Jane Digby

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Jane Digby 1831 ( Lady Jane Ellenborough ), painted by Joseph Karl Stieler for the Gallery of Beauties

Jane Elizabeth Digby (born April 3, 1807 in Forston House, Minterne Magna , Dorset , † August 11, 1881 in Damascus ) was the daughter of Admiral Henry Digby and Lady Jane Elizabeth Digby, née Coke, and was known as a mistress and wife of several well-known personalities.

Life

Her maternal grandfather was Thomas Coke, 1st Earl of Leicester , the richest landowner in Norfolk. She spent her youth on his manor; and he arranged their first marriage. On October 15, 1824, Jane Digby married Edward Law, 2nd Baron Ellenborough , who later became Viceroy of India . With this she had a son, Arthur Dudley, who died at the age of two.

Jane Digby began a revealing love life during the marriage. She had several affairs, including with her cousin George Anson, the librarian Frederick Madden and in 1828 with the young Austrian diplomat and later Prime Minister Prince Felix zu Schwarzenberg .

In 1830 Lord Ellenborough divorced Jane Digby. She went to Paris, where she lived with Felix Schwarzenberg, who was there on a political matter. The love affair with Schwarzenberg gave birth to their daughter Mathilde Selden (* 1829) and a son who died after just a few weeks. Jane Digby hoped in vain to marry Schwarzenberg. Rather, she left the latter in Paris, but took their daughter with him to Austria. Jane Digby never saw her daughter again.

After separating from Schwarzenberg, Jane Digby went to Munich, where she met King Ludwig I of Bavaria and cultivated an intense friendship with him because of the same interests. Ludwig had them painted by Joseph Karl Stieler ; she is said to have advised the king on his art institutions ( Pinakothek , Glyptothek , Propylaea and Walhalla ). It is only a rumor that she was the king's mistress, this is made clear by some of the letters that have been received. In Munich she also met Karl Theodor von Venningen-Ullner , whom she married in November 1833. They had the children Heribert Ludwig (born January 27, 1833; † 1885) and Bertha (1834–1907). Heribert Ludwig von Venningen continued the lineage of the Lords of Venningen .

During his marriage to von Venningen, Digby met the Greek Count Spyridon Theotokis and fell in love with him. When Karl von Venningen found out about this affair, he challenged Theotokis to a duel in which he wounded his adversary. Von Venningen later divorced Jane Digby at her request.

Jane Digby, Lady Ellenborough ( William Charles Ross )

Jane Digby married Theotokis in 1841. Together they moved to Greece. From this marriage comes John Henry, born on March 21, 1840. But the marriage with Theotokis did not last long either. The reason for this is said to have been an alleged relationship with Otto I of Greece , a son of Ludwig I of Bavaria. John Henry died in an accident at the age of 6.

After a trip to the old country England, she fell in love with the Klephtenhauptmann Christos Chatzipetros (also: Cristos Hadji Petros), an Albanian-Greek, who had built up an army of brigands. Digby was the queen of this troop for a short time, but left the captain when he was unfaithful to her and tried to touch her property. Another lover was a Bedouin named Saleh.

At the age of 46, Jane Digby traveled to Syria to do archaeological studies. Here she met and fell in love with the 26-year-old Sheikh Medjuel el Mezrab . In 1854 Digby married the Sheikh and took the name Jane Elizabeth Digby el Mezrab. She learned Arabic as her ninth language. She lived with the sheikh in his nomad tent for one half of the year and in the other half in a palace in Damascus, which Digby had built from her savings (from the settlement for the divorce from Lord Ellenborough). She met Richard Francis Burton , his wife Isabel and Abd el-Kader in Syria, among others . She remained the wife of Medjuel el Mezrab until her death on August 11, 1881. Jane Digby was buried in the Damascus Protestant Cemetery; her tombstone is made of red Palmyrian limestone.

literature

  • Lesley Blanch : nomad of the heart. Jane Digby - a portrait. German by Kyra Stromberg . Edition Ebersbach, Berlin 2005, ISBN 3-934703-96-8 ( Blue Notes 25).
  • Lesley Blanch: They followed their star. The fate of women in the Orient. Ullstein, Frankfurt am Main et al. 1984, ISBN 3-548-30157-6 ( Ullstein book. The woman in literature 30157).
  • Julia von Brencken : The desert tern . Biographical novel. Salzer, Heilbronn 1993, ISBN 3-7936-0316-4 .
  • Mary S. Lovell: A Scandalous Life. A Biography of Jane Digby. 2nd Edition. Fourth Estate, Hammersmith 2003, ISBN 1-85702-469-9 (English).
  • Cornelia Oelwein : Lady Jane Ellenborough. A woman impresses her century. Ehrenwirth, Munich 1996, ISBN 3-431-03434-9 .
  • Alan Savage : The last queen. (Historical novel). Lübbe, Bergisch Gladbach 2004, ISBN 3-404-15221-2 ( Bastei Lübbe. General series 15221).
  • John Ure: In Search of Nomads. An English obsession from Hester Stanhope to Bruce Chatwin. Constable and Robinson, London 2004, ISBN 1-84529-082-8 (English).
  • Eva Verma: The "offensive Gotha ". In: Eva Verma: "... wherever you come from". Bi-national couples through the millennia. Dipa, Frankfurt am Main 1993, ISBN 3-7638-0196-0 , pp. 81-88.

Web links

Commons : Jane Digby  - album with pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d Antonius Lux (ed.): Great women of world history. A thousand biographies in words and pictures . Sebastian Lux Verlag , Munich 1963, p. 131.
  2. ↑ Cf. Stefan Lippert: Felix Fürst zu Schwarzenberg . Stuttgart, Steiner 1998, p. 78 ff.
personal data
SURNAME Digby, Jane
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Digby, Jane Elizabeth (full name); Digby el Mezrab, Jane Elizabeth; Ellenborough, Lady Jane
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Daughter of Admiral Henry Digby and Lady Jane Elizabeth Digby, née Coke
DATE OF BIRTH April 3, 1807
PLACE OF BIRTH Forston House, Minterne Magna , Dorset
DATE OF DEATH August 11, 1881
Place of death Damascus