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

by Mary S. Lovell

  The sudden loss of her husband and the death of her child left Jane rudderless. From being fulfilled and happy, she was reduced, at the age of almost forty, to a life with no direction. She knew that if she turned to Charles he would have taken her back, but that was no answer; she still recalled the utter boredom of her life in Mannheim. Nor would an appeal to the sixty-year-old Ludwig have been timely, for ‘Basily’ was ensconced in the arms of his greatest love, the beautiful raven-haired pseudo-Spanish dancer Lola Montez. Within two years, Ludwig’s unquestioning championship of Lola’s arrogant and tempestuous behaviour would cost him his throne, but in the meantime the man who had so often discussed with Jane the ‘supreme joy’ of ‘being in love’ was in thrall to the extent that nothing else mattered – not his kingdom, his family, nor even the city that had been his creation.3

  What little information can be gleaned about Jane’s life after Spiros left for Italy is contained in letters between her and Charles Venningen in 1847. She had travelled to Italy from ‘the East’ where she had been touring, she wrote on 21 May 1847 from Livorno in Italy. She had just been to see Spiros, who was living in Pisa with his mistress, to try to get his agreement to a divorce. Spiros had countered that, though he hoped to obtain a consular position, he had at present no income, having given up his position at court on Jane’s insistence. While he remained Jane’s husband he still had a legal call on her income and properties; he insisted that in the event of divorce there would have to be some financial settlement.

  Expecting no sympathy from Charles, she wrote to inform him that his instinctive distrust of the count had been completely vindicated. Venningen replied that he had already heard about the death of Leonidas and the situation regarding Jane’s marriage from Edward Digby:

  Your letter … disclosed nothing new to me. I have known about it for a long time and could see that you would be forced to take the decision that you have. Your mother and Miss Steele will be able to tell you that in Paris I predicted everything that has just happened and begged them to dissuade you from taking the calamitous step of getting married. Unfortunately for you they thought it was my jealousy speaking … I was not listened to and now we have the result.

  You are mistaken … in thinking that your misfortune is my triumph. I never desired revenge; on the contrary I only ever wanted you to be happy although I was certain that with a man such as he, no woman could be. But what is the use of vain words which cannot console you … it is your fault … You wanted and arrogantly demanded a legal judgement to separate from me. You had your way and it is beyond human power to efface the consequences.

  Heribert was a page at court, Charles continued; he had been there for five years, in return receiving a first-class education. ‘He is getting on very well there, they are pleased with him and he is happy. I have no worries on his account … he will have a brilliant future.’ Bertha was causing him concern, for she could be difficult.

  I was obliged to remove her from the institute in Munich for several reasons, the main one being my mother, who now lives in Munich. Bertha is now in a convent with a governess and a maid … in her own apartment. It is very expensive but at least I have the satisfaction of … knowing that since she has been there she is much better … If her character one day corresponds with her pretty face and her charming figure I will not be anxious about her future.4

  Regarding financial matters, Charles had made provision for both children, and this, added to the sum of 20,000 florins ‘that you have bequeathed’ and a similar legacy from their grandmother Venningen, meant they would be respectably endowed. He ended by entreating her not to be foolish in her settlement with Theotoky. ‘Do not’, he begged, ‘lose sight of your material interests in this sad event. In your case generosity would be stupid. It is a question of salvaging from this horrible shipwreck everything which you still have. At least salvage enough for a financially independent existence. The world is large and, with the exception of Germany, is open to you.’5

  During the next year Jane travelled in Turkey, and from casual references years later we know that she also visited Egypt and sailed up the Nile.6 Her diary entries for those lonely years have not survived, but subsequently she recalled that in Constantinople she had seen the whirling dervishes7 and had visited a seraglio. Perhaps she noted from Galliani, a newspaper which she habitually read no matter where she travelled, that Felix Schwarzenberg had been made Prime Minister of Austria. But her life now was that of a wanderer, with no ties, no direction. She travelled from one city to another, observing in the detached manner of an artist the costumes and architecture, her only strong emotion being reserved for the lives of women in the East which she regarded as appalling.

