Anne Lister (1791-1840) is having a renaissance.1 The Yorkshire gentry woman and entrepreneur, often dubbed “the first modern lesbian,”2 was the subject of the popular BBC One/HBO drama series “Gentleman Jack” (which premiered in 2019 and aired for two seasons), and in 2023, the novelist Emma Donoghue published a novel called Learned by Heart, based on the romantic relationship between a young Lister and an orphaned girl named Eliza Raine at their boarding school in York. Much of what we know about Lister derives from her roughly five-million-word diary (about 7,000 pages of very small writing), approximately one-sixth of which she wrote in a code of her own devising that she called her “crypt hand.”3 Lister’s simple code—a one-to-one replacement of letters with symbols, numbers, and Greek letters—was deciphered in the mid-1890s by a distant relative of hers named John Lister, the last Lister to live in Shibden Hall (the family estate in Halifax, near York), along with a friend of his named Arthur Burrell.4
This article explores one facet of Lister’s remarkable legacy—her reading of the Classics, and in particular the 1st c. CE Latin poet Martial—with the aim of contributing to scholarly conversations both about Lister’s (Classical) reading practices5 and about the reception of Martial.6 Although it has been well established that men who desired men in 19th-century Britain used Classical literature to understand their (homo)sexuality,7 considerably less work has been done on Victorian-era (let alone Georgian-era) women’s reading of the Classics for similar purposes.8 Part of the reason for this is simply a paucity of evidence, part the pernicious idea that there were “no lesbians before 1900,” as Terry Castle cheekily put it.9 It is true, however, that lesbianism as such was not a recognized phenomenon in Lister’s context (early 19th-century Yorkshire), which helps to explain why she was so keen to find, through literature of all kinds, traces of anything resembling the desires she was feeling. Drawing on Lister’s diaries as well as her other private papers (including letters and extracts of books she read),10 I first show that, during the period between 1820 and 1825, Lister actively sought out and studied Martial’s poems, especially the sexually explicit ones. I then demonstrate that Lister, an amateur philologist, read this canonical author in decidedly queer ways.11 This included using12 him as fodder for her own sexual knowledge and sexual pleasure,13 and, through her selection of particular verses, as a vehicle of flirtation with, and even seduction of, other women.14
Studying the Classics and seeking out Martial
To contextualize Lister’s queer reading of Martial, it is important to note first that, as a girl raised in the late 18th/early 19th century, she was denied a formal Classical education.15 However, this did not mean that she did not learn Latin (or Greek, for that matter); she simply had to seek it out on her own, and she did so with great effort and determination.16 We know that at least as early as 1804, when she was still only 12, she was being taught Latin (among other subjects) by a Reverend George Skelding, the local vicar of Market Weighton, the town where she was raised.17 After she turned 14, in 1805, her parents sent her to the Manor School, an elite girls’ finishing school in York, but she left after a year; some speculate that she was expelled for her relationship with Eliza Raine, though there is no direct evidence to support this.18 At that point, in 1806 (and continuing until at least June 180919), she resumed her study of Latin and added Greek under the guidance of a Reverend Samuel Knight,20 who became vicar of Halifax in early 1818.21
Even after she stopped her lessons, she maintained contact with both men, as is clear both from her diaries and from her private correspondence. For instance, she reached out to Skelding on December 31, 1807 (when she was 16), writing him a letter in Latin telling him how fondly she remembered him.22 She also gave him an update on her studies, informing him that she’d been helped by Knight and that she’d started learning Greek—a language she found challenging, but which she loved even more than Latin.23 Skelding wrote back, in Latin, immediately upon receiving the letter, clearly touched by her gratitude and pleased to hear that her dedication to Latin and Greek had been so productive.24 In addition to Lister’s occasional correspondence with Skelding,25 she also saw him socially in the couple of years before he died.26 After she learned of his “rather sudden death” on December 2, 1819 (at the age of 82),27 she wrote a condolence letter to his widow28 and received from her a few of Skelding’s books in the following years.29
