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

by Mary S. Lovell

  Jane was also worried about her household, for Mrs Tappenden was proving more nuisance than she was worth. Just as Jane set out for Horns, she received a letter from Eugénie asking if she might return to Damascus. But Jane recalled the episodes of paranoia and did not wish Eugénie to return. Furthermore, Jane had been suffering for some months from severe pain which she self-diagnosed in code in her diary as ‘piles’, but which she half suspected might be something more sinister.

  Thursday May 15th 1862.… arrived at Homs early but I was dead tired with the heat and the road. On arrival found that Medjuel had been twice for me but was now in the mountains for the camels to eat zhuti, and I must now wait until he can fetch me …

  Monday 26th. I rode Hadibah, Yadeh taking her colt. She was very disagreeable and needs a groom, for taking care of her is very fatiguing to me in this dreadful heat.

  Tuesday 27th. I have, with joy, seen Medjuel again!… I rode out with them, and then went to Der Albee to pass the night with him.

  Thursday 29th. I drew for Medjuel £216 for another batch of camels. Sheikh Mohammed [el Mezrab] and some Khayal … arrived to escort me to the Meidan [desert] five hours off. We arrived before sunset after some tremendous galloping. We left Moussa and the baggage camels behind and they arrived one and a half hours later. The desert is still green and our camp is a nice grassy place with water and a fresh spring … Zoyah, Boughah and Howdjah are all dead since last year; all young girls …[I heard] that Mohammed Dukhi was in Damascus and escaped without my camels being recovered.

  Thursday 12th. We set off by night suddenly, it having been reported that soldiers were coming to attack us, and arrived at Firsgleh at daybreak.

  Sunday 22nd. Reports all day that the Pashas of Homs and Hamah were coming out against us with soldiers and cannon. The Sheikh did not believe it but on a repeated message from Solyman ebn Merschid we set off at midnight, by a beautiful moonlight to Firgloss. I, for one, enjoyed the ride excessively. We arrived at sunrise and encamped there about seven days. Not very pleasant, nothing for the horses [to eat] and scorpions in plenty, from which however our tent was mercifully free. I got a few bathes. The Sulymiat from the Medjid came with beautiful camels. Monday 30th.…our affair with ebn Merschid makes no progress towards a favourable settlement.

  The tribe spent several months evading government troops and Jane became accustomed to the life of a fugitive. She revelled in the wild rides to hidden encampments in the mountains to evade government troops. Whenever they rejoined the tribe she sat with the men where there was constant talk of waging a war on various groups whom Sheikh Mohammed el Mezrab blamed for their problems. Eventually a three-sided solution was decided upon. Mohammed would go with the tribe to Tadmor where there was relative safety from the Turkish troops. Medjuel and his brother Manah would go to ebn Merschid to try to bring their dispute to a satisfactory conclusion. And Jane was to go alone to Damascus as an official envoy of the tribe to obtain a pardon for Medjuel from the governor, but if she did not succeed she was to join the tribe at Tadmor for the winter trek.13

  She set off with Fidayah and Moussa, nursing in her lap her latest little ‘Angora Dog’ Bijou, which was ill because of the intense heat. Jane had had a succession of these little dogs with long white silken hair, ever since King Ludwig had given her one as a puppy; she had called that first one ‘Tuilly’.

  In Damascus she was distressed because the consul, Richard Rogers, appeared to be avoiding her, but she eventually tracked him down and extracted his promise to stand as guarantor for Medjuel’s good behaviour when Jane was granted an audience with the governor. Monsieur Heuguard, the French chargé d’affaires, seconded Roger’s guarantee and also offered French protection to Medjuel. Jane became friendly with Monsieur and Madame Heuguard, and travelled with them in a caléche, ‘a novelty to travel in a carriage in Damascus’, along the hadj road to Abd el Khader’s summer palace, where as always she was greeted warmly. ‘Bad news from Aleppo; roads intercepted by the Ansari and Mowah Arabs. Ditto from the Hauran from Arabs and Druses; Ditto from Mount Lebanon from Christians,’ Jane recorded in her diary on 10 September 1862. It was not safe to travel anywhere.

