At Palmyra it was too cold to stay in the tents so they were accommodated with Sheikh Fares of Tadmor while they waited for news of the tribe. Jane disliked the town Arabs’ houses at Palmyra, finding them dirty and noisy, but on this occasion she was too tired and cold to protest. After a few days they changed to ‘another house, more airy and spacious, where I get to my bedroom across the sawn trunk of a palm tree!’ she wrote with amusement. ‘Who would have thought that the ridiculously exclusive and fine (as it was then called) Lady Ellenborough of thirty years ago would bear to sit down, even in near neighbourhood with the dirty and rude fellah of Palmyra. Time, age and circumstances change almost one’s very nature.’9
She spent the next week drawing the wonderful ruins of Tadmor for a series of major works,10 and wandering around the ruins trying to place each building into context. Medjuel had told her a great deal about the city and showed her the old baths, cisterns and stables. Many buildings such as the temple needed no explanations but there were others which puzzled her for Medjuel did not know, and she could not imagine, their purpose. Her extensive knowledge of the city was absorbed in a leisured manner denied other Europeans and, given her interest in architecture, gave her great satisfaction.
The only drawback to visiting Palmyra was the constant attention of the townswomen wishing to hug her and examine her hair and person. One day when she tried to avoid them they took offence and were rude to her. They were immediately ‘set down’ by their menfolk but she realised that she would have to be more tolerant for Medjuel’s sake. That night they were invited to dine with Sheikh Fares:
I put on all my arab fantasia for the good of the public, and went to the Sheikh’s, and … threw away three medjidis [Turkish silver dollars] upon a wandering Schai’ir, an old crazed singer, for his high flown compliments. I felt, to my confusion and annoyance, as young and vain as I was 30 years ago, at seeing how my finery attracted the wild eyes of the large circle of Arabs assembled around us.11
After two weeks they had received no news of the Mezrab tribe’s whereabouts, but, happy simply to be with Medjuel, Jane was not as anxious as he to rush to the tents. She knew that Joffell, a wife of Mohammed’s whom Jane had especially liked and made her confidante during her last visit, had been divorced and gone off to marry in another tribe. ‘Furthermore,’ she wrote, ‘Mascha’s return promises me no very delightful stay.’ She suspected that life with the tribe might not be unmitigated pleasure for her.
One night they were awoken by a ghazou during which thirty cows were carried off. To Jane’s dismay, Medjuel decided it was his duty to go alone to recapture them. She stood at his mare’s head, handed him his lance, wished him victory, knowing that for the sake of the onlookers she must behave properly.
Trying not to think that Medjuel might be defeated and lie injured in the desert, she spent the day nursing a sick man. She gave the patient quinine from her extensive medicine box and bathed him with cold sheets to reduce his fever, but he died. Within two hours of his death he was in his grave, and the earth closed over him as though he had never been. ‘Of what avail are beauty, riches, love,’ Jane wrote, depressed both by the death and Medjuel’s absence. ‘In a few short years shall I, the unworthy object of Madre’s idolatry and early care, be destined for a Bedouin’s unmarked, unheeded tomb in some far-off desert …?’
But when Medjuel returned victorious with the cows her pride was unbounded. It was yet another of his feats that would be spun into Palmyran folklore and repeated to travellers.12 A few days later Jane accompanied him to the tents of the Amoureh tribe, from whom he had retaken the cows, to look at some camels they had for sale. She had yet to accept that war between these tribesmen, though bearing all the noise and hallmarks of war, only rarely involved fatalities and bred little ill-feeling. The whole purpose of the ghazou was to capture camels, tents and other riches. On the few occasions when a man was killed by a stray lance-stroke, blood money was payable to the victim’s family, so killing an enemy did not pay. Consequently Jane was surprised at the friendly manner in which she and Medjuel were received by those whom a few days earlier she had considered their enemies. She travelled there and back as a bedouin wife. ‘I rode behind him on the dromedary, full trot all the way and as pleased with myself as a girl of 15!’ she wrote that night.
