Isabella Norcliffe, known to Anne Lister by the affectionate nickname 'Tib,' was a romantic interest-turned-lifelong friend from their first meeting in York around 1810 until Anne's death in 1840. One of the most vivid and enduring figures in her world, Isabella appears throughout the pages of Lister's journals and letters as sharp-witted, full of life, and utterly unforgettable. This profile explores what we can learn about her from the traces left behind in that correspondence and those journals.
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Isabella Norcliffe, often affectionately referred to as "Tib" by Anne Lister, was born Isabella Norcliffe Dalton on 9 November 1785. The eldest daughter of Colonel Thomas Norcliffe Dalton and Ann Wilson, she grew up in a family of significant social standing in the East Riding of Yorkshire. The Norcliffes were one of the oldest landed gentry families in the region, and resided at Langton Hall, a gracious country estate, 17 miles from York, that had been in the family since 1618.¹
Isabella and Anne Lister are first known to have met in York around 1810. Their relationship quickly became one of deep affection and romantic intimacy, and it endured in the form of a steadfast friendship for the rest of Anne's life.
Through Lister's journals and correspondence, Isabella emerges as a vivid and unforgettable character: sharp-witted, outspoken, and fiercely loyal, with a talent for acting, a love of travel, and absolutely no resistance to salacious stories.
Isabella died on 11 May 1846, aged 60, and is buried, with her mother and sister Charlotte, at St Nicholas' Church in West Tanfield, North Yorkshire. Her death certificate gives her cause of death as “debility,” a term used in the period to describe a general decline of bodily strength,² and notes that it was not certified by a medical practitioner, a common enough circumstance in 1846, particularly for someone who had been in gradual decline rather than under active medical care.
Also known as: Tib, Bell
Anne Lister most commonly called Isabella 'Tib,' a diminutive of Isabel that had served in English slang since at least the 1530s as a term for a girl or sweetheart, sometimes with the added suggestion of a bolder character.³ Whether Anne chose it with that reference in mind is an open question, but given Isabella's outspoken manner and Anne's sharp awareness of language, it seems unlikely the word's history was entirely lost on either of them.
Others in their circle used different names for Isabella. Mariana (née Belcombe) Lawton and her sisters appear to have preferred Bell,⁴ though Anne also used Bella for Tib's cousin Isabella Dalton, which can cause some confusion for modern readers of the journals. In her own correspondence, Isabella signs herself simply 'Isabella Norcliffe.' In Lister's journals, she also appears as 'I.N.' and, occasionally, 'poor Tib.'
Isabella had her own nickname for Anne in return. Throughout their correspondence, she addressed her as 'Pevvy,' possibly derivative of 'Peverel' an old Norman surname, most famously associated with William Peverel, a knight (and potential son) of William the Conqueror.
Birth: 9 November 1785, Langton, Yorkshire
Baptism: 18 December 1785, St Michael-le-Belfrey, York
Death: 11 May 1846 — No. 9 High Petergate, York, Parish of St. Michael-le-Belfrey. Registered as Isabella Norcliffe Norcliffe. Cause of death recorded as debility, not certified by a medical practitioner.
Burial place: St Nicholas’ Church, West Tanfield, North Yorkshire (buried with her mother Ann Norcliffe and sister Charlotte Norcliffe)
Probate: 23 June 1846, York
Eye color: Brown
Hair color: Brown
Romantic Relationships: Anne Lister, Mary Vallance Shalch, Isabella ‘Bell’ Dalton (unconfirmed)
Music and theatre
Travel
Horseback riding and coursing
Wine
Waking up early
Bending over to pick up seashells
Being separated from Anne
Being criticized for her habits
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.
