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

by Mary S. Lovell

  All the other fruits of our indefatigable shopping have been duly admired and appreciated – glasses, toothbrushes etc. I am now studying hard, Arabic, as well as reading and writing it, and am getting on [well]

  [Tell Edward] his Cochins are splendid and I have a brood of 29!! What with Persians and Cochin pur-sang …they make a sort of ‘happy family’… of desert partridges, gazelles, turkies, ducks, etc. I would fain add an ostrich and young lion from ‘our estates’ near Bagdad, but I like to see beasts walking about … not cooped up. I treasure my print of the Crystal Palace in remembrance of one of the pleasantest and most wonderful days I ever spent. Poor Eugénie has not yet recovered from it; a sort of fairyland she thought.

  In about three months, I believe, we are going to the desert. I fear this winter will not be very pleasant as a great expedition is meditated against the Shemmaar Arabs who are always ‘taking what is not his’n’. And so several Anazeh Sheikhs have settled to drive them out of Mesopotamia. If this takes place I shall most likely be able to make other sketches of Babel and other places in ‘Shina’. The Sheikh admired the Bible and begs to send his best ‘Sal’aams, and peace to your house’. The Turkish government is trying to get him to take the town of Hammah (near Aleppo) under his protection for a consideration of a good sum of tribute money, and forage for so many horses. He goes on this business tomorrow which is not very amusing as he must stay away about 20 days. And now, my dearest Kenny, I have told you all my news.5

  A letter from home brought sad news about George Anson. Jane had heard much of his successful career. After his marriage he settled down, worked hard and had been a major-general for some years when in 1856 he was appointed Commander-in-Chief of the British forces in India. He was holding this important post when the mutiny of the Bengal army broke out and he immediately marched against Delhi, where he contracted cholera. He died on 27 May, only a month after Fanny Isted had proudly detailed her brother’s progress when she called on Jane at Harley Street. Jane was ‘sadder than sad’ until, ‘Oh day of days! Medjuel arrived and kinder, more tender than ever!’6

  Now her daily rides were a joy. One wonders if she was riding the same horses, since one day they were ‘odious and boring’, yet in Medjuel’s presence they all appear to be Pegasus reincarnated. ‘I had a delightful ride with Medjuel towards Djoba, which reminded me of my younger days.’

  She was invited by the pasha’s harem to attend the pre-nuptial celebrations of a favourite daughter. As an important personage in the city Jane was often invited to attend such celebrations; she enjoyed the spectacle and the opportunity to wear one of her Parisian crinoline dresses which always pleased her hostesses by their novelty. As she returned home after midnight she was touched to find Medjuel waiting outside the gate of their house, watching for her return. On the following day he was unwell and she fussed over him, blaming his long wait for her in the cold night air. ‘Where is the European who would thus love me day in and day out?’ she asked.

  Medjuel’s next absence accidentally provided a watershed for Jane. Three English travellers, Messrs Pennant, Ralley and Radcliffe arrived in Damascus with the express wish of visiting Palmyra; the British consul brought them to Jane and asked if a trip might be arranged. Jane explained that Medjuel was already in the desert, but when she saw the men’s disappointment a daring solution presented itself to her. The words were out of her mouth before she could recall them. If they agreed, she suggested, she would escort them herself. She knew the route now as well as anyone. She had access to some fast, strong dromedaries, and there were several members of the Mezrab tribe encamped near the house whom she could press into duty as guards.

  The Englishmen accepted. What a tale they would have to tell on their return! They would have travelled with the personal escort of the beautiful former Lady Ellenborough.

  Jane immediately sent a messenger ahead to advise Medjuel that she would meet him in five days at Tadmor, and within hours had arranged everything. Her impulsiveness was worthy of the young Jane Digby and lacked the wisdom she had shown of late; were the party to be attacked by bedouins friendly to Medjuel, her status as his wife would have protected them. But they would have fared ill had they been attacked by enemy tribesmen who had cast envious eyes on Medjuel’s money-spinning tourist trade. Without Medjuel’s famous valour as a warrior to call upon she could not guarantee her clients’ safety and she could not have been unaware of this. Yet dressed in her sheikh’s robes, riding as a man, carrying a lance, Jane rode out on her Arab mare ahead of the small train of fast camels, circling as Medjuel did to look ahead and behind them. Later when they reached the desert she changed her favourite dromedary Oudiada, and led the mare. Perhaps she hoped that from a distance she would pass for Medjuel.

