A Scandalous Life: The Biography of Jane Digby (Text only)

by Mary S. Lovell

  In his own words, Charles could not believe that a man could be ‘capable of lies or deception … at a time like this … a dying man about to appear before the eternal judge who reads our hearts and who knows the innermost recesses of a human heart’4 and began to think he had perhaps acted too hastily. Apponyi eloquently delineates Charles’s dilemma. If Theotoky were telling the truth, the lovers were eloping at the start of an affair, not culminating a liaison. If, as it seemed, he had killed an innocent man, Charles, as a man of honour, could not continue to live. By the code he was bound to turn his pistol upon himself.

  Fortunately he and Jane had their hands too full with the swooning and bleeding young man for him to take this point of nicety any further. Jane, frantic, called upon Charles and the coachmen to load Spiros into the coach. Apponyi tells us they took him a hundred miles back to Weinheim, where Jane nursed him. It was hardly a month since Theotoky had entered their lives.

  Under Jane’s dedicated nursing, the healthy young Greek rapidly recovered from his wound and on 26 February Count Apponyi, who was staying in Paris, recorded in his diary that ‘I could hardly believe my eyes upon seeing Lady Ellenborough … in the Place Louis XV giving her arm to a very handsome young man.’ He did not think the young man fitted the description of Charles Venningen, and so, having heard of the duel, concluded that Jane’s companion was Spiros Theotoky. ‘Here are the three of them, who, instead of returning to Munich, take the road to Paris under false names, but not disguised, which means that one has no trouble in identifying them in the street, or in a public square as happened to me.’5

  It seems surprising that Charles, with his fierce jealousy of Jane, would willingly have travelled to Paris with Theotoky in his party, but he apparently did so. The very next day, 27 February 1836, Jane wrote to Ludwig from Paris, having received a letter from him full of descriptions of his travels in Greece and Turkey which delighted her. ‘How I envy you … I am still living in hopes that one day it will be my turn!’ Jane remarked. ‘We are here on our way to fetch Heribert who must now be at Marseille and we shall probably return to Weinheim in the beginning of April. Father and mother intend spending this summer there with us.’6 When Ludwig wrote, he had still not heard of Jane’s affair with Theotoky; apart from the travelogue, his main subject was a plea to Jane that she should make him a new embroidered cap because the old one she had made him was worn out.

  In the meantime the three players in the drama reached an agreement. Jane promised to remain with Charles and her children. Spiros agreed to return to Greece via Marseille. It was convenient that the Venningens were travelling there anyway to meet Heribert. For the time being, Spiros disappeared from Jane’s life.

  Ludwig wrote to Jane as he passed through Paris on his return from Greece to Munich in June. Undoubtedly he soon heard the story of Theotoky and the duel, for he did not answer several subsequent letters. From his silence throughout the summer and autumn Jane knew that she had hurt him and probably lost his friendship. So when in December Charles, in Munich on business, wrote saying that he had seen the King, who had mentioned her kindly, she immediately sent a letter to Ludwig:

  Sire!

  Your Majesty will no doubt be surprised if not displeased at receiving these lines. You will say, ‘My silence ought to make her understand my wish that all correspondence should end’ and I had thus interpreted it. [But] the Baron’s last letter mentioned having seen you and that you had charged him with your remembrance to me, and that you regretted you could see me no more at Munich …

  Much as the idea of never seeing your Majesty again pains me more deeply than I can ever express, still I would not for worlds [have]… you think that in Munich I regret aught else than that attachment I so highly prized, and which I have now lost …

  There are some sentiments no time, no circumstances can efface, and such are those which must forever bind my heart in deepest attachment to Your Majesty, and make it impossible for me to be in a place where I should daily see you pass me by with indifference, if not aversion … Accept the warmest wishes for your happiness from her who has for years never ceased to love and revere you. Believe me … even should I never, never have the bliss of beholding you again,

