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

by Mary S. Lovell

  At last the Queen saw a way to revenge herself for all the imagined slights. When the King left Athens on a three-month trip for health reasons, Amalie was appointed Regent. One of her first actions was to send a messenger to Lamia, where General Hadji-Petros was quartered with his troops. The general was to be relieved of his command and the governorship with immediate effect, Amalie ordered.

  Of course, there was nothing to be done except strike camp and return to Athens. But this was not something that could be done in a few hours, and to placate the Queen Xristos scribbled a hasty private message and sent it via her messenger:

  Your Majesty has dismissed me, doubtless because I am living with the Countess Theotoky, but whatever my enemies have told you I can assure you on my word of honour as a soldier, that though I am this woman’s lover it is not for love’s sake, but purely for self-interest!

  She is rich. And I am poor. I have a position to maintain and children to educate.23

  Amalie was not to be placated so easily; she had copies of the letter prominently posted throughout the city for all to read. When Xristos and Jane reached Athens, Jane found herself the target of ridicule and pity.

  Jane would have been justified had she been angry at Hadji-Petros’s public betrayal of her love. It appears that she was not, however, or that any anger she felt was swiftly dispelled when he swore that his letter had been a lie to placate the Queen. Jane chose to believe and forgive him. Xristos and little Eirini were her life now and, as usual when she fell in love, nothing else mattered. But she recognised that if she and Xristos were to make a life for themselves they would have to follow, publicly at least, the rules set up by society. She therefore rented two neighbouring houses with gardens that adjoined, on the outskirts of the city, one for herself and her personal staff, one for Hadji-Petros, his daughter and his retinue of followers.

  Her new accommodation compared poorly with the handsome Kleanthes mansion which was now an embassy. Her friends said that ‘to see Ianthe in such a setting was like seeing a portrait by Lawrence hanging in a kitchen’,24 but she was too busy for self-pity. She set about building a house for herself and Hadji-Petros that was the equal of her former home, with a receiving room fit for a tribal chief to hold his own court, with stables for the Arab horses she intended to buy, and with accommodation and stabling for his Palikare followers. She instructed her legal advisers to obtain an annulment of her marriage with Spiros, on the technical grounds that her Greek Orthodox marriage to him in Marseille in 1841 had been effected before her divorce from the baron had been granted.

  Jane still had a few friends, though she was now ostracised at court under pain of the Queen’s displeasure.25 She met the King privately to beg his intercession but it appears he could do little for her. Amalie’s petty vindictiveness held sway, and those who hoped to retain the Queen’s favour took pains not to be too closely associated with the lovely Ianthe. Of important Athenians only Sophie de Barbe-Marbois, Duchesse de Plaisance, could afford to disregard this edict.

  The Duchesse de Plaisance was a legendary figure in Athens. She was French, the daughter of the Marquis de Barbe-Marbois. As a young woman she married one of Napoleon’s greatest generals, Lebrun, who for his successes was made Duc de Plaisance; his bride was appointed lady-in-waiting to the Empress Marie-Louise. Jane had first met her in Paris in 1831 when her own relationship with Felix was failing and the duchess’s marriage was in much the same state, for she was extremely eccentric and eventually her husband refused to tolerate her whims. Taking her daughter Louise, who – her mother insisted – would marry a prince or no one, she lived a peripatetic existence in various capital cities until she came to Athens, where her daughter died young without fulfilling the regal destiny her mother had predicted for her.

  Living alone with a pack of dogs in a massive mansion on the Kephissa road,26 the old lady suffered many delusions of a mild schizophrenic nature, believing she had been chosen to build a temple on the summit of Mount Pentelicon which would give the world a new faith, an alternative to the Christian religion, with herself as the chief priestess. She also believed, having been told so by a fortune-teller, that she would die within a year of completing the building of a house. Consequently, though she had begun many houses, none was ever completed and thus she expected to live a long time. Despite such whimsical notions she was a harmless creature, and Jane enjoyed her company, for she was an intelligent conversationalist. She is important to Jane’s story because through her we know the chain of circumstances as they next occurred.

  Although immensely wealthy, the duchess was astonishingly mean to all except her dogs, upon whom she doted and lavished every comfort. When she went out in her carriage she was invariably accompanied by half a dozen wolfhounds. ‘Any man who wears gloves’ could introduce himself at her house and be sure of admittance, even if only briefly, but as a rule the duchess did not like women. For some reason, however, she took a great fancy to Jane, who she said was the only woman she could bear to have around her. Jane was staying with the duchess when the French writer Edmond About paid the old lady a visit in February 1852.

  For two years About had been working on a book about contemporary Greece, and wished to talk to the duchess about a recent incident in which she had been held up by the infamous highwayman Bibichi. This gentleman, who turned highwayman when his wife ran off with a lover, was currently operating right up to the outskirts of Athens. He had demanded a ransom of 200,000 drachmas for the old lady’s freedom. She haggled with him, eventually signing an order for 15,000 drachmas which her servant was sent to collect from the city. The servant naturally returned with help and Bibichi was forced to flee without the ransom, but with a present of ten francs which his captive gave him out of pity for his naivety.