  Once her diaries had contained descriptions of the tints and colours in the sands and the mountains at dawn and sunset. Now her observations were more prosaic (though she continued to press within the pages, wild flowers) and she noted herbage that had sprung up after rain, providing grazing for camels. She was responsible on this journey for the tourists, for rationing the water, nursing the camels along, deciding the pace and stopping places, and her diary entries were the terse comments of a commanding officer:

  Tuesday 27th October. We set off I riding the Saklowyeh, and we slept at Ataiffin the khan.

  Wednesday 28th. Lunch at Djirrouda, and on to Karyetein.

  Thursday 2gth. Arrived at Karyetein and rested, and on through the night.

  Friday 30th. At about 2 o’clock set off on the last long stage for Palmyra.

  Travelled all night with a half hour rest and arrived in sight of Tadmor.

  Saturday 31st. Medjuel came to meet us with fantasia, which pleased the English much as a romantic novelty.

  These words mark Jane’s final transition from a Westerner playing at living among the bedouins, to full acceptance of her position as wife to the sheikh. Only a few years earlier it was she who was pleased with the romantic novelty of the jerid. Now she watched the exuberant spectacle with the complacent insouciance of the provider of the entertainment. These were her people now. This was her culture; while the visitors, ‘the English’, were mere tourists enjoying an experience novel to them.

  They stayed three days, more than the time usually allotted, for Jane’s exploit was the talk of Palmyra, and the inhabitants were inclined to be generous to her countrymen. Such a deed was the stuff of legends to add to the tales told by the storyteller around the fire. The bedouins loved to hear stories, the favourite one of unrequited love between Antar and Abbla being an Arab version of Romeo and Juliet. Sometimes the storyteller told of Medjuel’s bravery, and now he could add that the Ferengi Sitt who had married the Sheikh of the Mezrabs had proved to be a woman worthy of him, even though such independence was an unusual asset in an Arab wife. In such a manner desert news spread across vast distances in a remarkably short time.7

  It was soon after this that Jane was seen by an English friend of the Cokes, who was travelling in the East and procured an invitation to meet Jane:

  She met her swathed in a veil and Arab garments, and riding at the head of a cavalcade of wild Arabs – a veritable Queen of the Banditti – in surroundings which rendered her gracious, courteous manners, her air of grande dame and her sweet low voice more singularly impressive, even though her beauty – all but her glorious eyes – was scrupulously concealed from view. And still her thoughts turned to the life from which she was severed; all her questions were of Holkham Hall and Cannon Hall, of the relations whom she was fated never to see again.8

  Yet despite the exotic splendour and adventure of her life Jane also had domestic harassments with which to contend. There was a heavy fall of ‘wet snow’ over Christmas, the weight of which demolished her stables, her pretty garden kiosque and her greenhouses, and tore branches from her fruit trees. Without Eugénie, she had to oversee everything personally – the mopping up, the clearing, the repairs, and so on. ‘All my attachment for this place is
gone. I am ready to sell it,’ she wrote in irritation at the end of several trying days; and, to crown it all, ‘Soultan sickened with the strangles’. Soultan was the great black horse that Medjuel had given her as a two-year-old during their honeymoon. In February 1858 she wrote to Kenelm of her household,

  sitting like so many despondent cocks and hens under the dripping ceilings and streaming walls. Our oriental, romantic and picturesque houses are fit emblems of ‘luxury and misery’; mud without, and ditto (with marble fountains, and gilded cornices inlaid with mirrors) within!

  I fancied I would show [the builders] a little better building in baking my bricks longer in the sun, but here we are; the garden wall flat on the ground in three places, the pretty rooms filled with dishes of all sorts to catch the muddy water; the front of my grand stable (on an English plan) fallen, and our beautiful arab horses are camped, one in the old Mosque – our present dining room – the other in the dromedary’s box who eats up all her food. A whole brood of cochins just hatched are with their stately mother in a large basket in my bedroom, amongst damask hangings and other items and relics of former splendour!

