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

by Mary S. Lovell

  For the next two days the party did not make camp but took short breaks during the day to feed and rest. After four days’ toiling under a desert sun even the most ardent conversationalist grows quiet. The eyes ache from the reflected glare of the sun, sand dries the nostrils, and the burning air hurts the nasal membranes with each intake of breath. Medjuel showed Jane how to cover her face with the keffiyeh, and even how to sleep by twisting and lying down curled around the pommel. The long, even stride of the camel, unlike the short, quick step of a horse, made this feasible, and she found that to ease the tedium of the hours she could read, or even write in her diary, as they rode.

  A general listlessness settled on the party, except for the ever alert Medjuel, but at last they reached the pass that led to the ruined city, always thereafter called by Jane by its old Arab name of Tadmor rather than the classical Palmyra. According to the Bible,27 the ancient oasis city of ‘Tadmor in the wilderness’ was built by King Solomon (tedmur being ancient Hebrew for palm). After the defeat of Queen Zenobia the Romans called the ruins Adrianopolis, but the Arabs have never called it by anything other than its ancient Arabic name.

  Apathy dropped away, and the party quickened their pace and craned eagerly for the first glimpse of their goal, the 12th century Saracen citadel built on the hill overlooking the ruined city. First they had to ride through the Valley of the Dead with its unique tower tombs, 150 of them, bearing names such as the Bride’s Tomb, Maiden’s Tomb or King’s Tomb, not because of the status of the inhabitants but because the style of building suggested such a name.

  At last they crested a hill and the ruined city lay spread out before them. If Jane had been struck by Damascus, how much more moved was she now by this massive uninhabited city with its magnificent temples, triumphal arches and colonnaded streets. More than three miles in length, Tadmor gleamed with the dazzling purity of ivory. At dawn the stone would flush pink, and in the rays of the setting sun turn to rose-gold.

  News of their arrival had preceded them. Horsemen galloped out to meet them from the nearby village, welcoming them noisily as they relayed an invitation from Sheikh Mohammed (no relation to Medjuel) to his home. First, however, Medjuel led his party to a large walled garden shaded by trees. A small pool, fed by a hot sulphur spring, gave off an unpleasant smell, but the waters were crystalline.

  The first necessity was to bathe, and Medjuel showed the women where they could wash in private in a warm stream. The men meanwhile erected the tents and formed the camp that would be their base for the duration of their stay. The great floppy water-bags made of goatskins were refilled from the stream and hung in the branches of a tree. Within hours the smell of sulphur had disappeared and the water was cool and sweet to drink.

  By the time they had eaten it was dark, and Jane’s first, unforgettable experience of the ancient city was by moonlight as she wandered about with Medjuel through the Great Arch and along the main street, its paving still bearing ruts made by the wheels of chariots. The colonnade and buildings were now bathed in delicate light, and the desert air was warm and soft.

  Next morning she was up at dawn and spent part of the day going over the massive temple of Bel, the sun-god, and the other major buildings. Medjuel accompanied her and sat watching as she sketched, keeping at bay the inquisitive townspeople who had wandered over to see the Christian woman. Apart from architectural detail her notebook is dotted with small pencilled working sketches of cloaked figures hunched round a fire, tents and ropes forming a background, with camels grazing, and picturesque bunches of bedouin lances, their metal tips stuck into the sand, but always ready as weapons.

