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

by Mary S. Lovell

  The merest spark was needed to set off the tinderbox. On the morning of 9 July the cry (probably incorrect) went up that a Muslim had been killed by a Christian near the mosque and that the victim’s blood had been used to etch a cross on the wall nearby. Jane’s friend, Colonel Charles Churchill, described how

  the awful cry was caught up from mouth to mouth, a terrific commotion spread about like lightning from street to street. All business was abandoned, the shops were closed; and in less than a quarter of an hour an infuriated mob brandishing weapons, guns, swords, axes and every description of weapon was in full career to the Christian quarter.

  From all directions was seen and was heard the rush of men armed to the teeth; and from unarmed women and boys, shouts, imprecations on the infidels, the giaours, and cries of ‘Kill them! Butcher them! Plunder! Burn! Leave not one alive, not a house, anything!!!’7

  A cannon was discharged from the fortress by the Turkish guard; it was loaded only with powder, but flaming wadding landed on the matting stretched over the bazaar to provide shade. The tinder-dry matting caught fire and, aided by arsonists, the flames rapidly spread to consume a large area. Gangs of men ran into Christian houses, plundering everything they could carry away before setting fire to what remained. People from the suburbs poured into the city before the gates were shut, to help in the destruction.

  On the previous day, Abd el Khader had sent his son to Jane, inviting her to come to his palace and remain there while the trouble lasted, for no Muslim would dare to invade his home. Jane sent her thanks to her friend, saying she believed she incurred no risk by remaining in her husband’s house, he being a Muslim, but that in any case she had Christian servants in the house and whatever danger they had to endure she would share with them.8 However, at Medjuel’s insistence, she had not left their property for several days. After feeding her animals as usual, she had gone into the house while the sheikh went into the city to see what he could discover.

  I was sitting quietly, drawing, when D’jebran rushed in and announced that the Turks were risen. Shortly after the Sheikh returned and confirmed the fearful news. The insurrection was begun, the Druses and Kurds began to slaughter every Christian man they met.9

  Our house is outside the city walls, in the Moslem quarter, so we had the satisfaction and comfort of seeing the city gate shut against us, had we wanted to enter. But knowing a great variety of people, ‘every sort of bird’ (as the Arabs say), Druzes, Kurds and villagers in passing to their work of destruction stopped here and offered their services to help in guarding our house.

  The Sheikh thought it wise to accept none and arming himself, and a few very determined spirits of our tribe, took his long chibougue [pipe], shut our gates behind him and sat with them outside, awaiting events.

  I was all the time … on the roof from whence I could see all around and command the road filled with goers and comers, all armed for action; reap hooks, axes, clubs studded with nails, daggers, etc … Many Christians were attacked and killed in their shops before they knew what the uproar was about, and in less than an hour … all was a scene of murder, and plunder which we saw being carried to and fro; the Kurdish women inciting and helping the men. It was awful to behold.10

  Supplies of water were cut off and by sunset the entire Christian quarter was ablaze, in a sea of fire. In the midst of the smoke Jane was appalled to see crowds of women, some carrying infants, shrieking and rushing along flat roofs, jumping from house to house. Some fell and perished in the fire. Others were captured and sexually violated in the streets before jeering crowds. Some, especially young girls, were carried off; some were made pregnant and set free; some never returned; others were sold into the harems of Turks. Nor did the men escape. Young boys and old men were forced to apostatise and were derisorily circumcised before being put to death. At one point Jane took out her sketchbook and in a few pencil strokes drew in the outline of the city with its pall of smoke. Working notes read: ‘very red’, ‘dark’, ‘flames’, ‘smoke’.

