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

by Mary S. Lovell

  The summer of 1879 was the last Jane would spend in the desert. She did not record that she met Ouadjid, only that she felt more than previously the effects of the great heat. There was a good deal of fighting, but because in general the tribe were the victors she did not worry unduly about it. As usual she felt a surge of spiritual renewal in the harsh purity of bedouin life. She was still able to ride well and hard, considering her age, but during that summer she contracted ophthalmia, forcing her early return to Damascus. Medjuel was kindness itself, always riding ahead to ensure their camping site was set up and made comfortable for her arrival.

  Because of her eye problems she did not keep her diary for a while, except to make a monthly summary of her life. In November she was annoyed because ‘my eyes are again much inflamed and have been for some time, and for so long with few exceptions, I have not been out of the house; although more exercise, I think, would do me good.’12 She received a letter from Anne Blunt, enclosing some manuscript pages of Anne’s book in which Jane and Medjuel were mentioned. Knowing how Jane had been upset by Isabel Burton she wrote asking for permission to publish, but it was some time before Jane could answer.

  Damascus

  December 3, 1879

  My dear Lady Anne,

  I cannot say how delighted I was to receive your last letter about a month ago, nor how impatient I have been to answer it in detail as my heart always burns at everything relating to the Desert – but the whole summer, which was extra hot, I have been suffering more or less, with my eyes, but am now right of vision, and accordingly take up my pen. What a journey! But still a most satisfactory one to look back upon and I am very glad you are going to publish it; those parts are so little known.

  In answer to what you say about mentioning us in your next work, we can have no objection, for we know that we are in friendly truthful hands, and what you say of our tribes etc. is perfectly correct, but as you allow me to offer a hint of what I should like altered in any way you like it, the sentence in which you say ‘It is also easy to see that his heart remains in the Desert, and whence he succeeds to the Sheykhat [head of the tribe] – etc. etc., – I think he will hardly be able to spend even a part of his time in Damascus.’ The first part of the sentence I think might easily be misconstrued by ill-natured persons, of whom I have met with my share. The latter part, relating to the Sheykhych [sheikhdom], has often been discussed between ourselves, but of late years he has been much disgusted with many things such as the differentiation of the tribe in various quarters – some were not able, or willing, to follow him as usual in the Desert – he would most likely resign in favour of Afet. But I hope all this may be still in the future and we are looking forward to being there in early spring. Inshallah! I hope you quite understand the little womanly feeling that suggests these changes of phrase as you think fit.13

  She wrote to Kenelm to tell him of good rains over Christmas and the New Year, always welcomed by the bedouin for its promise of good grazing, and ‘we are in hopes of a good white truffle year [manna]. They stand us instead of potatoes which have failed everywhere.’14 In the spring of 1880 she suffered from a lung infection which left her weakened; however, she had recovered by April and as a birthday gift Medjuel gave her a new mare. ‘My seventy-third birthday! … Medjuel has brought me the most beautiful mare I have ever had! A pure Seglawi, quite thoroughbred, and in foal. If she does not suit me I shall never get a horse that does.’15 A few weeks later the lovely mare, called Ferah, produced a colt. ‘Of course I should have preferred a filly,’ Jane wrote in her diary, ‘particularly such a beauty as the colt, whose sire is also a Seglawi.’

  To her disappointment, Anne Blunt wrote to say their visit planned for the autumn was postponed until the spring. Jane’s reply is an eight-page letter cataloguing the continuing desert warfare, fascinating gossip and horse news.16

  At the same time, there again began to appear in her diary seeds of doubt regarding Medjuel’s love for her. Throughout almost twenty-five years of marriage, their sex-life had been a great joy to Jane. The single exception had been during Ouadjid’s brief reign. Now Jane wrote in puzzlement, and in code, ‘Medjuel is obviously not well, and I cannot understand the mystery of his not lying with me! Oh, may there be no second Ouadjid as a reason for this extraordinary conduct. And yet he is so kind, so attentive to me.’17 It was during the first week in August that she heard news which shocked her.

  Medjuel told me that Ouadjid was dead. She died in the Arak desert … Medjuel must have heard it almost a month ago, and yet he has never told me.

