Isabella 'Tib' Norcliffe

Tib at a glance

Personality and Interests

Isabella Norcliffe was memorable company. Journals and correspondence in the Shibden Hall Collection, West Yorkshire Archive Service (WYAS), portray a woman of considerable energy, sharp opinions, and an ability to fill a room, irritate a household, or be sorely missed all at once. She made an impression immediately, and without apparent effort, a quality that those who encountered her tended to remark upon long afterwards.

Eliza Raine, who Isabella first described meeting in July 1810,⁵ captured something of this quality when she wrote to Anne in May 1811. The memory of that first encounter had clearly stayed with her:

"I plainly perceived that Miss N–[Norcliffe] is of the race of ardent spirits, adoring & hating in the greatest vehemence — such characters often seem to me to have great enemies, why I wonder, because she uses no disguise whatever & the rage is at any present fashion would have young people appear all alike meaning the affected unnatural goal of speciousness – she appears quite a character & whenever she goes will raise wonder & exclamation. I often laugh to think how she astonished me the first day I ever heard the ebullition of her singularity seated with all her carelessness at Miss Marsh's lodgings. Such an odd compound snatched away all the powers of my utterance as I well remember then, but familiarity & acquaintance with such a character have quite reversed the action of that valuable organ." 

— Eliza Raine to Anne Lister, 2 May 1811 (SH:7/ML/A/27)

That unguarded force of personality and intensity, with no softening of manner for the sake of convention, was bound up with something else that many contemporaries noticed and commented on; a strong, somewhat masculine manner. In later letters to Anne, Eliza made further observations:

“Her character appears to me very odd... She has a few masculine attributes and such as a short beard, a loud and boyish voice form exactly your manners coinciding, and as far as I can judge sentiments on all subjects but that of the heart.” 

— Eliza Raine, March 1813 (SH:7/ML/E/26/1/0037)

Mary Vallance, who spent extended time at Langton Hall, offered equally striking observations. She told Anne she had thought of Tib as a man the entire time Tib was driving her to Castle Howard in a gig, and then asked Anne whether she would have married Tib if Tib had been a man.⁷ On an earlier walk together, Mary had been more explicit, telling Anne that Tib's manners were masculine and noting that the men in their acquaintance didn't like it, confessing she was worried about what her own brothers would think.⁸ The shared characteristics between the two women were noted elsewhere too. Anne recorded a conversation in which Mariana relayed that:

"Mr Lally had been visiting at Moreton last September and said he would as soon turn a man loose in his house as me - as for Miss Norcliffe, two jacks would not suit together."

— Anne Lister, 12 Sep 1825 (SH:7/ML/E/9/0016)

It is worth noting that not everyone saw the resemblance in quite the same terms, and that Anne herself (when it suited her purposes) was perfectly willing to argue the contrary. Writing to Sibbella Maclean in 1824, in response to Sibbella's curiosity about how two such different women could be such firm friends, Anne was quite direct: 

"The question was natural, for never were two people more thoroughly unlike each other in every thing than Miss Norcliffe and I — but she abounds in heart, in warmth of kindness, humour, in reading. She is quite a character, and I am much attached to her."

– Anne Lister to Sibbella Maclean, 21 June 1824 (SH:7/ML/140)

Among what might have been considered some of those masculine pursuits, Isabella enjoyed horseback riding and coursing (the sport of hunting game by sight rather than scent, typically using greyhounds). She was also musically talented, composing pieces as well as performing, and had a great love of theatre, often singing, performing dramatic readings, or acting and doing impressions during social gatherings.

Like Anne, she also had a strong interest in travel, and her letters contain vivid accounts of her time abroad. The Norcliffes were away from England for roughly three years (c.1815–1818) on what was a substantial Grand Tour including Italy, Switzerland, Belgium, and France. In a letter to Anne Lister senior from Paris in October 1815, written just weeks after the Battle of Waterloo, Isabella relayed accounts of the city as full of military, with many artworks having already been stripped from the Louvre for return to their original owners. She had watched the Duke of Wellington review sixty thousand men on the plain outside the city, and also shared an account of Versailles, and the room where Marie Antoinette “escaped the savages of the revolution.”⁶ 

Her travels also brought her into some remarkable company, and at least one near-catastrophe. During the family's time in Europe, Isabella was among the party introduced to Pope Pius VII, an encounter she described to Anne in enough detail that Anne copied it into a letter to Mariana.⁷ The trip was clearly an ambitious undertaking cut short by Emily Norcliffe's death in Brussels in December 1817, which cast a long shadow over the family's final months abroad and their return home.