  To say nothing of the garden. It looks like chaos and my new French gardener who is a man of projects was interrupted in his transplantations, making [paths] etc.; so that now the Sheikh says, ‘it looks as tho’ all the wild boars had been working there’…

  I am contemplating an excursion to the Hauran [desert]… the ancient Bashan where there exist still the habitations of the ‘giants’ with their massive stone doors and shutters, beautifully sculptured. How interesting!! I trust your ‘depression of spirit without visible cause’ has worn off? Why don’t you try Camphor Julip? According to the French doctor, Raspail, camphor is good for everything, externally and internally, and cures every disorder but death.

  The desert is very unquiet and we are waiting with impatience to set off on our spring excursion. When you write give me some Holkham news … the Sheikh always sends his salaams and should you ever want any Eastern articles, begs you will tell him. He manages Trant’s revolver beautifully and has got a Minié [rifle] which carries 1,000 metres.9

  As a result of the unrest throughout the desert (the Shemmar were plotting to avenge their defeat the previous year), Medjuel could not make up his mind whether to lead the tribe east to Mesopotamia or south towards Mecca that winter and waited anxiously for word from his brother, which never arrived. Eventually he set off alone to find the tribe.

  He would be gone for a month, he said. Some weeks later Jane wrote, in code, of a fear that had been eating at her like a worm in an apple. ‘The fourth week is passed and Medjuel is not returned … but his speech on the day before he went accusing me of no longer loving him as I once did, on account of our disagreeable discussions about money, cuts to the heart in his absence.’ Would he turn to another woman in the desert, one who was not so quick-tempered as she, she wondered. She had merely snapped at him over some trifle after receiving a statement from her banker showing her expenditure to be over budget. After his departure she discovered errors in the statement in her favour.

  Her relationship with Medjuel was unique; few bedouin men could have tolerated Jane’s independence, yet he accepted it with grace and patience, showing his displeasure when she overstepped the mark only by a tight, hurt expression around his eyes. It was this look he had worn when he left Damascus and Jane was anxious to set matters right between them. Her irritation had been caused because of his impending journey without her. However, she reasoned, ‘I must not be unjust or unreasonable. A great part of his desert fortune is at stake, and nor can he leave this affair at sixes and sevens’ – any more than she could leave her house in the hands of inefficient servants.

  But when a further week went by without his return she could no longer bear to wait in Damascus. She set the house to rights as far as possible, and with Moussa, one of Medjuel’s best men, and a Mr Walter Cave who wished to see Palmyra, she set off to find Medjuel. The novelty of her first lone escort duty was absent; now her wish was to reach Medjuel and the tribe. He did not come riding towards her on this occasion and was clearly still annoyed with her. The road between Damascus and Palmyra was ‘not safe’ and her precipitate dash with the English traveller was foolish. Medjuel dispatched the Englishman back to Damascus with Manah as soon as was decent.

  Jane soon overcame Medjuel’s mood of wounded pride, and rapidly became absorbed into the politics of the tribe. One week her diary was full of the domestic problems of her Damascus mansion, the next of a sister-in-law’s unhappiness because her husband, the childless Sheikh Mohammed, planned to take another, younger wife. When Mohammed returned from his bridal sortie he brought with him Medjuel’s son Schebibb, whom Jane ‘was really glad to see. [He is] a nice, clever and well-behaved boy.’10

  In a letter to Kenelm, Jane described her desert clothing as a dark-blue shift – no different from, ‘but cleaner’ than, those of the other women ‘of my tribe’ – and her dark gauze veil was larger than those of the other women. Dangling about her head she wore ‘handsome gold coins’ and on her cloak the gold insignia of a sheikh, to indicate her high rank in the desert. She was bare-legged, but yellow kid boots still protected her feet, for they refused to harden sufficiently to allow her to go barefoot. ‘But’, she said with pride, ‘I attend to the Sheikh’s mares and camels, and the arrangement of our tent, better than anyone’… and I doctor as far as I am able, man and beast.’11

  She writes of a mare taking all day to deliver a foal which was badly presented, which meant her remaining with the animal and its owner while the tribe moved on. Her knowledge of horses and their care was above all things a reason why the men of the tribe, in addition to the women, accepted her with respect.

