Arabian Horse In History-April

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Arabian Horse In History L ady Jane Digby ’s

Scandalous Life And Desert Romance

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by Andrew K. Steen

In August’s “Lady Jane Digby, Part I,” we detailed the celebrated traveler and horsewoman’s life from her birth in 1807 through the early 1850s. In May 1853, she met the Bedouin sheikh Medjuel el Mezrab, who escorted her on her first visit to the legendary ruins of Palmyra, a site which would be important to her for the rest of her life. The Mezrab tribe, part of the Anazeh confederation, was well-known for its excellent Arabian horses. When we rejoin Digby, it is December 1853, and she has just returned from Baghdad to Damascus, where she rejoins Medjuel el Mezrab.

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Despite being already married and a full 20 years younger than Jane Digby, Medjuel el Mezrab fell in love with her.

Although short in stature, his strength and dignity drew him near to her. There was also an incident with a hostile tribe on their journey to Palmyra in which Medjuel’s courage had deeply impressed her. The strikingly desolate panoramas and the hazards of the desert probably heightened Jane’s romantic impulse, and the inevitable transpired.

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approaches to seize our camels and tents. (Then I must) smile and encourage him with hopes of a speedy and victorious return, when I feel, ‘who knows if I will ever see him again.’”

If Lady Jane Digby was an unusual woman for 19th century Europeans, Medjuel was an equally uncommon Bedouin. Most men of the desert were superstitious of anyone that could read or write, and considered them to be possessed by the devil. However, Medjuel could not only read and write, but was well-read and spoke several Jane recorded their first kiss in her diary with the exultation languages. Jane had learned to tolerate the opinions of of a teenage girl. They were married under Moslem law others, and Medjuel was equally in the Syrian city of Homs, in willing to deal with the negative traditional Bedouin fashion. attitudes of his own tribe, which As his wedding gift, Medjuel in the beginning felt it was As his wedding gift, Medjuel unfitting for a Bedouin of noble brought Jane another horse, a mare brought Jane another horse, a mare lineage to consort with a “Frank.” called Midjioumah, which greatly However, with the passage of increased her prestige amidst called Midjioumah, which greatly time, Jane’s devotion to Medjuel the tribes because no woman gradually won them over. had ever before been known to increased her prestige amidst mount a horse except behind her Lovell notes, “She writes of a husband. For Jane to own and to the tribes because no woman mare taking all day to deliver a ride a desertbred Arabian with had ever before been known to foal which was badly presented such expertise engendered the which meant her remaining admiration of everyone. mount a horse except behind her with the animal and its owner while the tribe moved on. Her Jane quickly adapted to the husband. For Jane to own and to knowledge of horses and their challenging Bedouin lifestyle. care was above all things the She dressed in long tunics, colored ride a desertbred Arabian with reason why the men of the her hair with henna and painted tribe, in addition to the women, her eyes with kohl, smoked such expertise engendered the accepted her with respect.” nargil water pipes and learned to ride expertly on the backs admiration of everyone.

The feelings were mutual. On of camels. Almost effortlessly, April 26, 1856, Jane wrote to she added Arabic to her other her mother, “My heart warms eight languages, which she spoke towards these Arabs. They have many qualities we want in fluently. The tribe called her Umm al-Laban (“Mother of civilized life, unbounded hospitality, respect for strangers Milk”) because of the light color of her skin. or guests, good faith and simplicity of dealing amongst themselves, and a certain high-bred innate politeness, quite In her diary Jane lamented, “Why did I not come here unlike the vulgar Fellah.” and marry Medjuel ten years back? I should have liked a Bedouin child. … The moment when my heart fails me is Return To England when I am obliged—as is the custom—to give Medjuel After so many years, England got its first and last look at his lance, or other arms, when he mounts his magnificent the “Queen of the Desert.” Jane returned in early November mare to go off with his tribe against some rival one that

of 1856 for a six-month visit to settle her financial affairs and to see her aged mother for the last time. Undoubtedly many people, including members of her extended family, were eager to see a “fallen woman” whose foolish sentimental adventures had led her to ruin. If so, they were disappointed.