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)
Notably, it was also during that same Bath stay that Anne and Mariana's relationship first became physical. Anne later recalled it when she told someone that "a young lady had once awaked me by putting her hand up my drawers. I meant Mariana."³⁵
Later, in 1820, Anne explained to Mary Vallance that Tib's ongoing jealousy of Mariana had actually originated in something that happened at Bath. Charlotte had told Tib that Anne could not be happy with her, which she claimed as true due to her conduct towards Anne in Bath, though Isabella held Mariana at fault for Anne’s change towards her.³⁶
After Mariana's marriage to Charles Lawton, Anne turned to her journal to work through feelings she could not yet resolve:
"Ah my Isabel, you have indeed loved me truly and after all perhaps it may be fate that you and I shall get together at last. But on this subject I dare not think. God knows what is best. I love π [Mariana], but endless obstacles seem to rise up against this connection."
— Anne Lister, 17 June 1817 (SH:7/ML/E/1/0019)
The same entry reveals the painful difficulty of writing to Isabella at all that summer. Anne spent the better part of a day producing a page and a half, "weighing every word so as neither to say too much nor too little," torn between what she felt and what she felt obliged to say. Two months later she was still circling the same thought, writing "poor Isabel! She never forgets me… in spite of all I often think we shall get together at last."³⁷
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)
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.
The Norcliffe family claimed descent from William the Conqueror and had been a presence in Yorkshire for centuries. The first of the family recorded is Nicholas Norcliffe, whose line descends through several generations to Sir Thomas Norcliffe, a barrister of the Middle Temple, who purchased the Langton estate in 1618. From that point, Langton Hall was the family seat for over two hundred years.⁷⁰
The estate passed through several generations, including a line of knights and colonels who made their mark through military service and strategic marriages into families such as the Fairfaxes, the Vavasours, and the Heskeths. When the male line died out with Thomas Norcliffe (who died unmarried in 1768), the estate passed to his nieces, the daughters of his sister Frances and Sir John Wray. The younger of the two, Isabella Wray, married Captain John Dalton of Sleningford. Her eldest son, Thomas Dalton, assumed the surname and arms of Norcliffe in 1807.⁷¹ This was Isabella’s father.
This peculiar circumstance meant that Thomas Dalton changed the family name only after all his children had already been christened ‘Norcliffe Dalton,’ resulting in Isabella’s eldest brother becoming Norcliffe Norcliffe, and Isabella herself becoming Isabella Norcliffe Norcliffe. The family motto was Sine Macula (‘without stain’), and their seat at Langton, in the East Riding, was described in 1892 as “a modern mansion of stone, pleasantly situated in its own well-wooded grounds.”⁷²
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
The Norcliffe house sat within easy reach of several households that made up the centre of York's genteel society in this period. Nearby were Dr. Belcombe and his family, and Colonel and Mrs. Harriet (née Belcombe) Milne also kept lodgings on Petergate at various points.
After Mrs. Norcliffe's death in 1835, Petergate House became Isabella and Charlotte's permanent home and underwent substantial renovations that tested everyone involved. Anne's architect, John Harper, who was overseeing work at Shibden at the same time, reported to her that three of the Norcliffes' workmen had walked off the job.⁷⁷ Charlotte was directing changes constantly, and Harper observed with some exasperation that “the ladies were very changeable — always something new to be done.”⁷⁸ He estimated the final cost would reach £1,000 or more, considerably more than the house was worth in his assessment. Anne, who had rather accurately predicted the outcome, noted drily to Harper that she had already “prepared them for £500 expense.” The renovations had originally been quoted at £150.
