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

by Mary S. Lovell

  For you I gave up a good life and a promising future, but I have no regrets. No price would have been too high for the happiness you gave me for four whole years … If I have hurt you I ask you to forgive me … if I wronged you I swear that I have sinned in error, my intentions were always good. I have never loved anyone, heart and soul, with my whole being, as I loved you. I swear to you now that no other woman will ever replace you, that no other will possess me as you so completely possessed me. I will have female friends, perhaps I will have a mistress, but I will never have another Jeane.

  He told her what he had done with the jewels, among them Venningen heirlooms, which she had returned and which he refused to accept.

  I have spoken to Hecher about the jewel-case. He protested loudly, I knew he would. If you will entrust me with it I will deposit it in a safe place where you can reclaim it some day … Do not sell Mazeppa. I would be distressed to meet your favourite pulling a cart or carrying some young rascal. I will ensure that the noble animal has a happy life in remembrance of you … Farewell, my darling, farewell my life, farewell my Jeane.17

  The news came as a blow to the Digby family; they had not known she was unhappy. Lady Andover, Margaret Steele and Kenelm set out immediately for Paris and there in June they met Spiros Theotoky for the first time. They found Jane wild with happiness and defensive of her situation. She was pregnant by her lover, and they must have seen from the first that it was a waste of energy to attempt to persuade her to leave Theotoky and return to Charles. Theotoky swore he wished to marry Jane as soon as she was free, and at their urging she wrote to Charles pleading for him to grant her a divorce to save further scandal for her family’s sake.

  Unfortunately for Charles, both Miss Steele and Lady Andover found they actually liked the man they had come to trounce. When Charles, hearing of their presence there, rushed to Paris to enlist their support to persuade Jane to return to him, he found they had adopted an inexplicably neutral stance.18 He predicted that a marriage between Jane and Spiros would end in yet another divorce, and argued that the man was a fortune hunter. He begged them to dissuade her from any thought of marrying him. But Jane and Spiros had forewarned them of Charles’s jealous rages; the two ladies and Jane’s brother were placed in a situation for which nothing in their experience had prepared them. It says a great deal for Spiros’s charm that he was able to win the support of Jane’s family. Before he left Paris, Charles consented to the divorce.19

  When her family returned home, Jane and Spiros went to Honfleur, the tiny Normandy fishing village, for the remainder of the summer. On 15 September they took up residence in Paris at 83 Place du Palais de Bourbon, using the names Monsieur et Madame Theotoky. It was there in the following spring that Jane’s sixth child was born on 21 March 1840. It was a boy. This time the mother immediately fell in love with her baby.

  She could hardly believe it. After so many years of dreariness, here she was with Spiros whom she adored, and here was this infant for whom, miraculously, the maternal love she had never felt for her previous five children gushed forth.20 With the warmth Greek men always display for children, Spiros too seemed completely captivated by the child.

  For the immediate purposes of registration the baby was named Jean Henry, Comte Theotoky. But Jane wanted something more memorable for her wonderful child. She dug into the epic stories of Greek history so beloved by Basily and decided to name him after the King of Sparta who, with only 300 men, had opposed Xerxes and the mighty Persian army at the narrow pass of Thermopylae. The Spartans fought a heroic battle to the last man, and their young king was among the last to fall. His name was Leonidas.

  10

  False Colours 1840–1846

  Spiros went to London to meet Admiral Digby and to deliver in person news of the birth of Leonidas. He was welcomed into the family and his credentials were accepted by the admiral, who henceforward always referred to his daughter as the Countess Theotoky. While Spiros was away, Jane recovered from the birth and, having lost her personal maid, set about finding another. The replacement was Eugénie, a Frenchwoman whose history gained Jane’s immediate sympathy. As the result of a love affair with a married man, identified by Jane only as Monsieur Benoît, Eugénie had given birth to a daughter. The child’s father and his wife had agreed to foster the little girl, and Eugénie had given her week-old baby to them at her family’s insistence. Eugénie would prove a rock for Jane for thirty years.