Lister also corresponded with and periodically called on Knight over the years. On January 13, 1815, Knight wrote to (the 22-year-old) Lister, responding to a letter she had sent him with questions about a couple of Latin and Greek words, and including an anecdote about Virgil.30 Then, on August 12, 1817 (when she was 25), Lister recorded in her diary that she wrote to Knight expressing her “wish to become his pupil again. He said he could not take me till after Michaelmas (10th October) but would then let me have an hour from 3 to 4 every other day according to my desire.”31 Intending to “resume my studies about the 1st of November next,”32 she describes the first lesson in her diary entry of November 4.33 Lister concluded from the lesson that she “had lost less Greek than Latin” since her last formal lessons, and in fact that she was “a better Grecian than I ever was in my life — Indeed I have read more Greek within the last year and half than all I ever read before.”34 Shortly afterward, however, Knight became vicar of Halifax,35 at which point her renewed lessons seem to have stopped, though she did attend his church services periodically. A handful of months later, on May 23, 1818, she told Knight she was despairing of getting on with her studies, and according to Lister, he suggested that she “giv[e] up altogether the thought of pursuing them.”36 Fortunately, she didn’t heed his advice, and she continued reading Latin and Greek on her own the rest of her life.37 She kept detailed notes in her diaries of the texts she read each day (down to the paragraph and line numbers), as well as maintaining collections of extracts drawn from primary texts and commentaries, often coupled with her own analysis.38
The fact that Lister dedicated herself so studiously to reading Latin and Greek—an unconventional pursuit for a woman in her day, to say the least—was something she liked to advertise, especially in her flirtatious conversations with other women. For example, on May 10, 1824, a woman named Mrs Kelly, whom Lister found quite attractive,39 asked Lister how she kept herself busy. Mrs Kelly remarked that “to keep up Latin and Greek would take a good deal of time,” in response to which Lister “spoke of Greek as my favourite language.” (Italics are the conventional way of indicating the parts of Lister’s diary that are written in code.40) On another occasion, a handful of months later, while flirting in Paris with a woman named Mrs Barlow, Lister told her that she “did many things ladies in general could not do but did them quietly — my education had been different from the common rule.” She also “spoke against a classical education for ladies in general — it did no good if not pursued, and if [it was, it] undrew a curtain better for them not to peep behind.”41 That is, Lister believed that even when women had the opportunity to study the Classics properly, they shouldn’t so. It is important to note, however, that she was speaking about “ladies in general,” not about herself. In her case, Classical learnedness was an integral part of her self-fashioning.42
Of all the Classical authors Lister read, it’s hard to know what prompted her to pick up Martial, apparently for the first time, when she was 29 years old. Unlike the Latin authors Lister had read up until then, like Horace and Virgil, Martial was not a terribly popular author in her day, in part because his verses were deemed obscene.43 Though we can’t be sure, a possible impetus for Lister was reading the first canto of Byron’s Don Juan, which she reports doing on March 11, 1820,44 noting in her book of extracts Byron’s comment that Martial’s “indecent epigrams” are gathered at the end of the “Variorum Edition.”45 Inspired by this, she consulted Vincent Colleson’s 1701 variorum edition of Martial at her friend James Dalton’s house, reporting that she counted “just 150” dirty poems.46 Then, a few days later, she reports reading a few entries (“Sanchez,” “Sappho,” and “Sarah”) in Pierre Bayle’s Historical and Critical Dictionary, prompting her to note “very interesting” in her diary.47 It is possible that Bayle’s entry on Sappho, which speaks openly of the poet’s love for other women and contains cross-references to a number of Latin poets, was another factor inciting Lister to explore Martial’s epigrams.48
Lister apparently had her own text of Martial—what she refers to at one point as her “little edition”49—but for years she kept her eyes open for a better one, ideally the one she had thumbed through at Dalton’s. For example, on October 11, 1824, having gone to a bookstore in Paris called Billarand’s in search of an Italian dictionary, she spotted a variorum edition of Martial. It was priced at only 8 francs, but she didn’t purchase it; clearly, it wasn’t quite what she was looking for.50 And so, on October 28, she asked her French teacher in Paris, a Madame Galvani, “to get me a good edition of Martial.”51 A couple of weeks later, Madame Galvani brought her two editions to consider: one without any notes, the other the 1701 Delphin edition with, as Lister notes, “all the obscene epigrams collected together at the end — and a copious vocabulary.”52 While the first volume did not hold any interest for her, the Delphin edition was exactly what she wanted. But the price, 40 francs, was much too high (money was always tight for Lister), so she decided not to purchase it. Next, about six weeks later, on Christmas day, she asked Madame Galvani about “Raderius’ [sic] edition of Martial, which can only be got by stealth for me from the King’s library and which will therefore be too dear.”53 Lister may have learned about this expurgated edition by the Jesuit philologist Matthaeus Raderus, first published in 1599, through John Donne’s (three-line) poem Raderus.54 But apparently she didn’t manage to get her hands on it, or at least she never mentions receiving it.
