A Scandalous Life: The Biography of Jane Digby
Summary (from the publisher): The biography of Jane Digby, an ‘enthralling tale of a nineteenth-century beauty whose heart – and hormones – ruled her head.’
A celebrated aristocratic beauty, Jane Digby married Lord Ellenborough at seventeen. Their divorce a few years later was one of England's most scandalous at that time. In her quest for passionate fulfillment she had lovers which included an Austrian prince, King Ludvig I of Bavaria, and a Greek count whose infidelities drove her to the Orient. In Syria, she found the love of her life, a Bedouin nobleman, Sheikh Medjuel el Mezrab who was twenty years her junior.
Bestselling biographer Mary Lovell has produced from Jane Digby’s diaries not only a sympathetic and dramatic portrait of a rare woman, but a fascinating glimpse into the centuries-old Bedouin tradition that is now almost lost.
A celebrated aristocratic beauty, Jane Digby married Lord Ellenborough at seventeen. Their divorce a few years later was one of England's most scandalous at that time. In her quest for passionate fulfillment she had lovers which included an Austrian prince, King Ludvig I of Bavaria, and a Greek count whose infidelities drove her to the Orient. In Syria, she found the love of her life, a Bedouin nobleman, Sheikh Medjuel el Mezrab who was twenty years her junior.
Bestselling biographer Mary Lovell has produced from Jane Digby’s diaries not only a sympathetic and dramatic portrait of a rare woman, but a fascinating glimpse into the centuries-old Bedouin tradition that is now almost lost.
Review: Jane Elizabeth Digby was born in Dover in 1807 to a fabulously wealthy English family. Beautiful from birth, Jane was fortunate to receive the same education as her brothers and male cousins, an unusual move for the era, so "in addition to the practical basic education which naturally included French, a little German and Italian and a knowledge of the arts, she also had a thorough grounding in classical languages and acquired a love of history both ancient and modern" (6). As a teenager, Jane married Lord Ellenborough, who, although wealthy and a seemingly good catch, was a much older widower than his young bride. Although the marriage started out happily enough, Jane seems to have been disillusioned early on to learn that her husband had a mistress, and subsequently began her own love affair with her first cousin, George Anson. The result of this affair was her first child, Arthur Dudley and eventually divorce from Ellenborough.
From here, Jane was swept up into a whirlwind of love affairs, marriages, and scandals. She married four times and her lovers included an Austrian prince, King Ludvig I of Bavaria, and a Greek count. In all, she had six children with five men (although the paternity of a few is in question). She seems to have been a fairly poor mother, reportedly only feeling maternal affection for her sixth and final child, Leonidas: "and here was this infant for whom, miraculously, the maternal love she had never felt for her previous five children gushed forth" (119). Other children were pawned off on relatives of the husbands and lovers she left in her wake to raise.
It seems that Jane was simply not a woman who could be content with the life of a wealthy wife and mother that she had been born to be. "Jane could see before her an endless vista of domesticity, of cold dull winters, of growing old joylessly" (115). After yet another failed love affair, she set off for a tour of the Orient. In Syria, she met Sheikh Medjuel el Mezrab, a Bedouin nobleman. Although twenty years younger than Jane and married to several wives when they met, this is the man with whom Jane ultimately contentedly spent the last decades of her life. At this time, it was exceedingly rare for Europeans to live in Syria at all and quite exceptional for an intermarriage, such as Jane and Medjuel had, to occur. In the Syrian desert, she embraced the Bedouin lifestyle, became fluent in Arabic, and was known for her equestrian skills and healing abilities. Despite being raised in ultimate luxury, she proved more than willing to spend months at a time living in the desert, riding on camels, and sleeping in a tent. Although she kept up a lively correspondence with her family and friends in England, the rest of her life was devoted to her adoptive home and her love for Medjuel. She died of old age in Damascus in 1881 and Medjuel never remarried.
Mary Lovell has written a thorough and captivating biography of a most remarkable individual. Jane seemed to have been ruled by passion, consistently displayed poor judgment and little regard for social convention, and was a particularly poor mother, but her story was captivating and highly unusual. The author has thoroughly researched primary sources, as well as other accounts of Jane's life and explains in detail the occasional points when her story differs. For instance, she contradicts earlier, false accounts of Medjuel's raids in the desert, explaining that a previous author's theory "does not accord with Bedouin tribal custom" (165). I do wish there the author had included a more in-depth overview of Jane's childhood, her family's impressions of her behavior, and more details on the fates of her children. This is the third biography I have read by Mary Lovell and I enjoy her thorough writing style as well as the intriguing historical figures she chooses to research.
Stars: 4
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