  About found the old lady unwilling to discuss her own adventure, but happy to divert him with an amusing story about Jane, who, while painting a view of the city from a vantage-point on Mount Lycabettus,27 had been robbed of a gold chain from around her neck by a handsome young Greek. ‘She told the story all over Athens …“But why”, someone asked, “did you let him come so near?” “But how could I guess”, she answered playfully, “that he was only interested in my chain?”’28

  About was completely disarmed by Ianthe, who was friendly and amusing and had a voice of peculiar sweetness. She was quite different from the hard woman he had been led to expect, and he found the idea of this beautiful and gently bred aristocrat living as a queen of the banditti irresistible.29 Occasionally they met and spoke of her travels in Turkey, and when he wrote his book About devoted more pages to Jane than to the Queen, about whom he was not complimentary. He referred to Jane always by the name Ianthe, and stated that she was by far the most interesting woman in Athens. At the age of forty-five, About said, she was ‘the incarnation of vitality and health’.

  She is tall and slim, without being too thin; if she were a little longer in the waist it would be impossible to find a woman with better proportions. Her feet and hands are those of a thoroughbred, the lines of her face are of incredible purity.

  She has great blue eyes, as deep as the sea, beautiful chestnut hair, highlighted with gold. As for her teeth, she belongs to that elite of the English nation who have pearls in their mouths instead of piano keys. Her complexion has kept that milky whiteness that seems to flourish only in English fogs, but she flushes at the slightest emotion. It is as though this fine transparent skin is only a screen for the passions enclosed within her, which can still be seen stirring beneath the surface, all trembling and rosy.30

  About writes little about Jane’s relationship with Hadji-Petros except a remark that the general was growing old and a curious statement that he ‘sometimes beat her and was capable of killing her one fine day … not out of love’, said About wryly, mimicking the general’s letter to the Queen, ‘but self-interest’. This suggestion of violence sounds an odd note, for it is the only time it was ever mentioned; Jane’s diary entries over the next years, where
she discusses the general on many occasions with the greatest affection, make no mention of it.

  It was just at this point that Jane heard of the death of Felix Schwarzenberg. He had suffered a stroke while dressing to dine with the latest in a long procession of mistresses. He had never married and was just fifty-one when he died with the Austrian Emperor Franz Josef at his bedside. It had been twenty years since Jane had parted from him in Paris. Many years later she spoke of him to a friend, and it is recorded that her eyes filled with tears.31 She always kept a miniature of Schwarzenberg with her.

  When About next visited Athens the following spring the talk of the town was that Ianthe had at last regained her freedom after a tribunal had met to annul her marriage to Theotoky. Her new house was completed and ready for furnishing, and she had given notice on the two rented cottages, devoting her energies to decorating the house ready for occupation. It was said that the bedroom she was decorating for Xristos resembled a throne-room, that there was a garrison for the followers of her affianced lover, complete with a gatehouse for an armed guard, and a uniformed captain, ‘a genuine one’, to serve as gatekeeper.32

  The stables were almost complete, and it was Jane’s intention to return to Syria to purchase one of the rare and costly Arab horses that she had seen and coveted there. She had carefully drawn up lists of items needed to equip the stables: bridles, bits, snaffles and curb chains, Turkish saddles and silk halters, blue horse blankets embroidered in gold, snaffle bridle and saddle for groom, pantaloons for herself. The list had been sent to a French saddler on 17 September 1852,33 and the items arrived as winter gave way to spring. All that was needed now was horses.

  She discussed her forthcoming journey with Edmond About, telling him she would be sailing in early April 1853 from Piraeus to Smyrna in Turkey, where she would take a steamer to Syria. It was the best time of the year to travel in the Lebanon and Syria, when the spring sun was hot but without the oppressive heat of the high summer months. About was himself going to Turkey and would be in Smyrna during the first week of April. They arranged to meet briefly during her stay there.34

  Jane was forty-six on 3 April 1853, and the celebration was marred only by a disagreement with the duchess over the sum settled by Jane on Spiros Theotoky, which the old lady thought stupidly extravagant, and Jane’s equally lavish expenditure on the quarters she was providing for Hadji-Petros in her new house. When the two women parted Jane was full of happy plans for the future, her heart – as her older friend shrewdly perceived – ruling her head. But three days later when, together with Eugénie, she embarked on a ship bound from Piraeus for Beirut, the maid was tearful and Jane was grim-faced. In those few days between her birthday and her departure from Athens Jane had learned that her trusted and much-loved maid Eugénie was having an affair with Xristos.

  Jane had somehow discovered the relationship and Eugéne had confessed, revealing, during one of the many typical stormy exchanges between mistress and maid during their years together, that Xristos had sworn that it was Eugénie he loved, not her mistress. Jane could have forgiven Xristos much, as witnessed by her acceptance of his letter to Amalie, but she would not accept infidelity. She believed Eugénie, for not only had the maid never lied to her, but it seemed to confirm what others had said at the time of his letter to the Queen – that the general was only interested in Jane’s wealth and was not truly in love with her.

