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

by Mary S. Lovell

  In the spring of 1864 Jane once again personally escorted a party of five English travellers to Palmyra when Medjuel had to remain at Horns. The extreme heat was enervating, but she had a longing to see Tadmor again. She set off with Mr and Mrs Amherst and their daughter, Sir Patrick Murray and Mr Noeys, and sixty-five men as escort. Jane rode Oudiada, given by Medjuel as a bride-gift and still Jane’s favourite camel. She was delighted to be away from the towns and in the desert with only the sound of birdsong.

  Friday June 10th, 1864… near Bella Tiass we [stopped] and I slept the sleep I delight in, under the broad and brilliant canopy of heaven, with all sorts of aromatic herbs all round, Bedouin fires, and the dear, useful dromedaries chewing the cud …

  Saturday 11th. We rose for our last stage through the Dhow … after luncheon caught sight of the well-known (to me) pyramidical hills that descend upon Tadmor, still far, far off in the slight blue distance. We went the whole day without stopping, mostly trotting in order to get in before sunset, and at last attained the last hill and the ever glorious panorama of Tadmor and its long-departed glories lay stretched before us. Alas, half an hour too late, for the sun no longer brightly illuminated the colonnade; the columns were white instead of golden as I wished them to be. Still, the party were astounded and our entry to Tadmor was like a triumph, all the villagers turning out to shout a welcome.

  Sunday 12th. I bathed in a garden … and afterwards walked through the ruins. I delighted to do the honour of the place, dear to me by a thousand memories of love and tenderness.

  After several days the party set out for home but Jane, to her surprise, became affected with ophthalmia. She had often treated members of the tribe, including Medjuel, for eye infections but assumed that because of her own scrupulous hygiene she was immune.

  Thursday 16th. I rose with one of my eyes painfully inflamed; ‘gummed in’ as the Bedouins would say, and before we reached the long stage to the water at Bella Tiass in the evening I was affected in both eyes, though not at all tired. I envied Miss Amherst being able to sketch the deep, dark tints and the glorious sunset looking up the narrow gully with the Bedouin figures, and reflections in the water. She sketches rapidly and well with deep colours at once, using the brush, but I do not like her prodigality of Indian yellow on her buildings …

  Friday 17th. A most painful day to me with both eyes completely closed with inflammation and pain. The blazing sun full on my face I was obliged to be led by another Bedouin, the dromedary trotting as it liked, and the saddle quite broken. We arrived at length at the tents [of the Mezrab], I in a pitiable state doctored by Arglyeh.

  Saturday 18th. The worst day of all! … When we arrived at Ayfir I could not possibly open either eye. After luncheon we went on, I suffering inexpressible shooting pains and on nearing Homs to my inexpressible vexation I heard them exclaim “Here’s the Sheikh … on his beautiful chestnut mare etc. etc.”… It was impossible for me to open my eyes or see him, or greet him as I wished. What must real blindness be like?

  Jane fretted more about the incapacity it brought than the condition itself, recalling that on a previous return when Medjuel had come to greet her they had raced towards each other. ‘Oh how I love such excitement,’ she had written joyously, proud of her fitness and still-youthful agility. But her illness only seemed to make Medjuel more caring. ‘What an angel’s temper, and patience he has proved on so many occasions’, she marvelled.9

  Eugénie wrote saying she had to go to France in the hope of being allowed to see her daughter whom, twenty years earlier, she had given up to a foster family. Ever since, she had made attempts to see the girl and she believed it might at last be possible. This meant Jane had to return to Damascus again, but Medjuel was able to accompany her. They were both invited to the levee held by the British consul in honour of Queen Victoria’s birthday, as ‘protégés of Her Majesty’. Jane was thrilled by the invitation because she believed it indicated that Medjuel was about to be given British protection; but her campaign was doomed to failure, as a letter from Rogers, still in the Foreign Office files, reveals:

  Damascus, March 16th

  Sir Henry Bulwer,

  F.O. London

  Sir,

  I have the honour to acknowledge your Excellency’s despatch dated March 2nd in relation to Mrs Digby’s claim for the reinstatement of camels plundered by Sheikh Mohammed Dukhi, instructing me that the lady is not entitled to British protection – to do what I can officiously in her behalf, but not to get into an official quarrel on the matter.