A few months later, on March 24, 1825, she stopped by Billarand’s again. This time, the salesman had a Delphin edition for which he was asking 14 francs, as well as the same variorum edition as before, for which he was now asking 9 francs. After Lister offered 12 francs for the Delphin edition, the salesman said he’d take 13, but Lister decided to wait and come back another day.55 It seems, however, that she didn’t end up returning to this shop, and shortly thereafter, on April 3, she returned home to England. It appears that one of the first things she did when she arrived in London was to buy herself a copy of the Delphin edition. On her way back to her hotel after doing some shopping, she happened to spot the Delphin edition at a bookstore called Salva’s, and she persuaded the salesperson to take 14 shillings for it (rather than the marked price of 16).56 Her determination finally paid off, and this is presumably the edition she had with her at Shibden Hall from this point onward.57
Reading Martial as fodder for sexual knowledge and sexual pleasure
The first time Lister mentions reading Martial is May 5, 1820, two months after learning about his “nauseous epigrams” from Byron. She quickly put his poems to (queer) use, writing in her diary:
Before Breakfast (till 9 20/60) [i.e. 9.20am] cleaning out my book-cupboard and looking over Martial’s epigrams — some of them throw plenty of light on certain subjects, vide book the first, in Bassam tribadem, and liber eleven, in Ponticum and demaneid [sic] and many more — Came upstairs after breakfast at 10 3/4 — meant to have written to Anne Belcombe but unluckily took out Martial and stood reading his obscene verses till two, excited almost to masturbation, but I have just eescaped [sic] have laid aside the book and will not, I hope, spend another morning in this terrible way.58
The first poem she mentions, in Bassam tribadem (1.90), is about a woman named Bassa who the speaker assumed was the epitome of chastity since she is never seen with men—but the twist is that she is having sex with other women.59 In the second poem, in Ponticum (9.41), a man named Ponticus is attacked for masturbating, which Martial frowns upon because it wastes semen that could have been used to produce another human being.60 And finally, I think that the gibberish “demaneid,” which is inserted above the line with a caret, must be a misspelling of de Manneio (11.61),61 a poem attacking a man named Manneius (or depending on the manuscript reading, Nanneius) for performing cunnilingus.62 The “certain subjects” on which “plenty of light” was thrown, then, were female homoeroticism, masturbation, and cunnilingus, though she does not spell this out explicitly in her diary, even in crypt hand.
Two days later, inspired by her reading of Martial, she scrawled down on a piece of paper a list of sexual words that she looked up in Johann Scapula’s Lexicon Graeco-Latinum Novum and Adam Littleton’s Latin Dictionary.63 She then added explanations of “masturbation” and tribas to one of her extract books:64
Masturbation means self pollution; see Martial’s epigram To Ponticus book nine —Tribas, see Mart[ial]’s To Bassa liber one — it does not appear that she made use of olisbos, a leather penis, as Scapula says some of them did — Vide Bayle’s dictionary a[r]ticle [citing] Sanchez, where it is questioned whether a woman’s connection with another that is married be adultery or not — see my j[o]urnal of sixteen March eighteen hundred & twenty —65
This passage makes apparent some of the ways Lister used Martial to bolster her knowledge about sexual matters—and the ways, in turn, that her own sexual experience colored her reading of Martial. First, we see that it is from Martial 9.41 that she derived her definition of masturbation, a concept she clearly knew about, but a word that seems to be new to her (Martial uses the participle masturbatus in line 7). It is noteworthy, too, that she draws out not Martial’s main point in the poem—that masturbation is wasteful—but the part that was relevant to her, namely that it’s self-polluting, an idea that was popular in her own day.66 She was likely drawing here on Martial’s use of the word foeda, “filthy” (line 8) to describe the pleasure derived from masturbation.