  I am thankful, now that she is gone, that I never voiced the wish or hope that it might be so. I am jealous of her memory for she proved herself a bright woman to Medjuel, though she cast a great gloom over my life … twelve years ago. A strange feeling, of pity and of thankfulness, came over me rather than one of hatred gratified … She can do me no further injury. But oh, that I could see what passes in his heart at this news … I long to see someone who will give me some true details. Medjuel is not well and appears depressed; is it on account of her?18

  During the next months her diary entries detail the ebb and flow of her daily round. ‘Poor Misky, my favourite grey cat, was found dead this morning, so handsome and fond in its way to me … the cannon sounded in the evening; the first evening of Ramadan.’19 ‘Midhat Pacha left for Constantinople … I wish it had been before many picturesque bits of old Damascus were destroyed. I rode Ferah up to Salhiyeh to see M. de Savoye, the mare is handsome and pleasant but frisky if horses come coursing up behind.’20

  Through the daily trivia runs a constant underlying theme, that of Medjuel’s lack of libido. He had not made love to her for months. She sometimes thought he might have become impotent and, on her worst days, that she was now so old and unattractive that he no longer desired her.21 He remained as kind and attentive to Jane as ever, and appeared contented in her company, yet the old spark seemed lacking. When she gently raised the matter with him he ascribed his problem to ‘a weakness in the back’.22 She was not convinced. ‘I cannot understand it … Why? Another Ouadjid? God forbid!’ She found his lack of sexual desire strange, given his unabated ardour right up to the last time they made love, just prior to Ouadjid’s death. Since then, she wrote, he had been in low spirits. But Medjuel’s behaviour was symptomatic of depression and was almost certainly due to Ouadjid’s illness and death. It was not until Jane started to make plans to accompany him to the desert in the spring that he cheered up.

  A letter from Anne Blunt gave hope of another visit and Jane replied on New Year’s Day 1881 with all her news, thanking her for sending a magnifying lens which had helped her to read more easily. ‘I am very grateful and my eyes – I am happy to say – are better this year. I am much obliged to you for your promised book. Everything relating to the Desert and the Bedouin is of the greatest interest to me … what a pleasure it will be to us to see you and Mr Blunt.’

  In March the Blunts arrived for their third visit to Damascus and rode their camels straight to Jane’s house – or, to be more precise, Medjuel’s, since the previous month Jane had sold it to him for a peppercorn sum with no comment in her diary as to why. They were welcomed as old friends and their baggage camels, made to kneel in the courtyard, were unloaded and fed and watered. Jane had sent for the key to the Blunts’ house, and, after they had all breakfasted, ‘to our great satisfaction we found the house and garden in fairly good order and very much larger and nicer than expected … our garden is full of almonds, apricots and pomegranates’, Lady Anne recorded.

  During the two weeks that the Blunts were in Damascus the two couples saw each other frequently; for Jane there were long and intellectually stimulating conversations, the like of which she had not been able to enjoy since the Burtons left, on wide-ranging subjects and in several languages. But Anne noticed a change in her friend: ‘She has been suffering from weakness and seems to me feeble in health, though as young as ever in mind.’23

  A great de
al of the time was spent in Jane’s stable and discussing horses. The Crabbett Arabian Stud in England was already established and flourishing, and would eventually become a world-famous institution under Anne’s skilful direction, but these were early days. Lady Anne was still learning and absorbed what Jane told her like a sponge, recognising that Jane’s knowledge came from her long experience in the desert where she ‘fed foals on cornflour mixed very thick with camel’s milk’ to supplement their diet when there was poor grazing for the mare. A milk camel was allotted to the owner of every pregnant mare by the sheikh, Jane said, for the sole use of the mare and foal. The ears of a new-born foal were pierced and joined with twine, a process which caused no discomfort and ensured that the ears grew with the inward curving points so valued in the best types; the tiny hooves were lightly pared within a day of their birth and rubbed with salt to toughen the horn.24

  Wilfred, meanwhile, spent a great deal of time with Medjuel, discussing the latest developments in guns, a subject which interested them both a good deal, and promised to send Medjuel a new type of rifle.

  On 24 March the Blunts went on their way, promising to return at the end of the year. A month later Jane and Medjuel were delighted to hear that following an attack in the desert, from which they emerged unscathed, the Blunts had met Afet and stayed with him. Before they parted Wilfred Blunt and Afet had ‘made a brotherhood.’