  After his return from England, Spiros did not stay long in Paris but set out for Greece, where he planned to take Jane as soon as his duties enabled him to do so. It was considered too soon, anyway, to subject Leonidas to such an arduous journey. Jane planned to join her parents in England for the autumn and winter. Her father, now an Admiral of the Fleet, was to take over the Admiralty House at Sheerness in Kent.

  Shortly after Spiros left for Greece, Charles Venningen arrived in Paris. It was to be the last meeting between Charles and Jane, though they would correspond until his death many years later. He had agreed to allow the divorce to go through, and she showed him the statement she had provided to her lawyers. He was shocked to see that in conceding entire responsibility for the breakdown of the marriage she had included many unnecessary facts which were inimical to herself. Charles, who was not a vindictive man, tried to persuade her to edit the document for the sake of her reputation, but she insisted, with the experience of her previous divorce, that she must be sure of a divorce being granted so that Leonidas could be made legitimate.

  When he saw that she was so happy and heard her plans for the future, Charles relinquished all hope. In June 1840 he wrote to her, addressing the letter to ‘Madame Theotoky’.

  Chère amie,

  When you receive these lines I shall be far away from Paris. But my last word for you must be to tell you once more what I have said so many times in person – that my friendship and my attachment to you will end only with my life …

  May you find, in those faraway lands where you will live, the happiness I tried to give you, which … is now lost to me for ever. It is the only true happiness, the kind which lasts until the grave … Think then, under that beautiful sky of the Orient, that in sad cold Germany a warm and faithful heart is beating for you, a heart that will never forget the happiness and heavenly bliss you gave him during several years. If the Almighty should decide otherwise about our fate, remember me still – my house will always be a secure haven for an unhappy Jane.

  Again, farewell my dear one. When I have seen the children to whom I shall give your love and your gifts I shall write again. Write to me soon and tell me your final plans.

  Everything always to you.

  Charles

  Jane and Leonidas went to England in July 1840. On 4 August Jane was present when ‘Sir Henry Digby hoisted his flag in HMS How 120 guns’. Later in the month she accompanied her mother to Minterne House in Dorset, which had become her parents’ home, for a month in the peace and seclusion of the English countryside.1 When the two women rejoined the admiral at Sheerness, Margaret Steele’s sister came over from her home at Margate for a week ‘thinking it would be a great pleasure and advantage to Jane for sketching’. Lady Andover and Jane with their maids accompanied Miss Steele back to Margate on the admiral’s yacht and were caught in a vicious storm which prostrated crew and passengers, all except one.2 ‘Jane was the only person not sea-sick,’ Lady Andover wrote in her diary; ‘the maids nearly dead and myself very ill. I saw by the countenance of the stewards that it was very dangerous but distained to ask questions when I heard the alarms given during the night.’ Jane, the seasoned traveller, actually enjoyed the experience.3

  In November, Edward and Theresa arrived to collect their daughter after a European tour. ‘It was a great happiness to Jane’, wrote Lady Andover, ‘to see her brother whom she thought much altered by the suffering he had endured for five years from ici doloureuse [sic]’. Lady Andover and Theresa tactfully went for a drive around the autumn lanes during which time �
�Jane had a most interesting conversation with her brother in which many things were explained to their mutual satisfaction. The evening passed off very pleasantly.’4 With Jane’s planned departure for Greece, brother and sister thought it unlikely they would see each other again for many years and made the most of their time together.

