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

by Mary S. Lovell

  They crossed the River Barada by the old wooden bridge leading to the north-eastern gate, Bab Tuma (Thomas’s Gate). Unlike other visiting Europeans, Jane did not notice the dirt, being fascinated by the soaring architecture of the Great Mosque, and the brightly painted cafés and bath-houses. She saw quaint gilded lattices on windows projecting over the narrow crooked streets, and occasionally caught a glimpse through an open carved door of a cool marble courtyard; she heard the music of fountains behind high walls, and the cry of the milk-seller ‘Leben, Lebe-e-e-en!’; inhaled the scent of spices from the souk, and drank in the exotic and picturesque forms of dress and people – Persians, Kurds, Circassians, Anatolians, African slaves and Turks.

  There was only one hotel in the city, owned by a Greek, Demetri, who was ‘civil, obliging and attentive … though he can afford to be a little independent in his manner because he has no opposition and if you object to his hotel you must wend your way, as a pilgrim, to the khan’. With her knowledge of Greek and her obvious importance Jane was welcomed with particular warmth. Demetri’s was for many years the headquarters of any European visitor who found their way to Damascus.

  The hotel …[was] in the Frank quarter. It had once been the house of some rich merchant. The court into which we were ushered is paved with marble, with a great stone fountain and basin with goldfish, surrounded with vases of flowering plants in the centre. Two large lemon trees shade the entrance, and a vine climbing to the top of the house, makes a leafy arbor over the flat roof … The liwan is a vaulted apartment twenty foot high entirely open to the court.

  In front a pavement of marble leads to the chambers. Beyond this is a raised floor covered in carpet and at the far end a divan piled with cushions and carpets. Leaning back, cross legged against the cushions … the view of the court, the water basin, the flowers and lemon trees, the servants and dragomen going back and forth or smoking their narghilehs in the shade, all framed in the beautiful arched entrance, is perfectly Oriental.14

  There was no baths in the hotel, but the women’s hammam, the public bath-house, was close by. In the late afternoon Jane retired to the bath and then returned to eat and sit in the liwan lit with brilliantly coloured lamps hung in the oleander and lemon trees. Afterwards she slept. The soporific music of the fountain through the open lattice windows of her room, and the feeling of satisfaction, even permeated her dreams. She was in Damascus at last.

  The next days were spent visiting the famous sights of the city with its ‘Street called Straight’ mentioned in the Bible, the house of Ananias where Paul lodged after his divine revelation struck him blind, and the window in the city walls from which he was lowered in a basket to escape his pursuers.15 Jane and Eugénie explored the souks with delight. Here one could (and still can) buy anything from spices to gold, and silver filigree, from Damascene inlaid furniture to sweetmeats or the fabled Aleppo silk. Travellers wrote of how one could shop in succession through ‘the Mercer’s, Tailor’s, Spice, Tobacco, Shoe, Silversmith’s, Book, Saddler’s, Seed, Clothes, and the Silk Bazaars’.16

  Jane went shopping for the clothes Medjuel told her were essential for the journey to Palmyra. Her European clothes – which drew the attention of small crowds as she sat cross-legged on cushions opposite a turbaned merchant in the souk, gravely discussing the price of a purchase over a cup of coffee or a lemon ice – would have to be left behind, for not only were they impractical but they would create unnecessary danger. Having already noted the lightness, grace and freedom of the Arab dress, Jane had no qualms on this score.

  While Jane explored, Medjuel was organising the small caravan that would take her to Palmyra. This trip was to be the apogee of her tour; probably less than a score of Europeans had ever been there. Lady Hester Stanhope, the great eccentric of Lady Andover’s generation, had made the trip thirty years earlier. Her bedouin escort (from Medjuel’s tribe) had crowned her arrival with floral wreaths, which she took to mean that they had proclaimed her their ‘queen’. Since that time no European woman had visited Palmyra; it remained a dangerous and arduous journey.