Second, it is apparently from the assigned title of Martial 1.90 that Lister learned the word tribas, for which she turned to Scapula’s Lexicon for clarification.67 According to Scapula, tribades used a dildo (ὄλισβος) on one another,68 a point Lister challenges on the basis of Martial 1.90.69 In her (probably correct) reading of the poem, the line “You dare to join two cunts” implies direct genital-to-genital contact, rather than sex with the use of a dildo. Underlying her interpretation of this line may also be her own personal tastes: she disliked dildoes since she thought they involved “artifice,” and she also liked being as physically close as possible to her partners.70
Also worth noting in this passage is Lister’s analysis of the final two lines of 1.90 (“You have invented a portent worthy of the Theban riddle: where no man is, there is adultery”). Lister alludes here to something she had read earlier in Bayle’s dictionary entry on Sappho, namely: “I leave it to a new Father Sanchez [a 16th century Spanish Jesuit] to decide, whether a married woman, who had complied with the passion of Sappho, would have committed adultery, and made her husband a cuckold, properly speaking?”71 Bayle himself did not cite Martial 1.90 in this context; rather, it was Lister who made the connection, using Bayle’s words to cast doubt on the validity of the conclusion that Martial comes to at the end of the poem (that is, “where no man is, there is adultery”). This is, once again, not a purely academic question for Lister, since one of the greatest loves of her life, with whom she had an on-and-off-again relationship for many years, was a married woman named Mariana Lawton. Lister preferred to think that their relationship did not constitute adultery, despite Mariana’s having a husband.72
However, it is not just that Lister used her own sexual preferences to read these poems, or that these poems enhanced her sexual knowledge. As she notes in her diary on May 5, 1820, reading Martial’s “obscene verses” also prompted her to get “excited almost to masturbation.”73 The sexual arousal prompted by Martial is a pattern that recurs on many occasions. After a couple of brief and unremarkable mentions in her journal of reading Martial the next few months,74 she mentions on August 5, 1820, that she read Juvenal’s Satire 9 using “all the notes of both editions.”75 She doesn’t specify what these editions are, but one was certainly Lubinus’ 1603 commentary on Juvenal. James Dalton had loaned her this book a couple of months before, and she devoured it over the next few months, copying passages into her collection of extracts.76 The other edition might be Lubinus’ considerably briefer edition of 1602, given that the only source she cites in her extracts book is Lubinus. In any case, after reading Juvenal 9, she reports in her diary that she
unfortunately got to Martial and read him till near five when it ended in a cross astride of the bedpost — how unclean we are in conduct — oh, that I had had more resolution — it is not — I forget to think of heaven and the pure spirit that abides there even at the moment, but the adversary lays hold of me and I am caught — when shall I amend and have more resolution to resist?77
“Cross,” often “incurring a cross,” is Lister’s own term for masturbation,78 and as is usual for her, she reprimands herself afterwards for doing something “unclean.” The fact that Lister turned to Martial immediately after reading Juvenal 9 suggests that something in the latter directed her to the former. Since Lubinus’ 1603 commentary has many cross-references to Martial, we might imagine that Lister set about tracking down some of those references—all of which, for Juvenal 9, refer unsurprisingly to sexual matters.79
The next time Lister reports masturbating after reading Martial is a few weeks later, having turned to him after reading the late antique Latin poet Ausonius:
Came upstairs at 11 — unfortunately got hold of Ausonius and read him and Martial all the day till near six — when turning to Aristotle’s Masterpiece, this finished the business and my high state of excitation ended in + [i.e. a cross] — what a day I have spent — oh dear, it is very terrible — conscience warns me all the while and yet I do this great sin — I can make no excuse eeven [sic] to myself.80
She doesn’t specify what passages of Ausonius she read, but it might have been his poem Cupid Crucified, which mentions mascula…Sappho, a line she would have known about from having earlier read Bayle’s dictionary entry on Sappho. It might also have been Ausonius’ raunchy epigrams, which would naturally have led her to Martial if she was looking for similar material. Either way, reading Martial prompted her to turn to Aristotle’s Masterpiece, a work not actually by Aristotle but a very popular late-17th-century manual about sex, pregnancy, and midwifery that speaks very frankly about the clitoris, among other things. It was Aristotle’s Masterpiece that provided the final impetus for her “cross,” but Martial, as one of the texts she read, was at least partially responsible.81
Next, after (apparently) holding off on reading Martial for seven months, she was led back, perhaps somewhat surprisingly, by the Hellenistic bucolic poet Theocritus. After reading selections of the Oxford edition of Theocritus’ idylls, along with the scholia,82 she notes:
In reading the scholiast on line forty-three, idyllium fifth, a good deal excited — narrowly escaped incurring a cross — afterwards handled myself and read some of Martial’s worst epigrams but still, though excited, went no farther but put my things on and went downstairs at [illegible] forty minutes past 4.83
The Theocritus idyll in question involves two competing shepherds named Comatas and Lacon. Lister is responding to the part where Comatas refers to a time he anally penetrated Lacon (5.41-42), to which Lacon replies by cursing Comatas to a shallow burial, one no deeper than Comatas allegedly penetrated him (5.43). The scholiast on line 43 explains Lacon’s “joke” a few different ways, but all having to do with anal sex (pedicatio).84 Reading the scholiast’s frank explanations clearly not only excited Lister but prompted her to turn next to Martial’s “worst epigrams”—possibly, if she was continuing the theme, his poems involving pedicatio. Although she claims that she managed to avoid “incurring a cross” (despite her excitement), she does mention “handling [her]self,” suggesting that it was only full-fledged masturbation that she warded off.