  What would any woman do faced with such a dilemma? On the one hand was a faithless lover, on the other an indispensable servant regarded almost as a friend who, though she had acted shamefully in this instance, had supported Jane through joys and great sadnesses, had nursed her through sickness and had always made her life tolerable no matter what the difficulties. Who can blame Jane for concluding that, while men were relatively easy to come by, a good maid was beyond price? With her trip to Syria already organised and her luggage packed, Jane departed, leaving only a curt note for Xristos and, accompanied by an unusually truculent Eugénie, embarked on the steamer to Beirut.

  Edmund About missed meeting Jane at Smyrna. He had arranged an onward journey to Constantinople and had to leave the day before Jane arrived. For months afterwards he made inquiries about her, but a year elapsed before he discovered, on his next visit to the Duchesse de Plaisance in Athens, what had happened.

  Jane’s chief emotion at this time was anger. From her diary we know that she continually asked herself how Xristos could have betrayed her so disgracefully. But her anger was directed at herself rather than at her lover; it was annoyance that she had allowed herself to be talked into almost marrying him. And now, approaching fifty, she was yet again ‘alone, quite alone’. It was time, she reflected, to be done with men and the problems they had caused her throughout her life.35

  She decided to extend the planned trip. It had been her ambition for many years to visit Jerusalem and Damascus, and especially Palmyra, where the ruins of Queen Zenobia’s fabled city lay in the heart of the desert. This was as good a time as any to visit some of those ‘sites of antiquity’, as she called them. Her return to Athens could be delayed indefinitely, until she had decided what to do. Though she did not yet know it, she was about to begin the most interesting years of her life.

  12

  The Road to Damascus 1853

  It is unfortunate that Jane and Edmund About did not keep their appointment at Smyrna.1 Had they met there a detailed version of what Eugénie told Jane, and Jane’s reaction, would surely exist. As it was, she was in Smyrna alone for a week before she could obtain passage on a ship bound for Jaffa (now part of Tel Aviv) calling at half a dozen other ports, including Beirut.

  On her previous visit to ‘Beyrout’ she had apparently gone little further than the port, probably because of the rigid quarantine precautions that prevailed throughout the eastern Mediterranean. Visitors of all ranks were taken from the ships by lighter and herded with long poles into a prison-like building for up to five days. During this time travellers could order meals from a nearby hotel and though the food was good, according to the accounts of diners, the prices were extortionate. There was no alternative; payment was made by dropping coins into a bucket of salt water for cleansing purposes. This time Jane opted for the port of Jaffa, where quarantine was more relaxed and with the aid of well-placed baksheesh might last no more than twenty-four hours.

  As the ship anchored off Beirut she sketched the port from the deck, intending to see more of it on her return, when quarantine would not apply. According to a contemporary writer’s account:

  The world must be very rich in beauty if there exist half-a-dozen places more beautiful than Beyrout … the amphitheatre of mountains, clothed in every hue … the snowy summits towering up behind them; the rugged headland of rocks over which the sea dashes ceaseless wreathes of foam; the city rising from the water’s edge, climbing up the slopes of hills, adorned with gardens, minarets, domes and mosques, castles and palaces, the scattered palm trees and bright colours dotting every street and quay make a tout ensemble which … rests in the mind in an everlasting memory of loveliness.2

  At each port of call, loading and unloading could take twenty-four hours or more, but Jane had no reason to hurry and as a seasoned traveller was happy to be diverted by new sights, sounds and scents. From Jaffa, she intended to visit Jerusalem and other biblical and archaeological sites before making her way to Damascus.

  During the journey she spent most of her time reading the new books she had acquired about Syria, and sketching.3 More importantly, by the end of the sea journey she had already resolved that there would be no reconciliation with Hadji-Petros. Though she felt great affection for him, she had no desire to be financier for a man who could deceive her with her own maid. This still hurt. ‘Why was he so infamous with Eugénie?’ she wrote agitatedly in her diary. ‘Eugénie! who he could never love. While I?…’ She did not finish the entry.4 There were to be many similar entries over a period of eighteen months, as if she could not bring herself to believe
that the two people closest to her could be guilty of such betrayal, but she never wavered in her resolve to cut him out of her life. Yet for a long time she worried about the ‘fate’ of the general and his daughter Eirini.

  At Jaffa, where the ships of the King of Tyre had once brought the materials to build the Temple of Solomon, and the whale had cast up Jonah upon the beach, her depression lifted. The perfidy of Xristos and Eugénie diminished and she became ‘elate[d] and happy as usual on commencing a journey, especially one in search of l’inconnu’.5 Her first task was to engage a dragoman – a useful combination of guide, secretary and interpreter whose duty was to organise the route and see to all the necessary details regarding the comfort and feeding of travellers and animals and pitching and striking camp. More importantly, he would steer the party clear of any difficulties and danger. The Druses were apparently in revolt in Djebel Hauran and parts of the Anti-Lebanon, and several roads were notorious for violent robberies, especially of rich ‘Franks’ (as Europeans were known), so a strong escort of guards was essential.