with other girls from aristocratic families. There she discovered her life’s passion for learning anything about everything. She may have also found sexual and romantic connections, if stereotypes of that kind of school are true.
She had two older sisters, and her brother— the heir—18 months younger. Her siblings made good marriages, but as Mavor says, Eleanor “was neither rich nor beautiful.” She had finished her formal education when she returned home to attend her brother’s wedding. She then lived ten years behind the walls of various Butler homes: superfluous, well read, bored.
Sarah Ponsonby might have gone along with an advantageous marriage, but it was never offered to her.
By the time she was thirteen, a series of deaths and remarriages left her an orphan without inheritance. Her guardian sent her to school in Kilkenny. An educated woman of her class might become a governess and therefore some other family’s dependent. Sarah’s guardian asked Lady Butler to look after her, an obligation she delegated to her 28-year old daughter Eleanor. Sarah was 13.
Their friendship began, as so many before and since, with books. … From books they no doubt passed on to discuss the world as it was, as it might be, and, leaving that, would have pondered their own futures; slowly discovering over five years of growing intimacy that they both, the one so shy, gentle and over-sensitive, the other better, sharp-tongued, yet scarcely less sensitive, had a longing for the simple life, the douceurs [sweetness] of retirement.
A popular novel they probably read was Millenium Hall, an 18th-century manual for how to set up a women’s land. “The Hall the characters live in is a model of mid-century reform ideas. All the women have crafts with which to better themselves. Property is held in common, and education is the primary pastime.” (Wikipedia)
It sold thousands of copies, igniting the imaginations of women of the day, just like feminist utopian novels ignited ours in the 1980s.
After five years of their growing friendship, Sarah left school in Kilkenny and returned to her guardian’s home at Woodstock. It was then that her step-father contemplated trading in his current wife (not her mother) for Sarah herself. At the same time, Eleanor’s mother set into motion the next logical option, as her daughter was too old for marriage: sending her permanently to a French convent with a small endowment, and using the remainder of her unused dowry on more advantageous investments.
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| Walled garden at Woodstock |
Eleanor and Sarah did what young women do in this circumstance: they planned their escape. They would run away and live in the country. They did, and were soon caught. There followed much drama, but eventually the two families agreed to let them leave for Wales.
It’s a great story better told elsewhere, beginning with Mavor’s book. Mavor analyzed every extant diary and letter, written by them or mentioning them. The book is not only exhaustive in its sources, she finds evidence for and against the many myths that grew around them, and makes incisive deductions about their lives and relationships.
The Doris Grumbach novel I read in my twenties is more dramatic, but free with some facts. Mary Gordon’s 1936 novel Chase of Wild Goose is a ghost story, with political reflections on feminist topics of the day. (Recently republished.) An RTE radio documentary gives details about their lives in Kilkenny I’ve heard nowhere else. A huge Welsh tourism site collects every scrap related to them. The fan-site, Ladies of Llangollen is a beautiful work of love. The British Museum owns some chocolate cups that might have belonged to them.
Butler Castle now anchors one end of Kilkenny’s Medieval Mile. The family moved out after Irish independence, selling off 800 years of accumulated art and furniture. The house stood empty until the 1980s when it was sold for £50 to a Kilkenny preservation group, who spent the last 40 years repairing it.
The castle is definitely worth a visit, but it is restored to the high-Victorian period and none of the furnishings of Eleanor’s time exists. I found one photo of Plas Newydd in a hallway dedicated to famous Butlers through the ages.
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| These two framed photos appear to be someone’s souvenir of Wales. |
Our guide knew nothing about them, except to pronounce Llangollen incorrectly. (Again, it’s something like K’lan-gowth-lin).
Sarah’s last Irish home, Woodstock, remained a Big House until the Irish Civil War in the 1920s.
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| Woodstock today |
After Sarah fled in 1778, later owners invested in walled gardens and a terrific arboretum that is now a public park. The landscape around Woodstock is some of the most beautiful I’ve ever seen in Ireland.
Romantic Friendships
Anne Lister had read about the Ladies of Llangollen in a newspaper article around 1810. As newspapers repeated the same story for decades, it was likely similar to this one in the General Evening Post, published in 1790.