Theocritus was not the only Greek author who prompted Lister to re-read Martial. A couple months later, after reading paragraphs 175-182 of Herodotus Book 2 one evening,85 she
turned to Martial’s epigrams and read perhaps all the bad ones till nearly four, when it ended, as it generally has done, in masturbation — when I took down the book, I said to myself I would not let it come to this — I would try myself and felt a sort of persuasion I could manage — put down the book two or three times and had very near escaped but somehow I could not — who may dare temptation with impunity? — let me try to do better — I will pray for a better mind, but not now — I should feel too unworthy — I will wash — writing this has done me good — I am unworthy of π [Mariana] — oh, that I did better.86
A couple of days later, she took special note in her book of extracts of the Greek word ἀνδρόσφιγγες (“man-sphinxes”), which appears in Hdt. 2.175, quoting from William Beloe’s note that male sphinxes are sometimes considered “hermaphrodites.”87 Intersex people clearly held interest for Lister, who relays the stories of at least two (possible) examples in her journals: one of a person assigned female at birth who passed their whole life as male, took a wife, and who some thought was a “hermaphrodite”;88 and a wax model Lister studied in Paris of a local “hermaphrodite” who apparently presented as female but who was more attracted to women than to men.89 Although Lister suspected for many years there must be something anatomically “different” about her, upon examining her own anatomy she learned she was not intersex herself.90 Nonetheless, she may have felt some sort of connection or kinship with intersex people given her unconventional gender presentation and her attraction to women. It is not impossible that Beloe’s mention of “hermaphrodites” is what led her to pick up Martial, in search of similar material.91 It’s possible she revisited Mart. 1.90, with its line “your monstrous organ feigns masculinity.” At any rate, she says she sought out all Martial’s “bad” poems, reading which prompted her to masturbate, “as it generally has done.” She claims that she tried, repeatedly, to stop her reading, but was unable to do so, and just as in the other entries we’ve seen thus far, she expresses feelings of shame after masturbating.
After this episode, Lister apparently mostly avoided masturbation (“I have scarcely done it”) for the next year and a half.92 When she returned to the practice, she once again made use of Martial, but this time after the fact. On January 15, 1823, after reporting that she masturbated, she wrote, “Uncertain if it was mastupration or as I have written it above [i.e. masturbation]. Turned to Martial to see — Looking over Martial Epigrams about 3/4 hour — vide liber 7. page 93. vide de fragmento Argus —.”93 Here we see Lister once again using Martial as a source of knowledge, in this case as a source for the proper spelling of masturbation. While “mastupration” is in fact a viable archaic spelling in English—suggesting defilement (stuprum) by hand (manu)—the Latin verb is in fact masturbare, as she would have seen upon checking Martial.94 Puzzlingly, the particular poem she cites, de fragmento Argus, is Mart. 7.19, about a surviving plank of the mythological ship Argo.95 This poem has nothing to do with masturbation—it isn’t sexual in the least—and in fact she doesn’t cite it in crypt hand, so it’s possible she simply liked it. The poem directly before it (7.18) mocks a woman whose genitalia are noisy when she’s having sex, so it’s possible, although of course unprovable, that Lister came across 7.19 by chance when reading her real object of interest, 7.18.
