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

by Mary S. Lovell

  Just as on the previous trip, the women agreed to wear Arab clothes, but they felt less self-conscious this time, recognising their advantages. On Monday 19 December Jane left Demetri’s hotel at Damascus, ‘dressed as a Bedouin Sheikh in holiday clothes, to join my camp. Thus I begin my assay into Bedouin life’.5 Eugénie, ever faithful, shadowed Jane. Because so little is known of Eugénie, it would be easy to think of her as a faithful but insipid servant. Certainly she was faithful (apart from her lapse with Hadji-Petros) but as the next few weeks would reveal she was far from insipid.

  When she kept her face covered, Jane’s stature usually fooled people, for she was as tall as a bedouin man; ‘the women crowded around and took me for a man, but they were not intrusive,’ she wrote.6 It was to occur several times. But it was agreed that, should there be no alternative but to admit her gender, it would be best if she pretended to be Barak’s wife. The party consisted of Barak, Jane and Eugénie, twenty-five aghaylats (guards), some camel drivers and sundry others. The journey began well. ‘Lovely was Damascus last night,’ Jane wrote, ‘and lovely too in the morning as I mounted my donkey, elate in spirits. But as I passed the well-known road which branched off to Tadmor thoughts and regrets of Medjuel intruded themselves and made me look upon my present journey with distaste.’7

  Barak had made it clear from the beginning that it was not going to be a pleasure trip – the winter months in the desert are often bitterly cold and wet – and the first week was as miserable as he had forecast. Jane made light of the hardships, but a man who was to become her friend, the great and fearless traveller, Richard Burton, who made the same trip at the same time of year a decade later, said of it:

  Our hardships were considerable; the country was under water and the rushing torrents and deep ditches caused long detours. We had heavy and continuous rain, furious blasts, snow and sleet like Norway. One of the followers sickened and died, and we were all frostbitten … Throughout Syria, when the basaltic soil runs to any depth the earth is loose and treacherous, fatiguing to traverse in summer and impassable in winter.8

  Each day was the same: they got out of their beds more or less fully dressed, and a toilette usually consisted of shaking the sand or mud out of one’s clothes and hair. Those responsible for the animals went to see to them, some coaxed the embers of the fire into life and heated coffee, or fetched bowls of warm, frothy camel’s milk. Others started to strike the tents to pack and load them, or fill the leather water-bags for refreshment while they travelled. Jane would travel this route many times in the future and her experience would stand her in good stead. Christmas came and went, marked only by the fact that a camel was lost or stolen during the night. ‘It is astonishing to see the rising frustration with every misfortune,’ Jane wrote. ‘But our fires at night are delightful. I fetch food for the sheikh’s tent, and [for] my dromedary to which one becomes quite attached when one appreciates their instincts.’

  She was slightly bored with the cold, wet trek, but the men were happy about the rain, for it presaged a ‘green spring’ and therefore good forage for camels. And Jane consoled herself with the thought that she was on her way to Baghdad, the city of a thousand Arabian nights. Soon, boredom gave way to excitement. The caravan paused for the night, and with the cessation of rain it grew warmer. Jane took a bath in a deep pool of rainwater in the sand, and had just finished dressing when she heard the familiar and dreaded cry go up that a raid was in progress.

  Barak rushed into her tent demanding that she hide her sheikh’s scarlet mantle, but it was already too late. Jane heard the cries of the attackers and reached for a gun but, as she turned, an Arab on a chestnut horse, the sharpened point of his lance held before him, rode into the open tent and ‘made us fairly his prisoners’.9 A large group of ‘ruffians’ herded them off to the conquerors’ tents.

  Not surprisingly Eugénie was extremely frightened, insisting hysterically, ‘Oh, we shall be sold as slaves.’ Not so Jane. The raiders, she learned, were members of the M’wayaja tribe. She scribbled hurried notes in her small brown notebook, dismissing her captors as canaille. ‘Not one prepossessing face amongst them!’ she wrote. ‘How different from the handsome Jordan set.’ She was unafraid and, though she felt sorry for Eugénie’s distress, had to admit that ‘in my heart I have enjoyed the experience so far, and was glad of witnessing it’.10

  The following day, after much consultation, Barak paid the ransom demanded for the release of persons, camels and tents, but they had to stand by while many of their personal belongings were openly taken off them. When this was done Jane assumed they would be released, but they were still guarded by a fierce Arab woman wielding a large club and ruffian-looking guards who insisted they were not to move until their sheikh, Faris ebn Hedeb, returned. It seemed that Sheikh Faris had had second thoughts and now wished to press for more ransom money. As night fell, the men gathered around the coffee hearth to negotiate terms. Fascinated, Jane placed her bed-roll outside the tent so that she could watch and listen.