  As a result of her meetings with the pasha she believed she had obtained a measure of safety for Medjuel, at least in Damascus, but her pleasure in achieving this vanished when she discovered several young camels in the city with her own brand on their hides. She was simmering about this when she wrote to England, explaining her long delay in answering Kenelm’s enquiry about the sheikh’s affairs:

  In the desert, even were there a regular post, one is so overcome with the scorching summer heat, so bothered by a continual squatting position, and all sorts of things, and animals running over one (I mean sometimes a gazelle kid, sometimes a greyhound etc. etc.) and the outside noises to boot, that correspondence, reading and all quite sedentary employment is uphill work.

  … The two Consuls have so far befriended [Medjuel] that a ‘bouyourdi’, a safe conduct, has been obtained which protects him. Official French protection has been offered him, but we are hesitating until all hope of English protection is lost. I heard through Steely that Edward had kindly called on Lord Russell to speak upon the subject … I know that it is difficult even to get a shadow of protection for a foreign subject but this case has become notorious here, and the Turkish government is so corrupt and treacherous that they have got a notion that by attacking and persecuting the Sheikh when in Damascus they can, through him, get at English gold!! … It is said that they have offered the Denge Chief a price for Mohammed Dukhi’s head, and vice versa to Mohammed Dukhi for Ismael el Euttrasch (of the Druses); so each will be on their guard and they will get neither. But what a government!!

  I am now claiming from the government indemnity or restitution of a set of my own private camels which were taken by an Agent of the Government [Dukhi] who afterwards rebelled and fought the Sultan’s troops. The camels were seized by the latter, brought into town and actually sold by order of the Government without giving notice to the British consulate to apprise me that I might go and claim my own! I was in the desert at the time or I should certainly have gone and laid hands on them, and the little ones, all marked with my own mark ‘MI’…

  I wish that Syria was not separated from England by the long and expensive sea trip. The fatigue of travel I count as nothing but a visit to England must take five months or it is not worth while. I much enjoyed my last trip, just 6 years ago, but I fear dear Madre [now eighty-five] must be altered and aged … and I should dread to see it.14

  In December 1862, with the assistance of Mr Hannah Misk, senior dragoman to the British consul, Jane again petitioned Rogers regarding her ‘250 Camels – white, black, and brown, large and small; plundered by Sheikh Mohammed Dukhi of the Wuld Ali Tribe of Bedouin Arabs to the value of 250,000 piastres in the neighbourhood of Sakhay near Palmyra’.15 She asked Rogers to approach the Turkish authorities to insist that the allowance payable to ebn Dukhi be sequestered and she be repaid from the money. ‘Also,’ she said logically, ‘some of the stolen camels have been recovered by the Turkish government. Why can I not have them back?’ Mohammed ebn Dukhi had received money for the camels from the government when he leased them to the hadj. The Emir Pasha had already agreed to her plaint, she argued, and had ordered that ebn Dukhi restore the camels or their value. Hannah Misk had attended the meeting on her behalf when she had been in the desert. The Grand Council had decided that ‘it is customary for the Bedouins to plunder each other’ and ruled that ebn Dukhi should restore to Medjuel el Mezrab the camels or their value. ‘But,’ Jane explained, ‘the 250 camels are mine! The sheikh had nothing to do with them. I am the plaintive.’16

  Rogers reported the case to the Foreign Office. But it was not a straightforward matter, as Jane appeared to believe; for Mohammed ebn Dukhi had fled the area, undoubtedly warned.

  Re: Mrs Digby’s claim for the recovery of camels from Mohammed Dukhi, on which subject a Vizirial Order was obtained
and presented. This case was fully reported in my no 48 of December 31st, 1862 … Sheikh Mohammed [ebn Dukhi] had been recognised as the guardian of the district, but had become obnoxious to the authorities who strengthened his old rival Sheikh Feisal and supported [Feisal] in attacking the former.