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| The original watercolor portrait |
Extraordinary Female Affection
Miss Butler and Miss Ponsonby have retired from society into a certain Welch Vale. Both Ladies are daughters of the great Irish families whose names they retain.
Miss Butler, who is of Ormonde family had several offers of marriage, all of which she rejected. Miss Ponsonby, her particular friend and companion, was supposed to be the bar to all matrimonial union, it was thought proper to separate them, and Miss Butler was confined.
The two Ladies, however, found means to elope together. But being soon overtaken, they were each brought back by their respective relations. Many attempts were renewed to draw Miss Butler into marriage. But upon her solemnly and repeatedly declaring that nothing could induce her to wed anyone, her parents ceased to persecute her by any more offers.
Not many months after, the ladies concerted and executed a fresh elopement. Each having a small sum with them, and having been allowed a trifling income in place of their retreat was confided to a female servant of the Butler family, who was sworn to secrecy as to the place of their retirement. She was only to say that they wre well and safe and hoped that their friends would without further enquiry, continue their annuities, which has not only been done, but increased.
The beautiful above-mentioned vale is the spot they fixed on where they have resided for several years unknown to the neighboring villages by any other appellation than the Ladies of the Vale!
About a twelve month since three Ladies and a Gentleman stopping one night at an inn in the village, not being able to procure beds, the inhabitants applied to the Female Hermits for accommodation to some foreign strangers. This was readily granted—when lo! In these foreigners they described some of their own relations! But no entreties could prevail on the Ladies to quit their sweet retreat.
Miss Butler is tall and masculine, she wears always a riding habit, hangs her hat with the air of a sportsman in the hall, and appears in all respects a young man, if we except the petticoats which she still retains.
Miss Ponsonby, on the contrary, is polite and effeminate, fair and beautiful. In Mr Secretary Steels list of Pensions for 1788, there are the names of Elinor [sic] Butler and Sarah Ponsonby, for annuities of fifty pounds each. We have many reasons to imagine that these pensioners are the Ladies of the Vale; their female confidant continues to send them their Irish annuities beside.
They live in neatness, elegance and taste. Two females are their only servants. Miss Ponsonby does the duties and honors of the house, while Miss Butler superintends the gardens and the rest of the grounds.
After reading about themselves in the newspaper, Eleanor noted in her journal that she had canceled their subscription, “for Essential reasons.” She then tried—and failed— to sue them.
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| Plas Newydd stair from the attic |
At the time anyone familiar with the stereotypes of eccentric women would conclude the Ladies were lesbians, and so has everyone ever since. But they wouldn’t have used that word. The phrase available was romantic friendship.
The term, “romantic friendship” had been used by contemporaries to describe Eleanor Butler’s and Sarah Ponsonby’s attachment at the time of their elopement in 1778. While the very term “elopement” had not then, as it has now, a specifically sexual connotation, for it could simply mean an escape, a running away; “romantic was at that time only just beginning to lose its derisory meaning and to take on one slightly more complimentary. The epithet “romantic,” a notoriously vague one, had hitherto been generally applied to anything that was fanciful, whimsical, impracticable, absurd.
They were doubtless romantic in their regard for each other; their journals and letters full of endearments and long walks in the garden, long evenings in companionship, hard nights caring for each other through illness. They were also romantic when it came to money, in the sense of “fanciful, whimsical, impracticable, and absurd.”
Sarah had family friends who sent her a little money, but according to their own account books they continued to live far above their income, owing money to everyone in town, and always waiting—for decades— for the next dribble of funds. Friends encouraged them to apply to receive a pension from the British crown. Known as the Civil List, it was how Kings rewarded supporters and unfortunate aristocrats like Eleanor who needed to keep up appearances. They eventually received a small annual pension, but it often arrived later than promised. Late in life, when Eleanor’s nephew inherited the Butler fortune, he became their benefactor. By then, Eleanor had outlived the generation outraged by scandal.
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| Attic bedroom window. |
As the years went on, Eleanor and Sarah economized—sort of— reducing their long hours of self-education and foreign language study, and became small farmers, growing vegetables and dairy, selling the excess. They practiced “wild gardening” they learned from a book, just like we did in the early 21st century.