  Possibly it was Hester Stanhope’s story that had provoked Jane’s interest, but equally likely was the older story of Queen Zenobia and her fight against the Romans in the third century AD. At the head of 70,000 Arabs, Zenobia drove the Romans out of Syria before marching into Egypt to destroy the Roman garrisons there, thus gaining control of all Syria and the neighbouring provinces. For some years she ruled the entire desert from her magnificent palace at Palmyra, where she made her capital on the ancient biblical site of Soloman’s Tadmor. The warrior Queen was eventually defeated, and carted off to Rome, where she was displayed decked out in jewels, and fettered in gold chains, in the Romans’ triumphal homecoming procession. The city of Palmyra was sacked and razed in retribution.

  But Jane’s plan to visit Palmyra was not straightforward. The British consul, Richard Wood, was determined to put a stop to such a foolhardy notion. He invited her to the consulate a few days after her arrival and strongly advised her against making the journey. His concern was undoubtedly that Jane could cause a potential ‘incident’ on his patch, for despite her battered reputation as Lady Ellenborough, as he insisted on calling her, she was the granddaughter of the Earl of Leicester and had important connections in England. The mere thought of an Englishwoman travelling alone (apart from her maid) in the desert with a group of Arabs was distressing to him.

  Though he frequently travelled on the road between Damascus, Homs and Aleppo in the north of the country, the consul told her, he had never dared to make the journey across the trackless desert to Palmyra. Six months earlier Lord Dalkeith and a few other English gentlemen had made the journey and had been obliged to travel ‘almost wholly by night, running the gauntlet of a dozen Arab encampments’ and allowed only a day’s stay at Palmyra. On the return journey they had been captured and imprisoned for four days, escaping only by the merest good fortune, and had returned ill and exhausted. Indeed, said Wood, the best one could hope for if attacked was that the warriors were merciful and would not kill and bury one – that is, if one considered it merciful to be stripped naked and turned loose without food or water in the desert.

  Jane knew that Medjuel had not been escort to the Dalkeith expedition but that it was his tribe who were suspected of having captured the travellers in retaliation for the poaching of their rights of way. So she thanked Mr Wood but declined his advice. She was aware that the journey would not be easy and that there was potentially great danger; probably it was part of the attraction. And she knew that even when they reached Palmyra there would be little respite. For many years the Palmyrans (inhabitants of the nearby town) had allowed no one to spend more than twenty-four hours at the ruins of Zenobia’s city.

  You must be almost inhumanly strong if you can make the long journey there and back, fifty hours of camel riding and not spend those twenty hours in sleep or rest.

  … The ruins are three miles in extent and no one could take more than a glance at the principal objects, even if ten hours were spent in traversing them; and as the fear of Bedouin ghazzous and the want of water necessitate riding that part of the journey nearest to Palmyra at a stretch of twenty-four hours without stop or stay, both going and returning, few persons like to undertake it. Then the fee given to the tribe for allowing visitors to go there, with safe-conduct, is usually £30 each.17

  Medjuel had told Jane that most Ferengi (European or ‘Frankish’) travellers who wished to make the journey were turned down because he considered they would not stand up physically to the rigours of the journey, or sometimes simply because he did not like them. He was bedu, he told her proudly, implying that anything else was inferior.

  In early June 1853 Jane set out on what she would ever after call the ‘greatest adventure, probably, of all my journeys’.18 Wearing a cloak, called an abba, over a simple cotton shift, a square white keffiyeh folded into a triangle and fixed on her head with an agal (headband) of coloured silks, and soft k
id ankle-high boots with pointed toes, dyed lemon yellow, Jane emerged from Demetri’s accompanied by Eugénie in a similar outfit.

  Outside the hotel she found a scene of confusion, a team of dromedaries on their knees, groaning, roaring and growling, ‘as if they were about to be killed, after the manner of dromedaries the moment they are requested to kneel and the whole time they are kneeling’.19 Camel drivers ran around shouting at each other and in the midst of the commotion stood Sheikh Medjuel, calmly waiting. He wore his usual clothes – scarlet cloak over striped shift, a bright silk keffiyeh on his head. Around his waist he had wound and knotted several coloured scarves and into this wide sash had thrust a number of knives and pistols. Around his neck was a silken cord upon which hung a sword, and on his feet were red leather boots with upturned toes. On his wrist he carried a hooded hawk. This final touch was not showmanship: the bird would be used to catch small birds and game as fresh food on the journey, as would his salukis – the elegant hunting dogs of the desert – which always travelled with him. His long black hair, the sidelocks of which had formerly hung in ringlets around his ears, was neatly plaited.