In 1837, Anne narrowly avoided an argument after vocally doubting that many agreeable strangers would choose to settle in York. Isabella declared York “the finest town in Europe” and held the position without any inclination to qualify it.⁷⁹
Isabella’s father, Colonel Thomas Dalton Norcliffe (1756–1820), entered the army and obtained a troop in the 11th Dragoons. He later became lieutenant-colonel of the York Volunteers and inherited the Langton estate on the death of his aunt, Lady Norcliffe, in 1807.⁸⁰ He married Ann Wilson (1762–1835), the only daughter and heiress of William Wilson of Allerton Gledhow, Leeds. Ann’s dowry was reportedly £8,400, a considerable sum.⁸¹ The Colonel's private life was rather more complicated than his public record suggests. Anne's journal records that he had a long-standing mistress and had fathered at least three children by her outside his marriage, in a situation known to Isabella and Charlotte, and one that caused Ann Norcliffe considerable distress. A further claimant emerged after his death, when a young woman wrote from near Durham claiming to be his daughter.⁸³
Colonel Norcliffe died in London in June 1820. He had entailed the Langton estate, leaving it to his widow for life, and thereafter to his daughters in succession should his son Norcliffe die without lawful issue.⁸⁴ It was a disposition that would ultimately prove significant: when General Norcliffe died in 1862 without a surviving heir, the estate passed accordingly to his niece Rosamond, who assumed the name and arms of Norcliffe by Royal Warrant. The Colonel is buried near his parents and four of his children at St Nicholas' Church, West Tanfield.
Mrs. Ann (née Wilson) Norcliffe (1762-1835) was described as a cultured, energetic woman with a mind of her own and plenty of money.⁸⁵ Her father, Thomas Wilson of Leeds, had left her his fortune and when her husband died in 1820, he left her in control of his estate. Anne's journal records that during her extended stay at Langton in December 1822 (following Col. Norcliffe’s death) Mrs. Norcliffe mentioned that her annual income stood at around £2,100; a considerable sum for a widow, and one that comfortably explains both the family's continued presence at Langton and her ability to make generous provision for those she loved.⁸⁶
She was very fond of her granddaughters Rosamond and Mary Ellen Best and often had them stay at Langton Hall, making generous provision for them in her will.⁸⁷ She outlived her husband by fifteen years and remained at Langton until her death in 1835. Anne felt the loss deeply. Writing to Isabella just days after, she described Mrs. Norcliffe as:
"One of the earliest and best of my own friends whose kindness I could never forget, and whose steady regard I never for one moment ceased to return with grateful affection."
— Anne Lister, 4 October 1835 (SH:7/ML/887)
Thomas Dalton and Ann Wilson had eight children in total, though several did not reach adulthood. Of the surviving children:
Norcliffe Norcliffe (b. 24 September 1791) Isabella’s eldest brother, was commissioned into the 4th Regiment of Light Dragoons as a lieutenant in 1808, and served through the Peninsular Wars. He earned a medal with four clasps for his actions at Talavera, Busaco, Albuhera, and Salamanca, where he was severely wounded.⁸⁸ He stepped back from full-time service as a major in 1823, though he remained a reserve officer, rising to lieutenant-colonel in the 18th Hussars in 1837 and major-general in 1855. In December 1812, Isabella left Shibden Hall early to meet him on his return to York from the Peninsula, after she had not seen him for four years.⁸⁹ He married Decima Hester Beatrix Foulis on 24 June 1824; she died on 3 February 1828. Their only son, Thomas, predeceased his father, though the sources differ on the precise date. The obituary for Major-General Norcliffe in The York Herald of 15 February 1862 states that Thomas died in his twentieth year, however Burke's Genealogical and Heraldic History gives the date as 13 May 1849, and burial records at All Souls Cemetery cite 18 May 1849. On the death of his mother in 1835, Norcliffe inherited Langton Hall, though he seemingly showed little attachment to it, preferring London and extensive travel in continental Europe and in North America. The management of the estate's rents fell to Henry Robinson in his absence.⁹⁰ He rose to the rank of Major-General in the army and is buried at Kensal Green Cemetery.
Isabella Norcliffe (b. 9 November 1785) This profile is about her!
Charlotte Norcliffe (b. 14 September 1788) remained close to Isabella throughout their lives. In addition to her presence in Anne’s journal, Charlotte also appears regularly in Isabella’s letters to Anne, often sending her own love in the closing lines. She died unmarried in London on 10 January 1844. She is buried with Isabella and their mother at St Nicholas’ Church, West Tanfield.