  Shortly after her return to Athens from a tour of Egypt in the winter of 1848–9 Jane, who had hardly known a day’s illness in her life, contracted what she called ‘brain fever’, undoubtedly a severe case of malaria. For weeks she was dangerously ill, delirious and insensible, and if Eugénie had not nursed her so devotedly she might well have died. Even so, for the rest of her life she would suffer from nausea and headaches, sudden fevers and rigors that struck without warning. With the help of a quinine preparation she recovered, spending a long period convalescing; in the heat of the summer she went to stay in the cool mountains of Cyprus.

  In the autumn of 1849 she took a house in Rome,8 where, according to one biographer, she experienced some problems, being apparently involved with three suitors at one time.

  At a ball given in Rome by the Princess Corci, Jane met an Italian artillery officer. She succumbed to his flattery, accepted his gift of a diamond necklace and was considering his proposal of marriage. Then another suitor, an Italian army captain, told her that her prospective groom was an impoverished scoundrel who had cheated a jeweller out of the necklace. This charge proved to be true.

  The artillery officer went to jail, and the captain prepared to lead Jane to the altar. But by then she had turned to a young diplomat, the son of an Italian ambassador. Infuriated, the captain challenged the diplomat to a duel. Both assumed she would marry the survivor. The duel was fought with swords and the diplomat, though badly slashed about the face, ran the captain through. When the diplomat thereupon demanded Jane’s hand and she refused him, he killed himself.9

  It has not been possible to substantiate this story, and, whereas Jane subsequently occasionally mentioned in the diaries she kept until her death the names of Ellenborough, Anson, Schwarzenberg, Venningen and Theotoky, there was never any mention of this triumvirate of Italian suitors. However, since Jane had no ties and no responsibilities, there were undoubtedly casual love affairs about which no information survives.

  By now she had passed her fortieth birthday. Yet many writers and diarists testified that she looked far younger than her age – no more than thirty, according to the writer, Edmond About, when he met her several years later. The illness following her long period of mourning had left her thin, but the only other obvious evidence of age was a number of white streaks in her golden hair, which added an attractive element of maturity and an appearance of fragility suggesting gentleness.

  The winter of 1850 found Jane travelling again ‘in the East’, according to a family history. Later Edmond About would note she had travelled extensively in Turkey and spoke the language well.10 Notes in her sketchbook recorded that she had returned to Athens by May 1851 before travelling via Corfu, Trieste, Venice and Milan to meet her mother in Switzerland.11 Here she spent much of the time quietly painting, and produced a large portfolio of watercolours which were left to her brother Kenelm after her death. When she parted from her mother Jane went back to Athens via Rome and Naples.

  Jane’s lifelong habit of making lists of everything reveals what she wore, her taste in books, furniture, food and even flowers; what she packed to travel, what medications she took and the type of tack she carried around for her riding horses. There are lists of letters she needed to write, so we know who were her regular correspondents, while
her detailed accounts reveal the manner in which she travelled. Thus on her journey to Switzerland we know that on the boat between Piraeus and Trieste she paid extra for a separate table and her own personal waiter. In Trieste she hired a carriage for herself and Eugénie, and a baggage car to follow them to Venice. There was the hire of a ‘bateau’ to take them into the city and, once settled in her hotel, she hired a gondola to go sightseeing and to make calls during her two-day stay. Each day she recorded her taking breakfast, tea and dinner, the cost of each meal and the gratuity. Seats were purchased on the chemin de fer to Milan, where she took a diligence to her hotel. Every item down to the smallest tip was written down and totalled.12

  Her return to Athens, now as close to being her home as anywhere else, found her still footloose. The single constant in her life was Eugénie, to whom, after the break-up of her marriage, the death of Leonidas and her illness, Jane owed much.13 In a period of some twenty-five years Jane had experienced three marriages and borne six children, yet she had nothing to show for it. She felt like a middle-aged nomad.

  The house at Doukades was a Theotoky property, though she had ploughed large sums into its refurbishment. Spiros felt he had some claim on the Athens house, but following the baron’s advice Jane sold it. Jane visited Corfu on several occasions during these years of wandering but never stayed there more than a few days at a time. Eventually she agreed that Spiros was to take everything at Doukades, including all her silver and crystal, and a capital sum. It was the price demanded for her liberty, and she had reached a stage where she wanted to be free of the man for whom she had once cared enough to desert her home, but who had been unfaithful to her.

