A Scandalous Life: The Biography of Jane Digby (Text only)
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It lies just outside the old walls of the city, next to the mosque in the old Khassab quarter, and Hussein was able to photograph the interior and interview at length one of the occupants whose parents bought the property from Medjuel’s son, Afet. Although the fountains and trees are long gone, and the aqueducts which carried the water from the River Barada to Jane’s gardens and orchard are now covered, the old man showed Hussein the base of what Jane used to call ‘the Sheikh’s fountain, in the prettiest part of the garden’ in what remains of the courtyard.
In a piece of research which particularly pleases me, I traced a branch of Jane’s family to New Zealand. Subsequently, Ros Broadmore (whose father is a direct descendant of Jane’s brother Kenelm) wrote and later telephoned to say that her family had many mementoes (such as Jane’s silver inkwell, and her silver bejewelled muff chain, which are still used by the family today, the latter as a necklace). More importantly they had a large collection of Jane’s papers, including all the letters written to Kenelm and other family members during her years in the desert. Such moments in research are even more satisfying than the publication of a book.
At the Victoria and Albert Museum’s National Art Library, with assistance from Antonia Leak, I was able to trace the works of Carl Haag, the artist who made a trip to Palmyra with Jane in 1859. Surely, I reasoned, he could not have resisted painting her? As a result of my research there I made contact in Kuwait with Jehan Rajab, who owns the wonderful paintings by Carl Haag of both Jane and Medjuel at Palmyra. Jehan, an Englishwoman, is a writer and teacher married to a Kuwaiti scholar, Tareq Rajab. She had long been interested in Jane’s story.
During the Iraqi occupation of Kuwait in 1990, Jehan hid many artefacts behind false wooden panels she had erected in the museum that she and her husband own. These treasures included the Haag paintings, and it is no exaggeration to state that they survived at great personal risk to Jehan. Her book Invasion Kuwait (published in 1993) about her horrific experience as an ordinary housewife and mother, under siege for six months from August 1990, oppressed by an army as brutish as Hitler’s, should be compulsory reading for every Western politician.
In the archives of Bavaria’s royal family, the House of Wittelsbach, in Munich, I was able – thanks to the assistance of Dr Hans Puchta and Peter Kastner – to transcribe seventy-five letters and notes written by Jane to King Ludwig between 1831 and 1838 when she was his closest confidante and, for a time, his mistress. At the Nymphenburg Palace I was helped by Dr Gerhard Hojer and his staff to trace various likenesses of Jane commissioned by King Ludwig I; and by Dr Christoph Heilmann at the Neue Pinakothek to research King Ludwig. Herr Kleefoot, Oberbürgermeister (Mayor) of the town of Weinheim, kindly provided a photograph of Jane’s former home there – it is now the town hall.
At Holkham Hall in Norfolk, Christine Hiskey helped me to find my way through the relevant archives of the Earl of Leicester and the Coke family. There I was able to see in full flight the neo-classic architectural style that Jane adopted in all her building projects. I also walked the wide clean beaches and pinewoods that had been Jane’s playground as a child. It was a long way, I decided, from Holkham to Damascus.
I should also like to thank the following individuals who helped me in various ways: Rosemary Archer; R. W. C. Charlton; the late Miss Fiona Digby; Simon Digby; Maldwin Drummond; Angela Hurrell; Lord Lytton; Costas Manolis and Denis Minotos at the National Historical Museum, Athens; Spiros Mouzakitis; Vivien Noakes; Bernadette Rivett; Nicola Soana; George Theotoky.
In translating Jane’s diaries and other documentation I was ably assisted by: Janet Dubois (French); Alan Keenan (German); Jehan and Tareq Rajab (Arabic); Louise H. Watts and Mark Wazir (French).
Many archives, libraries and organisations were consulted. At each one staff were unfailingly kind and generous with their time and expertise. They were:
In and around London: The Bank of England (Mr Philip Davies, Museum and Historical Section); British Library, Gt Russell St Reading Room, Manuscripts Department (Martin Harris) and Department of Prints and Drawings (Jessica White); BL Newspaper Library, Collindale; Courtauld Collection (Sarah Wimbush and Barbara Hilton-Smith); House of Lords Library (Mr Michael Troke); National Portrait Gallery (Jo Copeland); National Register of Archives; Public Record Office, Kew; Public Record Office, Chancery Lane; St Catherine’s House; The Royal Archives, Windsor (Miss Frances Dimond); the Royal Geographical Society (Fiona Catherines and the Librarian); Society of the Sacred Heart at the Roehampton Institute (Sister M. Coke, Provincial Archivist); Somerset House.