  Jane’s one regret was that during her visit she did not see her brother Kenelm, to whom she would always be very close. But there was no intimacy between Jane and members of the wider family of Cokes, Ansons and Spencer-Stanhopes. Though her parents and brothers remained close to their relatives, there was never any discussion of Jane’s progress. Her name was never mentioned to the children of the next generation. On one occasion Lady Andover’s young half-brother Henry saw a portrait of a beautiful girl at Minterne and asked who she was. He was ‘told to get on with breakfast’ and not to refer to the matter again. When he next entered the room the picture had been removed. Some time later he found it hanging, face to the wall, in the housekeeper’s room. It was only many years later that he realised who the girl was and why he had been made to feel he had committed a major crime by asking her identity.5

  This may seem petty, but both sides of Jane’s family were closely connected with Queen Victoria’s court. The Queen had visited Holkham shortly before her accession; she was subsequently godmother to one of Edward’s children; and the Ansons were often mentioned in court circulars. Jane was regarded by all as a fallen woman and her kinsmen had no wish to be tainted by association. She accepted that she had brought this upon her own head by yielding to her passionate instincts, and though she was inevitably hurt by the rejection of her wider family she knew that were she able to turn back the calendar she would do the same thing again. However, she deeply regretted the sorrow her choice had caused her parents and brothers and the pain she had caused Charles, for whom she retained a great deal of affection, and was sad that she had failed her Venningen children.

  Jane left in February 1841 for Paris, where she had a joyful reunion with Spiros. A month was spent filling the lists of furniture, saddlery and household effects, and then the couple departed for Greece with Leonidas and the excellent Eugénie. Everything had fallen back into place, it was a new start, and Jane felt truly happy for the first time since her stay in Palermo eight years ago. She knew that she could never again make her home in England; nor, after her divorce, would she ever be allowed to live in Germany. But she was at peace with her family and was going into the future with her beloved Spiros and darling Leonidas. The parting from her parents had been hard, for she worshipped her father, her ‘dearest Babou’ who always forgave her transgressions, her ‘sweet Madre’ who never wavered in her love for her daughter, and Edward whose career and future had been blighted by Jane’s scandals. All knew it would be a long time before they met again. Despite the pain she had caused the family, they loved Jane as though she was still their little Janet. There must have been great sweetness in her nature for her to have retained their affection throughout her tribulations.

  The divorce from Charles was not granted until 1842, possibly because of the length of time it often took for legal documents requiring Jane’s signature to reach her and be returned. In the meantime, as she wrote to her mother, she and Spiros were happy and had undergone a Greek marriage ceremony at Marseille for which Jane was first baptised into the Orthodox faith by immersion in a tin bath.6

  Lady Andover’s chatty letters kept Jane abreast of home news. Admiral Digby (now Admiral Sir Henry Digby) suffered a bad fall from his horse which left him concussed, but this did not prevent him from showing the twenty-year-old Queen Victoria around his flagship, nor from dancing at the Trafalgar Ball. Nor, on 9 November, when news was announced of the birth of a prince and heir to the throne, did his indisposition prevent him from ordering that the mainbrace be spliced, a gun salute fired and a dinner given for all officers in his command. Nearly twenty years later Jane would meet this prince in unusual circumstances. Christmas 1841 found the Digby family all suffering from heavy colds and, as Lady Andover wrote, ‘too unwell to go to church’. By 20 January, Sir Henry’s seventy-second birthday, the admiral was still unwell and had begun to complain of numbness, pains in his arms and nosebleeds. Nevertheless he accompanied Lady Andover and Lady Anson to Holkham.

  Meanwhile Jane and Spiros had moved to the island of Tinos in the Aegean Sea. The island was part of the Cyclades archipelago and adjacent to Andros, Siros, Delos and Mykonos. Jane’s arrival on Tinos was recorded by Alexandre Buchon, a French scholar of Greek medieval history, who was working in the islands. Buchon was aware of Jane’s past:

  April 2nd 1841: We went to St Nicholas (the port of Tinos) to visit Comte Theotoky, the governor and father of Theotoky who has just married Lady Ellenborough. We saw in some of the rooms the furniture she had sent on to Tinos which was being unpacked, among which were her saddles. M. Theotoky told us that his son had sent on these things from Paris before coming to the island where he hoped to stay with his wife for six months at least, but more probably for a year …

  I do not know what stories Theotoky can have told Lady Ellenborough that could have decided her to settle in a country so utterly devoid of comfort, convenience, beautiful scenery and even decent conversation. That she should send her saddles where neither horse nor mule could hold its footing on the steep rocky slopes betrays absolute ignorance of the conditions under which she was going to live, and she will be bitterly disappointed when she sees Tinos as it is, one governor’s house, one barracks, one naval station, one town and one country walk. It will be a bitter expiation of the follies of her youth.7

  The governor knew nothing of Jane’s past, but only a romantic version of her meeting with Spiros. He was under the impression that his son had won her from an English nobleman.

