Jane Digby
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 Artist Joseph Karl Stieler (1831)
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| Born | 3 April 1807 Dorset, England |
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| Died | 11 August 1881 (aged 74) Damascus, Syria |
| Cause of death | Heart attack |
| Spouse | Edward Law Baron Venningen Spyridon Theotokis Abdul Midjuel el Mezrab |
| Parents | Admiral Sir Henry Digby Lady Jane Elizabeth (née Coke) |
Jane Elizabeth Digby (3 April 1807 – 11 August 1881) was an English aristocrat who lived a life of wild adventure.
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[edit] Family
Jane Digby was born in Dorset, daughter of Admiral Henry Digby and Lady Jane Elizabeth née Coke, a renowned beauty. Jane's father seized the Spanish treasure ship Santa Brigada in 1799 and his cut established the family fortune. As captain of HMS Africa he participated under Admiral Nelson's command in the Battle of Trafalgar. His estate, Minterne Magna, was inherited. Jane's maternal grandfather was Thomas Coke, 1st Earl of Leicester. Pamela Churchill Harriman was the great-great-niece of Jane Digby.
[edit] Marriages, scandal, and affairs
Notoriously promiscuous through much of her lifetime, she was first married to Edward Law, 2nd Baron Ellenborough (later Earl of Ellenborough) on 15 October 1824 who became Governor General 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, a daughter, Mathilde "Didi" (Born 12 November 1829 ) in Basel,Switzerland and a son Felix (Born December 1830) who died just a few weeks after his birth.
She then moved on to Munich and became the lover of Ludwig I of Bavaria, but had a son, Heribert, by the Bavarian Baron Karl von Venningen, whom she married in a relationship based on convenience in 1832. Heribert was born on 27 January 1833 in Palermo Sicily where Jane was residing at the time with her husband.
Soon she found a new lover in the Greek count Spyridon Theotokis. Venningen found out and challenged Theotoky in a duel. He wounded him but generously released her from the marriage, took care of her children, and remained her friend. Jane married Theotoky and they moved to Greece. Greece's King Otto (son of Ludwig I of Bavaria), became her lover. The marriage to Theotoky ended in divorce after the fatal fall of their 6 year old son, Leonidas.
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.
[edit] Life in Syria
At age forty-six, Jane travelled to the Middle East, and fell in love with Sheikh Abdul Midjuel el Mezrab (also known as Shaikh Mijwal). Midjuel was the sheikh of the Mazrab section of the Sba'a, a well-known sub-tribe of the great 'Anizah 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 11 August 1881.She was buried in the Protestant Cemetery in Dasmascus. Upon her footstone is her name ,written in Arabic. After her death a young H. R. P. Dickson and his family moved in to her house.
Her bible was inscribed: "Judge not, that ye be not judged."
[edit] References
- Lovell, Mary S. (1998). A Scandalous Life: A Biography of Jane Digby. Fourth Estate. ISBN 1857024699.
- Ure, John (2004). In Search of Nomads. Constable and Robinson. ISBN 1-84529-082-8.
- Bedell Smith, Sally (1996). Reflected Glory. The Life of Pamela Churchill Harriman. Simon and Schuster. ISBN 0-684-80950-8.