In the summer of 1824, she undertook an ambitious tour of Scotland with Charlotte, Mary Vallance, and their servant Thomas, tracing a wide circuit that took in Edinburgh, Aberdeen, Inverness, Tobermory, and the Isle of Mull. Writing to Anne from Edinburgh on 8 August, she could not contain her enthusiasm for the city. She had, she said: 

"travelled over most of the continent, and seen many different capitals, but never one that could compare with this most magnificent city, which may truly be called the glory of Europe."

– Isabella Norcliffe, 11 August 1824 (SH:7/ML/E/8/0051)

From Tobermory the party crossed to Quinish to visit Sibbella Maclean at her home (an introduction Anne had made possible) where Isabella charmed their hostess sufficiently that Sibbella afterwards wrote to Anne in some bewilderment that Isabella and Charlotte had "so overturned her common rule" of not warming to people on short acquaintance.⁸

If Isabella shared Anne’s passion for travel, she did not always share her enthusiasm for physical exertion. She had gone to the top of the Black Gang Chine on the Isle of Wight, declaring it “far worse than Mount Vesuvius and infinitely more fatiguing,” and declined to join her sister Charlotte and Harriet Milne in looking for shells on the island of Herm, as “the day is hot and I do not much relish stooping.”⁹ In later life, travel proved rather more hazardous: a letter from Elizabeth Sutherland to Ann Walker in November 1839 reports that Isabella had very nearly been killed by a railway train, and was only saved by a bystander who knocked her clear of the tracks, though the fall itself left her seriously hurt for some time afterwards.¹⁰ 

Her travels had presumably also given her a working knowledge of French. In October 1824, while Anne was in Paris, Anne wrote part of a letter to Isabella in French at the request of a Madame Galvani, suggesting Isabella was both comfortable enough in the language to receive it and moving in circles where it was in regular use.¹¹ Isabella was also a generous gift-giver, and her choices reveal a woman who paid close attention to the places she visited, and to the person she was thinking of while she was there. Her travels across Europe left a trail of carefully chosen tokens sent back to Anne. From Switzerland she sent a rosary from the pilgrimage site at Einsiedeln and a collection of minerals alongside nineteen hand-colored views of places the Norcliffes had visited.¹² From Florence came a small alabaster cupid on a bed of roses, which Anne received with evident delight, describing it as "an elegant little figure."¹³ From Venice, a multilingual prayer book printed on the island of San Lazzaro degli Armeni, a text in fourteen languages including Armenian, Turkish, Greek, Latin, Italian, and French, which speaks to both Isabella's curiosity and her sense of what would please Anne.¹⁴ 

Even practical gifts had a personal touch. In 1821 she enclosed a copy of Bailey's Latin exercises with a letter, specifically the same edition she herself was using, so that Anne might more easily help her with it.¹⁵ And while visiting Sibbella Maclean in Edinburgh, she sent Anne “‘a cloak made of the Maclean plaid’ – the prettiest of the thought – the implied compliment from an old friend to a new one, delights me.”¹⁶ This would be the cloak that became a “faithful companion” across years of mountain adventure.¹⁷ Anne recorded it going with her to the summit of Mont Perdu in 1830,¹⁸ and took it with her to climb Mount Vignemale in 1838.¹⁹ When it disappeared a few weeks later during the journey south through the Pyrenees, Anne was 'quite unhinged' by the loss and treasured it enough to retrace her route at dawn to recover it, even offering a reward of twenty francs, and having the cloak cried by the town crier at Bagnères de Luchon.²⁰ Her guide Jean was dispatched on foot to the village of Lys, where it was eventually found close to a cottage where the party had stopped to rest the horses.

Isabella's generous habit of sending gifts continued well into the 1830s, though it took more domestic forms than the carefully chosen 'Continental' tokens of earlier years. Throughout this period she regularly sent game she herself shot from Langton to Shibden,²¹ including pheasants, partridges, and on one occasion a brace of tench (freshwater fish from the carp family), accompanied by a handwritten receipt for boiling them and instructions for the sauce.²² Anne received them with evident appreciation, and dutifully shared them with the neighbors.

Not all of Isabella's habits were quite so endearing, however. To Anne’s distaste, she indulged freely in wine and snuff, which occasionally caused friction with those around her.