  In the evening they visited the Sheikh of Palmyra, a privilege Jane did not enjoy. As they rode into the town the people swarmed out in a mob and hung on to Medjuel’s legs, kissing his hands and knees, shrieking a noisy welcome. Jane feared they would pull him off his camel. She and Eugénie were objects of considerable curiosity and were pulled this way and that by the women who also wished to hug and kiss them. She was not impressed by the townspeople, who she decided were

  unmitigated barbarians; they are fellaheen of the lowest order, permitted by the Bedouins to live within the town, on condition of their acting as purveyors to the tribes. The caravans from Aleppo, Damascus and Bagdad all touch there … They are a rough, rude set and have all the vices of the Bedouin without any of his virtues.28

  Wherever she went the women tried to examine her person, her hair and her clothes. She found them ignorant, verminous and revolting, and her impression of the men was not much better. The only mitigation she admitted was in the display of horsemanship and obvious love of the Sheikh of Palmyra for his beautiful Arab mare, which Medjuel valued at £1,800, stressing that even so she would only be sold in the event of some great misfortune which obliged her owner to part with her.29

  Too soon, it was time to leave. Jane was already planning a return visit the following year. Medjuel may have smiled at this. The few European travellers he had escorted all said the same thing but none had ever returned. So unique was the experience that almost everyone who made the trip wrote about it, and so unusual that most accounts were published. By now Medjuel was fairly bewitched by Jane, but strangely, perhaps because of his age, she appears to have been unaware of it. Her journal speaks of Saleh and Selaine, her ‘handsome, tall Jordan friends’, and she was looking forward to seeing them again. The return to Damascus was as full of interest for Jane as the journey out, but it was free of incident.

  During one of their conversations Medjuel told her that this was the year he was to make his hadj to Mecca. It is a measure of his regard for Jane that he suggested she accompany him, and a little surprising that she did not accept the offer.30 That would have been an adventure. The only infidel ever to visit the holy city and live to tell the story was the adventurer and explorer Richard Burton. Burton spoke fluent Arabic and with his swarthy skin and black hair had disguised himself effectively enough to get away with it, all the time knowing that had he been discovered, by the merest slip in the Muslim ritual, it would have meant instant death. The hadj was filled with dangers of all sorts, not only from the arduous journey itself but from the risks of cholera and plague that every year broke out and killed thousands of pilgrims.

  At last the travellers came in sight of Damascus and its trees, orchards and gardens. After days in the arid wastes the desert travellers could smell the water,

  like a thirsty horse, [and] hear its gurgling long before [reaching] the rills and fountains … scent, and then see, the fruit, the limes, figs, citron and water-melon … feel a madness to jump into the water, to eat a fill of fruit, to go to sleep under the delicious shade … forget the bitter wind, the scorching sun, the blistering sand.

  You dream away the last two or three hours of the journey, wondering if it is true, or [whether] your brain is hurt by the sun, or your blinded eyes see a mirage. But your tired, drooping horse tells you it is true. He pricks up his ears, knows he is near home, would like to break out into a mild trot if he could, stops to drink at every rill and with a low whinny of joy gathers a mouthful of grass as he passes every crop.31

  The sensual joys of a bath are truly known only to those who have journeyed long in the desert. Bathed and rested, Jane spent some time looking at horses recommended by Medjuel. She decided to wait in Damascus to watch him depart on the hadj. It was a spectacle not to be missed and one, though she did not yet know it, she would witness many times in the future.

  For weeks, since the start of Ramadan, pilgrims from all over central Asia had converged on Damascus. Here they sold their horses and purchased camels for the desert march. The departure of the pilgrims occurred after several days of feasting, celebrations and processions, all accompanied by military bands, during which excited crowds of citizens, from shopkeepers to the pampered inhabitants of harems, went en fête in the streets.

  Every balcony and window overlooking the route was packed with sightseers, and with the assistance of the Brit
ish consul Jane obtained a good view. All around them was the sound of bands playing ‘wild and wailing music’, and street vendors, the sweetmeat-sellers, carpet-sellers, water-carriers, all vying with each other to advertise their wares. As the procession approached, a deathly silence fell as thousands of pilgrims, from the opulent court of the emir, wali and mushir in their golden palanquins, to the military escort and bedouins who would protect and police the massive caravan, down to the poorest pilgrim, filed through the gates of the city. Many were riding the hadj donkeys but among them sheikhs on their priceless desert horses that were ‘only seen on such days. A blood horse seldom costs here less than 200 or 300 Napoleons, but a mare has no price, she is too precious. She might be £40,000 in shares, if one of the three real old races, and her pedigree beyond dispute.’ Finally the hundreds of baggage camels, bearing chests of luggage and merchandise, marked the end of the procession.