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| The font and rebuilt summer house. |
Rustic bridges … were constructed across the deliciously picturesque torrent, … while a font, purloined from the ruins of Valle Crucis abbey, was placed beneath the runnel of a piped spring and allowed to develop into romantic accretions of fern and muse.
Eleanor and Sarah wanted to be remembered. The nearby abby of Valle Crucis was where locals recycled building materials, so it was no big deal they “rescued” the font and installed it in their garden. On either side is written this memorial prayer:
Drink Gentle Pilgrim from the well thus sacred in this hollow dell. Drink deep yet ere the yearning lip touches the draught it longs to sip. Pray for the souls of those who gave this font that holds the limped wave. This Holy font which lay o'er thrown mid Valle Crucis' shadows brown and which the hand of Holy men have blest but neer can bless again. Drink happy pilgrim daily and pray at morning dawn or twilight grey. Pray for the souls those who gave this font that holds the limped wave.
E. B. 1782 S.P.
Witty Conversations in Casual Clothes
For all their efforts at retirement, Eleanor and Sarah were part of a women’s community. And that community are now known as Bluestockings. (It was socially acceptable to wear one’s informal blue stockings—and not white—to these gatherings.)
When I was a young feminist, “Bluestockings” referred to women in the past, who may have written novels for each other, but were too conservative and complicit in the ruling class to be real feminists like us. I should have known that any word that disparages a group of women collaborating to free themselves from sex roles is a pernicious lie.
We know that during the 18th century there was a group—or there were groups—of women who wanted to be educated, who wanted to read and write, to talk and exchange ideas; and we know they were excluded from all areas where such activities were legitimated. We know that they provided each other with intellectual emotional support, and that they rarely sought the attention of men. … We know that they found their lives full and complete, even stimulating and exciting. We know that they constitute one of the initial claims for women’s right to education, to the life of the mind, to being reasoning human beings. … Perhaps we should know that they did not see themselves in a ghetto, that they did not see their lives deficient in any way, that they had no desire to join the mainstream….
These women sought to raise their status, and a status—and extent—of some of the activities that ladies were permitted to engage in in the male-dominated society. They used the private realm, their skills as hostesses, their hospitality, their manners, and their learning, literary and artistic talents to enlarge the space that respectable and wealthy women were permitted.
In general, Bluestockings have gone down in history with a little praise for men—or feminists: men have devalued their activities, and feminists have been critical of their conservatism. The term itself … has become a derogatory term and, almost predictably, a label for women with intellectual pretensions (and who, therefore, lead in bitter and sterile lives).
Dale Spender, Women of Ideas (And What Men Have Done To Them)
The Ladies would not have called themselves Bluestockings, but many of their female friends were.
Friends like the celebrated poet Anna Seward, (1742-1809). She named her dog Sappho, yet recent academics challenge the notion that she was a lesbian. She wrote a poem about Eleanor and Sarah, and they loved it. Here’s a stanza about their home.
How sweet to enter, at the twilight grey,
The dear, minute Lyceum of the Dome,
When, thro' the colour'd crystal, glares the ray,
Sanguine and solemn 'mid the gathering gloom,
While glow-worm lamps diffuse a pale, green light,
Such as in mossy lanes illume the starless night.
Then the coy Scene, by deep'ning veils o'erdrawn,
In shadowy elegance seems lovelier still;
Tall shrubs, that skirt the semi-lunar lawn,
Dark woods, that curtain the opposing hill;
While o'er their brows the bare cliff faintly gleams,
And, from its paly edge, the evening-diamond streams.
Eighteenth-Century Poetry Archive
Their friend Hester Thrales is always mentioned as a friend of famous diarist Samuel Johnson, who encouraged her to write one too, which exists. In widowhood, she married her children’s music teacher and became Mrs. Piozzi. They frequently socialized with Eleanor and Sarah.
Harriet Bowdler was emotionally intimate with them and many letters survive. Bowdler and her brother are famous for publishing The Family Shakespeare, a version of the plays with the offensive parts removed. Thus did the word “bowdlerize” enter our language.
Eleanor and Sarah had many bluestocking friends, but they weren’t friends with all of them.
