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

by Mary S. Lovell

  Saturday 24th March. Again difficulties arise which seemed to have been cleared away … the last real obstacle is Medjuel’s wife and he today offered [publicly] that if that was the real difficulty he would divorce her from hence. He said that if one must die and he must decide which, he would condemn her. Can I doubt his love? But can I accept such proof of it? Vengeance would surely follow such atrocious injustice.

  Though Medjuel declared that if necessary, in order to obtain the permission of the consul and the pasha, he would divorce Mascha immediately in her absence, Jane had already agreed to the marriage without an immediate divorce. There was no question of a marriage in the Christian Church; Jane did not even consider approaching a clergyman. On a former occasion she had embraced a different branch of the Christian faith in order to marry, but there was no requirement this time for her to undergo a change of professed faith. Because Jane was genuinely concerned about Mascha’s fate, believing that the position of a woman cast off in the tribe was an invidious one, she had reluctantly agreed to become a member of Medjuel’s harem, provided Mascha remained a wife in name only.

  Each day the couple met new problems, but Jane was bolstered throughout by Medjuel, ‘during our long tète-à-têtes … his charming, simple and truthful character shows itself more and more to his advantage.’9

  Tuesday March 27th. Today, at last, Barak came and announced [the marriage] for this evening … I put on my blue and white embroidered dress, and passed a dreadful day at Barak’s, melancholy with a thousand reminiscences. Ghosts of past and vanished loves arose before my memory and seem to mock my present vision of anticipated happiness.

  At length evening came and brought three Ullemas who married us according to the Moslem ceremony. Poor faithful Eugénie was present and in a short time I was his, and I gave him my hand in token of Love, Faith and Service.

  We walked home, those two [Eugénie and Barak] before; we following. About an hour after I was alone with him … and his! His, I trust, for ever.

  A wonderful night of love-making followed their marriage. Medjuel was an ardent man and their physical union was ‘more like a real wedding night than any since Lord Ellenborough’, Jane wrote. Medjuel had been thrilled to discover his bride was as youthful ‘as a girl’. Jane was happy in the belief that ‘neither he nor I had anything to reproach ourselves with’, and she delighted in Medjuel’s love-making, so different ‘from Saleh’s coldness, and lack of interest in love’.10

  Wednesday 28th, Thursday 2glh, Friday April 1st, Saturday 2nd, Sunday 3rd, Monday 4th, Tuesday 5th: All days d’or and de joie, passed in delightful intercourse with this simple, upright and affectionate character. May I not be deceived (as usual)!…

  Thursday April 14th. Today … my dream has begun its accomplishment. I leave Damascus for the loved desert with my adored, and adoring, Medjuel. His slave. Oh that I had 20 years less to excuse this last folly.

  The majority of these honeymoon entries were written in code and the only cloud on her ecstatic horizon was the thought of Mascha. Jane’s conscience pricked her, for whatever else she might have been guilty of in the past she had never deliberately taken another woman’s husband. She offered to provide Mascha’s dowry which was repayable on divorce, but Medjuel would not allow it. Her only consolation was Medjuel’s insistence that divorce entailed no disgrace to the bedouins, indeed he had already divorced one wife. If only Mascha were really as reconciled to the divorce as Medjuel claimed, Jane felt she could be completely happy.

  Barak escorted them from the city as far as Doumah, a small settlement two hours’ ride from Damascus. Eugénie agreed to remain in Damascus to keep house during their honeymoon. Jane took with her as personal maid one of the house servants, an old woman called Munni Abdallah ‘who is inefficiency itself!’ Jane wrote (not unkindly). Barak slept in a curtained section of their tent at Douma before setting off for Damascus at dawn; during the night Jane heard him turning over. ‘I sighed and wandered back in thought to our Bagdad journey that I so much enjoyed,’ she wrote, but she had no regrets.11

  They travelled slowly, calling on friends of Medjuel’s to introduce Jane. As a visitor to Damascus, Emily Beaufort, explained:

  When a woman is newly married, she is, a few days after, dressed in her best attire, with all her richest ornaments and taken round by her husband to visit every tent in the tribe … in turn. She has to drink coffee with everyone, in token of their friendliness and acceptance of her as wife among them.