  Jane stayed on in Damascus for a few days before leaving with a small escort organised by Medjuel for the return journey. She met Selaine as arranged, and when she parted from him at Beirut repeated her intention of returning again in three months. She was already thinking of buying a house in Syria, perhaps as a pied-à-tere for expeditions.

  She arrived in Greece in July, but there was no sensation of homecoming. She spent her entire time there, some six weeks, placing her affairs in order so that she could return to Syria in the autumn. Hadji-Petros was not in Athens, which was probably a good thing; but Jane was annoyed to find that her jewellery casket, which she had left behind, had vanished. She hoped that the general had taken it for safe-keeping and could only be grateful that the more important pieces she had either placed in a vault or taken with her.

  Somehow, the story of the adventurous trip to Syria had reached the ears of the Duchesse de Plaisance, though the two women did not see each other during those weeks. Jane’s trip to Palmyra, her attraction to Saleh, her search for a horse and her imminent return to Syria gave birth to the extraordinary tales that would spread about Athens after her departure, adding to the ‘Ianthe’ legend.

  Among the correspondence that Jane found awaiting her was news from her mother that her first love, George Anson, had achieved the rank of major-general, and had been appointed to command a division in India. How long ago that life seemed to her now.

  When Jane had left Athens a few months earlier she had been full of anger. Indignation had sustained her in the initial stages of her journey and caused her conclusion that men had brought her nothing but problems. But when the anger subsided uncertainty had taken over. She was nearly fifty, with no direction to her life. What was she to do, where go? In Athens she was unwelcome in top society because of her rivalry with the Queen; and she had quarrelled with the duchess, removing her only real mainstay (later, Jane would regret not calling on her old friend to make peace).32 Secure in her relationship with Hadji-Petros these things had seemed unimportant. Recent events had changed that perspective and Jane knew that, were it to become gossip that her high-profile relationship with Hadji-Petros had ended because he had preferred her maid, her enemies would ensure she became a laughing stock as well as a social pariah. But her journey to Jordan and Syria had opened new vistas. She went about her business decisively, buoyed by the exciting prospect of a new home in an exotic location, new friends and a fresh purpose. By the beginning of October Jane had put the newly completed house in Athens up for sale and was on her way back to Beirut.33

  13

  Arabian Nights 1853–1854

  9 October 1853. Off Beyrout.

  Here I am at last. My ardent wish is almost gratified, to see Saleh again … before long I shall know if I am to remain. Syria, Palestine. With how many sweet and fraught remembrances are you known to me.1

  The above extract was written in code, not in Jane’s diary but in a page of one of the small leather-bound pocket sketchbooks she always carried with her. As with her diary, anything Jane considered to be especially sensitive was written in this code. She knew her brother Edward would remember it, and in letters to him she included phrases written in it.2 In her diaries it was probably done to ensure that her most private thoughts were not read by Eugénie.

  Jane rode from Beirut to Jerusalem, then south to Hebron (present-day Al Khalil), where she expected to meet Saleh. But he was away when she arrived and it was close to the end of the month when she wrote, ‘He came at last!’ A few days later, on 2 November, she was jotting down hints of disillusionment. ‘Hebron. The charm is dissolving. Night at Hebron a disappointment. Grasping disposition. Gave £20 to Selaine; £3 to Saleh; £2 to Abou. Not so poor as they look, live well in their way.’ Then she made a list of what look to be the disadvantages of Saleh:

  His fanaticism

  Coldness in love.

  Can he obtain Selaine’s position?