Once a woman wrote to suggest she might become their housemate. Her own special friend had retired to a convent, and she was looking for a new living situation.
Eleanor replied:
Madam, I was this morning favoured with your letter. I must beg to leave to say that Miss Ponsonby and I can only attribute the proposal you make to us, to your being Totally Ignorant Who We are. As you mention that you are soon to come to England, a few enquiries on that subject will Satisfy you of the Very great impropriety (to give it no harsher term) of such an application to us. I take the liberty to add that We receive no Visitors with whose names, character and Consequence We are not perfectly Well Acquainted.
This is not the only evidence of Eleanor the Mean Girl. She was a snob, and born to it.
Eleanor and Sarah were famous for living alone while welcoming hundreds of the right sort of people. Despite their desire for “retirement,” from the beginning travelers of a certain class called in for a chat. Llangollen was on the coach route between Dublin and London. Visitors might arrive in time for tea in the afternoon; more visitors would arrive for a long evening in the library, drinking imported wines and commenting on the news of the day. They often mentioned the piles of books and newspapers that covered the tables.
Tourism hadn’t been invented yet, but even if they weren’t granted an audience, visitors to Llangollen could buy souvenirs of Plas Newydd decorated with The Ladies dressed in male clothing.
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| A postcard created posthumously still sold today. |
Had they lived in the twentieth century, they would have been on all the talk shows.
“Their visitors and admirers… were to number nearly everyone of note throughout the period… It should be recorded that it comprised not only royalty but soldiers, inventors, philanthropists, actors, artists, men of letters and poets. The Duke of Wellington was a cherished friend, Wordsworth and Southey composed beneath their roof, Josiah Wedgewood lectures them upon rock formations. Dr. Darwin and [son] Charles visited them, as did Sir Walter Scott, the Miss Berrys, Sheridan, Lady Caroline, and Sir Humphrey Davy.
What was the cause of such celebrity? For the two women were neither artists nor writers as has often been supposed, though many admired Sarah Ponsonby’s beautiful calligraphy and exquisitely careful illuminations and all enjoyed Eleanor Butler’s animated conversation, that “unaccountable knowledge of all living books and people and things,’' to which Mrs Piozzi had been ‘like magic.’ For some, fascination lay in the strangely picturesque charms of their garden, for others in the gothick witticisms of the cottage, to all the life of the two women represented a perfect picture of that “retirement”which had become the ideal of an age too long given over to the stridency of the world. …
But it was not only as exemplifiers of a perfect ‘retirement’ that the Ladies were celebrated, but as perfect friends.
Their peers saw them as “perfect friends,” a wonder to behold, and an example to be emulated.
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| Souvenirs |
As attractive as this perfect friendship was, Mavor cannot bring herself to characterize them as lovers like Anne Lister did. She writes that “romantic friendship” is a phrase more “liberal and inclusive,” implying that sexual relationships between women do not contain everything romantic friendships can. Worse, awareness of lesbian carnality has ruined the perfection.
Edenic it seems such friendships could be before they were biologically and thus prejudicially defined. Depending as they did upon time and leisure, they were aristocratic, they were idealistic, blissfully free, allowing for a dimension of sympathy between women that would not now be possible outside an avowedly lesbian connection. Indeed, most that we would not associate solely with a sexual attachment was contained in a romantic friendship: tenderness, loyalty, sensibility, shared beds, shared tastes, coquetry, even passion.
Anne Lister and I disagree.
Je-ne-sais-quoi
Hilary and I were pleasantly surprised by a special exhibit at Plas Newydd: costumes from Gentleman Jack.
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| The Breakfast room, with costumes for “Anne Lister” and her sister “Marian Lister.” |
The Diary of Anne Lister
July 1, 1822
We [Anne and her aunt] sat down to dinner at 8:30, having previously strolled through the town to Lady Eleanor Butler’s and Miss Ponsonby’s place. There is a public road close to the house, through grounds, and along this we passed and re-passed standing to look at the house, cottage, which is really very pretty.
I am interested in these two ladies very much—there is something in their story and in all I have heard about them here that, added to other circumstances, makes a deep impression. Sat musing on the sopha, witting what to do, inconsolate and moody. [in cripthand: Thinking of M[ariana]. Low about her. I cannot shake off the impression of what she said at Chester about delicacy in calculating C’s [Mariana’s husband, who was elderly]. I know not how it is, I am shockingly low altogether.