  Another day dawned and there was still no certainty of release. At that time Jane knew only a few phrases in Arabic, so she spoke Turkish and assumed the role of a Circassian to pass off her fair colouring. Fortunately, as the supposed wife of Sheikh el Barak, she received from the women a limited respect and was not roughly treated, but all knew that things could go badly if it was discovered that Jane and Eugénie were Europeans. Christians, and especially ‘Franks’, were not covered by the bedouin code of honour, and Eugénie’s fears of slavery were not without foundation.

  Eventually, after plundering Barak’s camp and exchanging their best camels for some poor ones of his own, Sheikh Faris gave the order that the prisoners might go free. Jane watched the ransack, reminding herself that this was her introduction to the bedouin life but that not all bedouins were like these people: ‘Their faces were demonical, I shall never forget the expressions on their faces … but I am not disgusted with Bedouins and Bedouin life.’11 When the robbers finally let them go, they quickly packed and were on their way before the sheikh suffered another change of mind. They rode until nearly midnight, then camped and tried to get some sleep.

  Next day one of the men caught a hare by pulling it out of a burrow. They cooked it whole, pieces being allocated by lot. The frugal meal was supplemented by bowls of camel’s milk. As they rode along afterwards Jane noticed small cairns of rocks in a remote valley and was told they were bedouin graves: ‘what a tale of sorrow it brings to one’s mind, of illness without help, without sympathy perhaps, and the cold, desolate grave covered with a few stones … In ten days, Inshallah, we shall be at Bagdad. Bagdad! Wonderful!’

  On 4 January, writing her diary, she recalled that it was Christmas in Greece for ‘poor Xristos’. But she reserved any emotion for recording how they had seen yet another party of bedouins, fortunately not hostile; ‘I am always excited by them,’ she wrote. They had arrived at the village of Kosbe, ‘and stayed in the garden of friends of Barak’s … the Sheikh’s wife has heard of Medjuel and spoke affectionately!’ Jane made a note of all the ritual, such as the hostess washing the hands of guests before dinner by pouring water from a tall copper vessel with a long spout. ‘When I returned to our camp the scene was semi-savage, semi-oriental by the light of the fires, amid palm trees, the camels gravely looking on behind. Oh! It was striking.”12

  On the following day they caught the first sight of the Euphrates, and the famous bitumen springs which provide the pitch for the giant coracles used as ferries on the Tigris. It was

  a desolate and burning country. Saw a Bedouin on a fine horse. I walked with the Sheikh to our dinner and paid a visit to his wives. What an environment those women have. In what darkness they live. Everyone screaming, pushing, talking at once and I gravely seated in the midst. Oh! Could la Madre have seen me, clapping my hands with the harem and joining the chorus, Tahire ha.!13

  The ensuing days were miserable. Their way lay over desolate stony country; mile after mile of drea
ry black basalt stones which, polished by the winds, gleamed under the sun, wearying the eyes. There was nothing for the camels to eat, and the few wells had sour brackish water that humans drank mixed with camel’s milk to make it palatable. The camels would not touch it; indeed, to Jane’s distress, they started to collapse and die. The men too were distressed, for they cared greatly for their beasts; they spent as much time talking about camels and looking at them as a contemporary Englishman would a good horse. They could not comprehend a land without camels.