  I have hitherto afforded official protection to Mrs Digby by virtue of her F.O. Passport granted her in the year 1857 by the Earl of Clarendon, which states her to be a British Subject, and I consequently defended her interests to the best of my ability, but if I have overstepped the bounds of prudence I hope your Excellency will excuse it,

  Mr Consul E. J. Rogers10

  This was answered by an instruction to ‘continue to assist Mrs Digby, but avoid quarrelling with the authorities on her behalf.’11 It was several years before Jane discovered that she had lost her British nationality: Rogers let it be assumed that Medjuel, like Jane, was under his protection.

  All around Homs ghazous threatened the encampment of bedouins. ‘A ghazou of 150 khayal’ one day; another day ‘a ghazou of 50 attacked Yousef Redouan near Seukarah’; yet another ‘killed six persons and carried off all the cattle’.12 And when Medjuel wished to set out for Palmyra via Horns, with a party of travellers, Faris el Meziad made it clear that the group would not be allowed to pass in safety unless he received a share of the travellers’ fee. After a divan Medjuel felt he had no alternative but to consider first the safety of his travellers. ‘Faris pocketed 15 Napoleons that he had no right to,’ Jane wrote in annoyance.13

  Shortly after Medjuel left Damascus in the spring of 1865 Jane had a visitor. ‘To my great disgust Sheikh Faris el Meziad arrived with 10 khayal to remain here a day or two.’ By the bedouin code Jane could not in honour turn him away, but she found it difficult to carry out the prescribed show of welcome and hospitality that a host must offer to his guests for three and one-third days. Faris el Meziad reported to her that war had been declared between the Wuld Ali tribe and the Sebbah, to whom Medjuel and the Mezrabs owed allegiance. This would mean Medjuel could not return for some weeks. Jane decided that if she heard nothing within ten days she would go to him at Horns. In April she wrote to England:

  I … intend leaving for the desert next week, although the garden is just now in high beauty. Roses, bulbs, tubers and climbers succeed better than annuals generally, and my new French man although not a professional gardener is a great amateur and works very hard. Towards autumn he urges me to write to Carter for some of the wonderful roots etc., of which his Vade Mecum speaks, but really one should be bewildered in the choice among so many lovely and new things.

  Here, notwithstanding the climate and quantities of water and shade … there are lovely wild flowers, quite worthy of any garden. What I find most difficult, and indeed have not yet succeeded in raising are verbenas, of which I am very fond but have none but the older brilliant scarlet.

  … I have now heard that Heribert has gone honeymooning in Italy; maybe he will return by Paris. His father has given him Riegarding near Linz and I suppose will live himself at Munich.14

  Jane sent all the jewels given to her by the baron during her marriage to her daughter-in-law; she had left the Venningen heirloom pieces and other expensive items with the baron on their divorce.15

  She rejoined Medjuel at Homs and every evening they had ‘delicious’ competitive rides together. ‘I rode with the Sheikh to see Ismael Pasha’s camels and galloped Midjioumah, almost catching the Sheikh on [the splendid mare] Hadibah.’ And she measured her riding ability not only against Medjuel but against other sheikhs, who would not have welcomed the prospect of being outridden by a woman. ‘I raced with Feisal and I think Midjioumah would have beaten him had he continued, but he drew up, not to be beaten bef
ore the Arabs who were all in sight.’16

  In August Medjuel left for the tents with Manah and Schebibb to organise his flocks of sheep during the coming winter. Jane elected to stay in Homs because of the heat. To her dismay, a few days later she heard from Eugénie that cholera had broken out in Damascus, having been brought back by the pilgrims of the hadj. Richard Rogers’s wife and Catherine Payen, assistant housekeeper to Eugénie in Jane’s own house in Damascus, died within days, and Eugénie was ‘terror-struck at being in the middle of it’. Equally terror-struck, Jane wrote to Medjuel and asked if he would come and take her to the desert, away from the threat of the disease being carried to Homs by northbound pilgrims.

