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

by Mary S. Lovell

  Jane did not react to this depressing letter in her diary except to note that she had written to Steely on Heribert’s behalf. She was certainly not yet ready to roll over and die, nor prepare for old age. She knew that there would be fierce fighting between the tribes that winter and was anxious to be at Medjuel’s side. She wrote home:

  On the eve of my winter flitting I am this moment sitting surrounded by iron pots and pans, saddle bags, water skins and other gipsy-like preparations. My old black woman, Munni [Abdallah], is pounding a supply of various spices as her kitchen ingredients … We bend our steps first to Palmyra and then towards the Euphrates, Bagdad and Bassorah country where all is at sixes and sevens with a renegade Pasha who has been beaten by the Bedouins over and over again, and is now recalled.14

  In this letter she sounded confident about her immediate plans, but her diary on the previous evening records a dilemma.

  Saturday, November 6th 1858. The last fortnight has been occupied by preparations of various kinds for my expected, and long wished-for journey when Nehabi called and brought me a letter from Medjuel, but not such as I wish to receive. He positively forbids, and adjures me not to move from Scham until a second letter arrives …

  I [am] convinced that he has scherraked [gone with the tribe into the desert for the winter] without me!!! I feel utterly low and cast down and know not what to do. Whether to obey – as is my duty – or risk all and go?

  She hesitated for several days, while Damascus reverberated with news of the fighting on twin fronts when Sheikh Faris el Meziad of the Hessienne tribe and Sheikh Mohammed ebn Dukhi of the Wuld Ali tribe, one of the most powerful in the desert and said to number 5,000 tents and command a thousand lances, respectively began attacking other tribes. Then she decided that anything, even Medjuel’s possible anger, was better than spending the winter in constant anxiety about him. If there was danger to be faced, she wanted to be at his side.

  Leaving Munni Abdallah behind to await further orders, and taking Moussa and Hamwoya as guards, she set off for Palmyra, deciding that if they came across any bedouin encampments they would beg shelter rather than risk being set upon as a small party.

  The journey was not without incident. On the second night the trio came across the tents of the Hessienne. They were well received and offered food and shelter. The following night they came across a small and disreputable encampment at the foot of the mountains. Upon requesting somewhere to sleep she found to her astonishment that her hosts were the very group of M’wayaja who had captured her on her trip to Baghdad five years earlier.

  It is not surprising that they did not recognise her, though the fact that she was veiled must have helped. Previously she had masqueraded as the Turkish-speaking wife of Sheikh el Barak, a man of no particular position. This time, as the wife of the renowned Sheikh Medjuel el Mezrab, she was a person of mark. She came riding into their camp dressed as an asil bedouin mounted on a fine camel, assertive and confident, a known European but speaking their own language, accompanied by – but very much in charge of – two of Medjuel’s most trusted young ayghals.

  The M’wayajas had heard much of this Ferengi Sitt. Her very presence in their tents conveyed distinction upon them. They killed a sheep in her honour.

  17

  Alone in Palmyra

  1858–1859

  Jane arrived at Tadmor on 1 December 1858 to find, as she suspected, that the tribe had gone off towards Baghdad some weeks earlier. This was useless information, for Jane knew only too well that the tribe did not move in any predetermined direction but went wherever their scouts discovered grazing for the animals. She decided to try to send a message to Medjuel that she wished to join him and to wait in Palmyra until he sent for her.

  Meanwhile she had no desire to live in the town of Palmyra among the fellahin, and she had no tent with her, having travelled fast and light through the desert. Among the ruins of the old city some ‘hovels’ had been thrown up against the great wall of the Temple of Bel. Itinerant bedouins lived in these dwellings which, being a mile or so from the modern town, were reasonably vermin-free. Jane rented one from its owner and moved in.