  25

  Funeral in Damascus

  1881

  Jane celebrated her seventy-fourth birthday shortly after the Blunts departed. She was physically tired and, as Anne Blunt had remarked, appeared weak despite her mental alertness. This frailty is reflected in her diary. The usual details of calls and visits, concern for her animals, and occasional visits to church are still her daily currency, but there is no further mention of exercising the horses as she had done even in the last months of the previous year. Nor did she visit the desert that spring.

  The days when she rode at Medjuel’s side were gone for ever, and she appears to have accepted the new phase of their relationship with grace. Medjuel was as considerate and caring of her as she could ever wish; few women of any age enjoy the loving attentions (noted enviously by Anne Blunt) that Medjuel lavished upon Jane. She had always marvelled, and in a sense been humbled by, Medjuel’s attention to her smallest requirement, and his manner when, at times, he waited on her. He was never servile but offered his services as a gift.

  A matter which caused her anxiety was an orphaned child. Jane had befriended a poor Circassian couple, Hanifeh and Ahmed. One Sunday in April Hanifeh died ‘shortly after seven in the evening, her husband just arriving in time to hear her last adieu!’ As ‘her mother’s last legacy to me’, Jane acquired the mixed blessing of the couple’s small daughter Fatmah, the father having no ability to bring up a girl child. Having already raised one orphan girl successfully, Jane sent the child to Mrs Mackintosh’s missionary school, with high hopes for ‘her good, present and future’, and made adequate financial provision for her. Many poor families had reason to be grateful to Jane, who tried to demonstrate through genuine kindness and caring the basic tenent of Christianity. But she was not gullible. Her last diary entry was made on 15 July 1881.

  Wednesday July 15th 1881. I answered poor Mr Lucas’s letter requesting a second loan of a hundred pounds to be enabled to trade corn … I was obliged to refuse with regret for though I do not doubt his worth, he now owes Medjuel a heavy loan of £200 and me a hundred.

  These were large sums for the time. Jane, though renowned for her generosity, was never a fool with her money. She liked Lucas, and over a decade she made several loans to him which he had until recently repaid. But the outstanding loans to which she referred dated back three years, and it is obvious that he was sinking deeper and deeper into debt. During the last years of her life, owing to many inroads on her capital for building projects and expensive gifts to the tribe and to Medjuel, Jane’s income had fallen, according to Lord Redesdale, who had enquired about Jane’s safety and been told that her income was about £1,500. But it was still, he was told by Sir Richard Burton, ‘a fortune’ in Damascus.

  At the hottest time of the year, Jane contracted a form of fever and dysentery. She had suffered similar symptoms many times; all residents, especially Europeans, were familiar with them. She began to feel ill during the first week in August and Medjuel, concerned, called in Mrs Reichardt whom Jane had known, through the little mission church, for seven years. Jane disliked herself for sometimes thinking uncharitably of Mrs Reichardt; her poverty of spirit alienated Jane and never allowed a close friendship. Nevertheless, when Medjuel sent for her, the missionary’s wife went to Jane’s house and took over the nursing.

  Later, Mrs Reichardt would write to Emmie Buxton, always Jane’s favourite niece, that Jane had ‘been growing weaker and weaker for the last three years, and gradually getting weaned from the things she loved so well, her garden, her animals, that is to say her cats and dogs and poultry, but not least her horses’. When the final illness struck, Jane had no physical resources to fight, and she died in a matter of days.

  She was very fond of Damascus, and often assured me that the part of her life spent here was by far the happiest … She was loved and respected by all who knew her, especially the Arabs and Moslems to whom her kindness and charity were unlimited …

  On the Sunday morning as I sat by her bedside, fanning her, she asked me the time. I told her it was after eleven. It was our church time and she knew our service had begun … she said ‘They are praying for me’, and then seeming to forget who she was speaking to, added, ‘Mrs Reichardt has only gone to church, she will come back afterwards, she will not leave me.’

  [Later] she rallied somewhat, and seemed to enjoy very much talking of home and her dear mother; and the pleasant time she had spent with her in Switzerland during her last visit to that place. She also liked to speak of English food, and when I mentioned one or two dishes her eyes brightened and she said with a longing accent, ‘Oh, they make that so nicely at home, it was particularly good.’