Regional: Ashmolean Library, Oxford (Corinne Cherrad-Marshall); the Bodleian Library, Oxford (staff of the lower reading room, and Michael Webb, Assistant Librarian, Dept of Western Manuscripts); Bristol Museum (Sheena Stoddard – Assistant Curator, Fine Art); Farquarson & Murless (photographers); the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge (Ms Margaret Clarke); Keele University Library (Mr Martin Phillips); Sheffield City Archives (Ms Julie Hibberd); Sotheby’s (Mrs Jackie Rees); St Anthony’s College, Oxford (Dianne King); Colin Wakeham (photographer); East Sussex Library Service (Hilary Woodard); Wiltshire County Record Office.
My special thanks to Heather Screen and Gaynor Myers of Lydney Library in West Gloucestershire for the cheerful efficiency with which they dealt with my frequent requests for long-out-of-print books which they sometimes obtained in spite of all odds.
I should also like to thank my long-suffering family. No one should have to live in the same household as a writer trying to meet a deadline. And finally I should like to thank Richard Cohen (editor and publisher), Linden Stafford (copy editor), Margaret Fraser (designer) and Robert Ducas (my agent) who are all part of the team who brought this book into print.
About the Author
A Scandalous Life
Mary S. Lovell began writing in 1980 after a broken back forced her to take a sabbatical from a successful business career. Her first major biography was the international best-seller Straight on till Morning, a life of the intrepid aviatrix Beryl Markham. Since then she has built upon her reputation with a succession of acclaimed biographies, the research for which has involved travel all over the world. She lives in Gloucestershire.
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Author’s Note
Spelling of Arabic words
During research for this book I very quickly noticed considerable inconsistencies in the spelling of Arabic names and words when written in English. For instance Jane Digby might describe an acquaintance as ‘Mohammed ebn Dukhy of the Wuld Ali tribe’, while Anne Blunt wrote it ‘Mehemmed ibn Dookhi of the Welled Ali tribe’, Isabel Burton wrote ‘Mohammed Dukhi of the Wuld Ali tribe’ and Charles Doughty ‘the Wulled Aly tribe’. The name Medjuel was pronounced Midgewell, and written variously – Miguel, Michwell, Midguel, etc., by English visitors.
These discrepancies (and there are too many to list) are easily explained by the fact that only three vowels are recognised in the Arabic language, and that some of the consonants have no equivalent in English. Each writer in English was therefore constrained to write what he or she heard, using phonetic spelling, and this naturally varied from person to person and town to town, just as pronunciation differs in our own regions, for example bath: baath or barth. Nor is the problem confined to the previous century. T. E. Lawrence had much the same experience when writing Seven Pillars of Wisdom.
To avoid confusion and irritation I have adopted a standard spelling of proper names and used them throughout the book, so that names such as ‘Beyrouth’ appear as the more familiar ‘Beirut’, etc. The standard is of my own devising and I make no claims as to its superiority over anyone else’s spelling. I have merely used a version which seems to coincide with the way words are pronounced by the majority of contributors, avoiding accents where possible. This has sometimes necessitated my changing spellings used in original source material, but since – in many cases – the spelling was inconsiste
nt within a single document I feel I can justify my decision.
Translations
Apart from Arabic, the original material used as sources for this book came in a variety of languages. This not only applies to published material: Jane and her contemporaries frequently employed foreign phrases to make a point in their letters, diaries, journals and memoirs. Assuming that not all readers will be multilingual, and for the sake of expediency, I have taken the liberty of translating these so that most quoted texts appear entirely in English. The translators who assisted me in this context are mentioned in the Acknowledgements section.
Notes
ABBREVIATIONS AND SOURCES
ABBREVIATIONS USED FOR NAMES
CD Caroline Digby
CV Baron Carl (‘Charles’) Venningen
ESD Edward, Lord Digby
JED Jane Elizabeth Digby
KD Reverend Kenelm Digby
LA Lady Andover
MS Margaret Steele
ABBREVIATIONS USED FOR SOURCES
MH Minterne House Collection
MH/01 Summary of Jane’s life between 1807 and 1846 compiled from papers subsequently destroyed by a member of the family.
MH/02 December 1853–May 1854. Soft-covered notebook containing pencil-written diary of Baghdad trip.
MH/03 Journal inscribed ‘Ianthe, Athens, 1841’. Diary 1841 to December 1855. All pages prior to September 1854 were cut out and destroyed after Jane’s death.