  Unfortunately, it was two months before Medjuel received her letter, and in the meantime Jane met with a nasty accident. Hearing a knock at her door and thinking it might be a messenger from Medjuel, she ran to open it, tripped and fell, spraining her back and arm badly.17 While she was recovering, the cholera epidemic reached Horns, and death became commonplace. ‘Mr Lucas came in and said that 25 had died of cholera this day,’ Jane wrote.18 With no word from Medjuel, and without knowing that he had not received her letter, she was stung by his apparent indifference to her appeal. There was no mail from Damascus and each day she feared hearing that Eugénie had succumbed. Although she always displayed great physical courage, Jane was frightened of illness and death. This probably stemmed from her fear (begun by the Duchesse de Plaisance) of being buried alive. Because of the heat, people were customarily buried on the day of their death. Many were the spine-chilling stories of ‘corpses’ recovering consciousness in a tomb.

  As soon as she was able, she rode into the desert to get news of Medjuel from a large encampment of Sebbah about a day and a half’s journey away. There an old man told her he had seen Medjuel several weeks earlier, and in praising him told her that ‘the mark of the Mecca hadj was upon his forehead’. It was one of Jane’s worst fears that Medjuel would make another hadj, and be away for half a year with all the dangers of plague and cholera that seemed to accompany such a journey. Indeed, it was one of the reasons she had not made another journey to England, for she feared he would go to Mecca in her absence. She rode back to Homs in deep depression.

  But within a short time of her return to Homs this worry seemed insignificant. During a visit to the missionary, Mr Lucas, to whom Medjuel had rented a small house outside the walls of the town, Jane heard a rumour that the reason Medjuel spent so much time away from her was that he had another wife, a bedouin wife, in the desert. Jane vehemently denied it and wrote furiously in her journal that night of her anger that they could imagine that she would ever tolerate such an arrangement. She wrote several letters to her family during this time, heading her letters ‘Horns (ancient Emesa)’. Yet, though her diary mirrors her personal anguish, her letters did not even hint of a problem; indeed, quite the reverse.

  You ask for details of my Arab life; as far as health and pleasure goes I prefer the wide and boundless desert to the cooped up town life. There is always some excitement or other going on, and constant horse or Dromedary exercise, as well as the good bowls of pure camel’s milk which suit me.

  The Sheikh, my Sheikh, never leads, joins or abets a plundering party because he thinks it wrong to seize other people’s property, but if we are attacked, or even our allies when he is there, or if there is a regular war, he is first and foremost to defend or pursue. This, I cannot think any more wrong than our more civilised, and murderous warfare for I do not know of any command to allow of ‘the goods being spoiled’… He is not fanatic, although he is strict as to his fasts, namaz (prayers), and in morals acts in all things to his light. [He] disapproves of polygamy, and doubts it being right, although allowed by the Muslim creed, and as to slaves black or white used in the Harem in the Turkish and Syrian sense, this is refuted by all Bedouin Sheikhs who, when they have black slave boys, bring them up as their own children and when of age, say 16 or 18, give them their liberty and marry them to some black girl equally liberated.

  As to the Bedouin women, they are – almost all of them – [ignorant]… and often more savage than the men. I asked a cleverish one one day about the [marital] conduct of the women in the desert. ‘Oh!’ she replied, ‘it [adultery] is almost unheard of, for we always have a sabre hanging over our heads for that, as we have also if we have too long tongues without being able to prove what we say.’ But the idea of [adultery] being a crime didn’t seem to occur in the desert.

  I do a little doctoring …[try] to teach them their letters, and preach by example … a strict regard for truth, honesty in little, as in great, affairs such as domestic harmony.19

  By December 1865 Medjuel had been away five months and the only word Jane had received was by messenger. He was unable to return because war had broken out between the major tribes and the desert was in turmoil. She knew it was no time for a sheikh to desert his people and, despite her desperation, Jane appreciated that his duty came first.