According to Lesley Blanche, Jane “returned to the family fold with the unrepentant air of youth and romance. At 50, she seemed in her early 30s. She had kept her figure, her hair was the chestnut tan Balzac had admired; the few silver strands merely seemed becoming. … If only she had come back wasted, bathed in tears of repentance! They would have shown how charitable they could be towards a fallen woman. Instead of which she positively glorified in her Arab marriage.”

Before returning to Damascus, Jane bought huge quantities of supplies not available in the Orient, including perfumed soaps, cold-cream, parasols, sketching materials, shoes and

undergarments. She also ordered medicine and veterinary supplies in such quantities that it was clear she intended to treat and medicate the entire tribe.

A Visit To Lady Jane Following their marriage, Jane had built a large house in Damascus, designing every element of its architecture and woodwork. For the next three decades the couple spent part of every year in the desert with Medjuel’s tribe and the remainder living in their beautiful home, which gradually turned into something resembling a page torn from A Thousand and One Arabian Nights.

In a letter of October 5, 1856, which was later published in Henry James Ross’ hard-to-find book Letters from the East 1837-1857, the adventurer who had befriended Layard at Nineveh described Jane and her Oriental surroundings: “Next day I called on Mrs. Digby (Lady Ellenborough), who … has finally espoused an Arab,

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A portrait of the soldier, explorer and diplomat Richard Burton, British Consul in Damascus and a good friend to Jane Digby and her husband, Medjuel.

Sheikh Midgwell. I was surprised at her choice, for he is not one of the noble featured, tall, graceful men so frequently met with among the Bedaween. He is short, with an immense nose. She is of full figure, brilliant complexion, stately port, and has well-opened crystalline eyes into whose depths one can gaze, dark hair and plenty of it; across the upper half of her forehead she wears a thin white muslin veil—quite transparent—just sufficient to give an Eastern look. Otherwise, her dress was a fashionable one, figured black silk open at the breast with bars across, the name for which I do not know, with a profusion of nice white frilled lace. Her boudoir was white and gold, and mirrored furniture of Buhl, armorial tapestries, and handsome paintings in rich frames, corner settees of dark velvet and gold. In her bedroom, on a dais, was a glorious tent-bed, crimson and gold. Her toilet table had a profusion of trinkets in Bohemian glass and gold.

She is rich for here—£1,500 a year. Then she took me all over the English garden where she has created a maze of walks, terraces, rustic bridges, shady bowers, and her stables and lodgings for her pet poultry and at last into her grand drawing-room, where she opened her portfolio of sketches and water-colors drawings. There were views of Switzerland, and other places she had traveled in, beautifully done; but what interested me the most was Palmyra, a gorgeous assemblage of column and arch, with a foreground of orange-groves and date palms. I quite long to go there, but it is an excursion, which would occupy too much time, besides being very expensive. I should not have objected to her being my guide, for she is clever and very accomplished.”

As The Legend Grew At the time, it was said that India was more accessible to Europeans than Damascus. Nevertheless, as Jane’s legend grew, a variety of intrepid European travelers (still in small numbers) and a few famous personalities (including the deposed king of Brazil) managed to brave the rugged and dangerous trails to Damascus from more accessible cities like Jerusalem or Beirut. Invariably, upon learning about the English aristocrat who was married to a Bedouin chieftain, each sought an audience with Jane. In 1859 the German artist Carl Haag, who was one of the first Orientalist painters to arrive in those parts, was introduced and invited to her home. Haag paid Jane and Medjuel to escort him to Palmyra, where he painted each of them in native costumes with the splendid ruins as a backdrop.

Abd-el-Khader And The Massacre Jane and Medjuel were in Damascus during the infamous massacre of hundreds of Christians which began on July 9, 1860. Her close and valiant friend Abd-el-Khader al-Jasairi, a former Algerian revolutionary leader, was (with his men) responsible for saving hundreds of Christian lives from the ancient Muslim sect known as the Druce. The Druce had precipitated the bloodbath that also destroyed the Christian neighborhoods of Damascus. (Author’s note: Abd-elKhader had supplied General Daumas with much of his material for his book, The Horse of the Sahara.)