  Her death was peaceful; like a tired child falling asleep in its mother’s arms. Content to the last, and for several days conscious that she was dying … she spoke sometimes in one language, sometimes in another … her love for her husband, and her anxiety for his happiness was beautiful to see …[As she died] such a sweet, happy and contented expression came over her face that we all simultaneously remarked upon it, and I could not help [remarking] that she was gone … from a word where I sincerely believe she was more sinned against than sinning.1

  Another report was sent by Mrs Suzette Smith, a missionary from the Lebanon who called on Jane during the last days of July: ‘It seems that she has generally suffered from diarrhoea but this being an exceptionally hot season proved fatal. She had no European [servants] about her, but I believe Mrs Reichardt was most kind and attentive to her. Mr Jago our Consul assured me your Aunt died in her arms.’2

  In the first biography of Jane, E. M. Oddie recounted the story that, over fifty years, had passed into Damascus folklore. It told how Medjuel, as the chief mourner, was placed alone and reluctant in a black carriage behind the hearse, and how halfway to the cemetery his bedouin instincts could not tolerate the confinement.

  He jumped from the moving carriage, and like a man pursued by a thousand devils, fled in the opposite direction to the funeral procession. It was disconcerting for the unfortunate clergyman who was to take the service, and for the few formal mourners who were neither kith nor kin to the dead woman. But still more disconcerting was Medjuel’s dramatic return. In triumph he galloped back to the cemetery on Jane’s lovely Saklowyek [Seglawi] mare, and he was there at the graveside with her favourite horse when they committed her body to the dust.

  … He watched them while they buried … the queer sweet woman who had loved him. Then he galloped back to the desert where he belonged, to mourn her after his own fashion among the tribes who had loved her … and to sacrifice i
n her memory the finest of the camels which had been her gift to him.3

  The reality is quieter, though no less dramatic in its way, according to a previously unpublished, eye-witness account by Roland Mitchell:

  The death of the Hon. Mrs Digby took place at 6.30 on Thursday August 11th, and she was buried on the following day. At 3.30 pm on August 12th I rode to the house in the North-East quarter of Damascus to attend the funeral.4

  Mitchell was shown upstairs to the English sitting-room where Jane’s body lay on a bier, with fresh flowers from her garden wreathed around her head and scattered upon her body. Legend says that she was dressed in her bedouin ‘fantasia’. Medjuel received him and he was introduced to a number of mourners already present: Medjuel’s nephew, Mrs Reichardt and her two daughters, Jane’s doctor and his wife and daughters, several members of the French community and a representative of the British consulate. There were few Europeans in Damascus, for most, like Mr Jago and his wife, had gone to the mountains of the Anti-Lebanon to escape the worst of the heat. Mr Jago set out for Damascus on hearing how ill Jane was, but arrived too late owing to ‘an immensely hot wind’ which obliged him to rest his horses.

  At a quarter to five, when the air began to cool, Mr Reichardt – the officiating minister – arrived. The coffin was carried out and placed ‘with careful hands’ in the first of the carriages drawn up in front of the house. Immediately behind, on magnificent desert horses which carried their tails like plumes, rode Sheikh Medjuel in his scarlet and gold robes, his nephew and a number of bedouins forming a ‘respectful and picturesque group’. Medjuel led Jane’s white Seglawi mare. The young man Mr Mitchell identified as Medjuel’s nephew led Jane’s white mule.5

  Some half-dozen carriages made up the cortege, which proceeded slowly along the road bordered by shady gardens and trees. All was quiet except for the jingle of a harness, the hollow echo of hooves, and the rattle of carriage wheels on the dusty roadway. The procession crossed the wooden bridge over the Barada River, and through the ancient Bab Tuma, where once a younger, still beautiful, Jane had eagerly ridden for the first time into Damascus, accompanied by Medjuel. They passed into the shadow of the minaret of the Great Mosque, and through the north-eastern Christian quarter of the city, where Jane had walked fearlessly after the massacre to see what help she could bring to the victims. And they left the walled city by Bab Kisan, near ‘the quiet little Protestant cemetery where the body was laid in its resting place.’