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

by Mary S. Lovell

  … Our departure is final and I am not sorry for the women are becoming tiresome … and I am most anxious for a good hammam. Medjuel bought me a handsome black horse, Soultan, two years old for 4,000 piastres … We departed with many feigned, and perhaps two or three real, regrets and wishes of our returning.

  The homeward journey took two weeks. Often they were ‘burning hot, tired and sunburnt’. As it was Ramadan, there was no possibility of getting food during the day, even when they came near a town or khan, and Jane was not sorry when they reached the mountains. They spent their last night in a field, and next morning Barak came to meet them and give them news, ‘while we were talking … who should come up but the Consul who caught me bare-footed and unveiled! But his manner struck me as kind and cordial to Medjuel which I was glad to observe.’ The consul was clearly a diplomat. On the previous occasions that he had seen Jane she dressed as any Englishwoman of distinction would. To meet ‘Lady Ellenborough’, as he called her in his reports, barefooted and wearing nothing but a bedouin shift, would have been far more alarming to him than the fact that she was unveiled.

  When it became a little cooler, I mounted and we arrived in due time at home where I was warmly welcomed in my nice house by my affectionate and faithful Eugénie. I was delighted with the appearance of the house, and gardens. She always contrives to give an appearance fête to everything whenever I return from a journey.17

  To Jane’s delight Medjuel grew in her estimation each day. The petty trivialities of life in Damascus such as servant problems that once would have vexed her unreasonably she laughed away. Some matters were of concern, however. They discovered that Barak had behaved badly in their absence, keeping back some of the money he had collected from Medjuel’s clients for escort to Palmyra, and that he had also accepted a generous commission on the items ordered by Jane as gifts to the tribe. She found herself quarrelling with Barak each time he came to the house, but no matter how rude she was to him he always returned. ‘I suspect his whole aim is to gain money,’ she wrote, ‘and to set me and the Sheikh at variance by insinuations … and by trying to persuade [Medjuel] to do things he knows I do not like him to do.’ The situation became a long-term nuisance, for he told lies about her to Medjuel, made worse by the fact that some lies contained a grain of truth such as when he told Medjuel that Jane had ‘had fourteen husbands’.

  It is quite possible that Jane had had fourteen lovers, for, including her husbands, eleven lovers were admitted in her diaries: Lord Ellenborough, Frederick Madden, George Anson, Felix Schwarzenberg, Charles Venningen, King Ludwig, Spiros Theotoky, Hadji-Petros, Saleh (and possibly Selaine), Barak himself and Medjuel. In addition there were rumoured affairs for which no evidence is available, with King Otto, and the two duellists during her time in Italy after her separation from the count. Probably she had confided this to Barak; it was certainly in her nature to do so, but from her annoyance on this occasion it is clear that she had not confessed them all to Medjuel.

  But worse news was to come. Eugénie, ‘ill and tired … worn out, I fear chiefly in my service’, decided she must return to Athens. In August, Jane escorted her part of the way and sent her on with an escort of two guards. As she watched the riders depart out of sight down the road towards Jerusalem, all her longing to travel surged up. ‘I turned my eyes towards Djebel Scheikh [Mount Hermon] and longed to [travel]… please God, next winter.’

  I returned home and found the Sheikh all kindness, trying to make up for Eugénie’s going in any way. Oh! He is so very kind, a second Basily in his way, and I am very fond of him and reproach myself for ever snubbing him as I sometimes do when his childish simplicity sometimes irritates my hasty temper.18

  Among the letters awaiting her was one from Steely, who had now learned of Jane’s latest ‘act of folly’ and wrote to deprecate her latest marriage – assuming, as Steely appeared to doubt, that it really was ‘a marriage’. Jane was furious, feeling that she did not need her old governess to castigate her. ‘I know what I am. I know and would give worlds to recall and live over again with other ties, thoughts and feelings, the last 15 years, aye 20 years of my misspent life. Still I would choose Medjuel as my husband. Where could I find a better?’19