Mary Norcliffe (b. 1 February 1790) married Dr. Charles Best, a York physician, in 1807 when she was just 17, at the church of St Michael-le-Belfrey in York. Her wedding dress has been preserved and is now part of the collection at the Victoria and Albert Museum.⁹¹ Best had studied medicine at Edinburgh University and was physician to the York Asylum during a period of significant scandal there. He resigned his post in 1815 amid allegations of financial and physical abuse of patients, and died in Italy in July 1817. Mary and her daughters Ellen and Rosamond returned to England the following year and lived at Langton Hall for a while, before moving into a succession of lodgings in York. By September 1818, Anne mentions her daughters Rosamond (about 10) and Mary Ellen (about 9) taking music lessons with Miss Vallance every morning,⁹² and describes her as occupying "the white room."⁹³ In September 1819, there is a letter from Mrs. Norcliffe reporting that "Mrs. Best will stay with them till the 1st of next month," suggesting she was again at Langton, or perhaps had been there for some time.⁹⁴
Mary survived her husband by twenty years. Isabella reported her death to Anne in March 1837 in a letter written on black-edged paper with a black wax seal, revealing: "All is over, my dearest Pevvy, poor Mary is no more; she expired this morning at half past 7 o'clock, and I am thankful to say did not suffer much at the last."⁹⁵ She noted that for Mary "it is a most happy release" after eleven months of serious illness. Mary had asked to be buried at Langton and was buried in the chancel of St Andrew’s Church, Langton, in 1837. Rosamond eventually inherited the Langton estate after General Norcliffe died without surviving issue.
Emily Norcliffe (d. 21 December 1817) was the youngest daughter of the family, and her death at eighteen cast a long shadow over the Norcliffes' final months on their continental tour and their return home. The family had arrived in Brussels on or around 3 December 1817, and Emily fell ill with an inflammatory fever on the very day they arrived, never leaving her bed again. There are hints in Lister's journals that her health had been declining even before Brussels. A servant's account suggests she had never seemed quite well since the family left Tenda, in northern Italy, her appetite failing and her growing visibly thinner along the way.
Two English physicians attended her in Brussels, Dr. Wilson, physician to the Duke of Kent, and Dr. Sayer, but both gave no hope. By the time Isabella wrote to Anne on 20 December, Emily was in a constant delirium, had begun to rattle in the throat, and the medical men had ordered her hair to be cut off and applied blisters to her back and breast. Her death notice appeared in the Leeds Intelligencer: "On the 21st at Brussels, aged 18, Emily, the youngest daughter of Thomas Norcliffe, Esq., of Langton, in this county."⁹⁶ A subsequent notice confirmed that her remains were to be conveyed back to England for interment in the family vault at Tanfield, near Ripon.⁹⁷ Anne recorded their arrival in York on 23 January 1818, and sat with the news quietly, noting that she had signed a deep and tender regret to the memory of her dear Emily.⁹⁸
Anne had clearly been genuinely fond of her. On first receiving the news of Emily's death, she wrote: "Poor dear Emily! I loved her, and my heart laments her deeply... Oh! This is indeed a bitter day."⁹⁹ A lock of Emily's hair was kept and treasured by the family; Mrs. Norcliffe gave Anne a portion of it, which Anne later shared with Mary Vallance.¹⁰⁰
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.