  Your Majesty’s most devotedly attached

  and truly affectionate

  Ianthe7

  There was no reply, and throughout that dreary winter and the following spring Jane attempted to come to terms with her changed life. Her heart was not in the struggle, of course. Her heart lay under the hot Greek skies described by the man who had reawakened her passion. As a result she and Charles quarrelled frequently. She was no longer the cheerful ‘Jeane’ she had always been prior to her meeting and Theotoky and, as couples in such a situation will, they said bitter things to each other. Jane was driven to remind her husband that she had told him many times before their marriage that she did not love him in the romantic sense. It had been he who insisted on marriage, not her. Charles later admitted that he too had ‘said harsh things … I did not always behave well towards you.’ But he justified himself: ‘It was caused by the despair which invaded my soul and gnawed at my heart.’8

  It was not until the following July that Jane heard again from the King. Chiding her for the ‘cold respect’ with which she had addressed him as ‘Sire’ in her December letter, he chatted about his busy life and asked her to let him know how she was. Jane’s melancholia is obvious in the reply she made on 18 July 1837, when she reverted, at his request, to her usual form of address:

  My Dearest Friend,

  … The Baron and I go on what the world may call ‘well’ together; the difference that exists in our characters cannot be changed. His really noble qualities are justly appreciated and esteemed by me. I am attached to him from affection and habit, but between ourselves his want of demonstration and warmth of feeling stifles a passion I fain would feel, and which once felt and returned would prevent my wandering even in thought to other objects.

  The misfortune of my nature is to consider ‘Love’ as all in all. Without this feeling, life is a dreary void. No earthly blessing can compensate its loss, and having at first setting out in life sacrificed all, without regret, to one great and absorbing passion the necessity of loving and being loved is to me as the air I breathe and the sole cause of all I have to reproach myself with.9

  Her letter was written on the eve of her departure for England with the two children. Initially, Charles was to have accompanied her to spend the summer with her parents in what appears to have been a last-ditch attempt by this good and decent man to save his marriage, and to help Jane through a difficult patch. But his business affairs were difficult and he could not leave Germany. Jane was received pleasantly by her family in England, according to a letter she wrote to Ludwig, and by ‘almost all my old friends’ such as Lord Londonderry. Her brother Edward had recently married Theresa, daughter of Lord Ilchester, and Kenelm was Vicar of Tittleshall, the living of which was in the gift of his grandfather Coke, now created the Earl of Leicester by the new Queen. Jane did not visit her grandfather, indeed she never saw him nor even corresponded with him again.10

  However, in Jane’s letter to Ludwig, written before she departed for England, she mentioned her intention to call upon her former husband. ‘I wish, if possible, to induce Lord Ellenborough to enter into another arrangement with me by which means I should possess a capital which I could employ in buying an estate in Bavaria instead of the pension he gives me. With his great fortune and no children it cannot to him make much difference.’ Although no record exists of their meeting, Ellenborough clearly complied with Jane’s request. At the time of his death in 1871 the only annuity he was providing for Jane was £360 a year. Jane’s lavish lifestyle since her divorce from Ellenborough was not supported on £360, even taking into account the annual allowance her father made her and the small annuity from her grandfather. So the capital sum that must have been transferred by Ellenborough was never used to buy an estate in Bavaria b
ut shrewdly invested by her father. Jane drew income from it for the remainder of her life. At one point her annual income from all sources was well over £3,000. This is an important factor for, according to the Bank of England, £1,000 in 1837 is the equivalent today of £34,450. Jane’s future travels and adventures were therefore funded by an annual income of what today would be about £100,000 net.

  Her meeting with Ellenborough may not have been an easy one, however. After her return to Germany Jane wrote that despite her kind reception by ‘almost all’ of her former friends she was glad to leave. ‘England has too many painful associations for me to be sorry to quit it.’11 Ellenborough would have known of Felix’s abandonment of Jane and her subsequent marriage. He must have heard the rumours of her royal liaison which were rife in London. He and Jane were destined never to meet again, and on most occasions that Jane mentioned him in her diaries she hinted at his coldness.