  Despite her settlement on Spiros, Jane was still able to live lavishly. Her rented house was a rendezvous for the attractive young people of Athens and according to a friend she ‘lived in the French manner’, holding salons and regular dances.14 It was a tolerable life, but it was empty of affection. Her return to the city was welcomed by King Otto, but Jane found the Queen still implacably opposed to her. Nevertheless she was a frequent guest at court in the winter season of 1851–2, usually in the company of her new friend, the bizarre Duchesse de Plaisance, in whose partly built palace she often stayed.

  Athens had grown in the twelve years since Jane had known it, but it had many problems, chiefly overcrowding and the personal safety of its citizens. It was said that in 1852 Athens had 20,000 inhabitants but only 2,000 houses. Situated as it was amidst ‘wild hills and mountains, it was Arcadia infested by brigands’.15 When Athenians referred to brigands at that time, they often meant Palikares, the legendary Albanian mercenaries who had fought with such valour in the Greek War of Independence, or the Grizottis, who had banded together in something approximating an army. During the harsh winters these ruthless men were not above turning to highway robbery to support their families. Within an hour’s ride of Athens travellers were frequently stripped of all their possessions and left to walk naked into the city for help.

  In the winter of 1852 travelling conditions in northern Greece and Albania were so perilous that King Otto was forced by public indignation to take positive action. To curb the activities of the brigands was no easy task, and it was clear that anyone taking on such a task would need to know how these predators thought, where they hid, how they lived. Consequently Otto invited to Athens, as poacher turned gamekeeper, the man Palikares regarded almost as their king, Xristodolous Hadji-Petros. His brief was to restore and maintain safe passage on the highways and to quell skirmishes between the border factions. Hadji-Petros was appointed the King’s General in the province of Lamia, and Governor of Albania.

  When Hadji-Petros first came to court his wild romantic looks and dress, not to mention his reputation of being half soldier, half bandit, caused many hearts to flutter – even Queen Amalie’s. Although he was past sixty he was still powerfully built, a tall, handsome man, full of humour, self-confidence and the joy of living.16 Prior to his court appointment he had been chief of a former Moldavian colony settled for centuries in Albania, who made their living from tax collecting and acting as mountain guides and muleteers. ‘He ruled in as princely fashion as he dressed. He wore Albanian costume, all crimson and gold embroideries, and he bristled with pistols and yataghans, which he did not hesitate to use. His horses were trapped out in gold and silver … he breathed fire and adventure.’17

  At first Jane saw only the flamboyant chieftain of the mountain men. But when she was introduced to him and he confided something of his life in the mountains, and talked of his late wife and his love for his children, she began to see a man for whom she could care. It was five years since her marriage with Spiros had ended and Leonidas had been killed. Spiros was still living in Italy, separated from his first mistress and now talking of marrying the spoiled daughter of a rich Athenian family when he and Jane were divorced. There would be two more wives in quick succession before he died in Russia, where he was Greek consul.18 Though the ties that had bound her to Spiros were not yet legally severed, Jane was responsible to no one. When Xristos, as she called him, began to court her she was ready for a romantic interlude.

  Romance was exactly what she got. Xristos and his band of Palikares dressed, said Edmond About, in ‘leggings fastened up to the knees, red slippers, fustanellas drawn tight around the waist in little folds, a sash and narrow garters of coloured silk … a red cap with blue tassel’; the ensemble was completed at court with scarlet silk jackets and gaiters embroidered with gold, and cloaks of white wool or less formally of sheepskin. When the Palikare troop left Lamia for the new governor’s first tour of duty, Jane went with them. She was in love, and Xristos said he loved her. Perhaps it was not the great love she had shared with Felix and Spiros, but she felt secure in the relationship and for the first time in years was prepared to make a serious commitment.