“Miss Vallance and Charlotte had had serious conversation about Tibs taking so much wine and wished me to speak to her seriously. I said how much pain all this gave me” 

– Anne Lister, 28 October 1820 (SH:7/ML/E/4/0095)

Anne noted during one visit to Shibden:

"She takes very near a bottle a day of our hot sherry...The time she is out of bed is chiefly spent in drinking wine and taking snuff"

– Anne Lister, 24 March 1824 (SH:7/ML/E/7/0114)

Her letters to Anne are full of genuine affection, warmth, and a charming self-deprecation. Not unlike Lister, Isabella possessed keen observation of the world around her and a penchant for sharing candid opinions as well as salacious stories. She was a reliable conduit for the kind of gossip and anecdotes that Anne relished, from the tale of a York clergyman obliged by the Archbishop to give up the mistress he kept in the city,²³ to a knowing account she had heard from a wine merchant in Brussels about the French statesman Cambacérès, who had "changed his taste" and "taken to men" after being "unfortunate in his amours with women."²⁴ Anne recorded them all faithfully, often retelling them in her own intimate conversations to scandalize the recipient, including the story of a woman exhibiting herself with a donkey at the Palais Royal in Paris at "five franks a head admission."²⁴ 

Through all accounts, her warmth and humor shine through, making it clear that she certainly would have been entertaining company.

Relationship with Anne Lister

Anne Lister's connection with Isabella Norcliffe was one of the longest and most enduring in Anne's romantic life, but also one of its most complicated. It was a relationship of genuine, deep affection that nevertheless never quite resolved into the kind of formal commitment Anne made with Eliza Raine, Mariana Lawton, and eventually Ann Walker. Anne never gave Isabella the solemn promise that would have bound them together, and she was aware of this distinction herself. As she recorded frankly in November 1820, she told Isabella:

"I would do anything in the world for her but did not feel myself bound to her for life. For tho I had said many foolish things to her, yet nothing could bind me but a serious protestation which I had not given her and never would"

— Anne Lister, 22 November 1820 (SH:7/ML/E/4/0103–0104)

It has been suggested that Isabella and Anne were schoolmates at the Manor School in York, but this is considered unlikely due to their five-year age gap.²⁵ The most probable setting for their first meeting was York itself, through shared social connections. Anne's primary base in the city during this period was the household of William Duffin and his wife at 58 Micklegate (now 130-134 Micklegate).²⁶ Eliza Raine, Anne’s first love whose welfare was previously under the guardianship of William Duffin, recorded in her own diary that Anne arrived at the Duffins' on 11 December 1809, and that just a week later, on 18 December, the two of them "were introduced at the Rooms,"²⁶ the York Assembly Rooms, the natural hub of polite society in the city. Whether Isabella was among the company that evening is not known. 

A letter from Eliza dated 18 May 1810 while Anne was staying in York with the Duffins, notes, “I am delighted to hear you have got so pleasant a companion as Miss Norcliffe.”²⁹ A note to Isabella dated 21 July 1810, inviting her to spend Tuesday with her before she departured York is tender and reflects a warm friendship already in place:

​​"...need I say that the first and most anxious of my hopes is that of spending Tuesday with you for whom I do and shall ever feel the most affectionate solicitude and regard."

— Anne Lister to Isabella Norcliffe, 21 July 1810 (SH:7/ML/27)

Anne wrote of Isabella with great affection in an early letter to Miss Marsh, describing her as:

"...the ‘porcelain clay of human kind’ from which a skilful artist might have moulded the most beautifully perfect... I love the darling girl with all my heart."

— Anne Lister, 9 November 1810 (SH:7/ML/36)

That autumn, Anne suffered a serious bout of scarlet fever, which struck in early October 1810. Eliza's diary charts the illness in anxious detail while Isabella, away at Langton, learned of it only through her mother's return from York. Writing to Anne, she shared that though the news of Anne's recovery consoled her, she could not express the anxiety and uneasiness she felt at the idea of Anne's illness: 

"That I ever loved you, could never I hope be doubted, but how much I hardly knew myself till that moment; you were never absent from my thoughts, though your name never escaped my lips, for as the rest of my Family do not know you half as well as I do, the pleasure I should have had in talking about you would have been comparatively trifling, as they could not possibly have entered into my feelings. " 

— Isabella Norcliffe, 4 December 1810 (SH:7/ML/38)

Isabella was also, in all likelihood, the one who introduced Anne to Mariana Belcombe, the woman who would come to define much of Anne’s emotional life. Writing to Anne from Langton in August 1810, Tib described her as, "my darling and utmost adored Mariana,” adding that, “in my opinion it would be impossible for you not to like her."³² 

In the same letter, Isabella offered a glimpse of Langton as it then stood: 

"I am delighted with Langton; it is a beautiful Place, and I enjoy it very much. We are only three miles from Malton, and sixteen from York, which makes it very convenient. We have just begun to build, and shall in time make it a very good home. The trees are amazingly grown up since I was here last, and we have a very pretty cascade before the windows."