MH/04 Bound diary covering period September 1855 to July 1881.
MH/05 Pencil-written diary from November 1858 to March 1859. Loose-leaf pages sewn together; a fair-copy edited version of this draft is incorporated into MH/04.
MH/06 Poetry written 1824–34.
MH/07 Letters 1856–73 between JED and ESD and Lady Digby.
MH/08 December 1853–April 1868. Leather-bound pocket notebook containing working sketches, sundry memoranda and accounts.
MH/09 (a) JED to Lady Andover, c. 1815.
(b) JED to Admiral Digby, c. 1820.
MH/10 Diary of Lady Andover, 1840–42.
MH/11 Letters to Edward Digby from Lady Strangford, 1873, and ‘Didi’ Selden Diebitsch, 1883.
MH/12 Letters 1875–80 from Heribert Venningen to JED.
MH/13 Letters 1839–65, from Baron Carl Venningen to JED.
MH/14 Sundry items including will, paintings, etc.
RB Roz Broadmore Collection, New Zealand
RB/01 Letters June 1856–January 1880. Large tranche of correspondence between JED and KD; CD; LA; MS; others.
PRO Public Record Office at Kew
FO78 Foreign Office correspondence from HBM Majesty’s Consul in Damascus concerning JED. Ditto between JD and Isobel Burton.
PRO30/12 The Ellenborough Papers; private papers and correspondence of Lord Ellenborough.
Parliamentary Papers
House of Commons Sessions 1830, vol. 10, no. 214; Second Reading, vol. 10, no. 36. House of Lords: Ellenborough Divorce Minutes of Evidence.
SCA Sheffield City Archives Papers of the Spencer-Stanhope family.
Keele Keele University Papers of Mr Ralph Sneyd.
BHM Bayerisches Hauptsarchiv, Munich Wittelsbach archives. Papers of King Ludwig I of Bavaria. Specifically, correspondence between JED and King Ludwig 1831–8, and CV and King Ludwig 1824–60.
BL British Library, Manuscript Department Wentworth Collection: papers of Lady Anne Blunt. Lieven, Princess Dorothea de: papers and correspondence. Joseph Jekyll (Holland Correspondence), MS 51594.
OTHER ARCHIVE SOURCES CONSULTED
Royal Geographical Society library.
Bank of England, Research Section HO–M.
Victoria and Albert Museum, National Art Library – Haag research.
The Royal Archives, Windsor Castle – diaries of Edward VII.
Digby Stuart College, Roehampton – Ellenborough’s home.
Royal Commission on Historical Monuments Library
Chapter 1 Golden Childhood
1 SCA, box 1 (a) 60599.
2 Thomas Coke’s first wife; also (and confusingly) named Jane, miscarried her only male child because of fright when a mouse got into her nightcap.
3 According to the daughter of Elizabeth Coke, the three girls were given dowries ranging between £20,000 and £50,000. See E. Spencer-Stanhope, The Letter-Bag of Lady Elizabeth Spencer-Stanhope, p. 19.
4 A. M. W. Stirling, Coke of Norfolk and his Friends, p. 443.
5 Ibid., p. 428.
6 Sir Henry Keppel, A Sailor’s Life under Four Sovereigns (edited by Sir A. West, 1905). p. 98.
7 According to Equivalent Values of the Pound; Historical Series 1270 to 1994, produced by the Bank of England, £57,000 in 1805 has a value today of approximately £1.5 million.