  As the violence mounted, despite his promise to the French to retire into private life, Abd el Khader felt unable to stand by and watch murder and rapine. He had his own army of 500 devoted Algerian followers, well salted in conflict, and he sent these tough men into the Christian quarter in his name, to rescue as many of the Christians as they could. Some families refused to come out of their houses, fearing a trick, but many hundreds were safely collected and escorted to safety. A mob subsequently converged on the gates of el Khader’s palace demanding that the Christians be handed over. After several hours the emir decided that ignoring them was not enough. He had the gates opened and rode out alone to confront the howling crowd. It was a measure of the respect in which he was held that they did not attack him, especially when he shouted to them, ‘Not a Christian will I give you. Stand back or I will give the order to fire.’

  Around the walls of his palace stood Algerians with rifles. They were outnumbered, but their reputation did much to even the score against a crowd armed with crude clubs and pickaxes. The mob dispersed, but the building was under siege for several days by growling knots of Muslims. The emir made a point of sleeping on a mattress by the gate of his palace in case any Christians should come knocking at the door at night and be turned away by his Algerians, who were Muslims and therefore might turn a deaf ear. A similar mob converged on the British consulate where numbers of Christians had been given shelter; the consul and his party escaped and made their way, disguised in Arab clothing, to the emir’s palace.

  The bedouins headed by Medjuel and stationed around the outside their house were armed ‘to the teeth’, but Medjuel wisely instructed them to adopt the casual attitude of watchkeepers rather than aggressive protectors. The noise of the burning city and the screams of victims went on through the night. Next day, Jane saw that there was no abatement of the horror: ‘Still worse! Murder, fire and plunder were the order of the day. Poor Mr Graham was killed [on his way from the church to the English consulate], and the convent and other churches were burnt down.’11 The school went too, and one of our schoolmasters saved his life only by becoming a Moslem.’12

  The nuns of the Sisters of Charity were rescued and taken to safety by el Khader’s men, but their convent was burned to the ground and several monks in a nearby monastery were butchered. By the third day Jane thought that the murders had almost ceased, though the rape, arson and looting continued. Like el Khader, Jane and Medjuel gave sanctuary to Christians who ran to their gates. Medjuel warned that there was a real danger of the mob rising during the night and returning to storm the emir’s palace, and any other houses sheltering Christians.13 Still, for Jane’s sake he would not turn anyone away.

  After several days the city became calmer and a deathly quiet fell over the carnage. Thanks to Medjuel and his grim, armed bedouin sentries, Jane was at last able to write that she and all her household

  have been wonderfully and mercifully preserved during the days that the storm raged around us, and murder, fire and plunder were the order of the day! …[But] in all the many wanderings of my adventurous and adventureful life I never was in such a mess as this and the distress of those around is heart rending.14

  When the fighting ceased, she dressed in enveloping robes and veil and walked alone through the Christian quarter to the consulate, where families were still hiding in fear of their lives. From there she went to Abd el Khader’s palace, where she found the British and French consuls, and Monsieur Le Roy, who had been her Arabic interpreter and sometime teacher. The courtyard was packed with people and in a garden beside the walls, guarded by his men, thousands more were fed on rations of ‘bread and cucumber’. El Khader received her with calm nobility, and she saw why the emir valued so highly his placid aged wife, for she greeted Jane as though she were calling for a tea party.

  The following day Jane went out to another part of the Christian quarter, having heard that there were people in need of help. In her bedouin clothes she would not be taken for
a Christian. The sight of mutilated bodies and the stench of putrefaction and smouldering rubble were stomach-turning, ‘sixteen corpses in one spot, still unburied [after a week], half devoured by the dogs, filling the air with all the elements of plague and cholera. Awful to behold.’15 She called on a number of Christian friends to ascertain their well-being. Jane could have remained within the safety of her home; Medjuel would probably have preferred that she did. But each day she went out, dispensing flat unleavened bread to those too afraid to leave their homes, or simple medicines to those in greatest need. She made no mention of this in her diary, nor did she write home about it, but eventually word of it reached Charles Venningen via the German consul and he wrote to tell her that he had ‘learned about your brave acts during the massacre … by chance. Knowing you as I know you I was not at all surprised.’16

  It was not until the end of July that the city returned to a reasonably stable state, but the plight of many thousands of homeless Christians living on the roadsides and existing on public charity was pitiable.