  In the encounter that ensued Mohammed Dukhi’s party lost about 40,000 (forty thousand) camels. This is a very large number but I have been assured by a good authority that it is not exaggerated. Thus Mohammed Dukhi was reduced to comparative poverty, and when he attacked Feisal, the authorities deserted the latter, who lost a large number of men. This quarrel is one of very long-standing – indeed the blood-feud is an inheritance on both sides, and nothing definite having been settled it is most probable that hostilities will be recommenced next spring.17

  As the year moved to an end, Monsieur Heuguard, hearing that Jane was thinking of selling her lovely house, offered to buy it. ‘My love of change and occupation will easily induce me to sell if I could get my price … [I have] a longing to sell this house, the fruits of 8 years labour and expense, and buy part of Assad and Hadji Nounych’s [neighbours] garden and build a pleasant, more compact house, there.’18

  The Heuguards told Jane that King Otto and Queen Amalie of Greece had recently fled to Germany. Madame Heuguard was ill and Jane spent the day sitting with her. The close, quiet atmosphere of the sick-room and talk of King Otto led Jane into exchanging confidences. She could not stop herself as the story of her relationships with Felix Schwarzenberg, with King Ludwig, Baron Venningen, Count Theotoky, and King Otto, tumbled out. Afterwards she wrote in her diary that she was ‘vexed with myself for speaking to them of … bye-gone days. Why? I neither did the noble-minded Baron justice, nor the’ love I bear to the dear Sheikh.’19

  Christmas came and went with only Jane’s party for her servants to mark its passing. But at least for once she had Medjuel with her, for as the year ended Jane obtained ‘an order from Mohammed Pasha to Abdou Aga, liberating the Sheikh from his dreadful kefab’. In the first days of 1863 her mare Hadibah gave birth to a beautiful little filly foal. Except for her loss of £3,000, all was well.

  20

  The Sitt el Mezrab

  1863–1867

  The middle years of the 1860s were filled with colourful incident and domestic contentment. As there were frequent fights between the tribes, Medjuel was often away for months at a time. They made Medjuel’s house at Homs their base, since his representations on behalf of the tribe had to be made to the governor there. Jane did not care for Horns, a small hot rural town with none of the diversions of Damascus.

  In June 1863 Lady Andover died. Although eighty-six years of age she had been in good health and died suddenly and quietly while sitting with Miss Jane Steele in her drawing-room at Tunbridge Wells, according to letters from England. ‘I understand perfectly how deeply this sad event must have affected you,’ wrote Charles Venningen, ‘for she was certainly the very best of mothers; at least I never met another to compare with her.’1 Jane’s sadness was intensified by a resurgence of guilt at the distress her career had caused both her parents, whom she had loved deeply. But it was characteristic of her – since she observed scrupulously the niceties of both cultures – that she agonised over the fact that she could get no black-edged paper, nor even a black waxed crayon to edge her paper, when she wrote to her brother about their mother’s death.

  Poor dear Madre! It always seemed strange to me, that with all her nervousness she never appeared to be afraid of death … which I think a most natural shrinking, however brave you may be. And in the East another terror is added to the rest, that of being buried alive which constantly happens … I am very glad to hear that you and Edward have settled an annuity on the Steelys [and] have begged him to add my quota so that they cannot refuse to accept …

  Edward told me in his letter that Lord Russell had told him the authorisation had been sent either to Damascus or Stamboul, he is not sure which, but Mr Rogers has received nothing yet from the Foreign Office … I have come to the conclusion by experience that there is no living in the towns for the Sheikh without a European protection.2

  Medjuel, still unpopular with the Turkish government, was busy buying up more property in Horns, having sold a flock of sheep and several very valuable horses, since he wished to be the owner of their new home at Homs which, though small, Jane made as pleasant as the one in Damascus.

  The weather in 1863 began with a hot and ‘hollow sirocco’ that gave Jane headaches. The heavy, sultry heat made her feel listless and ill, so that she began to worry about cholera. However, it was Medjuel who became ill. A fever, which Jane treated with cold compresses and analgesics, appeared to abate, and Medjuel said he felt a little better. He was anxious to clear up several matters that had been worrying him, and they rode together to the tents of the tribe, a few hours from Horns. But soon it became obvious that he was in distress; despite Jane’s careful nursing, he collapsed into a delirious coma.

  Tuesday, 14th July 1863. Dear Medjuel’s illness is decidedly either typhus or something very dangerous, and here we are in the desert with no human aid! His fever is raging and he is delirious; day and night there is no change … I am at my wits’ end not daring to think of the dreaded possibility of his death.