  The differences in their ages continued to nag at her, and in spite of Medjuel’s ardent love-making she worried about the future. When Medjuel reached her present age, she would be almost seventy, and she could not bear to think of a time when he might be revolted by her body. She felt she was already

  hastening downhill in every way!… how I regret the atrocious folly of having dyed my hair when a little henna would have sufficed, and saved me worlds of trouble and vexation. How I would now enjoy and rejoice in a child, and yet it is perhaps better that this blessing be withheld. How could I bring it up? [Yet] should Mascha marry [again], I should like to have Afet as my own!20

  Medjuel was to leave on 10 September to go to Tadmor with his brother Sheikh Mohammed ‘on account of a mare’. Although the impending separation was disagreeable to her she did not attempt to dissuade him, for she felt it would be unfair to deprive Mohammed of ‘his lawful income’. Although it irked her to miss an opportunity to travel in the desert, she decided to remain in Damascus alone. Each day she compiled seemingly interminable lists for her mother or Steely of commissions to be fulfilled – a piece of furniture, a pair of pistols for Medjuel, books on gardening – and sent out to her.

  At this point she came to the end of the journal she had begun as ‘Ianthe’ fourteen years earlier on the island of Tinos. She browsed through it one evening, regretting many of the things she had done and wondering at the extraordinary course her life had taken. Before she slept she wrote that if only her marriage to Medjuel was lawful, and Mascha’s future settled, she wanted for nothing else.

  Jane began a new journal immediately and this chronicle survives intact, unlike the previous one which was ‘censored’ by having pages removed by protective family members after Jane’s death. Consequently from 9 September 1855 until her death in 1881 we have an authentic memoir of Jane’s activities, thoughts, fears and hopes in her own words. Together with a large tranche of letters to various members of her family and friends, her drawing books, account books and pocket notebooks, it provides a remarkable record of the unique life of the woman who now called herself Jane Digby el Mezrab.

  15

  Wife to the Sheikh 1855–1856

  In September 1855, a month after their return to Damascus, Medjuel set off for Palmyra as planned, and also escorting two rich Englishmen there. Left alone, Jane began her life as a Damascene gentlewoman and a pattern emerged that would be repeated for the remainder of her life. Missing Medjuel she was irritable with the many callers, such as the emir’s son and a harem who called to welcome her home ‘bringing unwanted gifts’. She showed them over the grounds of her house with ill-disguised impatience and was afterwards shocked at her inhospitable behaviour, realising that she had not even invited the ladies to sit. This, she felt, was inexcusable when she had been given so much both in personal happiness and in worldly goods. But two letters received that day had not improved her humour. Eugénie wrote to say she was still unwell and could not return to Syria, and Jane’s English banker Mr Drummond advised that news had reached London that ‘Lady Ellenborough had married her camel-driver’.

  ‘Why is the world so constantly spiteful and ill-natured towards me?’ she scribbled furiously. She tried to assuage her irritability in hard work in the garden, and in schooling some young horses that Medjuel had brought in before his departure. But in Medjuel’s absence nothing pleased her. ‘A very pretty ride through tree-covered lanes,’ she wrote gloomily, ‘but these unbroken horses give no amusement.’

  Medjuel returned after ten days and the sun came out again for her. She went shopping and bought a violet-and-gold fantasia cloak to add to her desert wardrobe. To please Medjuel she dressed à l’arabe as she worked around the house and garden. Her light skin and blue eyes were accent
uated now by her black-dyed hair, which she wore in a plait. On her slight figure the simple blue shift of the bedouin, with its pointed sleeves that trailed to the ground unless they were tied back out of the way for work, looked elegant and youthful; indeed, at first glance she could still pass for a woman of thirty, as Edmond About had said.

  Medjuel’s open admiration of her always thrilled her, and in deference to his tribe’s custom she began to wear a fine gauze veil over the lower part of her face when any male callers came to the house. As a gift to Medjuel during their honeymoon she had commissioned a new tent to be made and the great lengths of woven black goat-hair now duly arrived, followed by a gaggle of women from the tribe to make it up in the garden. It was a significant occasion, for a sheikh’s tent is an important accoutrement reflecting his wealth and status, and like any nobleman’s dwelling in the West the bedouin tent is a principal heirloom passed down in the family. Sheikh Mohammed lived in their father’s tent, while Medjuel had formerly lived in a small inconspicuous tent and shared his brother’s divan.