  Medjuel instructed the argeels (camel drivers) to keep their animals lying down by standing on the forelegs of the beasts while the women scrambled awkwardly into the seats. Jane’s camel immediately jumped up, raising its hind legs and throwing her almost over its head, then raising its forelegs and throwing her backwards against the wooden frame of the saddle. She would quickly learn the art of mounting as the bedouin women did, by stepping lightly on to the camel’s neck and springing into position as the beast lifted its head, but this required practice, and her first experience was awkward. The small amount of baggage she had been allowed to bring – some changes of linen, a few toilet items, sketchbook, pencils and paints, and a book – was handed over by Eugénie and safely stowed in her saddle-bags.

  At last they were on their way, Jane sitting easily in the middle of the rug-covered saddle with her legs crossed around the front pommel. On either side of the saddle, or schedad, were large saddle-bags made of woven camel hair into which had been sewn rows of coloured silk tassels, bunches of ostrich feathers and tiny turquoise beads to ‘ward off the evil eye’. Long cords ending in dyed woollen tassels hung down almost to the ground and swayed as the camel walked. Soon the party cleared the city, the drums ceased beating, the camel drivers ceased singing, the last goodbye faded in the distance. As they passed out upon the great plain beyond the village of Doumah they met the postman galloping in after his nine-day ride from Baghdad.20

  The first night they camped at a khan, a desert enclosure on the outskirts of a small village where they could buy limited foods such as camel’s milk and leben (a yoghurt-like substance made from the milk of sheep, goat or camel), and fresh oranges and dibs (honeyed raisins). Jane was happy to sleep in the open on a mound of rugs under blankets, gazing up at the moon hanging low in the sky. There is nowhere in the world where the moon hangs so close and so bright as in the desert. And there is such silence that the very sound of it seems to enter the soul.

  The women were woken at daybreak with hot coffee, and set off into the desert with four days of hard riding ahead of them. Medjuel had been explicit about the dangers that threatened and he had not lightly undertaken to shepherd the two women on a journey fraught with possible dangers. He warned Jane of the bedouin ghazous (raids), when fierce groups of tribesmen would swoop down on encampments, club the travellers senseless and loot the camp. With infidels they were not bound by the rules that made it unlawful to kill another bedouin, thus creating a blood feud that could last generations.

  Jane’s diary was full of the beauty of the desert and the mountain range that they were to follow almost all the way to Palmyra. She had anticipated miles of arid sand, but there were frequent patches of aromatic bushes, splashes of bright scarlet poppies and tufts of herbs for over half the journey – all material for her sketchbook. At times Medjuel stopped to allow the camels to graze this foliage which, he told her, assuaged their thirst. They saw gerboas, desert rats and hares. Occasionally a gazelle bounded stiff-legged across their path. Hoopoes and brilliantly coloured rollers flashed against the dark mountains, and in the sky above them eagles wheeled. The colours, the never-ending changes of tints in the sands and the mountain backdrop made her itch to paint. Endless streaks of pinks, lilacs, mauves, reds and deep purple-browns changed as the sun dropped to hazy blues and deep smoky-grey.

  Several times great blue lakes appeared at the foot of the mountains, and initially Jane could hardly credit it when Medjuel told her that there was no water, but only a mirage on the great salt pan. The lakes faded away after several hours as the light changed. In the desert the view was limitless and perspective distorted, so that an item seen clearly in the early morning might take ten hours to reach, never seeming to come closer until almost under the camel’s feet.

  The next day they pitched camp in the open desert. Within fifteen minutes the low black tents had been erected, a fire was blazing brightly, the camels had been strung in lines and the saddles set at the open side of the sheikh’s tent, covered with carpets to act as seat backs. The women had their own accommodation, rugs to lie upon and saddle-bags as pillows. Jane loved the bedouin tents, the sight of which, she said, made her heart beat with pleasure: ‘Lovely to my eye are these … low, black tents.’21 A friend of Jane’s would describe them as

  long and narrow, closed at the back but partially open in front. When walking in the camp one must pass at the back of the tent and not peep into any at the front – any more than we should think of peeping into a gentleman’s window. To look into an arab’s tent, even to pass too near the front of it, would give the deepest offence.22

  In camp the men prayed regularly, spreading out their prayer mats and performing the washing ritual with sand, in the absence of water, before bowing to Mecca. Since it was Ramadan, they had all fasted between sunrise and sunset, so the meal – which consisted of broth made from a desert partridge caught that day by Medjuel’s hawk, which had dropped on the creature from the sky and held it on the sands until the unleashed salukis seized and killed it – was welcome. The women had taken sips of water during the day but the men, she noted, took nothing; though a traveller was permitted to drink during Ramadan, additional grace could be earned by abstinence.