An Inquisitive Prince On April 29, 1862, the 20-year-old Prince of Wales and his entourage came to Damascus and pitched their tents, Bedouin-fashion, on a large plot of land adjacent to Jane’s home. The trip to the Holy Land and important Middle Eastern cities had been planned by Prince Albert shortly before his death as a means of completing his son’s education. Prince Edward paid an informal visit to Jane, who commented in her diary that his arrival had been motivated by “mere curiosity I suppose.” Without undue fuss, she showed the monarch and his party around her home and garden with its menagerie of animals and birds, which the royal party “much appreciated.” Afterwards, at her large stables, the prince looked at the horses, especially at Jane’s latest acquisition and favorite mare, Hadibah.

In his own diary, Prince Edward (who later owned and rode Arabian horses) remarked that Jane “was once very handsome and is still very good looking tho’ more than 50.

Her house is charmingly arranged in true oriental style, as is her garden, which is full of roses.”

Captain Richard And Isabel Arundell Burton In 1869, newly-appointed British Consul Richard Burton arrived with his wife, Isabel Arundell, in Damascus. They quickly became friends with Jane and Medjuel and over the next two years, the two couples spent many evenings in one another’s company, engaged in passionate discussions. One can almost imagine Lady Jane and the intrepid explorer, who would later be knighted, seated on cushions under a lustrous summer-night’s sky—each learned, multilingual, and armed with a lifetime of accumulated experience, expounding upon a diversity of topics, places and people they had known. By most accounts, Jane’s knowledge proved indispensible to Burton for his controversial essays and books on Oriental sexuality and the salacious details of harem life.

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Richard Burton said that Jane Digby was “out and out the cleverest woman he ever met.” Isabel Arundell concurred, “There was nothing she could not do. She spoke nine languages perfectly, and could read and write in them. She painted, sculpted, was musical, and her letters were splendid. And in business there was never a word too much, or too little.”

of the Mizrab (tribe), a very well bred and agreeable man, who has given us a great deal of valuable advice about our journey. … (The couple is) a providence to their tribe whom they supply with all the necessaries of Bedouin life, and guns, revolvers, and ammunition besides. The Mizrab, therefore, although numbering barely a hundred tents, are always well mounted and better armed than any of their fellows, and can hold their own in all the warlike adventures of the Sebaa.”

Tribal Loyalties Sir Edwin Pears, who authored Forty Years in Constantinople, visited Digby in 1876 and recorded: “I found her a close observer, an excellent Later, on December 12, 1878, talker, with keen flashes of insight Lady Anne added, “We had a and wit, and, what interested me long conversation with Mijuel most of all was her experience with about breeds and horses harem life, of which she spoke and about the history of the A portrait of Lady Jane Digby, painted in 1824. frankly, of quite an exceptional Bedouins, and both of us are character. She told many stories struck by his intelligence and of her Eastern experience. On one clear way of putting things, besides his refinement and occasion, by a mistake, the whole of her husband’s tribe good breeding equal to the best of any of the noble flocked into Damascus and took possession of her home (English) families. … I remark this particularly, because it … I intimated that she must have been alarmed with the has often been said that Midjuel was a ‘camel driver’ and crowd of these wild fellows. She immediately retorted that nothing more … ” she was greatly alarmed, but not at anything which her husband’s Medjuel mentioned that a small tribe would do. Her fear was that house next door was for sale for some of the many Turkish soldiers £350. Anne Blunt wrote, “We all Shortly after Jane turned 73, near her house would make some looked over the wall by means remark derogatory to her, in which of a ladder.” Before departing Medjuel brought her the most case, she said, not a Turk in the Damascus, the Blunts bought neighborhood would have been left the dwelling. A good friendship beautiful desertbred stallion she alive. On mentioning this story to developed between the two English a friend, he said that he entirely had ever seen. “If he does not women, who often communicated believed it because the attachment by letter. suit me, I shall never get a horse of the Bedouins to their chieftain’s wife was passionate, and each would On December 3, 1879, following that does,” she told him. have been ready to die for her.” the Blunts’ intrepid passage to Najd (detailed in Lady Anne’s subsequent publication Pilgrimage Lady Anne And Wilfrid Scawen Blunt to Neyd), Jane wrote to Lady Lady Anne Blunt related how “a chance meeting in the Anne, “What a journey! But still a most satisfactory one Syrian desert while marching with the Gomussa tribe to look back upon and I am very glad you are going to of Sebaa Anazeh gave us the opportunity of making the publish it; those parts (of the Nefud and Najd Deserts) acquaintance of … Mrs. Digby and her husband, Mijuel are so little known.”