  But Medjuel’s ‘new house’, as Jane called it, was a massive affair some thirty yards long and twelve yards wide, able to accommodate fifty or sixty people for a celebration or a conference.1 The sleeping quarters, with Jane’s own separate room, were arranged to one side of the massive divan, which was a central feature of the tent and in front of which the central hearth would be built in camp. Working offices such as kitchen, servants’ quarters, and storage space for corn, rice and rock salt were arranged on the other side. The entire structure was so made that a small section could be hastily erected as shelter for short halts, and it was impervious to sun, wind and rain. All the walls could be raised and lowered to welcome or exclude weather from any direction. Medjuel was delighted.

  So was Jane, not only because it had given such great pleasure to Medjuel but because it was important to her that his people came to accept that Medjuel had chosen his wife wisely. In return for Jane’s gift Medjuel bought her the prettiest riding camel he could find, a gentle, good-natured creature which Jane loved on sight and called ‘Oudiada’. On the day after Oudiada’s arrival the British consul visited and was surprised to find Jane in the garden dressed à l’arabe, making a cake of flour and milk to feed the camel. She would ride this cream dromedary for many years and develop a close relationship with her; often at night in the desert Jane would be awakened by the camel gently nuzzling her feet.

  Medjuel gave Jane another present at the same time which meant a great deal to her. It was the custom after a bedouin marriage, as soon as the husband regarded the marriage as successful, for him to provide a traditional bridal gift of silver bracelets. This symbolic jewellery, the equivalent of a wedding ring, became absolutely the property of the wife, her wealth, and often to poorer women their only security against the risk of widowhood or divorce. ‘Dear Medjuel,’ Jane wrote in November 1855. ‘How I value this proof of his affection, far more than the costly gifts I used to receive from Lord Ellenborough.’2 Medjuel also gave her a tiny pair of silver pincers to be worn on a silver chain around her neck for removing thorns from feet.

  Her growing contentment was marred only by the guilt she felt over Mascha. ‘The more time I spend with the man I am happy with, Medjuel (whose equal I met but once in Basily), the more my conscience reproves me for my conduct towards Mascha … and yet were I to renounce him whom I adore, would he return to her? No! He is no Spiros, no General, he knows not deceit and treachery.’3

  When Medjuel suggested that they join the tribe during their winter trek into the desert Jane agreed readily, anxious to please him. She would match any bedouin woman in wifely attributes. She had spent long enough in Medjuel’s tent to note those items that were lacking in his establishment, and one of the first things she did was to purchase her own kitchen, a complete range of pots, pans and utensils for the desert. She wrote that because of the negotiation rituals it took two days to make a purchase in Damascus that would take only half an hour in London. Her list included a homely touch: mounds of coloured beads to give to the children of the tribe to make bracelets and necklaces.

  The Damascus house was nearing completion as Jane prepared to leave. According to descriptions of visitors it stood in a great garden outside the city wall, and was built on three sides around a large central court. The main room of the house, facing north, was used for receiving important visitors and consisted of a huge octagonal atrium which opened on to a liwan strewn with carpets and cushions. The atrium had an octagonal domed ceiling set into the flat roof, and was decorated in typically Arabic fashion with heavy carvings, rare Persian rugs and porcelain. The shape of this room had been suggested by the priceless gift to the newly wed couple of a lamp which had originally hung in the Great Mosque at Mecca, on one of the eight side panes of which ‘in token of special consideration’ the Sultan had scratched his seal.4 Both Jane and Medjuel regarded the item as a great treasure.

  On the ground floor of the other three sides of the house were the kitchens, housekeeper’s room and staff quarters, stores, stables and gatehouse. On the upper floor Medjuel and Jane each had a suite, Jane’s boudoir giving on to an English drawing-room. Straw-coloured silk drapes hung at the windows and complemented the ornate mirrors and European furnishings. Her massive, carved bed was overhung with gauze-like drapes falling from a large coronet. There were several guest apartments, and all the rooms led on to the flat roof, where the household sat on summer nights.