  Up to 14,000 deaths occurred in Syria during the massacre, some 2,000 – many of them men who had been breadwinners and heads of families – in Damascus alone. The hardships of the families left without support was almost as appalling to Jane as the massacre itself.

  The incident was too serious to be contained nationally, and when strong international representations were made Constantinople had no alternative but to move strongly against the perpetrators of the atrocities. The governor, Achmed Pasha, was deposed and jailed pending trial. The city returned to normal except for the trials of those accused of murder, and formal executions by the hundred went on for weeks. El Khader was decorated by the French for his part in saving many hundreds of lives. Monsieur Le Roy left Damascus for Beirut but died of a heart attack shortly after reaching the coast, said to have been brought on by grief at what he had seen during the massacre. Mrs Tappenden had been ‘useless’ during the entire episode, and Jane decided that ‘with all her faults’ Eugénie was worth ten of her replacement, who was ‘too concerned’ with the safety of her person. Unintentionally, this reveals a great deal about Eugénie, who had accompanied Jane through many adventures over a number of years.

  Tuesday August 20th. Today Mustafa Talou, my former porter and 205 others were hung and shot. I rode on Nourah in the evening with the Sheikh, and Sheikh Fares, to the empty burying ground to see the havoc made there [ Christian bodies had been exhumed and defiled]. That quiet little nook, destined in all probability to be also my last resting place if I am to die in this far off land. We then returned all round the formerly joyous road and gay gardens, now quite silent and deserted, the mourning and sorrowing city like a heap of desolation.

  Yet there were bright spots in the bleakness. To her astonishment and delight, Sheikh Feisal, whom she had declared to be her ‘ideal of a Bedouin Sheikh’ and whom she believed dead, suddenly appeared at their house. He brought ‘many of his Arabs with him’, and the house was full of people for a few days; when he left, Medjuel went with him for the first part of his journey.

  Within hours of their departure a message came from Medjuel’s brother Manah to say that the Shemmar had made a large ghazou and taken all the Mesrabi tents in retaliation for his attack on them with a small number of khayals (warriors). Jane sent for Medjuel, who came racing back, furious at the losses and Manah’s foolishness at bating a much larger and more powerful force. Fortunately his own tent was still at Tadmor but the raid was a significant loss for the tribe and caused great hardship, which Medjuel would have to mitigate.

  Meanwhile Achmed Pasha, the former governor, was executed along with twenty-four other high-ranking government officials. Jane helped to set up a committee at the British consulate with the wife of the consul and Lord Dufferin, to see what might be done to rescue the girls captured and carried off by the Kurds, and to discuss the problems that would undoubtedly occur when the raped women and girls gave birth.

  The city that had once captivated her now seemed a dreadful place, shamed and despoiled. However, confident that Jane was in no further danger, Medjuel left for Homs to recover the valuable tents taken in the Shemmar raid, expecting to be gone at least a month. Jane accompanied him to Doumah, where they had an affectionate parting. They had agreed that while he was in Homs Medjuel should look at property there, for both were ‘sickened’ by Damascus.

  When Medjuel wrote to say that he had seen a smallholding at Homs that he thought he might buy with his own money, Jane wrote that she was in favour of the purchase: ‘it is not a bad way I think of investing his money; houses and ground are more stable than camels …!’

  While Medjuel was away she decided to show her support for the Christians who had so bravely defended their faith. Christian worship in Damascus was always conducted in Arabic and although Jane now spoke fluently, and read and wrote Arabic reasonably well, she could not follow the services because, as she later told Kenelm, ‘the scriptural language is so different to the language in common use that I do not understand it.’17 From this date onwards Jane became a regular churchgoer. She felt she owed some recognition to the faith of those who died for their belief, and this was coupled with deep anger towards the Muslim perpetrators of the acts of brutality she had witnessed, particularly against Christian women.