At their first stop, they received some mail sent by messenger from Damascus and Jane was mortified to hear from Steely that she had again featured in a newspaper report identified as Lady Ellenborough. On this occasion Lady Ellenborough was reported as having been murdered by the jealous harem of the Arab sheikh she had recently married. Jane wrote hurriedly to her mother and Steely to set their minds at rest, and to Eugénie, who had been ill again in Damascus. Forgetting earlier qualms about Eugénie’s betrayals, Jane wrote, ‘If I should lose that good devoted creature what remains to me, whose attachment was ever like hers?… Yet Basily and Medjuel are images that float above the rest.’
Medjuel was always able to right her world. Seeing her glum expression the following morning, ‘Medjuel, kind and good beyond all measure of expectations, said on serving me my beautiful breakfast amidst hurricanes of wind and sleet, “Could I but give you El Ferdouss [Paradise] I would do it. Do you not do everything for me at Sham [Damascus]?” Such words said in his simple and unaffected way to go to my heart and rest there for ever!’13
After trekking across the desert for a week in April they caught up with the Mezrab tribe, and Medjuel sent back to Palmyra for their tent and heavy luggage. Jane was welcomed by the tribe with such warmth that she felt herself drawn into a family.
Were it not for Eugénie’s loneliness and failing health, I would willingly remain some time here. My heart warms towards these wild arabs. They have many qualities we want in civilized life, unbounded hospitality, respect for strangers or guests (Diouff), good faith and simplicity of dealing amongst themselves, and a certain high bred politeness and unobtrusiveness; quite unlike the vulgar fellah.14
After a few days Medjuel’s favourite brother, ‘dear good Manah’, arrived with Medjuel’s children, ‘all jacked up on a Hedgin’. His two sons, Schebibb and Afet, and his daughter Aafteh, were accompanied by several cousins. Jane’s enjoyment of the children was interrupted when their mother arrived a few days afterwards:
Mascha is quite changed from last year, and prettier and all alive, no longer the lazy apathetic creature she was. What can be the reason?… Schaiba told me Mohammed intended marrying Mascha as soon as divorced! Can this be so?
Days have passed on and as usual I have lost track of the day and even month. We are arrived at the waters and I am come to an open nouille with Mascha … Medjuel behaves like an angel for the Bedouin are not used to bursts of temper and jealousy in their wives. But I must not try him too far.
… For four or five days I neither spoke nor looked at Mascha but at length my conscience reproached me and when I met her at Feyda’s tent we spoke. She suffered horribly with the toothache so I made her a cataplasm of camomile. When I think of her extraordinary position my only consolation regarding my own conscience is that certainly her conduct is not praiseworthy, nor ever was, towards Medjuel.
Jane’s attempt to live in peace with Mascha was soon rewarded by an unexpected incident.
Afet was ill and to crown all fell into the bir [well] while trying to drink water. Medjuel fell into a rage and without telling me his intentions, went, took Kalaori as witness and without further ceremony divorced Mascha, and insisted on her leaving his brother’s tent! Next day she removed her bedroll to her uncle’s tent next door.
Medjuel was now hers alone. Though she had shared him in name only her relief was enormous and she hugged to herself her new status as Medjuel’s only wife, feeling absolved of the guilt she had been carrying with her since her marriage.
During the weeks she spent with the tribe she began to appreciate the position of a sheikh. He must act as the ‘father of his people’. As his wife Jane found herself increasingly
called upon to play a leadership role among the wives, to mediate in disputes, administer medicine to sick children, and to provide the poorer wives with gifts of clothing or kitchen utensils. Later she would look back on this period as her apprenticeship, a time of learning and of forging relationships.
I have chosen Endaya, Manah’s wife, and my sister-in-law in fact … as my particular friend. She, Bettli and Hassanah are all pregnant and I feel that my present sterility (how unlike former days) is almost a reproach in the eyes of the Arabs who long to see another child of Medjuel’s.