  The England that Jane saw in the summer of 1837 was not in mourning for William IV, who had died in June, but, rather, wild with enthusiasm for its new Queen. Jane had been twelve years old when Victoria was born and now this child had ascended the throne it seemed as though a breath of fresh air swept the country. Victoria was excluded by Salic law from dominion over Hanover, which passed to her uncle, the Duke of Cumberland, and her accession seemed to sweep from Great Britain the final traces of the Hanoverian era. Sweet, pretty and unspoiled, she was the antithesis of the gross and overindulgent sons of the old, ‘mad’ George III. A fresh start, a wave of revulsion for the sins of the flesh, rolled over the land. This would have been admirable were it not for the predictable piety and hyprocrisy that followed. Jane’s sins were not forgotten, nor would they ever be forgiven.

  Shortly after Jane returned from England in September 1837, the reason for her approach to Ellenborough became obvious. Charles sold the estate at Weinheim. During the years he had devoted to courting Jane he had neglected his inheritance, leaving it in the hands of agents who, he now discovered, had abused their position ever since. Creating for Jane the setting and lifestyle he thought would make her happy must have been a further heavy drain on his estate. When the true nature of his financial position was revealed, Charles was almost stupefied with anxiety. There was nothing for it but to sell off part of his property. Although the major proceeds of such a sale belonged to the entailed Venningen estate, an income would be generated for his family and save the expense of running the estate at Weinheim.

  The couple subsequently moved to a family house in Mannheim, Charles steadfastly refusing to use Jane’s money to assist him through his difficulties. It hurt him deeply to have to sell the estate he loved and where, before the appearance of Theotoky, he had known great happiness. The shame of his financial reverses was very great to him, but what caused him far greater distress was the fact that his marriage to Jane was inexorably coming to an end and he was powerless in the matter.12

  When Jane wrote to Ludwig in January 1838 she mentioned nothing of her marital problems. Instead, she spoke of her dislike of Mannheim, whose inhabitants she found dull. She described some cheerful ‘sledge parties’, but the frozen winter landscape was bleak, and without riding there were few diversions. Mentioning that she and Charles might be passing through Munich in May en route to Austria on a matter of business, she reminded the King that it was two years since she had seen him and hoped it might be possible for them to meet.

  It was the last letter she would write to Ludwig, and it reveals that Jane was still keeping to her resolution of trying to be a good wife to Charles and a good mother to their children, though the effort had depressed her spirit. But in the event there was no trip to Munich in May that year with Charles. Only a month after she wrote this letter Spiros Theotoky returned from Corfu and asked her to come away with him.

  Jane could see before her an endless vista of domesticity, of cold dull winters, of growing old joylessly with the kind but stolid Charles, whose recent concern over finance had robbed him of any lightness of character he once possessed. The King appeared to have drawn away from her, and anyway Charles could not afford long periods spent in Munich with the court. Nor would his pride allow Jane to finance such diversions. But these were secondary considerations. Jane longed to be loved as she had loved Felix, as she now loved Spiros, and as he claimed he loved her.

  Spiros’s promises were irresistible. In them Jane glimpsed hot southern skies, white houses with cool stone floors and windows thrown wide to admit the summer breezes, the golden islands of Greece basking in turquoise seas; and was there a hint of nights scented with wild herbs, of loose robes, of wine, of lovers’ murmurings? It was the call of passion that drove her to abandon her vows to Charles. But there was also the chance of freedom from the bonds of provincial German conventiality. Jane’s spirit, likened by Balzac to a whirlwind in the desert, chose liberty.

  Knowing that Charles would never willingly allow her to leave, she agreed to elope yet again. A ball was being held locally for visiting royalty and the event provided a suitable opportunity for their plans. Jane slipped away while Charles was engaged. Spiros was waiting close by with a carriage. They made directly for the French border thirty miles away, hoping to get across even though Jane’s papers were not in order. Charles discovered their flight soon after they left and pursued their chaise, catching the errant pair at a post-house at the border town of Rastadt (now Rastatt).