  But that summer, even though she may not have been able to satisfy her urges to ride, was not a punishment for Jane, despite Monsieur Buchon’s sour predictions. She loved the island, the people, learning about Spiros’s family and their customs. Nor was the lack of luxury a penalty to her; the sparsely furnished rooms and the sand that blew in through the open shutters to whisper on the stone floors were the tokens of the life Spiros had promised. The simple freedom appealed greatly to her, and her child grew healthy and strong. She was content to spend her leisure time sketching, and frequently amused herself conducting her own semi-historical surveys of the island.

  She learned that the columns in the tiny church in the village of Panagia had been taken from the temple of Apollo at Delos, and thus she began piecing together something of the island’s history. With the classical history she had learned as a child, and encouraged by her relationship with Ludwig, she embarked upon what would become a lifelong interest that would take her far beyond the barren little Greek island.

  Buchon writes in October of a ball given in honour of the governor’s daughter-in-law, Madame Theotoky; of luncheon parties served by black servants in orange groves; lavish picnics taken by mule to beaches on the other side of the island where a whole lamb was roasted on hot stones and local wine flowed; painting expeditions, and village carnivals and fêtes, all participated in with obvious enjoyment by Jane. She began a new diary, writing neatly on the opening page: ‘Ianthe. Tinos. October 10th 1841.’ The second page is decorated with small pen-and-ink sketches of peasants, shepherds and goatherds in their traditional costume. She would keep this diary for thirteen years until the last page was filled up with her latest adventures in Syria on 31 December 1854.8

  In the early spring of 1842, Jane and Spiros left Tinos for the family estates at Doukades on the island of Corfu. Here, generations of Theotokys had lived and held lands, and for Jane it was a place of enchantment, where lush vegetation flourished. She designed a beautiful garden of terraces and lawns, with roses and the English garden border plants she loved chiefly because they recalled her happy childhood. A cypress tree planted by her is the only surviving remnant of it now, but in Jane’s time her garden was muc
h admired.

  During that spring and summer, she gutted the modest house and decorated it in her favourite classical style with pastel-washed walls, and carved and gilded woodwork reminiscent of that at Holkham. Exquisite watered-silk hangings formed a backdrop for huge mirrors, crystal chandeliers, silver, porcelain and the costly gilded furniture imported from Paris. For Spiros she built a magnificent library modelled on the one at Holkham. With marble pillars, a fireplace, comfortable sofas and Greek statuary it was Spiros’s favourite room in the house.

  The divorce from Charles had been formally granted, but it prohibited her from ‘ever setting foot’ in Germany or Bavaria. Baron Venningen spent the summer at Herrnsheim with his Granville cousins, who called him Baron von Pfeiningen and tried unsuccessfully to throw pretty girls in his way.9 He was unfailingly courteous to them, but for Charles there would never be another woman in his life. He had temporarily lost touch with Jane but when he heard an ugly rumour about her he wrote immediately to the Bavarian consul in Athens for news. The consul replied with a full account of Jane’s life on Tinos including her conversion to the Greek Orthodox faith, and also mentioned that Spiros, who had retired from the Greek army,

  came here [to Athens] last July to see how the land lay. But having ascertained that the Queen was little disposed to receive Madame Theotoky, and that several Athens society houses would perhaps remain closed to her, she seems to have preferred to remain in Tinos … The young couple [are] well and comfortably established … they had announced their intention of going to spend the winter in Corfu if Athens would not do … As for the abduction of the lady by another young Greek, I have not been able to find any further information. If … I should hear of it I should lose no time in writing to your Excellency.10