— Isabella Norcliffe to Anne Lister, 7 August 1810 (SH:7/ML/31)

The hall that Anne would come to know so well across years of visits was, in the summer of 1810, still a work in progress. 

A few years later, after another visit to Langton, Anne described  her pleasure in seeing "Miss Mariana Belcombe"³³ again in a letter to her brother Samuel:

 "Isabella's most intimate friend, who came to us before we left Langton, and made the last fortnight of our stay there doubly interesting." 

— Anne Lister to Samuel Lister, Feb/March 1813 (SH:7/ML/51)

Anne introduced Mariana to Sam with warmth, calling her "a charming girl" who had "gained no mean portion of my esteem and regard." It was a connection that would come to define much of the next two decades of Anne's life, and one that would, before long, fundamentally reshape her relationship with Isabella too.

The decisive turn came later in 1813, when Anne accompanied the Norcliffe family to Bath, staying with them at their lodgings at 1 Laura Place, in the fashionable Bathwick district. The Norcliffes were habitual visitors to Bath, spending nearly £300 a season there.³⁴ Something in Isabella's conduct during that stay, the precise nature of which Anne never spelled out in the surviving record, settled the question over the future of their relationship. Writing to Mariana nine years later, Anne was direct:

 "It was about Tib's not suiting me. I had found it out and given up the thought of it ever since I was with them at Bath."

— Anne Lister, 12 August 1822 (SH:7/ML/E/6/0038)

Anne's journals from her extended stay at Langton Hall in the autumn of 1818, following the death of Emily Norcliffe, offer a candid portrait of their connection at the time. On the very first night of this visit, Anne "tried for a kiss a considerable time last night but Isabella was as dry as a stick," yet noted with some puzzlement that "she by no means seemed to want passion."³⁸ Anne found a practical solution on at least one occasion, recording that she "oiled her with rose oil and then had a good kiss,”³⁹ though it was a challenge she would eventually solve less charitably. Two years later, during a remarkably candid conversation, she told Isabella plainly that the wine was "the cause of her being so dry," and did not spare her the details of quite how disagreeable she found the effects.⁴⁰

The picture that emerges across this period is of two women deeply fond of one another, but not always in easy alignment. Isabella acknowledged her own volatility to Anne, writing that she was “naturally violent and hasty in my temper, accustomed from my infancy to give way to violent bursts of passion.”⁴¹ Anne often counseled Isabella on managing her temper, especially when arguing with her mother.⁴² Miss Marsh, observing the Norcliffe household from the inside in December 1814, put the dynamic with Mrs. Norcliffe plainly. There was what she could only describe as 'a fixed mutual dislike,' with Mrs. Norcliffe venting her own frustrations on Isabella. Miss Marsh concluded with some resignation that it was 'a thousand pities' Mrs. Norcliffe had not addressed the children's tempers in their early years.”⁴³

Isabella was also occasionally prone to jealousy, not made easier by Anne's attachments to Mariana Lawton, and later to Mary Vallance.

By the early 1820s, Anne's ambivalence had crystalized. She wrote of Isabella in December 1820: "Tib does not suit me. I began to feel very low and said I had a headache; it was a heartache."⁴⁴ And yet her feelings remained genuinely tender. As late as March 1824, just before Isabella left Shibden Hall after a visit, Anne recorded a moment of surprising softness:

"Just after getting into bed I wanted a kiss. She was tired and would have me go to sleep, but soon, as if she could not find it in her heart to deny me, she turned round said she loved me and I had a pretty good kiss... I believe she is still fonder of me than anyone. She always says so, and I think, truly... Had Isabel been but half she might have been, my affections never could have strayed to Mariana or to any other. But no more. God bless thee, Tib."

— Anne Lister, 24 March 1824 (SH:7/ML/E/7/0115)

By the following year, Anne's private assessment had settled into something more resigned. Reading a letter from Isabella in August 1825, Anne reflected in her journal: 

"Tempora mutantur! Poor Tib is no longer in love — 'tis well — her nature is grown too old — even passion I think is worn out except perhaps for wine and snuff — yet I am fond of Tib though without loving or much respecting her character."

— Anne Lister, 27 August 1825 (SH:7/ML/E/9/0013)

It’s a quietly melancholy note, but characteristic of Anne, fond feeling and frank disappointment sitting side by side, as they so often did where Isabella was concerned. 