  To her annoyance, the ‘hot-headed’ Hamwoya, believing he had discharged his duty, set off to find the tribe before Jane had an opportunity to give him a letter to take to Medjuel. Possibly he had not wanted to risk Jane demanding to accompany him in a search of the desert that could take weeks. She knew that if he found the tribe Hamwoya would tell Medjuel that she was at Palmyra, but not necessarily in the way she might have wished to break the news. She decided she would have to find a reliable messenger of her own and sent Moussa back to Damascus with some travellers to look after their horses there. Munni Abdallah was to bring Jane’s desert luggage to her with the next trade caravan. Meanwhile she employed a young man called Sedran to care for her horse and act as factotum.

  Jane found a messenger who she thought was reasonably trustworthy, offering him a substantial reward for bringing her written word from Medjuel. The letter she sent to Medjuel was the first she had ever written in Arabic, which she had been studying ever since her return from England. She practised the opening phrases in Arabic script in her pocket notebook, ‘Salaam to you every day and night, my darling. It is now more than a month since I heard …’1 Would he receive it safely, and if he did, she wondered, would he be able to read it?

  Had she known how long her lone sojourn in the desert would last she might have gone back to Damascus with Moussa. But various bedouins who passed through Tadmor told her, with typical desire to give her good news, that Medjuel would probably return within three weeks, and so she settled down to wait.

  She spent her days sketching and painting among the ruins, and tending to the illnesses of the townspeople who sought remedies for every ailment from ophthalmia to piles. Eye infections were most common, due to grit, sunburn scarring and flies. She sometimes thought that there was not a pair of sound eyes in the entire place, and some of her patients looked so diseased ‘you could catch it just by looking at them!’ Meanwhile she wrote long letters to her family and to Eugénie to let them know that she was safe despite widespread reports of warfare in the desert.

  On 20 December ‘a ghazou of 500 from Sheikh Feydan’ attacked the town and the little houses scattered among the ruins. Jane was more angry than frightened, knowing that it was the responsibility of the Mezrabs to protect Palmyra; it was why the townspeople paid them annual tribute money. She sat with a pistol at the ready, waiting for the invaders to break in. To her surprise, though they ‘forced themselves upon my neighbour’, Jane was studiously left alone. Next day she learned the reason for the ghazou. It was apparently known throughout the desert that Medjuel had gone ‘to Schedada’ in preparation for the predicted war between the Mezrab tribe and its allies, against Mohammed ebn Dhuki, one of the most evil men in the desert. This meant he could not possibly return in under twenty-one days.

  It was probably her most unusual Christmas, spent ‘among the great and lovely ruins of a long past generation. The day was clear, frosty, and lovely … I went and sketched a new drawing of a new mass of ruins.’ On New Year’s Day she was predictably depressed, having already spent a month waiting in vain for word from Medjuel,

  far away from husband, family, friends, country. Alone. A stranger in a dark land … My womanly vanity as well as my affection is deeply wounded by this prolonged absence and seeming neglect … Sedran alone gives me some little consolation by his kind vows and promises to take another letter to Medjuel … I went and coloured the amphitheatre, but even this talent seems to have deserted me for I can do nothing to my satisfaction.2

  One evening she went to the sheikh’s house ‘to pass the time’, and after a while a traveller came in from the desert. After he was refreshed he was asked for his ‘news’. It was news Jane did not wish to hear. He said that Medjuel had returned to Mascha and married her. Heads nodded; before the Mezrab tribe left Palmyra Mascha had been here in the sheikh’s house w
ith Medjuel. Jane left quickly, deeply upset at the conversation.

  Wednesday 5th [January]. Many men came in the morning with kind intentions to console me for last evening’s conversation, and Sedran swore it was not, could not be true. Yet why did Mascha go to the Sheikh’s house?… and Medjuel was there with Mascha … This month must pass before he comes.

  All her peace of mind was gone, and it was typical of Jane that she insisted on pouring salt into the wound: ‘Today I walked to the arch and thought mournfully on those days when Medjuel walked there with me, and watched me while I bathed, and again I glanced at the gate of the garden where we spent our honeymoon; so happy.’3 From angry frustration more than anything else she joined in an activity she would later regret.