(1808–1881) – Isabella’s niece, assumed the name and arms of Norcliffe by Royal Warrant in 1862 on inheriting the Langton estates. She shared her sister Ellen's artistic education, including a period at Miss Fanny Shepherd's school at Bromley Common.¹¹⁸ The fire that damaged York Minster in 1829 galvanized in Rosamond a commitment to documenting the city's architectural heritage, and she undertook a systematic survey of York's twenty-four ancient parish churches, producing drawings and descriptions that were published as a book in 1831.¹¹⁹
Her interests extended to heraldry and genealogy, and she applied the same careful hand to painting coats of arms, contributing blazons to a scholarly work on medieval peerage compiled by Nicholas Harris Nicolas.¹²⁰ She married Henry Robinson, a York attorney, in May 1830, and the couple had thirteen children over the following two decades. She also left a written record of that domestic life, in the form of a family chronicle covering the years 1831 to 1851. In 1813, Eliza Raine wrote of visiting with Isabella and encountering the Best children: "I never saw a sweeter child than the blooming Rose."¹²¹
(1809–1891) – Isabella’s niece, known in the family as Ellen, painted a number of watercolors of the Norcliffe family’s home at Langton Hall and is estimated to have produced more than 1,500 paintings in total.¹¹⁴ She received her early formal art training at a school in Doncaster run by Ann Haugh, whose husband George was a drawing master and regular exhibitor at the Royal Academy.¹¹⁵ Isabella's 1833 letter to Anne mentioned Ellen's theatrical drawings with evident pride and affection, "everyone who has seen them is quite charmed at the spirit and ease with which they are executed."¹¹⁶ Her work is now considered a valuable historical record of Yorkshire and European domestic life in the period. In 1839, at the age of thirty, she married Johann Anton Philipp Sarg, a musician who played both violin and piano and taught at the Englische-Fräulein-Schule, a prestigious academic girls' school in Frankfurt. The couple had three children.¹¹⁷
(1790–1875), a young woman from Sittingbourne, Kent, who first entered Anne's correspondence under the sorrowful circumstances of Emily Norcliffe’s death. Mary was baptised on 19 April 1790, the daughter of William Vallance and Mary Ann Beckett. Her father was a brewer whose product, Anne would later learn from a coachman in 1824, was universally considered very bad. The Norcliffes had first encountered Mary during their time in Europe. Anne and Mary met in person for the first time at Langton Hall in the autumn of 1818, when Anne arrived to find herself surprised. Mariana had prepared her for someone unremarkable, but Mary played music "pleasantly, perhaps well," studied thorough bass, and gave daily music lessons to Isabella's nieces then staying at Langton. During the visits of 1818 and 1820, she confided in Anne a vivid account of her romantic history, including a Dr. Oburn whose advances she had declined for being "too violent," and a Captain Thomas Harnett, her first love, who "turned out to be such a scamp" they could not marry and who was later executed for forgery. News of his fate reached the household during the 1820 visit at Langton, when Anne Belcombe casually read his name aloud from the newspaper and Miss Vallance came to her door almost fainting. At the time Mary met Anne, she was engaged to Captain Andrew Schalch.
Her connection to the Norcliffe household ran considerably deeper than friendship, as is documented at greater length in the Relationships with other women section of this profile. She married Andrew Orcher William Schalch, an officer in the Royal Artillery, on 13 June 1826 in Sittingbourne. Census records from 1841, 1851, and 1871 show the couple living in the Woolwich area with only servants. In 1827 Anne noted she’d suffered multiple miscarriages, and no evidence has been found of any surviving children. Andrew died in Woolwich on 13 January 1874, and Mary followed in October 1875.
(1791–1860) – Anne Lister's first love and a figure who touched, in her own way, almost everyone central to this story. Born in Madras on 13 July 1791,¹²² she was the daughter of William Raine, a surgeon in the Madras Medical Service,¹²³ and an unnamed Indian woman. Her father died at sea in July 1800 when she was nine; her mother died in August 1802.¹²⁴ Eliza and her sister Jane had already sailed to England by then, leaving Madras around October 1797 to live with their appointed guardian, William Duffin.¹²⁵ Eliza and her sister Jane attended Mrs. Cameron's School in Tottenham around 1803¹²⁶ before transferring to the Manor School in York. In a letter to Anne written on the anniversary of their meeting eight years later, Eliza recalled "in this day, month, and hour I first saw you" on August 2, 1804. ¹²⁷ A list of pupils at the Manor School records Eliza as sharing the attic room known as "the slope" with Anne Lister.¹²⁸
From around late 1814, she was admitted to Dr. Belcombe's private asylum at Clifton House outside York.¹²⁹ On 13 June 1816, a formal Commission and Inquisition of Lunacy was held at Clifton Green, declaring her unable to govern herself or her estate.¹³⁰ She remained in private care, moving between Clifton House and other arrangements, for the rest of her life. Eliza died on 31 December 1860 at Terrace House, Osbaldwick, and is buried at St Thomas' Church. A forthcoming timeline for this site by author Steph Gallaway aims to share more about her life.