  It was on Sunday evening of that week as they drew near to their proposed camping ground that things took a surprising and not entirely welcome turn. As they stopped, Barak ‘said something I hardly like, in helping me down from my camel, and slightly fussed and rather alarmed me … After dinner he proposed sleeping in my tent! [saying] “Sacso sacso, etc.”’ The word ‘sacso’, which Jane does not explain but obviously understood, is not an Arabic word. A modern-day interpreter suggests that it was a corruption of the word ‘sex’ which Barak had possibly learned from a European visitor. Not surprisingly, she was very uneasy as she accepted Barak’s pressing invitations to join him after dinner. ‘I went to his fire after dinner on his pressing me … Oh the night, and the times. Nine [unreadable] a Bedouin!’14

  This frank, though irritatingly incomplete, coded entry might, even so, be ambiguous were it not that a year later in her diary she referred to the occasion as the anniversary of the night when ‘I gave myself to Barak’.15 The act itself gave her no cause for guilt, then or later. She was not at that time confident of her feelings for Medjuel, nor did she owe sexual loyalty to any other man. It is interesting to the biographer, though, as an illustration of her attitude towards casual sexual encounters, in direct contravention of the mores of an Englishwoman of her generation. Barak was not a man to whom she would have turned willingly for sex, but in a difficult situation she was not prepared to make a big issue of it. So she recorded the incident briefly, more concerned to note the chorus at night of prowling wolves, jackals and lynxes.

  They reached Baghdad on 12 February, after a journey of eight weeks. The Tigris – Euphrates valley has long been assumed to be the site of the Garden of Eden; and Baghdad, the magnificent city built by the mighty caliphs, was its metropolis, famed for its beautiful buildings, a mixture of Saracenic and Byzantine architecture. Fatigued and dirty, Jane was disappointed at first, but after a bath and a rest she felt better. The hammam itself, however, she described as frightful, with the harem women behaving stupidly at the colour of her hair. That night she again slept with Barak but the day was memorable for another reason: at the bath-house she had discovered that her hair was turning ‘quite grey’. Next day she went shopping for henna. She found two types of dye: the black, made of powdered indigo leaf, which was only made near Baghdad; and the red or ‘Mecca’ variety of henna. She favoured the black dye which she thought might make her disguise more effective.

  She had half hoped that Medjuel might turn up in Baghdad during the three weeks Barak planned to spend there, and when he did not she wrote him a letter in case he should arrive after her departure. She toured the city from one end to the other, saw everything there was to see and met everyone worth meeting from the emir and his harem to Sir Henry Rawlinson, the British consul, with whom she dined.16 At Rawlinson’s suggestion, she decided to go to Mosul, 160 miles to the north on the Tigris River, from where she hoped to visit some interesting ruins. Barak refused to go with her; he had business to transact in Baghdad, he said. Eugénie sulked and said she needed to rest before the arduous return journey. So Jane went with only a small party of guards to protect her. At Mosul she met Sheikh Ferhan of the Shemmar tribe (the ancient enemy of the Anazeh) and charmed him into sending some of his people with her to Nineveh and El Haddr.17 She sketched quickly all she saw before returning to Baghdad, knowing that she would have to set out again almost immediately for the journey back to Damascus.

  The decision about what to do on her arrival there troubled her greatly. ‘Where is the joy anticipated on returning to Damascus, as [there was] at Jerusalem? Sorrow in many shapes waits for me at Damascus,’ she wrote. In Baghdad she found Eugénie defensive and prickly. She suspected that in her absence Eugénie had taken her place in Barak’s bed. The fact itself was of no great moment – Jane’s feelings for Barak were objective – but the implied disloyalty, a repetition of Eugénie’s behaviour at Lamia with Hadji-Petros, rankled.

  The journey from Baghdad to Damascus was free from attack but had its share of discomforts. There were fleas that kept her from sleeping, a violent storm that blew away their tents in the night, and days of trekking without any nourishing food, ‘the camels, poor things, vicious from their hunger’. On the other hand, there was the unexpected sight of a wonderful hill town; the site of ancient Babylon; a Saracen castle with beautiful carvings that she paused to sketch in blissful solitude on a hillside while her companions set up camp out of her sight; and the simple joy of a long smooth canter on the camels as they stretched their necks towards an oasis. The weather too, with the approach of spring warmth, was pleasant.