At length one fine morning I mounted Oudiada and we took a final departure for Sham, leaving the children with Jassin’s wife. We slept at the Meidan, an encampment of Ebn Merschid’s. They are evidently richer than our tribe with their slaves, and their tents are better appointed than ours. We met his wife in full dress going mardoufa [in state] to her parents, and I actually am fool enough to throw time and thoughts away upon various vanities relating to my next appearance among them! When and how – an old lady of 50!
Within two weeks they were back in Damascus, Jane delighted with the house and Eugénie’s management, and amused by praises received from those who had visited her ‘show house’ (as she heard it called). By now it was June, and a backlog of mail had built up in her absence, including, to her great pleasure, letters from both her brothers and her mother. To her brother Kenelm and his wife Caroline she replied at once:
It is indeed a long time since we have written to each other but I was not a little delighted on returning after five months wandering in the desert to receive your letter with several others … How I rejoice that that ill natured, and utterly unfounded report of my assassination by the ‘Sheikh’s Harem’ did not reach our poor dear Madre’s ears!
First I must assure you, my dearest brother, however much as a Protestant clergyman you may be averse to the idea of my husband being a Mohametan, his principles of honour and morality of conduct, are such as would do honour to many a Christian. Secondly, he has no other wife but me but 3 children by a former one, and is so good and kind that I only regret I did not know him long and long before. It might have spared me, and all, much misery. You will smile, and say ‘a Bedouin’s morality’. But believe me the Arabs are governed amongst themselves by as strict a code of laws as any other, and many a curious fact I know which would throw light on this most ancient and peculiar race.
As to the rest, for which I know you care but little, he is a great and renowned Chief of a tribe, the Anazeh Bedouins, which have always refused to enter into a pact with the [Turkish] government, but make their own terms and dictate their own conditions. An intermarriage with a European, it is true, is a new thing under the sun to them. But I am very popular amongst them and when amongst them adopt their customs, dress, manners etc. I hold my open divan for the women and do what little good I can in the way of medicine, clothing, settling differences etc. But they fancy I know something of magic, and many are the consultations that you would laugh to hear.
My riding and my real fondness for animals has made me a great favourite with them, and I can now ride the swiftest Meccan Dromedary across the desert with the best! We hawk with beautiful falcons and Persian greyhounds, hunt the ‘b’tiddin’ (wild goat), antelope, grey crane, etc., and I have shot D’jerboa (a sort of kangaroo), to their amazement. Their women, only riding on camels, are timid when out of the precincts of their tents.
The moment when my heart fails me is when I am obliged – as is the custom – to give the Sheikh his lance, or other arms, when he mounts his magnificent mare to go off with his tribe against some rival one that approaches to seize our camels and tents. And smile and encourage him with hopes of a speedy and victorious return etc., when I feel ‘who knows if I will ever see him again’. But enough of this.
I am now in my cool, shady garden kiosk at Damascus with water and turtle doves bubbling and cooing in every direction, and here I hope to remain until the next campaign. Many and many are the English and other foreigners who come and see the house and garden while I am away and express themselves enchanted. How I wish you or Ed could be hit by a longing for the east and come over. Your account of your nine children is most interesting … what a troop!15
A similar letter went to Edward’s wife Theresa, expressing Jane’s sympathy on hearing that old Lord Digby had died leaving a will disinheriting Edward. Although Edward became Lord Digby, the late Lord Digby’s personal fortune and Sherbourne Castle had been left to his sister Charlotte.16 The will had been made shortly after Jane’s divorce and, despite Admiral Digby’s attempts to persuade his uncle not to visit his distaste for Jane’s behaviour on her family, the will remained as written. Edward and Theresa lived at Minterne but without his uncle’s fortune could not match the lifestyle of his forebears. Jane sympathised at the couple’s disappointment, not realising that she may have been a contributory factor: ‘But I have often had misgivings, for when I asked Madre how he was with [Edward and Kenelm], and heard her answer, I set him down in my mind as a nasty old crab!’17 She added a few words for her long-estranged brother Edward, reminding him that she was still his loving ‘Jenny’, and begged him to restore their relationship, ‘Let me write to you or Theresa sometimes for you shall never again have reason to break it off!’