(1788–1868) – physician's daughter, philanthropist, and the woman Isabella introduced to Anne Lister.¹³¹ Born in Vienne, France, on 5 February 1788,¹³² Mariana was the third of six children of Dr. William Belcombe, a York physician with a focus on mental health (who had changed the family name from Bullcock in the late eighteenth century) and Marianne Mountford.¹³³ The family settled on High Petergate in York in the early 1800s, placing them on the same street as the Norcliffes and firmly within the same social world.¹³⁴ In March 1816, she married Charles Bourne Lawton of Lawton Hall, Cheshire, a match that provided the financial security the Belcombe daughters could not safely count on from family funds alone.¹³⁵ She is referred to in Anne Lister's journals as M, Mary, and π — the last a mark of the particular place she held.
At Lawton Hall, Mariana proved an energetic and compassionate presence. She established a Blanket Club for the poor at the nearby saltworks and founded a school that eventually enrolled more than ninety pupils, later adding an infant school.¹³⁶ She was a skilled pianist and horsewoman, and a woman capable of real tenderness: a bullfinch she trained to whistle "God Save the Queen" on command was mourned with a gravestone erected on the grounds of Lawton Hall when it died in 1853.¹³⁷ Several of her sisters spent extended periods at Lawton Hall in their later years, including Harriet (Mrs. Milne) and Louisa. After Charles died in 1860, Mariana moved to Belsize Park in London, where she and Louisa shared a house near their sister Eliza and her husband.¹³⁸ She died on 31 October 1868 and is buried with Charles at All Saints Church, Church Lawton. You can see a timeline of her life, or visit Herstory in the Archives for more research by author Shantel Smith.
(1784–1830) – a mutual friend and another of Anne Lister's loves. Anne had known Sibbella since February 1820, when she first encountered her at a party in York, and the two had been close correspondents for several years before Isabella met her.¹³² The introduction came when the Norcliffes visited Sibbella at her home at Quinish on the Isle of Mull in the autumn of 1824, by which point Isabella had been gently teasing Anne about her attachment to Sibbella for some time.¹⁴⁰ Please read more about her in this profile.
(1791–1840) – the eldest surviving child of Jeremy and Rebecca Lister, came into the Shibden Hall estate on the death of her uncle James in 1826. She is now widely recognised as one of the most significant figures in LGBTQ+ history, and sometimes described as "the first modern lesbian.” Her relationship with Isabella is documented at length in the Relationship with Anne Lister section of this profile and you can read more about her from her very own profile and other articles on this site.
"Naturally violent and hasty in my temper, accustomed from my infancy to give way to violent bursts of passion, mine is not a character that can ever secure the esteem of the world: how grateful then ought I to be when I find there is at least one individual who, overlooking all these failings, can yet love me and be anxious for my happiness."
– Isabella Norcliffe, 7 August 1810 (SH:7/ML/31)
“I have taken entirely to coursing, and can think or dream of nothing but horses, hares and greyhounds."
– Isabella Norcliffe, 15 October 1810 (SH:7/ML/35)
“I have more faults & I fear vices, than any body I know, yet I fear I have not resolution to get the better of them. I wish you could be constantly with me, as I am convinced nothing would do me as much good as your conversation.”