  Nor is the choice of wife … a simple affair … The Anazeh are exceedingly proud, and particular to an extreme degree about descent and pedigree. The rank of husband and wife must be equal. If marriage with a stranger is in question enquiry is made about the age of the family and pureness of her descent as in the case of any Spanish grandee. If every step in the pedigree is not satisfactory … the engagement is broken off.12

  At one house Jane missed some money from her luggage and Medjuel, ‘stung at the idea of what would be said at Scham if I was supposed to be robbed hardly outside its gates!’, nearly came to blows with his host’s servant. But it was smoothed over and Jane was obliged to ‘lug out my things and dress up as an Arrouss [bride], and here again I felt the need of Eugénie to “do me up”… I saw a nice black slave, that I think would just suit me as femme de chambre.’ For the remainder of her life Jane always had a small girl ‘slave’ among her retinue (when they reached maturity they were released by her with a dowry), to run errands and plump cushions. Emily Beaufort commented on the bedouin attitude to slaves:

  All Bedouin sheikhs have their black slaves, for they are the only servants they can have; no Bedouin of any tribe will hire himself or herself as servant to anyone … But these slaves are always kindly treated, and generally are much attached … to their owners; we used to see Sheikh Miguel [sic] giving his little black boy his food with much care … the interpreter told us that if his master was to forget … he would neither ask for food nor complain, until he starved. They are valuable servants and sometimes cost huge sums of money.13

  Emily Beaufort also noted that on a cold night in the desert Medjuel took off his own fur-lined cloak to wrap it around the child.

  The honeymoon journey in the spring of 1855 was the happiest period in Jane’s life. She was travelling in the desert, not as an outsider but as the beloved wife of a desert prince. In that simple fact lay the fulfilment of all the adventure and romance she had ever craved; and in Medjuel’s attitude towards her all the tenderness she had ever longed for in a relationship.

  They arrived at Tadmor at sunset and camped ‘in a nice place out of the town amongst gardens with a tepid spring under a cluster of palm trees, of which I profited at night to bathe by a splendid moonlight’.14 It was a sensual pleasure to wash the sand from her hair and body, and she was inordinately proud that she had kept her youthful figure and agility as Medjuel sat and watched her while she bathed. Later, when she thanked him for the happiness he had brought her as he promised, ‘he replied in the kindest and simplest manner, “Badein [Later], you shall see if I do not keep my word in all things”.’ He had his own bedouin name for her, ‘Frangya’; it was merely an affectionate corruption of the bedouin word for western Europeans, Ferengi (or Franks), but Jane liked it, for it sounded fragrant and flower-like.15

  For the next few days she was bothered by the wives of the fellahin, or town Arabs, from modern Palmyra who were eager to meet el Arrouss Medjuel (Medjuel’s bride). She found their vulgar obtrusiveness irritating, ‘so different from the ways of the Bedouin, and their children rude, dirty and unmannered’. They asked innumerable questions. Did she know God, they asked her. Did Christians pray and fast as they did? Was it true that Christian men were uncircumcised and took a woman when they wished? When they married, did they pay a bride-price? Was it true there were no camels in her country? What was the name of her tribe? Finally the couple decided to move further away from the town and the prying women.

  We removed the tents into a li
ttle garden of palms and olives. And ever, ever, shall I remember the happy fortnight I passed there. It may have been more for in the all engrossing happiness of the honeymoon I have forgotten time and date!

  … at length it was decided that we set off to meet Sheikh Mohammed and the rest, and not least for my curiosity, Mascha, of whom I am, and am not, jealous!16

  The journey took some days. As they rode across the featureless plain the only moving things Jane could see were tall columns of whirling dust and sand racing across the desert. When they were caught in a sandstorm, Medjuel showed her how to couch the camels and shelter in their lee, pulling her abba over her head to form a tent. Afterwards she found that nothing in her luggage, not even a tightly closed ‘jar of cold-cream’, was free of sand. At night their lullaby was the chorus of jackals, and at dawn she was wakened by Medjuel offering hot coffee. The days took on a dreamlike quality, and she wanted the time never to end, but she was about to meet Sheikh Mohammed:

  at last we heard they were near us so we halted in a low glen and sent a messenger. He returned early in the morning and said ‘the Sheikh is coming.’