The last recorded instance of Martial inciting Lister to masturbate occurred about seven months later.96 As she says, the “mischief” began when she read about Donne’s poem “Sapho to Philaenis” in the journal Retrospective Review, a 19th-century literary journal focusing on early modern English literature. The article she read, on Donne’s poetry, says only the following about the poem: “Though it will not exactly bear quotation, perhaps the most poetical, as well as the most characteristic, of the Epistles is the imaginary one (the only one of that description) from Sappho to Philaenis.”97 This brief mention clearly intrigued Lister. She knew who Sappho was, but the name Philaenis was apparently unfamiliar. Ever the diligent researcher, she looked up Philaenis in John Lemprière’s Bibliotheca classica, a dictionary purporting to contain “a full account of all the Proper Names mentioned in Ancient Authors.” There she would have found the following: “Philaenis, or Phileris, a courtesan. Vid. Phileris”; turning to Phileris, she would have found “an immodest woman, whom Philocrates the poet lampooned. Mart. 7.” Unsurprisingly, she then “turned to Martial, as referred — this led to my looking over all his epigrams, which led to my incurring a cross just before I went downstairs.”98 Among the epigrams she would have tracked down in her reading of book 7 were poems 7.67 and 7.70, both about a tribad named Philaenis who has tremendous appetites, including sexual appetites, and who has sex with both women and boys.99 For Martial, this depiction of a women who thinks she’s manly but doesn’t actually conform to the norms of Roman virility is presumably intended to amuse or even horrify his readers. But that’s not how Lister read these poems, or not the only way she read them. Rather, there was something about Philaenis, a masculine, athletic woman who has sex with women—that is, someone in some ways like herself—that excited her.100 Indeed, these poems prompted her to “incur[] a cross,” for which, once again, she berated herself (“I thought my unworthiness afterwards and always lament”). This time, she sought solace afterwards in Rousseau’s description in his Confessions of discovering masturbation.101
Reading Martial as a vehicle for flirtation and seduction
Let us turn now to a second way that Lister read Martial queerly, and that was as a vehicle for flirtation with and even seduction of other women. While other scholars have noted that Lister uses Classical texts in this way, I am interested in exploring the specific ways she engages with particular verses of Martial. Moreover, I will show that using Martial in this way was a delicate operation, requiring Lister to navigate her competing desires: on the one hand, she wanted to find a woman who was open to her advances, for which knowledge of Martial was one proxy; on the other hand, she didn’t want someone who was too sexually worldly, for which knowledge of Martial was unfortunately also a proxy.102 In what follows, I focus on an extended set of episodes in which Martial plays a key role.
In May of 1824, Lister met a woman named Miss Hodson, the cousin of her friend Mrs Priestley.103 A couple of months later, Lister and Miss Hodson had an extended, if subtle, flirtation, culminating with Miss Hodson handing Lister “a few lines” of Latin to translate for her.104 According to Lister, Miss Hodson “said she knew what they meant, but would not acknowledge she understood Latin — She saw I gave her credit for understanding the language — I looked significantly, and said, I know their author.”105 But Lister didn’t actually know who the author was—she was simply posturing in order to advertise her Classical literacy—and once she got home she combed through a number of Latin texts in vain trying to find the source of the lines.106 She then set off for the library in Halifax, where apparently by chance she ran into her old Latin teacher Mr Knight. She showed him the lines, which he correctly identified as being post-Augustan and which he said had “the twang of Martial.” Lister, posturing now in the opposite direction in order to project innocence, claimed to her old teacher she did not “know much about Martial.”107 However, after she left Mr Knight, she thought, “as I went musing along, Miss Hodson is au fait at Martial — her knowingness does not surprise nor yet her opinion of the ladies less elevated than that given by myself.”108 That is, Miss Hodson’s familiarity with Martial confirmed Lister’s suspicion that Miss Hodson was (sexually) knowledgeable, and what’s more, that she might be attracted to women.
When Lister got back home, armed with the information she’d gleaned from Knight, she tracked down the poem in her “little edition” of Martial. The lines were from 1.54, a poem in which the male speaker asks a certain Fuscus if, with all of his many friends, he still has space “to be loved” (amari); if so, the speaker would like a spot.109 Having already translated the lines in her head on her walk home from the Priestleys’ house, and then to and from the library, Lister proceeded to write out her own translation on her slate.110 Then, before bed, she picked up Martial again, and after getting “much excited” “looking all over Martial,”111 she offered her interpretation of the particular lines Miss Hodson gave her, which she believed revealed what “must Miss Hodson feel on these occasions,” namely that “she would not refuse me anything I chose to ask — perhaps she looks at home when she judges of the ladies.”112 That is, Lister read Miss Hodson’s choice of Martial, and likely also of this poem in particular, as an overture.