Mrs. Davis is going to enquire after Lady E. B. My aunt and I walked with her to wait for her giving an answer to our inquires… I feel better for this writing—in fact, come what may, writing my journals, thus, as it were, throwing my mind on paper always does me good.
At 7 went to Plas Newydd and got back at 8—just an hour away and surely the walking there and back did not take me more than 20 minutes. Shown into the room next to the library (the breakfast room) waited a minute or two, and then came Miss Ponsonby, a large woman so as to waddle in walking but not taller than myself—in a blue shortish waisted cloth habit, the jacket unbuttoned shewing a plane plated frilled habit shirt–a thick white cravat, rather loosely put on—hair powered, parted I think down the middle of a very fine face—coarsish white cotton stocking—ladies slipper shoes cut low down, the foot hanging a little over—altogether a very odd figure yet she had no sooner entered into conversation thanI forgot all this and my attention was wholly taken by her manners and conversation.
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| “Anne Lister” costume |
The former, perfectly easy, peculiarly attentive and well bred and bespeaking a person accustomed to a great deal of good society–mild and gentle, certainly not masculine, and yet there was a je-ne-sais-quoi striking—her conversation shewing a personal acquaintance with most of the literary characters of the day and their works.
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| Costume for “Ann Walker” in The Ladies’ bedroom. |
She seems sanguine about Lady Eleanor’s recovery —poor soul! My heart ached to think how small the chance—
They discussed books:
Mentioned the beauty of the place—the books I had noticed in their rustic library—she said Lady E read French, Spanish, and Italian—had great knowledge of ancient manners and customs, understood the obsolete manners and phrases of Tasso remarkably well—had written elucidation nots on the first 2 (or four, I think) books of Tasso, but had given away the only copy she ever had.
And then Anne asked if they were lesbians in a way Sarah might recognize if they were. She asked, “Are you Classical?”
“No!” (said she) Thank God from Latin and Greek I’m free”—Speaking of translations she mentioned La Cerda’s (I think it was) as the best according to some bishop friend of hers, of Virgil and Cary’s being the most excellent of Tasso, literal and excellent for a beginner and which she should recommend to anyone wanting assistance.
They discussed an ancient poem by Lucretius that Anne admires, On the Nature of Things, promoting the philosophy of Epicureanism; the poem had inspired Jefferson to write “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” 50 years previously.
She somehow mentioned Lucretius, but it was “a bad book and she was afraid of reading it.”
She asked if I would walk out—shewed me the kitchen garden—walked round the shrubbery with me—she said she owned to there having been 42 years there. They landed first in South Wales, but it did not answer the accounts they had heard of it—they then travelled in North Wales and, taken with the beauty of this place, took the cottage for 31 years —but it was a false lease and they had a great deal of trouble and expense. It was only four years since they had bought the place.
Anne can’t help herself and describes her own home, Shibden Hall. I sense that Anne had rambled and was regretting it.
Dared say I had a much nicer place at home—mentioned its situation, great age, long time in the family, etc. She wished to know where to find an account of it—said it had been their humble endeavour to make the place as old as they could. Spoke like a woman of the world about liking the place where I was born etc, —said I was not born there—my father was a younger brother but that I had the expectation of succeeding my uncle—all. Yes,” said she “you will soon be the master and there will be an end of romance.” “Never! Never!” said I.
Anne knows she is imagining herself living idyllically like they do, but can’t help imagine the challenges of this perfect friendship.
I envied their place and the happiness they had there—dared say, they had never quarreled— “No!” they had never had a quarrel—little difference of opinion sometimes—life could not go on without it—but only about the planting of a tree—and when they had differences in opinion, they took care to let no one see it.”
At parting she shook hands with me and gave me a rose; I said I should keep it for the sake of the place where it grew—she had before said she would be happy to introduce me sometime to Lady Eleanor—I had given my aunts compliments and enquiries—said she would have called with me but feared to intrude and was not quite well this evening—she gave me a sprig of geranium for my aunt with her compliments and thanks for her enquiries. …
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| “Anne Lister” costume for Paris scenes. |
I came away much pleased with Miss P and sincerely hoping Lady E will recover to enjoy a few years in this world. I know not how it is. I felt low after coming away—a thousand moody reflections occurred, but again, writing has done me good.