Though Anne clearly considered the prospect of a shared life with Isabella impractical, there were still vague allusions to the future. Mary Vallance reported to Anne in November 1820 that Isabella had "been taught... that she and I would live together."⁴⁵ Separately, it was understood that while Isabella could not easily leave her mother or her sister Charlotte,⁴⁶ there was some expectation she might eventually join Anne at Shibden in a plan that was never realized. The full weight of that truth was voiced aloud on a visit to Langton in October 1828. After Isabella and Mrs. Norcliffe retired for the night, Anne sat up late with Charlotte and spoke about why a shared life with Tib had become impossible. She told her about the drinking, the bottle of wine a day, the fact that her uncle and aunt and the servants at Shibden had all known about it, and said that she had made one final attempt to address it, even when Isabella visited her in Paris the summer prior, and that it had ended only in unhappiness and done no good. She spoke of the depth of what she had felt, and what it had cost her, "a first friendship like a first love never quite got over."⁴⁷ She told Charlotte she would always feel a regard for Tib, but there was no going back. She put it plainly, saying that even now, she would rather go and sleep in the stable than go to Tib. Charlotte, for her part, seems to have heard her out and understood as much as she could. They parted, Anne recorded, "very good friends."⁴

Even so, across the arc of their relationship, none of this dissatisfaction with the idea of Tib as her life partner ever severed the bond the two shared as friends. Isabella addressed Anne in her letters as "my own darling Pevvy"⁴⁸ well into the 1830s, and Anne’s journals document what had by then settled into a mature friendship of warmth and mutual affection, no longer burdened by the weight of unresolved romantic expectation on either side, though not without its own intimacies. Anne continued to visit Langton regularly, and an extended stay in 1831, which lasted nearly three weeks, was particularly rich in the kind of late-night conversation the two women seem to have managed better than almost anyone else. Anne recorded standing half-undressed talking to Isabella in her room, and the two of them continuing "surely an hour or more after getting into bed."⁴⁹ The subjects ranged widely from Anne's future property plans to the ongoing difficulties with Mariana, and Isabella shared her own confidences in return. 

And yet, despite exchanging affectionate calls and kindly notes with Isabella during 1836 York visits, Anne was writing in her journal with characteristic candor. After an evening at the Norcliffes' in June, she recorded, "I was tired of it but did not shew my weariness. They are not society for me now."⁵⁰ It is a quietly significant line. The affection was real but so was the distance, and Anne’s new partner, Ann Walker, didn’t share Anne’s tolerance for Tib’s jokes and stories. 

"poor IN — from the time of Mrs. Duffin's coming had joked and told her good stories, and was rather too much for A-[Ann]."

— 17 April 1836 (SH:7/ML/E/19/0029)

Anne had been writing 'poor Tib' and 'poor Isabella' for some years and it had become habitual by 1836, in a fond, weary recognition. Isabella was doing what Isabella always did, and Anne observed it with something that was well beyond romantic feeling. For Isabella’s part, she had once told Anne, "you will find me as little changed at heart, as if time had stood still since the 7th of June 1813" the date they left Bath together, and one she had clearly never forgotten.⁵¹ 

In 1839, before Anne's departure for Russia, a trip from which she would never return, a letter from Isabella closes with the same warmth, unchanged after nearly thirty years: 

"Remember me most kindly to Miss Walker, and wishing you both, the compliments of the season, believe me to remain, my dearest Pevvy, most sincerely and affectionately yours, Isabella Norcliffe"

— Isabella Norcliffe, 7 January 1839 (SH:7/ML/1041) 

Relationships with other women

One of the most striking parallels between Isabella and Anne Lister is that Isabella, like Anne, appears to have been drawn exclusively to women. Anne noted in her journal as early as October 1820 that it had been hinted to her that Isabella, "never had admired men but always her own sex.”⁵² While Isabella denied this when pressed, the evidence gathered across Anne's journals tells a rather different story.

A telling anecdote recorded by Anne captures her attitude with characteristic wry humor. Recounting a story a Mr. Du Bousquet shared with Tib about two women sharing a bed at an inn in Mons, one of whom raised the alarm declaring she had got into bed with a man, Isabella told Anne that she herself:

"should have lain very quietly. That as her affections were engaged, she should have desired the girl to be quiet. But if she had not known me, she would have let the girl have her way to gratify her (Tibs) curiosity."

