Jane Digby
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jane Elizabeth Digby (April 3, 1807 – August 11, 1881) was an English aristocrat who lived a life of wild adventure. She was born in Dorset, daughter of Sir Henry Digby and Lady Jane Elizabeth née Coke. Her maternal grandfather was Thomas Coke, 1st Earl of Leicester.
[edit] Marriages, scandal, and affairs
Notoriously promiscuous throughout her lifetime, she was first married to Edward Law, 2nd Baron Ellenborough (later Earl of Ellenborough) on October 15, 1824 who became [Viceroy of India]]. They had one son, Arthur Dudley, who died in infancy. After affairs with her cousin, George Anson, and Felix Schwarzenberg, an Austrian statesman, she was divorced from Lord Ellenborough in 1830 by an act of Parliament. This caused considerable scandal at the time. Jane had two children with Felix before he left her in Paris.
She then moved on to Munich and became the lover of Ludwig I of Bavaria, but had a child by the Bavarian Baron Venningen, whom she married in a relationship based on convenience.
She later divorced the Baron and eloped with a Greek count who had fought her husband in a duel and whom she subsequently married. They divorced after the death of their 6 year old son and his infidelity.
Next came an affair with an Albanian general, acting as 'queen' of his brigand army, living in caves, riding horses and hunting in the mountains. She walked out on him when he was unfaithful.
She later travelled to the Middle East, and fell in love with Sheikh Midjuel el Mezrab of the Sbaa tribe of Syria. Although he was seventeen years her junior, the two were married under Muslim law and she took the name Jane Elizabeth Digby el Mezrab, living with him for quite some time in the Bedouin style and adopting Arabic dress. Half of each year was spent in the nomadic style, living in goat-hair tents, while the rest was spent in the palace she built at Medjuel in Damascus.
In her later years Jane became friends with Richard and Isabel Burton while he was the British consul at Damascus, as well as Abd al-Kader al-Jazairi, a prominent leader of the Algerian revolution living in exile in Damascus at the time. She died of a heart attack in Damascus on August 11, 1881.
[edit] References
- Lovell, Mary S. (1998). A Scandalous Life: A Biography of Jane Digby. Fourth Estate.
- Ure, John (2004). In Search of Nomads. Constable and Robinson. ISBN 1-84529-082-8.