8 Hugh Montgomery-Massingberd, Great British Families (Michael Joseph, 1988), p. 92.
9 A. M. W. Stirling, Diaries of Dummer (Unicorn Press, 1934), p. 105.
10 Stirling, Coke of Norfolk and his Friends, p. 246.
11 Ibid.
12 Stirling, Diaries of Dummer, p. 105.
13 Keppel, A Sailor’s Life under Four Sovereigns, pp. 11 and 12.
14 Thornton Hall, Romances of the Peerage, p. 65.
15 SCA, 60599/1, bundle B22(a).
16 MH/04, diary entry, 24 July 1863.
17 RB/01, JED to KD, 18 May 1867.
18 MH/09(a).
19 Stirling, Coke of Norfolk and his Friends, p. 428.
20 MH/09(b).
21 RB/01; JED to KD 31/3/1868. Caroline Boyle later became lady-in-waiting to Queen Adelaide, wife of William IV.
22 JED’s ‘secret code’ referred to in later chapter.
23 Edmond About, La Grèce contemporaine, p. 100.
24 RB/01, JED to KD, 17 July 1859.
25 Hall, Romances of the Peerage, p. 64.
Chapter 2 The Débutante
1 SCA, file 60612, Mary Spencer Stanhope’s daughter-in-law, Eliza, née Coke.
2 SCA, file 60612, 2 April 1824.
3 Stella Margetson, Leisure and Pleasure in the Nineteenth Century, p. 27.
4 Ibid., p. 28.
5 Ibid., p. 29.
6 SCA, file 6059B, 16 March 1824.
7 Thornton Hall, Romances of the Peerage, p. 65.
8 Ibid.
9 Ibid.
10 Keele, SC12/11, G. Agar Ellis to Ralph Sneyd.
11 The Times, 13 March 1819, p. 5.
12 Chambers’s Biographical Dictionary, vol. 1, p. 238.
13 Keele, SC5/210.
14 E. M. Oddie, A Portrait of Ianthe, and Margaret Fox Schmidt, Passion’s Child, have both written full-length biographies of Jane, based on original research. Many potted biographies exist within anthologies; the best of these is Lesley Blanch, The Wilder Shores of Love, and the most biased is Irving Wallace’s Nymphos and Other Maniacs. None of the above is thoroughly sourced.
15 Oddie, Portrait of Ianthe, p. 35.
16 MH/06, Lord Ellenborough, undated, probably May 1824.
17 Ibid.
18 Byron, Don Juan, 15th canto, v. 43.
19 Oddie, Portrait of Ianthe, p. 37.
20 SCA, file 60612, 2 April 1824.
21 Now the site of the Roehampton Institute.
22 E. Spencer-Stanhope, The Letter-Bag of Lady Elizabeth Spencer-Stanhope, pp. 51–2. Note: The treatise written by Lady Andover was included in this privately printed book as a curiosity from a previous century.
23 F. Bamford and Duke of Wellington, Journal of Mrs Arbuthnot, p. 336.
24 Sir H. Maxwell, The Creevey Papers, 7 September 1824.
25 Lady Elizabeth Holland, Lady Holland, to her Son, p. 30.
26 Keele, SC8/129, G. Agar Ellis to Ralph Sneyd, 14 September 1828.
27 Lord Ellenborough, Political Diaries, vol. 2, p. 68.
28 PRO, Chancery Lane, p. 226 of the register.
29 MH/03, diary entry, 27 February 1855.
Chapter 3 Lady Ellenborough
1 Henry Spencer Law in evidence to the House o
f Lords, p. 5.
2 Butler’s statement in evidence to House of Commons.
3 Joseph Jekyll, Correspondence with Lady Sloane Stanley, p. 148.
4 Ibid., p. 213.
5 Lord Ellenborough, Political Diaries, Preface, p. x.
6 MH/06, dated ‘1825’, no specific date given.
7 A. M. W. Stirling, Coke of Norfolk and his Friends, p. 348.
8 MH/04, diary entry, 12 November 1855. ‘Dear Medjuel gave me my silver bracelets [see explanation in later chapter]. How I value this proof of his affection far more than the costly gifts I used to receive from Lord Ellenborough!!’
9 MH/06, dated ‘1825’, no specific date given.
10 The Age, 14 March 1830, p. 85, col. 1.
11 Jekyll, Correspondence, p. 152.
12 SCA, Mary Spencer-Stanhope to Eliza, 19 April 1826.
13 F. Bamford and Duke of Wellington, Journal of Mrs Arbuthnot, p. 23.
14 SCA, Mary Spencer-Stanhope to Eliza, 19 April 1826.
15 Dictionary of National Biography (Smith Elder, 1908).
16 Bamford and Wellington, Journal of Mrs Arbuthnot, p. 167.
17 SCA, G. Agar Ellis to Ralph Sneyd, SC8/ 134, 1 April 1819.
18 Sir H. Maxwell, The Creevey Papers, pp. 247 and 415.
19 Bamford and Wellington, Journal of Mrs Arbuthnot, p. 244; also JD801, letters to Eliza Spencer-Stanhope.
20 Bamford and Wellington, Journal of Mrs Arbuthnot, p. 175.
21 Maxwell, Creevey Papers, p. 247; Bamford and Wellington, Journal of Mrs Arbuthnot, p. 167.
22 MH/06; poem dated 23 September 1826.
23 Keele, Sneyd Collection, SC8/115, George Agar Ellis to Ralph Sneyd, 22 November 1828.