— Anne Lister, 20 September 1818, (SH:7/ML/E/2/0069)

This awareness of her affections also extended to others in their circle. Eliza Raine, Anne's first love and a mutual acquaintance, wrote to Anne about Isabella in terms that leave little ambiguity. In one letter, she described being pushed gently from Isabella's room with the words "I cannot do with you now I am sorry," followed by Isabella insisting on a kiss, "come I must have a kiss off those lips, took me in her arms and I found she could embrace pretty feelingly."⁵³ In another letter, Eliza reported that Isabella had said that, had Eliza been at the inn with her, "she would have asked for a room to ourselves."⁵⁴

The dynamic between Isabella and Eliza was observed with some amusement by Anne herself, as Isabella worked her usual effect on Eliza. Writing to Isabella in August 1810, shortly after Eliza had visited her in Halifax, Anne reported that Isabella had been "ever present to Eliza in ‘midnight slumbers and in waking dreams,’"⁵⁵ and that she had "so often caused the conscious blush, and taught her a strange variety of sensations for which she was unable or perhaps unwilling to account."⁵⁶

Anne teased Isabella openly:

"I can only laugh that she who would sit for hours moping in a quiet corner hearing and observing all without one single utterance of a sound, should thus on a sudden find such magic in a word or look from you. Indeed, Isabella, you are in some things the oddest girl I ever knew. In this instance you rather surpass my powers of comprehension: do, therefore, explain the arcana of those manners which render you to some at once so singular and so enchanting.”

— Anne Lister, 03 August 1810 (SH:7/ML/30)

Isabella's reply was characteristically wry. What Eliza had said of her, she wrote, was "perfectly correct," and she couldn’t resist relaying the account to the Norcliffes’ maid, Burnett, “who was extremely entertained, and laughed heartily, corroborating the fact at the same time.”⁵⁷

Eliza's letters to Anne about Isabella carry a thread of wry wariness, and she was alert to the dynamic forming between the two. By 1812, before her own circumstances began to deteriorate, she had drawn up a will leaving all her property to Anne Lister, with a specific legacy of £50 to “my dear friend Isabella Norcliffe, the friend of my dear friend the above mentioned Anne Lister.”⁵⁸ A generous tribute, and one that speaks to the genuine regard that existed between all three women, even as their relationships with one another remained tangled.

By 1836, whatever distance the intervening years had placed between Isabella and Eliza's world, Isabella had not forgotten her. In a letter to Anne that September, she mentioned having recently called on Eliza, who was "much better than she was the last time I saw her, tho' still a most painful object to look at."⁵⁹ By this point Eliza had been confined to private care for over two decades. That she went at all, and that she told Anne about it, says something tender about the thread of connection that still ran between all three of them.

The most fully documented of Isabella's other attachments was her feelings for Mary Vallance, a young woman who had first come into Anne's orbit through sorrowful circumstances. The Norcliffes had first met Mary, who hailed from Sittingbourne, Kent, during their time in Europe, encountering her first in Brussels and again in Switzerland. It was Isabella herself who introduced her to Anne, in a letter written from Brussels on 20 December 1817, the day before her youngest sister Emily died in Brussels in 1817 aged just eighteen.⁶⁰ 

Writing in the grip of unbearable grief, with her father too distressed to leave his bed and with family's fears for Charlotte's health adding to the weight of it all, Isabella still found space to think of Mary, asking Anne to write to her both in the body of the letter, and again in the postscript: 

"I can write no more but entreat you to write to Miss Vallance… she is a most amiable girl, and one I feel assured you would like – Breathe it to her gently; for she is much attached to our beloved Emily."

— Isabella Norcliffe, Bruxelles December 20 1817 (SH:7/ML/E/1/0067)

Anne obliged, "feeling it a melancholy pleasure to pay any attention in my power to one who, whoever or whatever she may be, has a claim upon me on behalf of poor Mim.”⁶¹ A correspondence followed, and when the Norcliffes returned to England and Anne visited Langton Hall in the autumn of 1818, the two women met in person for the first time. 

What Anne also learned, gradually and through various confidences, was how entangled Mary Vallance had become with the Norcliffe family in ways that went well beyond friendship. Emily Norcliffe, Isabella’s younger sister, had seemingly been quite attached to her. As Anne recorded in November 1820:

"it seems Emily wished her to do to her as Tib has since made her [Miss Vallance] do. In short Emily was in love with her… vowed she would never marry. Miss Vallance was the only one she could live with."

— Anne Lister, 3 November 1820 (SH:7/ML/E/4/0115)

Emily was not the only one. Isabella too had confessed strong feelings for Mary to Anne. Lying in bed one morning talking, Isabella told her that Mary was "the only one she had ever seen in her life except myself whom she could love. That there was something irresistible about her and she should have been in love with her if she had not known me.”⁶² Anne had initially supposed that Isabella "wanted to play the man" to Mary, but Mary set her straight.⁶³ What Isabella had in fact wanted was for Mary to "grubble" her, just as Anne had been doing to Mary.