  I dressed in my best, put on every item of gold I had, and waited, no longer sure (as formerly) of the impression I might make … my heart beat rather as they came in sight, for in fact they are now my relations, and nearest to me in this far-off portion of the world.

  It was pretty to see Sheikh Mohammed, the dark and renowned Bedouin Sheikh winding up the glen with his [tribesmen] behind him on horseback with their long spears. He alighted, embraced his brother and received me cordially.

  An hour afterwards came the women. Mascha foremost in her Dhalleh [palanquin]. I was breathless as I took in her whole person at a glance … and felt vexed that she was not so ugly as people said.

  We embraced cordially (false on both sides), and the day passed in mutual recognitions. Shortly after, while I was sitting in the men’s tent, a conversation took place between Medjuel and Sheikh Mohammed I would have given worlds to understand, on the subject of Mascha’s separation.

  She herself came in afterwards and seemed to me to be in a mighty hurry to grasp at the money, as she grasped at the clothes … A true peasant and a fit companion for Saleh of old!

  The next morning we all set off together making a pretty picturesque sight, I riding Sheikh Mohammed’s Seglawi mare with a halter – the takht, on the adorning of which the women spend much of their thoughts and time, and a new takht appearing with some fresh fantasia makes as much sensation as would some new fashioned carriage in London.

  There seemed so much to learn, chiefly the customs of the tribe, Jane wrote, but she was always interested to note ‘a strange bird, a new plant’. She became inured to ‘the utter astonishment of other bedouins at this European wife’. It was unheard of for a bedouin to marry outside the tribal system. Was she a Circassian, the daughter of a bondwoman, they wondered. Perhaps the whiteness of her skin was due to leprosy? The softness of her feet was remarked by ‘soft glucking noises of pity’, and necessitated her wearing kid slippers when all other women went barefoot.

  Jane was only too well aware of the need to conduct herself with great care; her family background meant nothing to the bedouin. They did not regard her as being asil (of noble blood) as Medjuel was, for all her trappings, for they believed only the bedu to be of pure blood. Honed by harsh living over centuries, only the finest of their race survived to breed. They were a lean, hard, proud people who were not prepared to take an outsider at face value, despite her bride gifts of a flock of sheep and herd of camels. She had Medjuel’s protection, but to win their respect and approval would take time.

  One day Medjuel came to her and explained that he had either to give Mascha a settlement of money and leave her, or to sleep with her. He said he wished therefore to make the settlement arrangements before they left for Damascus. The manner in which he told her pleased her. ‘He and Basily are my ideals of men as their character, and their humour are too civilised, too sensitive to dwell on certain points.’ However, she insisted on making a contribution towards Mascha’s divorce settlement as her own ‘gift to Mascha’ which he could not refuse. In fact the divorce was not effected during their honeymoon.

  As his marriage gift to Jane, Medjuel bought her another horse, a mare called Midjioumah, which gave her great kudos in the tribe. No woman had ever been known to ride a horse unless mounted behind her husband; to own one and to ride with such skill set her apart from them almost more than the cultural differences. Women rode camels, and the wives of sheikhs travelled in ornate curtained dhallas on the backs of camels. Though they appeared content, Jane considered the lives of bedouin women desperately hard, their lot one of unequal concubinage and weary servitude.

  It was not easy for her in those early days of her marriage. Often she felt isolated, especially among the women. She was exasperated by their constantly asking for things until she came to accept that to ask for a gift is not shameful to the bedouin. Nor was there any need to thank the giver, for the act of giving was in itself greatly admired. They could pay a man no greater compliment than to say enviously, ‘Wullah [By God!], he is a generous man!’