Many Objects Elaborately Carved In Oak
Hilary and I listened to the RTE documentary on the way to Llangollen, passing under literally awesome mountains and along breathtaking rivers.
The area now attracts hillwalkers and river rafters; the cafe we stopped in was full of lycra-dressed people just like Santa Cruz.
Plas Newydd is a simple house, originally “two up, two down” like many houses around here, including the one I live in now. A kitchen to the left of a central stair, and a sitting room on the other. Two bedrooms above, and two attic rooms above that for servants.
Gay wittily literary, nestling amid its floral walks and fan-trained fruit, and facing onto its green field dotted with white sheep. It is a cottage, “four small apartments,” Anna Seward tells us “the exquisite cleanliness of the kitchen, its utensils and its auxiliary offices viewing with the finished elegance of the gay, the lightsome little dining room, as that contrasts the gloomy yet superior grace of the library, into which it opens.”
The original house was later expanded with a two-room addition to the right of the sitting room. The Ladies called the ground floor room “the library” and installed gothic bookcases and large windows looking into the garden.
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| Library |
Anne’s diary entries about her visit were printed out and available to read in the library. I read Anne’s description of the Library while I was standing in the Library.
Anna Seward described the library light fixture they designed:
The ingenious friends have invented a kind of prismatic lantern, which occupies the whole elliptic arch of the Gothick door. This lantern is of cut glass, variously colored, enclosing the two lamps with their reflectors. The light it imparts resembles that of a volcano—sanguine and solemn. It is assisted by two glow worm lamps, that, in little marble reservoirs stand on the opposite chimney piece, and these supply the place of the here-always chastised day-light, when the dusk of evening sables, or when the night wholly involves the thrice lovely solitude.
The lantern remains beautiful and timeless in its originality.
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| The Ladies’ bedroom, with costume worn in the title sequence of Gentleman Jack. The writing desk is original, the bed isn’t. |
The large room above the library they called the “dressing room.” Now it contains exhibit cases and the remnants of their lives: Scraps and the cheapest souvenirs purchased at the estate sale.
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| Their mirror |
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One book.
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| Sarah’s cookery book. |
But the most obvious remnant of their lives at Plas Newydd is what they did to used oak furniture. Jacobean furniture—dark, heavy, mythological—had gone out of fashion. Aristocrats were tossing it out as they built their new spare Georgian assembly rooms. Kilkenny Castle displays a Victorian photograph of the dining room with a Jacobean chest, so perhaps it remained popular with the Butlers even in Eleanor’s day.
[Friends] gratified their passion for oak carving: “none ventured for a second visit without bringing a contribution which was the regular passport.”
Plas Newydd brochure
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| Their bedroom door |
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| Window in the library |
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| The porch |
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| Over the front door |
They were so proud of how they upcycled an old bed into the porch that they invited friends around to celebrate its completion.
Decorating your house with recycled wooden furniture might be eccentric in rural Wales, but seems both practical and beautiful to Bargain Barn me.
Four years later Eleanor and Sarah were able to buy Plas Newydd. Mavor thinks it was Eleanor’s nephew, now possessing the Butler fortune, who gave them the money to pay off a lifetime of debts.
Interesting Miscellanies, Curiosities, and Relics
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| Another popular postcard. |
At nearly 90 years old, Eleanor died in 1829. As Anne had feared, she suffered in her last years. Sarah was unable to attend the huge funeral.
Eleanor’s civic pension died with her, but Sarah’s friends arranged for her to be given her own.
Sarah did not burn their journals and letters, but bequeathed them to a close family friend.
That she never burned these intimate papers could indicate that some part of her intended that a select few should know the truth of their story.
Sarah died about two years later. She and Eleanor are buried under the monument they built for their faithful housekeeper, Mary Carryl, who not only helped them plan their escape, she left her people and lived in Wales with them for the rest of her life.