Anne told Isabella plainly that she knew grubbling was practised among girls, and that from what she had heard Isabella say, she would have suspected something of that nature between the two of them had she not been sure Mary was incapable of it. At the same time, she also acknowledged that had she not known that Miss Vallance was already engaged, she would not have been comfortable with Isabella sleeping with her at all.⁶³ 

To Anne, who had long distinguished between her own same-sex attachments and others, this had been distinctly unsettling. She told Isabella she could more easily have forgiven her falling in love with a man. When Isabella attempted to compare her feelings for Mary to her feelings for Anne herself, Anne drew the line sharply, saying she considered herself quite a different character, and that if Isabella could genuinely confound the two, all connection between them ought to cease. Isabella received this badly at first, but eventually conceded that she would no more sleep with Mary and would be cooler in her manners toward her. It was a resolution of sorts, but not a clean one. ⁶³ 

What the situation reveals with unusual clarity is the layered nature of the relationships among these three women. Anne was herself intimate with Mary Vallance. Mary had told Anne things about Isabella she did not know. And Isabella had feelings for Mary she was not entirely honest about. That Anne's chief complaint was framed as one of character is consistent with her broader habit of framing sexual and romantic jealousy in the language of principle. But the feeling was clearly there beneath it.

Mary, for her part, told Anne she "could not bear the thought of seeming a rival… knowing as she did our situation towards each other."⁶⁴ This delicate awareness played out in the correspondence too. In April 1822, Mary asked Anne to write to her privately, noting that she would reply with Isabella's knowledge, but in the meantime preferred Anne not to mention that she had asked.⁶⁵ 

It was a small act of discretion that speaks to the careful navigation all three women were doing, managing their connections to one another without openly unsettling loyalties. Mary had also spoken, separately, of the idea of "having a cottage in Langton," suggesting she imagined a continued closeness with the Norcliffe household whatever her future held.⁶⁶

Mary Vallance continued to be a source of intelligence on Isabella's private life in later years. In October 1825, she insinuated to Anne that something particular was going on between Isabella and her cousin, Isabella ‘Bell’ Dalton (1802-1877), daughter of Rev. James Dalton. Speaking of the two, Mary described Bell's feelings:

"like our friends under no control her passions ungoverned and powerful as hers."

— Miss Vallance, 19 October 1825 (SH:7/ML/E/9/0026)

Anne drew her own conclusion, "Tib perhaps grubbled her, she can do no more."⁶⁷ In fact, years prior, Anne herself had also noted that recorded that Bell, who had shared a bed with Isabella, experienced feelings she herself could not account for, noting she "was all in a tremble sometimes in bed particularly if Tib just touched or kissed her." 

The connection between Isabella and Bell Dalton was strong enough that Tib left Bell a specific bequest in her will for £100. That Bell remained a singular preoccupation in Isabella's later years is suggested by Mrs. Duffin, who reported to Anne in December 1838 that Isabella "scarce takes a pen in her hand but to Cousin Bell," a remark made in the context of gently scolding her for her neglect of other correspondents, Anne among them.⁶⁸

Isabella also showed a keen awareness of same-sex desire in the wider world. She shared with Anne a story she had heard from a wine merchant in Brussels about the French statesman Cambacérès, who had "changed his taste" and "taken to men" after being "unfortunate in his amours with women" the kind of knowing, worldly observation that suggests Isabella moved through life with her eyes open to such things.⁶⁹ That she told it to Anne with evident relish says perhaps as much about her as the story itself.

Beyond Langton, the Norcliffes also kept a house at No. 9 Petergate (now No. 11 High Petergate) in York.⁷³ The Norcliffes' ownership of the property can be traced back to 1740, when Thomas Norcliffe acquired it, and the family retained it until at least 1881. The substantial mansion served as the family's base in the city for much of Isabella's life and formed the hub of their York social world. 

Petergate itself ran almost directly from the Minster's west door to Bootham Bar, the city's northern gate, and was one of York's principal thoroughfares.⁷⁴ It was lined with some of the city's most significant institutions. St. Michael-le-Belfrey, one of the largest and finest churches in the city, sat almost immediately next to the Cathedral's south entrance, and the Assembly Rooms on Blake Street, a centre of elegant social life for York's genteel classes, and where the city's leading families gathered for concerts and dancing, were a short walk away.⁷⁵ The Theatre Royal on St. Leonard's Place was a similarly well-established venue within the same short radius.⁷⁶ 

Staff

Another steady presence in the Norcliffe household was a long-serving and trusted lady's maid, Mrs. Ann Burnett,¹⁰¹ who appears quietly but consistently across Anne Lister's journals and the family correspondence for more than three decades. Originally in service to Mrs. Norcliffe,¹⁰² Burnett was a trusted fixture of the household Isabella called home, and over time she forged a meaningful connection with Anne, who came to value and rely on her expertise.