– Isabella Norcliffe to Anne Lister, 29 July 1810 (SH:7/ML/29)
“You tell me you rise every morning at five o’clock; this surely is infinitely too early & must exhaust both your strength & spirits; do for my sake consent to remain a little longer in the arms of Morpheus; I do not ask you to follow my example, who never make my appearance till near ten (and in consequence receive a regular lecture from my Father every Morning) – I only wish you to continue in bed till seven, which in my opinion is quite early enough for any one who is not obliged to rise from necessity.”
– Isabella Norcliffe to Anne Lister, 15 October 1810 (SH:7/ML/35)
“I have made a firm resolution never for the future to hide any of my most secret thoughts from you, whom I shall ever love with the sincerest affection whilst an inhabitant of this wretched world.”
– Isabella Norcliffe to Anne Lister, 29 July 1810 (SH:7/ML/29)
“Your kindness my dearest Friend in wishing to hear from me is the only reason that could possibly induce me to write, being perfectly convinced that my letters are incapable of affording either amusement or instruction to any human being.”
– Isabella Norcliffe to Anne Lister, 29 July 1810 (SH:7/ML/29)
“I perfectly agree with you about Miss Maclean, who is one of the most ladylike, pleasing women I ever met with in my life. I have seldom seen manners that I prefer, and when seated at the head of her own table, she is perfect."
– Isabella Norcliffe, 28 September 1824 (SH:7/ML/148)
“She is a bad nurse. At first she annoys or rather distresses you by sighs & croaks & seems quite out of spirits. In a day or two she gets used to seeing you ill, recovers her spirits... comes & kisses you violently, calls you a thousand pretty names, beautys, pets, angels, lambs of heaven, sweetest loves that ever were born, asks you a thousand questions.”
– Eliza Raine, c.1806–1814 (SH:7/ML/E/26/1/0019)
“You will have no rival in me with regard to Miss Norcliffe, tho’ I daresay I shall admire her manners. Brilliant abilities, or interest are the only qualities that can ever attract me, and when you meet with a woman who can read Homer in the original, or cry over Moore, introduce me instantly.”
– Sibbella Maclean, 9 July 1824 (SH:7/ML/E/8/0014)
“After supper I.N. put on the dress in which she had acted at Florence, and gave us the part of Constance in the Earl of Warwick, very well done – and a most spirited, and Mr. and Mrs. N– [Norcliffe] agreed most like, imitation of Talma in Hamlet on the French stage – I.N.’s talents for the stage and for imitation are certainly first rate”
– Anne Lister, 12 October 1818 (SH:7/ML/E/2/0074)
“She ate heartily and drank freely, insisting on my drinking your health with all the airs of masculine fervor… Put her hand into her habit, sat with all the freedom of a man and thought, I dare say, she could not be too near to me.”
– Eliza Raine, c.1806-1814 (SH:7/ML/E/26/1/0012)
“She is too fond of gross language. In short, tho she dotes on me and her constancy is admirable, and her wish to oblige and please me overcomes every other, yet her passions seem impotent without the strong excitement of grossness and her sentiments are very far from being those I most admire but so far she is improved in temper she has sseen a great deal of vice abroad... her mind is not pure enough for me but time must tell the event of our connection”
– Anne Lister, 26 September 1818 (SH:7/ML/E/2/0070)
“...how disgusted she was with Tib’s shocking grossness yesterday. On saying Charles was going to Paris, Tib had wished M- would take her with her up her arsehole, and such like”
– An account from Mariana Lawton, 31 July 1831 (SH:7/ML/E/14/0093)
Explore Isabella Norcliffe's timeline below, or open in a new window.
Timeline: Isabella 'Tib' Norcliffe, 1785-1846 by Shantel Smith
Real People in Anne’s World: The Norcliffes by Martin Walker
Where was the Norcliffes' house in Petergate? by Martin Walker
The pedigree of Isabella Norcliffe and the Norcliffe family of Langton Hall by SJ Riocain
West Yorkshire Archive Service (WYAS), Shibden Hall Collection, Calderdale. Correspondence between Isabella Norcliffe and Anne Lister, 1810–1836, including: SH:7/ML/27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 35, 38, 39, 47, 286, 373, 596, 613, 669, 682, 772, 887, 920, 957.
