The Secret Diaries Of Miss Anne Lister by Helena Whitbread

Author:Helena Whitbread [Whitbread, Helena]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-748-12571-5
Publisher: Little, Brown Book Group
Published: 2010-11-03T16:00:00+00:00

Anne described her meeting with Miss Ponsonby to a friend in York, Miss Sibbella MacLean, with whom she frequently corresponded.

Saturday 3 August [Halifax]

‘… If any of your friends are going to Llangollen, pray recommend them to the King’s Head or New Hotel, kept by Mrs Davis. A very comfortable house. Everything good & Welsh mutton in greater perfection than we had it anywhere else. Never ate anything so excellent. Lady Eleanor Butler was seriously ill. An inflammatory complaint. She had been couched. 3 operations by absorption. The sight of one eye nearly restored. Caught cold by going out too soon & staying out too long, and late, in the evening. On our return she was rather better. Miss Ponsonby, by especial favour, admitted me & I spent an hour with her most agreeably. She had been alarmed, but was returning to good spirits, about the recovery of her friend. There was a freshness of intellect – a verdure of amusing talent which, with heart & thorough good breeding, made her conversation more time beguiling than I could have imagined. She told me they had been 42 years there. ’Tis the prettiest little spot I ever saw – a silken cord on which the pearls of taste are strung. I could be happy here, I said to myself, where hope fulfilled might still “with bright ray in smiling contrast gild the vital day.” You know, Miss Ponsonby is very large & her appearance singular. I had soon forgotten all this. Do not, said I, give me that rose, ’twill spoil the beauty of the plant. “No! No! It may spoil its beauty for the present, but ’tis only to do it good afterwards.” There was a something in the manner of this little simple circumstance that struck me exceedingly…’ Foolscap sheet from M—… She seems much interested about Lady Eleanor Butler & Miss Ponsonby and I am agreeably surprised (never dreaming of such a thing) at her observation, ‘The account of your visit is the prettiest narrative I have read. You have at once excited & gratified my curiosity. Tell me if you think their regard has always been platonic & if you ever believed pure friendship could be so exalted. If you do, I shall think there are brighter amongst mortals than I ever believed there were.’… I cannot help thinking that surely it was not platonic. Heaven forgive me, but I look within myself & doubt. I feel the infirmity of our nature & 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.

Wednesday 7 August [Halifax]

Mended my skirt & gloves… At 4.10, down the new bank (walked) to Halifax to make some shoppings, order about a trunk, etc. Saw a handsome rosewood, perhaps about 16 ins square, writing box handsomely mounted with brass (at Adams’ shop) £2 8s. Large portmanteau trunk at Furniss’s (apparently a very good one, 45/–).

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