  Afterwards the sun dropped suddenly and the wonderful desert night skies filled with bright pinpricks of light until the moon rose, turning the sand into molten silver. Behind the tents they could hear jackals howling, a lonely, eerie sound that set the camels groaning, and the hunting dogs crept closer to the fire. Jane was told to try to sleep for a few hours, for they were to rise and ride through the night. Jane ‘more than ever enjoyed the night, the camels kept together better than in the day, and the argeels indulged in a number of wild songs … some of the tunes wild and sad’. The songs that the argeels sang to their camels, which Medjuel translated for her, Jane found particularly amusing:

  Oh, Camel, my love, my beauty, go on quickly and the prettiest girls of the village shall come out to meet you. Go on, and when you kneel, the maidens will feed you with fresh sugar-canes and stroke you with their soft hands.23

  She found it a delicious experience to trot along under the moon; without the burning heat of the day, the smooth trot of the camel was more exhilarating than the long striding walk.

  On the next evening, as they made camp, they were attacked. Medjuel had never relaxed his guard from the moment they left Damascus. Whenever they stopped he posted lookouts; when they were on the move he himself constantly circled the group, peering into the distance. Scouts were sent ahead and some made to lag behind to warn of any strangers who approached. Jane did not underestimate his concern. Once or twice they had seen riders in the distance, but it was not until the dreadful cry of ‘Ghazou, ghazou’ went up from all sides and riders poured into the camp brandishing lances and uttering a blood-curdling war-cry that she felt any apprehension.
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  Medjuel’s one thought was to protect his client and he sprang in front of her tent with a pistol in one hand and a sabre in the other. Jane, taken by surprise, could do little but watch as he parried the attack, calling out orders to his men. They had few items of value and were carrying only what was necessary for the journey. All jewellery had, at the sheikh’s instruction, been left behind with the consul in Damascus. The money she had brought for expenses on the journey had been given into his safe-keeping. But there were some good riding camels and much equipment of value to bedouins. No shots were fired, but there was some hand-to-hand fighting until Medjuel’s energetic defence drove the raiders back into the desert.

  Jane believed that she owed her life to Medjuel on that occasion, and even twenty-five years later, when she described the incident to a visitor, she recalled the breathtaking excitement of the moment and her debt to him.24 It also gave her a great respect for the ways of the desert, for she had learned that these raids were a way of life for the bedouin, as sudden as they were vicious.

  Jane’s niece, the writer A. M. Stirling, who produced a condensed career of Jane for a family history, wrote that it was quite usual for travellers to pay their 6,000 francs for a visit to Palmyra and later to find themselves held up by members of the same tribe for a similar sum of ‘ransom’ money. E. M. Oddie believed that the raiders were from one of the branches of the Anazeh tribe, to which the Mezrabs belonged, and, having identified Medjuel as one of their own sheikhs, had no intention of harming anyone. Had they made off with any booty, she thought, they would have shared it with Medjuel later, and Medjuel’s actions were thus an act for his client’s benefit.25

  This theory does not accord with bedouin tribal custom. It would have been the height of impropriety to continue to attack the caravan after having identified a friend. The marauders would have been forced to apologise immediately they realised such a mistake, and Medjuel would have been obliged to invite them to join in their meal.26 That the raiders were Anazeh is more than likely, for the Anazeh frequented that part of the desert. But the Anazeh had many branches and there was great internecine rivalry between them. It was not considered especially unfriendly to attack another Anazeh tribe by ghazou; raiding for plunder was a way of life, and the answer was a counter-raid. The main danger lay in the fact that as in any society there were unscrupulous elements, and that a ghazou of so-called bedouins might in reality have been one of the many itinerant gangs of ruthless men who were not pure-blood bedouins and therefore lacked their code of honour.