  The possibility of their marriage was under discussion; meanwhile she lived openly as his consort in caves, in open camps under a vast canopy of stars, in deserted castles or military forts. She rode alongside him across dusty plains or on mountain tracks, cooked for him over open fires and looked after his small daughter Eirini, who was then about eight and wrung Jane’s heart with her dark curls, huge eyes and pathetically thin little body. Eirini filled a void left by Leonidas and came to mean a great deal to Jane. It was to Jane that the child went for comfort in the dark, and Jane who sang her to sleep with lullabies she had learned for Leonidas. And always there in the background was Eugénie, who kept Jane’s clothes folded neatly, who washed and brushed her mistress’s hair and found some way of organising a toilette even in the most difficult situations.

  Jane had always been physically athletic; she was as good a rider and shot as any of Xristos’s men; indeed, it was her proud boast that she could kill a partridge from the saddle at the gallop. Living rough was a challenge that she met happily and enjoyed. And after several years of wandering she felt there was, once again, a purpose in her life. In Xristos she found a tender and passionate lover, a man of stature who told her that she was a queen among women, that he was grateful for the love she gave his children, and that he was enslaved by her beauty.

  In the province of Lamia, a Palikare stronghold that had once been the haunt of Mediterranean pirates, wrote Edmond About,

  Ianthe imagined she was born Palikar … and that she was a Queen reigning over Lamia. The entire town was at her feet and when she came out to go for a walk the drums were beating in the fields. This delicate woman lived with drunkards, galloped on horseback in the mountains, ate literally on the move, drank retsina, slept in the open beside a great fire.19

  The ‘delicate woman’ had once been an elegant girl who sat on the gilded Chippendale chairs of Holkham Hall, singing Italian love-songs to a lovelorn scholar; and now she dressed in a simple cotton shift embroidered with coloured silks and adorned with a broad woollen sash.20 This was freedom, this was life!21 Now she regretted selling the Athens mansion and decided that when they returned she
would build another house there in which she and Xristos could live when he was not patrolling his territory. She planned that after her divorce from Spiros they would marry. Unfortunately, she reckoned without the woman she would subsequently describe in her diary as her ‘rival’.22

  When the Queen heard how Jane had left Athens, gaily riding beside Xristos Hadji-Petros at the head of the colourful troop of Palikares, she was filled with jealous anger. The daughter of a powerful Grand Duke, she had come almost as a child to a kingdom that had seemed to everyone to have a golden future. But now she was an embittered woman, disappointed to find that her handsome bridegroom, hardly older than herself, was an inept ruler, his head filled with daydreams rather than plans, totally inadequate for the role history had allotted to him. Their Greek subjects had eventually rebelled at the Germanic culture the young couple imposed at court, and the consequences were that Otto and Amalie now had little real power other than as social leaders.

  Amalie lived her life through the intrigues of the court and was renowned for her swift retribution against anyone who offended her. By 1852, when she was thirty-five, it was said that there was nothing easier than to displease the Queen and nothing harder than to win back her favour. It was also said that, while Otto reigned, Amalie ruled. She was as unhappy as she was unpopular.

  She spent her considerable energy in gardening, hard riding and dancing, and it was not unusual for her to get up at 3 a.m. to go swimming in the sea at Phalerum. King Otto was as delicate as his queen was robust. Probably Amalie would have liked nothing better than to present her husband with a nursery of healthy heirs, but no children came.

  However, the Queen was first a woman, and like many woman at court she had fancied herself half in love with the colourful General Hadji-Petros, who had obviously gone to some lengths to charm her. The writer Senior Nassau gave strong hints about the Queen’s fascination for Hadji-Petros in his journal, saying that the general maintained his power at the court by virtue of ‘a relationship that could not be openly avowed’. It is extremely unlikely that there was anything physical between Xristos and the Queen, but Amalie believed she owned his allegiance. Her court seemed dull in his absence, and, though she could not object when he left it to go about the work of keeping the King’s peace, when she learned that Ianthe, her despised rival of many years, had apparently snatched the general from under her nose, she decided on revenge. In the meantime she obtained petty satisfaction by bringing to the attention of Athenian society the most recent disgraceful episode in Ianthe’s shameful life. It was surely scandalous, she averred, that such a woman should be openly living with the King’s general; and furthermore it was an insult to the high office granted to the chief of the Palikares. Obviously Ianthe was using her personal wealth to hold the general in thrall. The constant drip of acid, allied to the necessity of retaining the Queen’s favour, took effect. People who had once admired Jane now recognised that she was not acceptable.