  Having given up expecting him during the worst of the winter and after receiving complaints of loneliness from Eugénie, Jane decided to go quickly to Damascus and arrived there on the anniversary of her mother’s birthday, ‘once so joyously kept when we were all children at Holkham, and now only a reminiscence of innocent joys’. Next day brought a heavy snowfall which remained over Christmas, and the mail from England carried news of Miss Jane Steele’s death. As Jane mourned the severance of another link with her childhood, her melancholy grew. The poison of Lucas’s gossip about Medjuel took effect: ‘I passed the most wretched evening. Is he ill? Is he dead? Is he married? Oh what shall I do? What think?’20

  Sunday 14th January 1866. Rain in torrents all day … and night. So again the roads are closed, and the mystery of Medjuel’s prolonged stay is explained by the news of a great ghazou having left the Sebbah for the Wuld Ali tents. Medjuel alone disobliged, to remain in command of the tents! Norah [Jane’s maid] came in having been to an Egyptian Cheikh and bought a charm (without my knowledge or consent) which is ‘to bring Medjuel home on the wings of the wind!!!’

  After a few weeks she returned to Horns, travelling with the harem of a Turk for safety, and they broke the journey, staying in Hessia as the guests of a pasha. To her distress the entire talk of the harem was of a Circassian wife, owned by one of the ‘young Agas’, who had been discovered in an illicit liaison. The penalty for infidelity by a wife was final; she was beheaded.

  Jane’s depressed spirit rose again when in February Medjuel came back to her. He denied Lucas’s gossip. ‘Sweet are the moments when one forgets all the sorrows and endless anxieties of the past months in the great bliss of meeting again,’ she wrote. The normal patterns of life resumed. Her fifty-ninth birthday came and went. Schebibb, now a grown man, was often in and out of Jane’s home, and she was fond of him; he had asked permission to marry his cousin, the daughter of one of Medjuel’s brothers, feeling that it was time he married. Later in the year, Jane helped her nervous mare Hadibah deliver with great difficulty a tiny colt; ‘like a little gazelle,’Jane said happily, though a filly would have been more valuable.

  She spent only a few weeks in the desert that year and returned to Damascus to hear at Christmas from Kenelm that his wife Caroline had died suddenly. At the same time she learned from the consul that she no longer enjoyed British protection. Both items of news were blows to her; but the latter, allied to her discovery that Rogers had accepted bribes from local businessmen in return for ‘favours’, decided her to leave Damascus. The house was offered for sale. The previous September she had written to Kenelm:

  We have not yet abandoned our [house] here for want of an adequate purchaser, but should we find one we intend to remove to Homs as a pied-à-terre [when we are not in the desert]. It is four days from Damascus, the same from Beyrout, on the borders of the desert, and the Sheikh has constant occupation there. Our tribe comes in the spring into the Aleppo, Tadmor and Homs deserts and remains there until October when they
migrate again. All your family news is most interesting to me … and my Bedouin nephew Willy always interests me particularly.21

  William, the younger son of Kenelm and Caroline, had emigrated and turned sheep-herder, escorting flocks of thousands of sheep across the deserts of Australia. He sent long letters to his parents describing his life which were sent on to Jane. ‘Very like our life here; except for the raids,’ Jane commented.

  Medjuel bought a large plot of land adjoining the original house, and they began building a new house from her drawings. When Medjuel went back to the desert, leaving her to oversee the work, she wondered for the first time whether she had the enthusiasm and energy to start building all over again. Her sixtieth birthday in April 1867 marked the milestone of old age, she thought. And her age was brought home to her when a few weeks later she took a tremendous toss from her horse on some paving and tore all the sinews in one leg, which left her limping for months.

  The lack of physical fitness for a woman of her energy was an annoyance but, worse, the accident made her nervous of riding and this irritated her more than anything else, for her horsemanship had always been a matter of pride to her. She expected Medjuel to return to her in mid-June, but as usual he was late, and meanwhile she had to deal with the building problems. Even in a small desert town over a century ago, planning permission was necessary: ‘The building permission was granted for the garden wall and they began to build and repair it.’22

  One evening she went to visit the missionary, Mr Lucas (who seems to have had a remarkable lack of tact), and in the course of their conversation the subject of Medjuel’s frequent absences was raised again. Mr Lucas suggested yet again that Medjuel was unfaithful.

  Thursday 20th.… he told me that Yusuf Redouan had told him of, and even shown him, a woman who he said was Medjuel’s wife who he said Medjuel had married … and who he kept concealed among the Hessienne tribe when I came to this part of the country, and that he had seen her again this spring when he called one day at our house.