  They were travelling now as camel herders, with the string of beasts stretching far behind them. Each camel wore a bell. Barak explained to her that each bell had a different note, and that a good camel master, with his ear finely tuned, could tell immediately if a single camel halted or stumbled. Once they had to pitch camp a long way from other travellers because some of the camels had developed mange. But the bedouins, whose ingrained hospitality towards other travellers is unlimited, courteously invited them to join them. ‘I went with El Barak to pay several visits and was struck by a grave [gathering] of about 55 sheikhs and higher Bedouins sitting in a formal circle,’ Jane wrote, having sketched the impressive scene.18 Their host, Sheikh Jerhan, she thought, was

  not handsome or particularly prepossessing, he has three wives, [all] are kind in manner. [European] people are so much out in supposing that they are giving the Bedouins pleasure or doing them honour in condescending to visit them. They don’t care a straw for it, but as the visit invariably brings them presents … something in it appeals to them.

  He sent in the evening an abundance of excellent warm sheep-leben and hot camel’s milk. All is on a grand scale of friendly hospitality … In the evening Jerhan came to see me attended by as numerous and noble a suite as Basily. I afterwards sent a present.

  Thursday 6th April, 1854. This day year I left Athens on my ill-fated journey to Syria which seems to have changed all the current course of my life.

  Friday 7th.…A dreadful night of wind and rain … I was struck by Barak’s selfishness about letting people come into my tent for shelter! A vision passed before my eyes, of a small house and garden at Athens.19

  As they plodded along day after day, uncertainty about her future tormented Jane. Sometimes she would look back at Eugénie faithfully trailing in her wake, Eugénie who always managed to make her tent welcoming and comfortable for her, though not always uncomplainingly, it must be said. Eugénie had told Jane unequivocally that she would not stay with her if she made her home in Syria. ‘What is before me if I lose Eugénie, one of the very few who is really attached to me?’ Jane asked herself; and in the next entry: ‘Slept in the mountains where the thunder rolled awfully and I was annoyed at the sheikh’s taking Eugénie on his shoulders to cross some water.’

  Jane thought that during this incident Eugénie looked at her with a challenge in her eyes, and she could not help recalling, once again, the maid’s appalling behaviour with Hadji-Petros. On this occasion, however, Jane decided, ‘I could not affect jealousy where none is felt.’ Later in the trip the two women would quarrel again. ‘I had a dreadful falling out with Eugénie on the sheikh’s account. She told me I was jealous of her! I was furious at the imputation.’20

  Sheikh Barak, too, she alternately liked and disliked.

  Barak displayed a temper and violence, and stinginess over a little flour I wanted for a stray
camel we picked up who came with touching confidence into the tent. He shocked, offended and disgusted me and I foresee the end of his reign. He was cross, too, to poor Eugénie.21

  On many occasions, though, Barak’s sun rode high in her sky, as when the stopped at the towns along the way and

  Barak good-naturedly took me on a walk all round the town where I saw several things worth sketching; a fine mosque where I saw the Pasha going to Mardin … In the evening raiders passed and took three [camels] by force – poor things. The Sheikh went after them and returned late without money. He is certainly a man of energy and courage!22

  For the most part, Jane revelled in the experience of travelling as a bedouin: ‘What a journey this would be with someone I really loved with enthusiasm and who understood me, and returned my attachment … there are moments in which if I had no mirror and no memory to remind me I would think I was still fifteen years old.’

  On 6 May they reached Aleppo. Jane had been ill with malaria, which held them up for several days, but she recovered quickly and was eager to visit the city which in her youth had seemed to her so remote, another world. After accompanying Barak to buy oats for the camels and ensuring that they were properly fed, she went to meet the German consul. The consul ‘knew poor Henry Anson, who died in a field of the plague 27 years ago, and today, he comes with me to see the place of Henry’s long-forgotten grave.’23

  She made many acquaintances in a very short time in Aleppo. There was a far larger European presence than in Damascus, of Greeks, Hungarians, French and a few English missionaries. To her great surprise she met Mr Kissini, a former acquaintance from Greece, who spoke of Hadji-Petros and other friends, and dredged up ‘strange, uncertain and sad remembrances’. Kissini took her to visit ‘Suleyman Pasha … he was very pleasant and polite. Walked afterwards around the castle, its mound curious and said to have been built by Solomon.’ But even more interesting was news Mr Kissini had just received from Greece – that Otto had been relieved of power. While sad for the King, Jane could not resist a feeling of satisfaction that Amelie, who had made Ianthe’s life so difficult, had also been toppled: ‘So my wish is granted! My rival the Queen is annihilated! But what of Greece … my friends? Xristodoulos. Can I be indifferent to his fate?’24