A postscript Burnett added to Isabella's letter written the morning before Emily Norcliffe died in Brussels, dated 20 December 1817, had described Emily in the last stages of an inflammatory fever, and the family in a state of barely contained despair. It was Burnett who took up the letter again the following morning and added:

"Dear Miss Lister — It is all over our dear Miss Emily is no more she went off like a lamb this morning — It is in no one's power to tell you this but your afflicted servant's A. Burnett's."

— Anne Lister, 27 December 1817 (SH:7/ML/E/1/0067)

It shows that Burnett had a genuine relationship with the family she served, and was trusted to deliver such devastating news.

An entry from August 1819 reveals that upon receiving a box of dresses (during the trying on of which Tib “rather interrupted” Anne’s work on her journal index) Isabella read aloud a letter in which Burnett sent her “duty” to Anne and mentioned Anne’s “great generosity,” which had enabled her to give her “poor aunt at Leeds” considerably more help than she could otherwise have managed.¹⁰³ This referred to Anne’s parting gift from just weeks earlier, in July, when she had pressed four half-crown pieces upon Burnett as she departed Halifax for Leeds. Burnett had initially declined the money, accepting only when Anne said she would be offended by a refusal. That she had taken the trouble to write and relay what the gift had made possible for a struggling family member speaks to both her sincerity and the care she took in maintaining her connection with Anne. When Isabella asked what Burnett had meant by the mention of such generosity, Anne, characteristically, “got off explaining.” Even as late as 1832, a letter from Isabella closes with an aside that "Burnett is quite shocked that her letter to you has been so long delayed," suggesting their correspondence at times ran alongside, rather than through, Isabella's own.¹⁰⁴

Burnett's steadfastness was apparent in moments of crisis. During Anne's extended stay at Langton in the autumn of 1820, it was Burnett who took charge when Mary Vallance fell ill, administering laudanum, sitting up through the night, and at one point (having initially blamed Anne's attentions for the patient's condition) apologizing handsomely when she realized her judgment had been unjust.¹⁰⁵ When Anne’s footman George Playforth was accidentally shot in 1832,¹⁰⁶ and the surgeon Mr. Cobb wished to open his skull, Anne felt the presence of male observers would cause too much talk and decided Burnett was better suited to assist. She stayed beside her throughout. Burnett, Anne recorded, "behaved very well" until feeling faint, at which point Anne got her away, gave her brandy and water in her room, and watched her recover and return to the servants below "as if nothing had happened."¹⁰⁷ That same steady composure was evident again during Mrs. Norcliffe's final illness in the autumn of 1835, when it was Burnett who slept in the same bed as her mistress through the worst of the nights, while Charlotte took her room nearby. Anne's condolence letter to Isabella after the death asked after Burnett specifically, noting that she “will be, if possible, more valuable to you than ever.”¹⁰⁸

Burnett was also a practical household resource Anne valued in her own right. In December 1822, it was Burnett who brought word of a young woman who might make a suitable housemaid for Shibden.¹⁰⁹ Anne took the recommendation seriously enough to write to her aunt that same evening, asking for an immediate reply before she left Langton. Anne turned to her again in 1826, asking whether she could find a lady's maid for Shibden — "not a fine servant but a good one."¹¹⁰ On another occasion Burnett brought a black bombazine petticoat into Isabella's room and explained in careful detail how it had been washed successfully using beast's gall: a lather made by pouring the gall gently into water, working it with the hand, then hanging the fabric to drip-dry without wringing, its own weight preventing shrinkage. Anne recorded the method carefully. That evening she sat copying out cooking ‘receipts’ (recipes) into one of Burnett's books, transcribing instructions that had been given to her on loose pieces of paper at various times.¹¹¹

In a letter to Mrs. Norcliffe written from Paris, Anne Lister sent "remembrances to Burnett and Cartouche" alongside her love to Isabella and Charlotte.¹¹² Together, these glimpses across years of journals and correspondence paint a faint but consistent picture of a woman who was literate, emotionally attentive, and genuinely trusted not only to travel between households, carry letters, and be present in moments of grief and crisis, but to maintain her own quiet connection with the Norcliffe’s closest friends.

Whether Burnett was altogether content with how things eventually settled is another matter. After Mrs. Norcliffe's death, Mariana relayed to Anne that Isabella and Charlotte were "mortally offended at Burnett for being housekeeper to their brother instead of themselves."¹¹³ It’s the kind of detail that resists easy interpretation; whether Burnett chose her own path or simply found herself in an impossible position between competing claims on her loyalty, the record does not say.