There was only one problem, however: the very thing that made Miss Hodson appealing also disqualified her as a potential match. As Lister wrote next: “I would not not [sic] choose a wife who could read Martial — the idea of Miss Hodsons having read him seemed to shock me — I kept muttering as I undressed, by Jove, I don’t understand it, the deuce is in it, etc. etc. — Miss Hodson seemed laid open to me and I did not like her the better for her read-away innocence — who knows what practise she has had — Martial is enough to excite and instruct — it is the filthiest and the worst book I ever read, unfit for any, especially a woman’s [sic].”113 Needless to say, this represents a double standard: it’s fine for Lister to read Martial, whom (as we know) she read “to excite and instruct” herself, whereas other women should avoid him at all cost. But this attitude was perfectly in keeping with her ideas about Classical education for women more broadly (see above), in addition to mirroring what many men at this time sought in a prospective spouse: namely, sexual innocence. In short, Lister wanted a traditional wife.
Nonetheless, despite her reservations, she did what Miss Hodson asked of her. She copied out her translation and sent it to Miss Hodson,114 writing: “You asked me, my dear Miss Hodson, for a translation of the 7 following lines,”115 the Latin of which she then quoted.116 She continued:
I promised unknowing what you were going to ask, and keep my promise better than my credit, in sending you the following — The 2 last lines do not give exactly the idea contained in the original, but, in my present hurry, nothing closer or better occurs to me —
If still, my Fuscus, there be void at heart,
Nor others fill the whole, though better part;
If there be still one little spot left bare,
See here, who sues to be the tenant there.
Nor spurn the friend, because the friendship’s new:
As new was once what’s oldest now to you.
But look within. — The heart alone can say,
If love grows old in ages or a day.117
This translation, while not exactly literal, does convey the general sense of the original poem, with the added element of rhyming couplets.
According to her journal, Lister had thought about adding to her letter “Quod tibi vis dici, dicere, Fusce, potes” (“but you can tell me, Fuscus, what you want to be told”), a line borrowed from another poem of Martial (7.28.10). That is, she considered escalating the flirtation through a (queer) re-use of Martial’s own words, inviting Miss Hodson to say whether she wanted a relationship with her. But “2nd thoughts convinced me it were better” not to add anything, since “Esse tibi tanta cautus brevitate videris” (“You believe you are protected by such brevity”), another line she took from Martial (2.1.11).118 In other words, it was prudent not to push her Martial-based flirtation too far. “For,” she continued, “Martial is not an author… ‘Quem Germanicus ore non rubenti Coram Cecropia legat puella’” (“for Germanicus [=Domitian] to read without a blush in the presence of a Cecropian maid [=Pallas]”), another line she steals from Martial (5.2.7-8). Her repurposing of this line is especially interesting, since in its original context, at the start of Book 5, Martial is saying that Book 5 is in fact suitable for Domitian to read without blushing. Lister’s replacement of quintus…liber (“fifth book”; line 6) with “Martial,” and her addition of “not,” completely reversed the meaning of the original lines. She did this deliberately, of course, in order to make her own point: namely, that Martial might be too salacious for her to use if she was trying to be circumspect. Moreover, she added, “mutare dominum non potest liber notus” (“a well-known book cannot change author”),119 again borrowing a line from Martial (1.66). In that poem, Martial is attacking a plagiarist for copying his books and attaching his own name to them; Lister adapted the line to her situation to suggest that she wouldn’t be able to disguise the fact that she was using the lines of the famously dirty Martial for her own (less-than-innocent) purposes. Lister’s internal dialogue thus reveals another dimension of her queer reading of Martial: in this case, her drawing on Martial’s verses first as a possible flirtatious coda to the poem and then as a way of weighing the riskiness of using Martial to flirt with.
