It is a day of absolute deluge and dullness, therefore today's posting is about two women from the last centuries who at the start of this year, I knew nothing of. Anne Lister, and Eleanora Duse, but looking into their lives, both intrigue me for reasons I find puzzling. Lets begin with the latter an acclaimed actress who is now mostly forgotten.
I did some research this week on Eleanor Duse for a programme. And it was fascinating. Rather than me writing about her life, I'll paraphrase an extract from the Encyclopedia Britannica entry.
Eleonora Duse, (born Oct. 3, 1858, near or in Vigevano, Lombardy, Austrian Empire [now in Italy]—died April 21, 1924, Pittsburgh, Pa., U.S.), Italian actress who found her great interpretive roles in the heroines of the Italian playwright Gabriele D’Annunzio and of the Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen.
Most of Duse’s family were actors who played in the same touring troupe, and she made her first stage appearance at the age of four in a dramatization of Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables. By the age of 14, when she played Juliet at Verona, her talents were already being recognized by critics; but not until her appearance at Naples in 1878 did this mark the turning point of her career. Her performance there of the title role in Émile Zola’s Thérèse Raquin won great acclaim, with audiences and critics united in the opinion that a woman’s anguish had never before been played with such truth.
In 1882 Duse took an opportunity to watch Sarah Bernhardt perform. With Cesare Rossi, a prominent actor-manager, she toured South America in 1885, but after her return to Italy she formed her own company, the Drama Company of the City of Rome, and with it toured throughout Europe as well as the United States.
In 1894 she met and fell in love with a rising young poet, Gabriele D’Annunzio; she financed his career, and he wrote for her a number of plays. D’Annunzio told the story of their love in his novel Il fuoco (1900; The Flame of Life). Aside from D’Annunzio’s plays, Duse found an inexhaustible source of self-expression in the dramas of Ibsen. To the title role in Hedda Gabler she brought a demonic quality, a touch of the fantastic—deeply troubling to Ibsen when he saw her perform it—as though she had gone beyond the frontiers of realism.
The British playwright George Bernard Shaw was one of the many critics fascinated by Duse’s ability to produce an illusion “of being infinite in variety of beautiful pose and motion.” He confessed that “in an apparent million of changes and inflexions” he had never seen her at an “awkward angle” (Dramatic Opinions and Essays, 1907).
In 1909 Duse quit the stage, mainly for reasons of health. Financial losses incurred during World War I, however, obliged her to emerge from retirement in 1921. Her acting powers were undiminished, but her health was still not good and interfered with her late career. In 1923 she appeared in London and Vienna before she embarked upon her last tour of the United States. The tour ended in Pittsburgh, where she collapsed. Her body was taken back to Italy, and, in compliance with her request, she was buried there in the small cemetery of Asolo.
The other woman on my radar is Anne Lister.Before the BBC 1 series Gentleman Jack was announced, I'd not heard of Anne. Yet this week, and after loving the series so far, I bought the book and currently reading it. A restless highly intelligent soul. Again, rather than blathering on, an exerpt from the Calderdale Museums website.
Anne Lister was born in Halifax on the 3rd April 1791 and was brought up in Skelfler House, Market Weighton. She made frequent visits to her Aunt Anne and Uncle James who lived at Shibden Hall. In 1815 Anne moved in permanently with her Aunt and Uncle, and when her Uncle James died in 1826 Anne started to manage the estate. In 1836 when her Aunt and Father died Anne fully inherited Shibden Hall and Estate.
Anne wrote a detailed diary of her daily life and left behind twenty-six volumes of 7,722 pages, of an estimated five million words. The diaries give a great insight into Anne’s life as a landowner, business woman, intrepid traveller, mountaineer and lesbian. Anne was only interested in women and had ‘marriage’ ceremonies with Mariana Lawton and later Ann Walker, who would eventually move in with her at Shibden Hall. It is also clear that Anne was different from society’s expectations of a woman at the time. Anne not only did not wish to marry, but she also did not want to conform. She decided to only wear black, spent a great deal of time studying, managed her own estates and sought business opportunities, travelled widely and even climbed mountains. Anne was an avid walker and climber and undertook the first ascents of Mount Perdu in the Pyrenees in 1830 and Mount Vignemale in France in 1838.
In addition to her diaries, Anne also left behind fourteen volumes of travel notes. The volumes of travel notes cover her overseas trips and travel within the United Kingdom to the Lake District, Scotland and North Wales, including a trip on the newly opened railway from Manchester to Liverpool in 1831. Anne had first travelled to Paris for three weeks with her Aunt in 1819 and over the coming years she made journeys to Switzerland and Italy in 1827, Belgium and the Netherlands in 1829, and lived in France and the Pyrenees from 1829 to 1830. In 1831 she travelled to Holland, visited friends in Hampshire and went to the Isle of Wight and Sussex. After the deaths of her Aunt and Father in 1836 she focussed on managing and improving Shibden Hall and Estate, leaving behind a great number of changes and developments which can still be seen by visitors today.
In 1839 Anne once again had the time and resources to travel. This time Ann travelled with her partner Ann Walker, a neighbouring heiress who had moved in with her at Shibden in 1834. The couple set off in June 1839 on a two-year expedition. Anne and Ann travelled via Dunkerque, Belgium, Germany, Copenhagen, through Norway, Sweden, Finland and Russia into Astrakhan (now Georgia). However, Anne Lister tragically died in Koutais, Georgia on 22 September 1840. Ann Walker was left to travel back to Shibden accompanying Anne's body which was interred at Halifax Parish Church, now Halifax Minster on 29 April 1841. Ann Walker was left Shibden Hall and Estate but was focribly removed by her brother-in-law and taken to an asylum in York. She died at her family home of Cliffe Hill in 1854.
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