  Wednesday 15th. The worst day and night! His eyes wide with a dreadful glazed expression in them, the fever raging more and more. I prayed earnestly.

  When they saw that her nursing had no effect, the bedouins gathered at the entrance to the tent begged her to let them treat him with the traditional cures. They knew this illness; they told her they could help him. Jane had seen some of the rough bedouin medicine – a child with a terrible skin disease anointed with ointment made of pounded camel dung and ashes; a dying man placed in the midday sun to ‘burn out’ the evil spirit. Much of the nursing involved magic spells and the chasing away of evil spirits by the use of turquoise stones and amulets of various kinds, and the ‘burning-out’ or cauterization of afflictions with hot irons. Yet Jane’s own methods had had no effect, and it was clear that unless something was done, and soon, Medjuel would almost certainly die. The treatment was even worse than she imagined.

  without hope, but in despair I committed him to the curing of the Bedouins who burned four misamar in his head with a hot iron which hissed as it touched him!

  What I felt I cannot express … but shortly after he broke out into a profuse perspiration, which I trust has spared him.3

  From that day Medjuel began to recover. It was a slow process during which Jane never left his side, but as he gained in strength she relaxed.

  Friday 24th. I rode into Homs with Nehabi for my letters, called upon the Aga about the odious kefab, which notwithstanding all we have done, still seems far from being finished. I rode back in the evening and galloped Midjioumah up to the tent as if I was bringing her up to a winning post! A reminiscence of long gone by days when I used to run races with my brothers.4

  As soon as Medjuel was sufficiently recovered to ride a horse they returned to Homs with his children. Often, during the intensely hot July and August of that year they spent the day beside the River Asy as a family, lolling under the trees, splashing about in a shallow inlet. A small donkey carried the picnic. In one quickly executed cartoon Jane places the children, now adolescents, up a tree over the heads of herself and Medjuel. Sometimes Jane and Medjuel went alone and Jane swam naked in the wide, deep and fast river with a rope around her waist – the other end held by an anxious Medjuel. In the cool of the evenings they exercised the horses, and sometimes they rode to the vineyards ‘to eat grapes, and then all round the town after a nice gallop’.

  Medjuel was still as loving as in the early days of their marriage. ‘How he tries to please me in everything,’ Jane wrote when he gave her Aidaah, a splendid dromedary, in gratitude for her nursing.5 They held mock races, and Jane – confident that she was as good a rider as Medjuel and could beat him if she really tried – sometimes held back. Her
beautiful horse Midjioumah (which she had bred and broken) was one of the fleetest in the desert and gave Jane enormous pleasure: ‘Midjioumah would have beat Nourah had I let her.’6

  From Charles Venningen came news that Heribert had married the granddaughter of Lord Erskine, her grandfather’s old friend, who had been kind to her when she first arrived in Munich in 1831. The ‘pretty’ bride, Countess Gabrielle de Paumgarten, was, like Heribert, half English:

  she is very blonde with a pink complexion and skin so fine one can see the blood circulating in her veins. She is a little shorter than you. I fear her health is delicate, in contrast to that of her husband who is built like a Hercules. They do not match physically, but … they have married purely for love, and there is nothing to be said against that.7

  In Damascus Mrs Tappenden was proving to be a wasteful and gossiping servant, and Jane learned she had been indiscreet with several of the male servants. Eventually Jane felt obliged to go alone to Damascus. By coincidence Eugénie now appeared back in Syria and, as she seemed more her old self Jane re-employed her with relief. In addition to her other defects, Mrs Tappenden was a poor needlewoman, whereas Eugénie was a first-class dressmaker. In Eugénie’s absence Jane had relied on her two sisters-in-law to send her up-to-date fashions from England in the crates which still arrived three or four times a year.

  the riding jacket and muslin dress are capitally chosen. I have a small grey French strap riding hat for visits, but for real country riding and cantering yours is just the thing! In your next letter please to send me the bill for I carefully opened all the papers and did not find any list or the bill.

  I long to be into my new books but I am still busy resettling the house. After a long absence Eugénie is returned I am happy to say, but did not bring any aide de camp with her, which I am sorry for as the chief plague of Syria is the want of servants.8