In her diary in September she noted that Hadji-Petros had written to say that Eirini, about whom Jane had enquired, had been seriously ill but now seemed a little better.
his letter touched me with its tones of affection, sincerity and confusion of my former affection (alas, how sincere) for himself. The ways of providence are inscrutable! A widower in Athens would have been far more suitable than a Bedouin Sheikh and the Desert. But oh, the truth of one, and his morality (though classed as an infidel), against the laxity of the other!18
The letters from home increased her longing to see her family, and she mooted the possibility of a trip to England, probably the last time she would see her mother. Medjuel quashed any thoughts that he might accompany her and she put off the idea until, as the autumn set in, Medjuel began thinking of again joining the tribe for the winter months. It was finally decided that Jane should go to England, and Medjuel to the tribe.
Jane left Damascus with Eugénie in early November armed with daunting shopping lists of furniture, saddlery, guns and ammunition. Medjuel accompanied her as far as Doumah, where he set off for the desert. As he turned and rode away she almost abandoned her plan and galloped after him. Thoroughly dejected at the thought of six months without her husband, she wept as her ship sailed from Beirut, fearing that something might occur to prevent her return. She would never be parted from Medjuel again, she wrote, except by death.
Monday 24th. Arrived at Piraeus and was most happy to find there was no quarantine … I sent a message afterwards to the General [Hadji-Petros] who soon arrived. What I felt, I cannot express. Emotion at seeing once more that once-loved face, suffocated me. He remained an hour or more and then left. I went and saw the Palace gardens.
Tuesday 25th. I went early to see poor Eirini … Nothing short of a miracle can save her. She is evidently dying. Poor, poor Eirini, so young … her father is very low and unhappy.
She spent a week visiting old friends and in the company of the general, often at the bedside of Eirini. Hadji-Petros was bluff and outspoken as usual, and fiercely loyal to the new king, George, to whom he was senior military adviser. Later he was to be dismissed by the Prime Minister, who thought the general’s close relationship to the new king a danger to the constitution,19 but now his stock was high.
Eugénie, who owned several tenanted properties in Athens, had business to conduct and took care never to be around when the general called on Jane. Hadji-Petros spent the entire time trying to persuade Jane to return to him, saying that Eugénie’s reports had been a misunderstanding, that she had entirely mistaken his intentions. He might have saved his breath. Jane felt great affection for him, but her heart belonged now in a low black tent in the desert
and, had it not been for her eighty-year-old mother, she would have hastened back there with all possible speed.
She rode one day to the abandoned villa of her friend the Duchesse de Plaisance, its pink marble walls partly hidden behind a jungle of overgrown shrubs and brambles. In its bright garden she used to sit and look out over the distant Aegean but there was nothing here for her now and nothing to regret leaving behind.
Suspecting she would never see the child alive again, she ‘took leave of Eirini with a low foreboding and an aching heart’. She doubted that she would ever return to Athens and when Hadji-Petros said goodbye to her at the docks of Piraeus they were both in tears. Jane’s were for him rather than herself: ‘I felt very, very low to leave him to whom I was once so attached. Poor man.’20
As the ship set sail into a tempestuous gale which confined Eugénie to her bunk, Jane spent her time on deck, annoyed that a letter from Medjuel, handed to her as she boarded the ship, had been forwarded without translation by Monsieur Le Roy of Damascus. It was written in Arabic script and Jane had no means of knowing what it said. She vowed that as soon as she returned to Syria she would improve her Arabic speech and learn to read and write it as well. ‘Tuesday [December] 9th 1856. We arrived at Marseilles after wonderfully good passage for the season. I spent the rest of the day in running over the shops which seem beautiful.’
A Scandalous Life: The Biography of Jane Digby (Text only) Page 27