The auction catalog describes what they left behind. An excerpt:
ELEGANT FURNITURE OF THE CHATEAU,
comprising a dining-room suite in curtains, glasses, centre, card, and occasional tables ottomans, sofas, couches, chairs of various descriptions, yet in unison, whatnots, cheffoniers; the dining-room is very complete there are excellent dining tables, chairs, side- board, writing tables, and library chairs.
A RANGE OF BOOKCASES, AND MANY OBJECTS ELABORATELY CARVED IN OAK;
also a strong box of great antiquity, and carved; it was once the property of his late
ROYAL HIGHNESS THE DUKE OF YORK.
The furniture of the bedchambers and offices is of a corresponding character; excellent table and bed linen the equipments of the garden are of a very superior description; a variety of seats, curious Etruscan flower vases, garden implements, &c.
A GREENHOUSE OF GREAT BEAUTY,
ornamented with painted and stained glass; an extensive collection of plants, dairy and brewing utensils;
JEWELS, JEWELLERY, and ELEGANCIES,
presenting many pleasing and valuable ornaments for the person, necklaces, ear-rings, crosses, and brooches, most of them enclosing the hair of the donors, particularly one of great interest, possessing
A Lock of “MARY, QUEEN of SCOTS” Hair.
INTERESTING MISCELLANIES, CURIOSITIES, AND RELICS, viz.
very fine missals, beautifully illuminated, autographs of numerous renowned personages, particularly a letter written by “CHARLES THE FIRST” to Lady Fisher, from Whitehall, during his confinement, presentation snuff-boxes, many of value, and most with lines of dedication, relics of great antiquity, and many of modern date, presented by travellers, forming altogether a museum of great interest and amusement, several remarkably fine cameos and intaglios,
A LIBRARY of RARE and VALUABLE BOOKS,
of vast extent, comprising many thousand volumes elegantly bound, in folio, quarto, and octavo (large and small) but as the prescribed limits of an advertisement preclude the possibility of an enumeration of the principal works, it must suffice to mention that those of the most esteemed ancient and modern authors will be found conspicuous, whilst a variety of interesting works in general use complete the library.
Enough money was raised from the sale of the house and contents to provide a pension to their two remaining house maids.
The Ladies of Llantysilio
Much as I like Mavor’s book, she takes the position that straight people often do when they find themselves admiring famous lesbians. They hesitate to acknowledge that a woman is a lesbian because doing so deprives the world of her universal appeal. I think that lesbians can be beloved as lesbians and also appeal to everyone. I hope I am.
I saw a photo of a cemetery monument similar to that of The Ladies while flipping through the binder that docents use to answer the more obscure questions.
It was the grave of two women, Charlotte Andrews and Amelia Lolly. The docent said they were women “who impersonated Eleanor and Sarah.” Eleanor had called them the “Lollies and Trollies,” an insult that combines the childishness of sucking on candy with the notoriety of prostitution.
The photo of the grave is in the museum binder because Charlotte Andrews and Amelia Lolly purchased Plas Newydd after Sarah died. They had moved from Manchester to Llangollen years before. Perhaps they moved there for the same reason that Anne contemplated: “an association of ideas.” Perhaps they moved for the same reason I moved from Fresno to Santa Cruz: I heard there might be some lesbians there.
We know nothing about Charlotte and Amelia except that they importuned The Ladies with an offer of friendship. The Mean Girls of Plas Newydd rejected them.
I found the location of their grave in Mavor’s book, and after a short drive on a narrow road, Hilary and I found Charlotte Andrew and Amelia Lolly in the church yard at Llantysilio.
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| Charlotte and Amelia’s monument is inside that dark grove of yew. |
You can find detailed information about subsequent male owners of Plas Newydd, but these two women are a cipher. No one has bothered to decode the clues of their lives. Plas Newydd historians dismiss them just like Eleanor did. They were not Perfect Friends to be Emulated like the Originals. One lesbian couple is a roadside attraction, but two? In the same town? Impersonators.
It’s hard to imagine the same thing happening to lesbians of our time. The late 20th century recorded the flowering of lesbian culture, in books, poems, letters, film, art. How we lived in our time is already historical record. These collections are now safe in institutional archives. We have nothing to fear.
Just look at what happened with Anne Lister.
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