  Sabba!3

  It was the last disadvantage, however, that tipped the balance. Saleh had with him a young, dark-eyed girl of the Moseineh tribe. Confident in her youth and ‘insolent in her beauty’, her name was Sabba. It was ‘Sabba … who kept Saleh’s heart from me,’ Jane wrote; and she had no intention of playing second fiddle to a girl half her age. Apart from this, though not actually stated, there are sufficient hints throughout her diary that there were frequent calls upon her purse from both Selaine and Saleh. Jane returned to Beirut, and there on 26 November she wrote in her notebook, ‘Second departure from Beyrout and parting from Saleh.’4

  The note ‘departure from Beyrout’ is intriguing, for it sounds as though she sailed from the port. Yet three weeks later she was in Damascus, having talked her way into another ‘adventure’, even more fraught with danger than the trip to Palmyra. The journey from Beirut to Piraeus could hardly be done in under twelve days and she could not have travelled to and from Greece in three weeks. The probability is that even when the promised relationship with Saleh failed to materialise she could not bring herself to return to Greece. Arabia still promised much.

  At Damascus she met Medjuel and told him that she wished to make another desert journey. He was unable to escort her, since he was obliged to go with his tribe to their winter grazing. She explained what had happened at Hebron, which she said had ended any possibility of her making her home there. Instead she was now considering building a house in Damascus.

  To her surprise Medjuel then asked her if she was willing to marry a bedouin. Himself. She had known he was attracted to her, but, since ‘no word of love had ever passed his lips’, she was, unusually for Jane, taken aback by the question. She told him that if she loved him she would certainly be prepared to consider his proposition were he not already married, but it was against her religion for a man to take more than one wife. The word ‘divorce’ hung over the discussion.

  Afterwards Jane hardly knew what to think, and her questions and reasoning on the matter run like a theme through her diary. Was it a serious proposal? Medjuel was twenty years younger than she. She was not in love with him, at least not in the way she had always defined love. Was their genuine liking for each other a sufficient star-sight by which to set her compass? Could he grow to love her? Could she grow to love him? What part in the marriage of a bedouin did love, as opposed to sex, play? She had been told that the bedouin never married outside their culture; indeed, their own blood-lines were as pure as those of their prized mares. Would she be accepted by his people? And, supposing Medjuel divorced his wife to marry Jane, what would her family in England think of her marrying an Arab? ‘What an abyss into which I have plunged,’ she wrote.

  Soon afterwards Jane arranged to join a desert caravan under the direction of Sheikh el Barak, a bedouin well known to Medjuel. Barak was not the cultured man that Medjuel was, but it would be some time before Jane discovered this flaw. Meanwhile he was another striking and confident man of the desert who flattered her with attention; furthermore, for an undisclosed sum he was prepared to take Jane along on his four-month trip across the desert to Baghdad to buy camels and other commoditie
s. Medjuel appears to have made no attempt to dissuade her from going. When they parted he had still spoken no word of love, nor had he even kissed her, and Jane was unsure whether or not to take seriously their earlier conversation regarding marriage.

  She had learned that Medjuel now had only one wife, Mascha. She was the mother of his two sons, one of whom, Afet (meaning ‘gift), had been born to Mascha since Jane’s trip to Palmyra. A second and younger wife, Minouah, who had been very beautiful, had been divorced for some reason that Medjuel seemed reluctant to discuss, but that Jane later learned was because (as Jane wrote in code) ‘of her bad smell’. Would he really be prepared to divorce the mother of his two sons, Jane wondered. And could she, Jane, live with the knowledge that he had cast off a wife for her? And, supposing Jane was to become Medjuel’s wife, could she live as a bedouin? She had enjoyed the desert journeys more than any experience in her life, but was honest enough to recognise that discomfort had been tempered by novelty and the knowledge that she would return shortly to a normal life. The considerations seemed endless and were still troubling her when she left Damascus with Eugénie. A measure of her intentions can be divined by her determination to make the journey to Baghdad not as a Frankish tourist but as a working member of the caravan, to see how she might adapt to the life of a bedouin.