  This time there was no duel, but the verbal battle was more damaging. Charles would have done or said anything to keep Jane. He used every argument he could think of to change her mind, pointing out the inevitable permanent separation from the children, the further anguish and social embarrassment she would cause her family in England, Theotoky’s lack of financial substance, Ludwig’s reaction, her reputation. He might as well have saved his breath. In her mind, Jane had already accepted all these things and discounted them.

  Her affection for Charles went deep, however. She agreed to his pleas that she should wait six months before taking the irrevocable step of leaving the country with Theotoky. But she refused to return home. Instead, in return for Charles’s signature giving her permission to leave the country (under German law it was necessary for a wife to have her husband’s permission to cross the border), Jane agreed to remain, living alone near the border.13 Spiros was to return to live and work in Munich about a hundred miles away, and both men were to give her time and space for six months.

  The three accordingly went their separate ways, Jane initially staying at Baden-Baden to recover from the traumatic events of the past days before moving to nearby Carlsburgh (now Karlsruhe). Charles wrote to her from Mannheim:

  At the post-house in Rastadt I signed away all happiness in this world. There I rebelled for the last time against the harshness of my destiny. What I suffered between 8 p.m. and 2 a.m. is beyond words. At present I am resigned, almost calm, or at least I hope to be soon. I have bowed my head and I shall no longer attempt to raise it.

  At the moment my only preoccupation is with the planning of my children’s future, of securing their fortune as far as possible. For the time being I cannot think beyond that. I will consider my own future later but I shall not trouble myself overmuch since I have no interest in anything, the shorter it is the better … In spite of everything, it is your future, from which there is no escape, which causes me most pain …

  … farewell, dear … Jeane. When the misfortunes which you are so blindly courting make your life difficult always come to me. The children are well and are always asking after their little mother … Be happy!14

  Alas for Charles, when the agreed time elapsed Jane chose Spiros. She told Charles of her decision but remained at Carlsburgh until the following spring; occasionally Spiros stayed there but they were not living together. Charles visited her several times and their meetings ‘though not conjugal were friendly’. As he told Jane’s brother Edward, he sent Bertha to her, an ‘amiable child … as beautiful as an angel … hoping that Jane would beco
me attached to her’. But he overstepped the mark when, after some investigation, ‘I revealed her lover to her in his true light. I told her that he had neither name, nor rank, nor fortune; nothing but a tarnished reputation.’ And he lost her completely:

  she has sent Bertha back to me and thrown herself headlong into the arms of this man without name without fortune and who has a very bad reputation. It was useless to try to stop her. She listened to nothing except her passion (but not her heart) and her hot-headedness …

  From her note [enclosed] you will see that I have returned everything to her, her diamonds, gold articles silver, etc. She is in possession of several thousand pounds sterling [worth nearly £70,000 in 1995]. When this is swallowed up she will be abandoned, I am sure of it, but it is humanly impossible to stop her. You can see from her letter that she has asked me to declare to you and her father that I renounce outright her fortune. That is what I am doing today. I renounce it entirely and I beg you to always remit her allowance directly to her without any deduction. I accept sole responsibility for the children’s upbringing and education …

  You can see she is asking me to consent to a divorce so that she may remarry. I would willingly consent had she chosen better, but this is too much to ask. Even so, if you and your father wish it I promise to consent … She has no ground for complaint against me, something she herself admits. Her only grievance is that I have exposed her lover, and that I do not admire him.15

  Charles’s attack on Spiros was all Jane needed to make the break. By March 1839 she and Theotoky were living together in Paris. Charles suggested to Edward that he go there to see the proof of what he had told him, ‘with your own eyes’.16 Had Edward done so he would have had to follow the lovers to Rouen, for by the time the letter reached him Jane and Spiros had taken a house there for the summer where, according to her sketchbook, Jane spent most of her afternoons painting on the river-bank. In spite of the bitter letter Charles wrote to Edward, however, he wrote to ‘Jeane’ asking her to forgive him for the harsh things he had said to her. It is a letter full of pain and love.