  Tuesday February 17th. I went with an old Hadji to the tombs to dig for Mummien among the dead of long gone by ages, and threw out their dried bones and tore open their scarlet and green winding sheets without compunction. Their costly tombs still remain, fresh and new as though built yesterday … oh the horror I have of death and of being shut up in a dark narrow tomb!!4

  Matters improved somewhat when Munni Abdallah joined her with her desert luggage. Each day Jane rode her mare in the desert, but it was a dreary and anxious time for her. Letters from home brought no relief from her misery. On 20 February, she wrote, ‘I learned of poor Isabella’s awful death by poison, and the family’s melancholy and touching letter. Oh my past life!’5

  Isabella, the widow of George Anson, had died as the result of a frightful accident. She had been staying with Fanny Isted and had taken a large measure of laudanum in mistake for a tonic.6 Normally laudanum was measured out in drops, and the amount Isabella took was lethal many times over. Realising almost immediately what she had done, she ran down to the drawing-room ‘still en déshabille with her lovely hair in disarray’ to tell the Isteds what she had done. They sent for the doctor, gave her an emetic and walked her up and down the drawing-room to try to keep her conscious, but unfortunately she died before the doctor arrived.7 The only interpretation one can place on Jane’s exclamation, ‘Oh, my past life!’, is remorse over her affair with George Anson, but it was irrelevant. George and Isabella had many years of happy marriage together after each had enjoyed youthful spells of wildness in varying degrees.

  Though she wrote disconsolately from time to time of returning to Damascus without Medjuel, by March Jane seemed determined to wait for him no matter how long it took. After all, she was in a place that she loved. The winter was ended and the desert around the oasis was covered in spring flowers and foliage. But she longed for Medjuel, and there lurked always the fear that he no longer loved her. The rumours of his return to Mascha had now been discounted, but she worried that Medjuel might be attracted by a younger woman, a fear almost inevitable in a relationship when the woman is so much older and the man so eligible and in his physical prime.

  Sunday March 5th. What a Sunday. People came and told me that Medjuel was only two hours off, looking after a mare … this turned out to be only Medjuel’s sheep, whilst I, who gave the sheep, am here in a furnace of grief and desolation … trying to fathom the reason for his non-appearance.

  Monday 6th. Unspeakable, untold happiness! I awoke in despair … breakfasted and then went with Sheikh Ali much against my will to the school picnic where I … sat under the trees watching the children. Sheikh Fares and others came [and sat with me] when … Mahmoud came and said an arab was coming with a letter from Medjuel … that he was coming in a few hours.

  Jane wrote that she nearly fainted with relief. Having ascertained that the stories were true, she sent for her Seglawi mare, which was stabled in the sheikh’s house in the town, and rode out to the Ras el Ain. Here, a mile outside the ruined city, beside a cleft in the foothills, was a small cave from which a stream bubbled out. Medjuel had to pass this way on his road into Palmyra.

  After a short wait she saw him riding fast ahead of a group of ‘cavaliers’ towards her. All her anxieties were forgotten in an instant. ‘What a moment of joy was our meeting … and that night one of ardent happiness.’ In the morning they walked to Ras el Ain and bathed together. Medjuel was full of love. He told her of the fighting, but of greater concern was the inability to find adequate grazing, as a consequence of which the tribe had lost many camels from starvation. He had not been able to leave the tribe and come to her, he explained, for it was his duty to stay with them and help. These simple and logical explanations soothed her jealous fears and doubts. He had seen Mascha but only in connection with their children. And he promised that he would never go off without her again, at least not without discussing it.

  The days that followed almost equalled those of their honeymoon. Sometimes at his request she dressed in ‘stupid fantasia’, for he loved to see her in her most beautiful clothes and jewellery, and was proud to show her off. Nothing could spoil her mood of happiness and her pride in him, which even escalated when he left one afternoon to go after a ghazou ‘and alone brought back 100 sheep and goats’.8 Only the sudden death from a stroke of her old servant Munni Abdallah clouded her joy.