About Lady Anne, who reminded Jane of her own youth, she wrote, “I enjoy her energy and horsemanship and nerve.” It is from their exchange of long and detailed letters that we know the most about Jane’s final years.

Unlike Isabel Burton, who had angered Jane by writing articles about their association, falsely claiming that she was authorized to author Digby’s biography, Lady Anne sent copies of all the pages of her manuscript that mentioned Jane and asked her permission to include them in her books.

The Last Scherrak As the years past, Jane maintained her beauty with remarkable grace. Until she was 72 years old she continued dividing her time between the black tents of the desert and her comfortable villas in Damascus and Homs. She was still agile on the back of a horse and seemed to relish the privations of Bedouin life. It was only during the last two years of her life that she ceased making the yearly scherrak (trek) with the Mezrab tribe into the wilderness. Obliged by failing health to remain in her home, Jane experienced the same frustration that the Bedouins felt when they where away from the desert for too long.

Shortly after Jane turned 73, Medjuel brought her the most beautiful desertbred stallion she had ever seen. “If he does not suit me, I shall never get a horse that does,” she told him.

Her ardent feelings towards her husband remained strong until the very end: “It is now a month and 20 days since Medjuel last slept with me! What can be the reason?” Even after 25 years of marriage, she fretted about him in her diary, apparently never considering that Medjuel had also grown old and that his physical passion was in decline.

In March 1881, the Blunts returned to Damascus for the third time. They rode their camels directly to Jane’s front door and collected the keys to the house they had bought on their previous visit. During their two-week stay, the two couples visited each other frequently and had many stimulating conversations on a whole range of topics.

However, Lady Anne noticed a change in Jane: “She has been suffering from weakness and seems to me feeble in health, though as young as ever in the mind.”

“Still more disconcerting was Medjuel’s dramatic return. In triumph he galloped back to the ceremony on Jane’s lovely Saglawi mare, and he was there at the graveside with her favorite horse when they committed her body to the dust.”

Jane’s Saglawi Mare Five months later, Jane fell ill with dysentery and died on August 11, 1881. She was buried in the Damascus Protestant cemetery. Her grave may still be seen today.

Upon its pink footstone (that came from a limestone block of Palmyra) is her name, which was written in Arabic by Medjuel, then carved into the stone by a local mason. It is paradoxical that Lady Hester Stanhope had had herself proclaimed ‘the Queen of Palmyra’ in a mock ceremony, whereas Jane Digby’s funeral was attended by hundreds of Bedouins who regarded her as an authentic queen of the desert. Indeed, in their eyes, she was the reincarnation of Queen Zenobia.

According to Jane’s first biographer, E.M. Oddie, during the funeral procession—which included a mounted honor guard of horsemen of the Mezrab tribe—Medjuel “jumped from the moving carriage, and like a man pursued by a thousand devils, fled in the opposite direction. It was disconcerting for the unfortunate clergyman who was to make the service, and for the few formal mourners who were neither kilt nor kin to the dead woman. Still more disconcerting was Medjuel’s dramatic return. In triumph he galloped back to the ceremony on Jane’s lovely Saglawi mare, and he was there at the graveside with her favorite horse when they committed her body to the dust.”

Years later, Sir Richard Burton wrote perhaps the most fitting elegy: “Lady Jane Digby el Mezrab was a woman whose life’s poetry never sank to prose.” ■ Author’s Note: As usual, the Arabic spellings of names ( Jane’s husband Medjuel, Midjuel, Midgwell, Mijuel and Mijwal; his tribe Mezrab, Mizrab, and Mesrab) vary considerably among the different authors.