  Unless she and Medjuel retired to their sleeping tent there was no privacy; therefore she had to get used to being constantly interrupted. She learned how to milk a camel and carry the bowl of frothy liquid to Medjuel; any in excess of their immediate needs was poured into a ‘sour-milk skin’, to be rocked back and forth on her knees until it turned into leben. The woman who throughout her life had been served by hundreds of retainers (even in Damascus her staff were numbered in dozens) had to learn how to keep the fire alight with faggots and roots gathered in the desert, or with dried camel droppings. She revelled in her new knowledge, performing her tasks with increasing expertise as an offering to Medjuel.

  Her most immediate problem was to learn the cheerful gossiping patois of the bedouin, and their habit of frequent cursing – ‘God curse thy beard; thy house fall upon thee’ – or the simple courtesy of greeting a guest, meant to be taken literally, ‘Oh guest, you are lord of this house … everything I have is yours.’ The poorest family would happily kill their only sheep to provide a complete stranger with a feast: such was the code. Before long, Jane recognised that for the bedouin raiding was a way of life, a means of increasing the wealth of the tribe. Though she would never find it acceptable, she saw that the custom was hedged about with its own code of honour regarding the safety of women and children. The tribe were always ready for attack, but did not allow it to affect celebrations.

  A strange people I have adopted as my own. By early morning we were all ready to meet the expected enemy in chain armour. This evening all given up to fantasia and gaiety for the misuma [circumcision] of Schebibb [Medjuel’s elder son].

  The wild dance of the Binnaat [maidens] is … to show off their hair which at other times is kept hidden, they throw it about, as well as their bodies, in all directions. The men … throw their agals over the Binnaat as a crown, and stick an ostrich feather in her hair as the award of beauty … Yet their dances have none of the indecency of the town arabs.

  The feasting lasted some days, presided over by Medjuel and Mascha, but Medjuel was careful to involve Jane in the festivities and make her status plain.

  The sword dance, where men and women joined, I thought graceful, and pleased me as more characteristic of their manners … we joined in … to the delight of the Bedouins and though I felt a sort of shyness steal over me in the presence of so many, I knew that if I chose I could surpass them all in fire and agility.

  Her interest in archaeology was unabated, and Medjuel, who knew all the ancient desert sites, often organised an excursion for her as the tribe moved around the desert in search of fresh grazing for the camel herds. His knowledge was inherited through the strong oral-history tradition of the bedouins. One day he took her to Sclamya.

  there are some remains of black stone columns of unusual architecture, neither Corin
thian nor Doric; and a more modern Frank fortress of the middle ages commanded by a Turkish Emir (nominally to protect the villagers from the Bedouins), who espying us from the top of the wall, insisted upon our going up …

  Next day we rode across the desert to the water ‘el Moy’ and here is to be the ending of the Misuma for Schebibb. A viper ‘dabb’ started and slightly stung my dromedary today, and … a poor camel was slaughtered in honour of the ceremony. The whole tribe partook of the hospitality.

  Today, there came into my tent a … handsome young man who has been to Greece. Greece! Always connected in my mind with painful and tender recollections of Hadji-Petros. Why do I still start and my eyes grow dim as I write that name? But for him I had not been here … the wife of a Bedouin Sheikh, a marauding Chief whose only domain is the desert, whose will is sovereign—and my only—law. And what was he and his Palikari? And with far less moral virtues than our wild Bedouins. Away with these thoughts.

  This evening was the fete, the fantasia (Traad) and splendid horsemanship. Medjuel rode the two year old without saddle or bridle. The horse slipped on the grass and fell, and he defended himself with the sabre. [It was] good riding, but none – I thought – had the ardour of Saleh on the plain of Jericho! I was dressed à la Bédouine and pronounced by these simple people to be still el a Kwoyss! Why did I not come here and marry Medjuel 10 years back? I should like to have a Bedouin child. What would it be like I wonder? Syrra, Sheikh Mohammed’s son, arrived and poor Joffell [Mohammed’s wife and Jane’s best friend] after working all day like a slave—as the women are in most respects – was beaten on account of some crotchet of Mohammed’s …