  It was the end of May, six months after her departure from Damascus, before Medjuel judged the desert calm enough for him to leave and return with Jane to the city. The house, running smoothly under Eugénie’s care, was cool and welcoming in the relentless heat of summer. Jane took a fever but shook it off after a week or so and then she wrote home, pleased at the news that she and Kenelm had been granted permission by the Queen to use the title ‘Honourable’, and that the College of Arms had produced a family tree:

  Heribert’s tree has blossomed at last … From the Baron’s great stress upon it it seemed to have been the branch upon which hung all his earthly prospects of rank and fortune. Poor boy I fear his regiment, the Archduke Charles, is in the very thick of this horrid war [the French–Austrian war of 1859].

  Though it was the hottest summer for many years, life was pleasant in Damascus. Knowing that she would be in the desert during the coming winter, Jane settled to domestic tasks, such as making quince jelly and garlic paste, and enjoyed it, even when Medjuel went off on business.

  Meanwhile, riding Soultan or Nourah, a white mare, she made calls upon local friends, often travelling considerable distances to outlying towns to visit dignitaries who could be helpful to Medjuel. By far the most interesting of her acquaintances, someone she would come to know far better at a later date, was His Highness the Emir Abd el Khader, an Algerian nobleman. Born in the same year as Jane, el Khader was a hero in his own country, having been elected emir by the combined tribes of Oran to lead the struggle against the French. This made him virtually the absolute sovereign of two-thirds of Algeria. He was known in England for his fifteen-year fight against the French and for several major victories, but in the end he surrendered and was imprisoned. Eventually, in 1852, Louis-Napoleon released him and exiled him to Broussa with an annual pension of £4,000 on condition that he never returned to Algeria and stayed out of politics. He arrived in Damascus in 1855 and lived there in great state with five wives and a personal army of 500 devoted Algerians.9

  From Charles Venningen she heard that Heribert was safe and his regiment ordered to return to Hungary upon the declaration of peace. Bertha’s condition was unchanged. Charles still urged her to consider her position in the future:

  old age is approaching, and with it infirmities, and one day or another your present way of life will weigh heavily upon you and will perhaps seem odious to you. Look at how devastating it is to lose your trusted housekeeper. What would it be like if you were ailing, or feeling the effects of age … meanwhile I hope you will enjoy perfect health for many years to come.10

  Jane was more concerned by Eugénie’s impending departure, but then they quarrelled again.

  Monday August 15th 1859. I had a terrible fall-out with Eugénie. She is in reality an invaluable servant, but her temper is so irritable, susceptible and suspicious that she torments herself and everyone around her
.

  I privately have a painful remembrance of her concealing what she positively knew of the Count’s errors, and then saying she had been the object of the General’s pursuit, which can never be pleasing to me. Never! Having now made her fortune, she is neither servant nor mistress; an undefined position which she sometimes forgets! But what I shall do without her as to my ménage affairs I know not!!

  In September some interesting travellers from England arrived in Damascus and the consul brought them to meet Jane. Travelling in separate parties they were Mr Carl Haag with his travelling companion Mr Roden Noel, and two young ladies in their early twenties, the Misses Beaufort. They were shown Jane’s portfolio of drawings and paintings of Palmyra and were so overcome with the magnificence of the ruins that they were ‘seized with an intense desire to see them. However the more we asked … the more impossible it seemed … the fatigue and expense combined made it out of the question,’ Emily Beaufort wrote. Carl Haag was made of sterner stuff. ‘If I am a ruined man all my life, or if I walk there in Bedouin sandals, I must go to Palmyra!’ he said. So the following day they went to see Medjuel to plead with him. Medjuel agreed, for the tribe were encamped at Palmyra, and he had been torn between remaining with Jane and a desire to see his brothers and sons before they went off into the desert.

  he engaged to let us stay five whole days … if all the party in the hotel joined together at the price of £15 a head, and good dromedaries [at] £2 each extra. It was a golden opportunity of seeing a real, true Bedouin tribe in the desert, and we were promised to live among them as the Sheikh’s guests, and live upon camel’s milk and flesh.11