  She was touched at Medjuel’s moving their tent and heavy luggage at considerable trouble to a place where she might get more shade and be less troubled by the heat. But as the summer heat increased she became unwell and was not sorry when he suggested he would take her to Damascus and return alone for a month with the tribe. Her ‘nice, cool, comfortable house at Damascus’ was a relief after the heat of the desert, even though the temperature was over 100 degrees Fahrenheit in Damascus.

  Eugénie’s replacement, Madame Buffet, had produced a baby but the child sickened in the heat and died, to the great distress of the entire household. Jane was soberly reflective in her diary entry that night: ‘I have deprived myself of all such pains, and pleasures by my unnatural conduct in former days.’12 She seldom referred in her diary to the children she had left behind with their respective fathers, probably because she felt uncomfortable at her abandonment of them. At the time it had seemed better for Didi, Heribert and Bertha to be left in a stable domestic environment rather than be dragged around with Jane to share her unconventional lifestyle and the disgrace that clung to her name in Europe. It had always been her intention to send for them at some convenient time, but the time when she could offer them a suitable home had never materialised. Only very occasionally did she pull out this particular private shame to admit regretfully that her behaviour had been ‘unnatural’.

  Medjuel went back to the desert and Jane rode with him as far as Doumah. On her return to the house she ‘could not get cool again’. Next day she was ill with a recurrence of her fever, shivering and hot with a severe headache. With no Eugénie and no Medjuel to care for her, the illness brought home the vulnerability of her position. The only European doctor in Damascus, the aged Dr Nicorat, was summoned and put on leeches, but the intense migraines and severe fevers did not abate for two weeks.

  July 29th 1858. My convalescence slowly progressing, but I am very weak and still annoyed by a strange pain in the bones of my head. The days are past when I recovered as quickly as I was down, but I have great reason for thankfulness that I was spared the awful brain fever that threatened.

  As soon as word reached him, Medjuel rushed back from the desert, the important negotiations forgotten in his anxiety for her.
A note to Eugénie brought her rushing out to Syria also, though she was hardly in a fitter state than Jane and quite unable to deal with the uproar in the household when the indoor and outdoor servants quarrelled violently between themselves. Jane wrote that she longed to accompany Medjuel to the comparative peace of the desert, and when he left she made plans to join him as soon as she felt well enough. But things did not go as planned.

  In November she received a long letter from Charles Venningen, the first since her visit to England. He too had been ill but was recovering. Bertha had become hopelessly insane. His main concern, though, was for Heribert and the lack of paperwork concerning his birth.

  [Heribert] often used to ask about you but [recently] he has not spoken your name. This leads me to suppose that he has … learned about what happened twenty years ago. I tried several times to speak to him about you but he listened without saying a word. This distresses me deeply as … I think … that as soon as I die his enemies [i.e. his cousins] will raise their heads on all sides and if by that time all the English documents are not in order he will very probably go under.

  Charles hoped she would somehow find a way of seeing her ‘only son’ and forecast earnestly that she might some day be glad of his service. His letter reveals everything one needs to know about Charles: his kindness, his conservatism, his utter worthiness. It also makes it manifestly obvious why Jane could never have remained happily married to him.

  Lady Andover is very old, and when she is gone you can hardly return to England. With her gone your family will be dead to you. One day you will inevitably tire of your present way of life and will not be able to continue. Old age will come with all its accompaniments, from which no mortal escapes, and you will be glad to settle in a civilised country and to find a soul who will take your side. Believe me, I know something about what it is like to always be alone, to have no one to whom one can turn to open one’s heart, and yet I am a man who has been cruelly tried from a young age … I wish you a long life and perfect health. If this letter seems rather long … reflect that it may be my last, for my days are numbered.13