West Yorkshire Archive Service (WYAS), Shibden Hall Collection, Calderdale. Anne Lister journals (SH:7/ML/E series): Multiple journal entries referencing Isabella Norcliffe, 1810–1838.
Borthwick Institute for Archives, University of York: Parish and probate records for the Norcliffe family and Langton.
East Riding of Yorkshire Archive, Beverley: Estate and tithe records for Langton.
The Secret Diary of Miss Anne Lister (2010), played by Susan Lynch.
Such Sweet Possession: The Life and Loves of Anne Lister (2019; BBC Radio 4)
Gentleman Jack" (Season 2, 2022; BBC/HBO), played by Joanna Scanlan.
Her home, Langton Hall, will feature in Jennifer Van Gessel's film, Langton (in pre-production), whether Tib makes an appearance remains to be seen.
Burke, Sir Bernard. 1871. A Genealogical and Heraldic History of the Landed Gentry of Great Britain and Ireland, Vol. 2. London.
Bulmer’s History and Directory of East Yorkshire. 1892.
Craig Thornber, Glossary of Old Medical Terms Used in the 18th and 19th Centuries, drawing on Robert Hooper's Physician's Vade-Mecum (1812) and Dr. Johnson's Dictionary (1755).
Crawford, D.G. A History of the Indian Medical Service, 1600–1913, Vols. 1 and 2. London, 1914.
Davidson, Caroline. 1985. The World of Mary Ellen Best. London: Chatto & Windus. [Published in the United States as Women’s Worlds: The Art and Life of Mary Ellen Best 1809–1891. New York: Crown Publishers, 1985.]
History and Description of the Ancient City of York. 2 vols. York: Hargrove, Gawthorp & Cobe, 1818.
Lawrance, Rev. Henry, M.A. "Portraits at Langton Hall in the Possession of Francis Best Norcliffe, Esq." Transactions of the East Riding Antiquarian Society, Vol. XII (for the year ending October 1904). Hull: A. Brown & Sons, Ltd.
Lister, Anne. Shibden Hall Collection, SH:7/ML/E and SH:7/ML series. West Yorkshire Archive Service, Calderdale.
Major, Susan. 2024. "History of York's Former BrewDog Bar in Micklegate." York Press.
“Mary Dalton Norcliffe marries Dr. Charles Best & the V&A has the dress!” Eliza Left Us.
Smith, Shantel. "Mariana Percy (Belcombe) Lawton: A Timeline, 1788–1868." Packed with Potential, 2025.
Smith, Shantel. Herstory in the Archives.
The York Guide for Strangers and Visitors. York: W. Sotheran, 1846.
Williams, Kat. "Sibbella Maclean: 1784–1830." Packed with Potential.
This profile owes a great deal to fellow codebreakers and researchers Marlene Oliveira, Kat Williams, Amanda Pryce, Livia Labate, Jessica Lowther-Payne, Jude Dobson, Pauline M. and Kerstin Holzgraebe for sharing their favorite ‘Tib-bits’ from transcriptions beginning in September 2020, in a collective effort to build a clearer picture of Isabella Norcliffe in the lead-up to her portrayal in Season 2 of Gentleman Jack.
To Isabella herself: #PoorTib, we’re sorry it took this long! You deserved better.
And to the friends who convened at Langton Hall in 2022 to celebrate Anne's shenanigans in situ, that trip is one we won't forget.
If you'd like to cite this article in your works, please do so in a manner similar to this:
Gallaway, Steph, and Shantel Smith. 2026. “Isabella ‘Tib’ Norcliffe.” Packed with Potential. https://www.packedwithpotential.org/profiles/isabella-norcliffe (accessed MONTH DAY, YEAR).
Note: Don't forget to replace "MONTH", "DAY", and "YEAR" with the corresponding date in which you accessed this article.