  But the garden was her chief pride. In the courtyard was a large oblong pool fed by water from the river, with raised sides upon which one could sit to trail a hand and watch the fish hiding under lily pads. Four fountains bubbled gently to provide the soft sounds of trickling rather than splashing water. Doves fluttered from a dovecote, and she had planted trees – citrus, flowering hibiscus, pomegranate, mulberry and, to remind her of England, a pear tree, unheard of in Damascus. There were also old-established trees which gave welcome shade and to these she added a horse chestnut. She laid paths which wound informally through English herbaceous borders, and rose-beds which vied with native plants and palm trees. Climbing roses and jasmine scrambled in profusion up arches, along walls and over the little kiosque she had built, where she could sit and read.5

  She had quickly collected a large number of small animals, which she called her menagerie: stray cats, a large collection of poultry, both domestic and decorative, and dogs, all of which lived in the garden. Never, throughout her life, was Jane without a dog, and she was particularly fond of the good-natured Bijon Frise breed, which she referred to as ‘Angora Dogs’ for their long white silky hair. All her pets lived happily alongside Medjuel’s elegant salukis and the watchdogs. The salukis must have been extremely well trained, for sometimes Jane had tame gazelles living in her garden, brought to her as abandoned kids by the bedouins, and the gazelles seemed to dwell happily with the salukis which had been bred to hunt them.

  There was adequate grazing near the stables (built on the lines of the stableyard at Holkham6) for their town horses and camels. Members of the tribe and bedouin guests were welcome to set up camp in the garden when they passed through Damascus. To one side of the property was a large uninhabited plot of land which Jane coveted as extra quarters for visitors. She asked Mr Hannah Misk, dragoman to the British consul, to try to find out who owned the land and negotiate its purchase, but old Sheikh Seyd who owned it refused to part with it. It was not a wasted effort, however, for Seyd was an artist of some ability; he and Jane subsequently spent many happy hours together painting and exchanging information.

  It is hardly surprising that Jane’s ménage came to be regarded as one of the most remarkable houses in Damascus, and an essential port of call for any important foreign visitor. Jane loved it as she had loved no other home, though her childhood memories of Holkham and Minterne meant much to her. Her other homes had, each in its way, been spoiled for her by shattered relationships. Here at last she believed she had found and created he
r spiritual home.

  It was January 1856 before Jane and Medjuel could leave Damascus. Myriad details claimed her attention and delayed her departure, from Eugénie’s arrival with all the latest Athens gossip to the heavy-handedness of a new gardener. Amidst this, in November she had received a censorious letter from Steely addressed – insultingly, Jane thought – to ‘the Countess Theotoky’; for Steely would not accept Jane’s marriage to ‘a heathen’. Jane was furious. ‘Oh, that hated name,’ she wrote in her diary, ‘cause of much, much evil to me …[I am] annoyed and vexed beyond measure.’7

  However, a letter from her Beirut banker, advising her that she had overdrawn her annual income by the recent heavy expenditure on her house, created not concern but delight, for on sharing the information with Medjuel she was told she must never worry about money. He would always provide for her; her welfare was his responsibility. This simple declaration thrilled and touched her. ‘How different from the Count, from the General, from all,’ she marvelled. ‘Oh, that I had felt and thought at 18 as I now feel and think, what a load of misery I might have spared myself and others.’8

  At last they were ready to leave and Eugénie helped to pack Jane’s personal baggage, including two long black plaits to attach to her own hair, extending it to hem length. She planned to bind them with silver or gold ribbon on gala occasions. She had begun to apply kohl to the rims of her eyelids, as the bedouins did. The chief purpose of this was to prevent sunburn of the eyelid rims which could eventually cause painful scarring; but Jane was not wholly unappreciative of the added emphasis it gave to her huge blue eyes.

  As they travelled the beloved road to Palmyra for the third time together Jane was touched by Medjuel’s care for her. It was bitterly cold and he was always concerned for her comfort. In the mornings he woke her with a bowl of delicious warm camel’s milk or hot coffee. In the evenings, he sometimes rode ahead in order to have a fire ready for her arrival at the stopping place. They were escorting a caravan of 150 donkeys, and on one occasion when Medjuel had ridden to the front of the caravan to check the leaders Jane got down off her camel to stretch her numbed leg; she tripped and lost the halter and got left behind. ‘I had a long and stumbling walk for it,’ she noted, but eventually Medjuel came back to find her.