  Her first venture into church after the massacre was to the small room which some new missionaries had taken after their church had been destroyed. Dr Robson, whom she had known for some years, had gone to Beirut and the service was being taken by a Dr Meschaka, whom she had not met. Robed and veiled as a bedouin she slipped unobtrustively into the room and took her place at the back, sitting on her heels. With her startling blue eyes, upright carriage and presence she was not a figure to pass unnoticed and the minister and his team were curious about the stranger, for a bedouin woman seemed a most unlikely convert. After the service they waited to speak to her and welcome her to the mission.

  They were astounded when she replied in English, flabbergasted to learn that she was the Honourable Mrs Digby [and that] she was interested in their work, and in the progress they were making towards repairing the damage of [the massacre]. She implied that she was always at home to them, and from this meeting which resulted in her entertaining them hospitably, new acquaintances were made from whose number [in her later years] she drew some of her closest friends.18

  Jane’s friend, Dr Robson, returned to the city, and after a great deal of deliberation Jane took Communion from him ‘for the first time in 36 years’. Since her marriage to Lord Ellenborough she had regarded attendance at church as a social rather than spiritual obligation. Even now she was doubtful about her real feelings but felt she ought to support Robson, that ‘dear, good man, [so] willing to “spend and be spent” in doing service to others while I, blessed with health and strength and an abundance of earthly comforts, what do I do?’19

  In November, Jane and Medjuel set off for Horns, prior to joining the tribe for the winter trek. Jane was to look at the house and land that Medjuel wished to purchase. Mrs Tappenden, having failed the test of travelling maid, was left in charge of the house at Damascus. Jane took Fidayah, a young girl from the house, instead.

  Saturday 1st December 1860. Up very early and rode to Nöbk, stopping at Geustall for some of its famous dibs. We arrived early at Nöbk and I was pleased and thankful to find that Fidayah turns out to be an excellent desert servant. I much enjoyed my luncheon today with dear Medjuel. We rode on alone, and climbed the horses to the brow of a hill before turning them loose to graze. We sat down, en vrais bédouins, to breathe the fresh mountain air! Such scenes as this engrave themselves on my memory for always …

  Sunday 2nd. I was sorry to be obliged to go on to Gharrah when we stopped and I dined with the Aga’s wife and a very pretty Circassian, Emmie. What a very melancholy sight to me are these harems, and the [poor wives] black or white. What a total waste is their mind. Every thought concerned on dress or the means of pleasing –
not a husband, or even a lover – but a cold, selfish master at most!20

  Homs seemed pleasant and relaxed after Damascus and Jane was eager for them to buy a house there. ‘The cheapness of the old stone houses on the ramparts’ was tempting, and she accepted Medjuel’s wish to live ‘in the place he now prefers to desolate Damascus’.21 They stayed in a rented house while they waited for their large tent to arrive from the desert. After a few weeks Medjuel decided that the tribe would probably not return from the desert until June, and that he should go and fetch the tent himself to ensure its safety. Jane decided to slip back to Damascus while he was away, to ensure that all was well there. The thought of her lovely home, left for six months in the worst weather under the direction of Mrs Tappenden, made her uneasy.

  Medjuel accompanied her halfway to Hessia and she went on with Fidayah and a single guard, planning to ride fast and sleep at the houses of village notables. On the first night, she was stung to fury when the wife of the emir (sister to the objectionable Faris el Meziad) asked her offhandedly what sum she had given Medjuel to bribe him not to take other wives.22

  Apparently without her noticing it Christmas slipped by while she was on the road, for she never mentioned it in her diary; but she was happy to find the house at Damascus ‘in order and very comfortable, and the servants agreeing’ when she arrived there on 27 December. Even in her absence she had arranged the annual Christmas party for her household, with a turkey from her small flock and small presents for everyone, and ‘with snap dragons [flambéed raisins] and so on. The little black children were delighted.’23