Having finished her deliberations, Lister sent off the letter and began pondering whether she should try to make a move on Miss Hodson. But she immediately thought better of it, since she had her hands full with another woman (!), “and after all Miss Hodson is desperately plain, has not good connection, and has read Martial and is probably up to more than I like — a woman may know too much for me — she cannot have read Martial for nothing.”120 Once again we see Lister’s view that a woman who reads Martial may be good to flirt with, but she’s not marriage material, a point reinforced by Miss Hodson’s allegedly inadequate looks and status. But none of this stopped Lister from continuing to flirt with her and continuing to use Martial as the currency of this flirtation. The day after sending the letter, Lister stopped in on the Priestleys and “joked Miss Hodson about the translation and having read the author in the original — could not get her to own this.”121 It is as though Lister both wanted and didn’t want Miss Hodson to have read Martial in Latin—her having done so would be a sure sign of her openness to Lister, but it would also make her offputtingly worldly. Lister’s conflicted feelings seem to have continued into the evening. At bedtime she “sat up dawdling and thinking of Miss Hodson,” who had told her that the “translation was very well done.” But Lister nonetheless suspected that Miss Hodson wasn’t fully satisfied and wanted something “more professional.” And so, Lister “stood musing and trying to write her something epigrammatic on the occasion but nothing occurred to me that I liked,”122 and so she finally abandoned this avenue of flirtation.
But Lister did not forsake her use of Martial altogether as a tool of seduction. In fact, just a few days later, Lister’s lover Mariana spent the night, and when they had gotten ready for bed, Lister, “having abused Miss Hodson for reading Martial, by way of proving no woman ought to read it, translated to π- [Mariana] a few of the epigrams to Lesbia and to his wife… and two or three more.”123 It is worth noting, first, that Lister had to translate these poems for Mariana, who apparently didn’t know Latin herself. Second, the particular poems Lister translated were clearly selected for their content. By “the epigrams to Lesbia,” Lister must be referring to Martial’s invective poems addressed to a fictional woman named Lesbia, whom he often attacks with explicit sexual language.124 The epigram “to his wife” is 11.104, in which Martial criticizes his wife for not providing the sexual services he desires—all of which he lists in detail.125 The sexual content of all of these poems unsurprisingly aroused Lister, but they clearly also aroused Mariana. As Lister says, “when we were both a good deal excited, we jumped into bed leaving one candle burning,”126 and she began her next journal entry with, “And had two or three kisses ssuccessively [sic], then dropt asleep, I having put out the candle…,”127 using her usual euphemism “kiss” to refer to the act of sex or an orgasm.
What we see, then, is that after flirting with but ultimately rejecting Miss Hodson for knowing too much about Martial—an author “no woman ought to read”—Lister used the very same poet to get another woman into bed. A number of factors might account for Lister’s different strategies in these two contexts. For one, Mariana was already Lister’s lover (not to mention already married), so Lister wouldn’t have had the same concerns about determining her suitability as wife material. In addition, unlike with (the too-knowledgeable) Miss Hodson, Lister herself initiated the Martial-based flirtation with Mariana, rather than vice versa. Put another way, Mariana had already passed the “Martial test”—she couldn’t read Latin at all, let alone Martial—which allowed Lister to proceed with her use of Martial as a mode of seduction. She did something similar with the widowed Mrs Barlow later that same year in Paris, whom she refers to as “not a person of very general or classical reading.”128 One tactic she used for seducing Mrs Barlow was sharing salacious stories from Classical antiquity, on one occasion even employing Martial’s poem to his wife, already tried and tested with Mariana!129
Conclusion
In the middle of Book 3 of his Epigrams, Martial warns his imagined female reader, the modest matrona, not to read any further, since the material in the remainder of the book will be too obscene for her. He suspects, however, that this warning will actually induce her to “read studiously to the end” (totum...studiosa leges) (Mart. 3.68; see also 3.86; cf. 5.2).130 As we have seen, Anne Lister—neither modest nor a matrona—performed her own kind of “studious reading” of Martial. Indeed, I have argued that she was a “queer reader” of Martial, in all senses of the phrase: she was non-normative in terms of both gender and sexuality; she was both akin to Martial’s implied “studious female reader” and a completely unanticipated reader of his verses; and she was an amateur Classicist who read and interpreted Martial, sometimes against the grain, for her own purposes, whether that was self-edification, self-pleasure, flirtation, or seduction. I hope in this way to have illuminated some of Lister’s very particular reading practices, as well as to have shed light on an understudied chapter of Martial’s reception: namely, how he might have been read by women (or at least one very sui generis woman!) in the early 19th century. I would suggest, moreover, that viewing Martial through the eyes of Anne Lister can offer us a model of alternative, queer, and/or feminist ways to read his epigrams in the future.