Rebel Heart: The Scandalous Life of Jane Digby

by Mary S. Lovell

I read this book when living in Damascus and I thought it would be an amusing diversion from our present restricted life and our usually serious reading…

There are two paintings of Lady Jane Digby (born in 1807): one, by the court artist Josef Stieler, hangs in Ludwig the First Gallery of Beauties in his Munich’s Nymphenburg Palace. The other, 28 years on, is a watercolour by the German artist Carl Haag of her in Arab dress, with the ruins of Palmyra as the background. Even if you knew nothing of their sitter, looking at these two paintings together you would probably assume she was rarely at home playing a good house wife. And you’d be right - she pursued a life for which there were few precedents among her gender, class or nationality, and her exploits sent waves of indignant uproar throughout Europe. Her first divorce occupied the front page of newspapers, with a verbatim transcription of the divorce proceedings. She had had many lovers, been married thrice and divorced twice when, at the age of 50, she embarked on her fourth and happiest marriage, to bandit Chief Sheikh Medjuel of Arabia, 20 years her junior. She adopted her husband's culture, spent part of each year with the Bedouin nomads in the desert and in her Damascus home entertained Western visitors. An original spirit to the last, Jane Digby died in 1881 in Damascus, where her grave can (could?) still be visited at the Protestant cemetery.

In the discussion (on Zoom), the members of the group gave an overall favourable opinion, appreciating the background and historical facts of the various places where Jane lived and travelled, but mostly preferring the last part of the book, where Lovell provides vivid descriptions of her lavish existence in Damascus and, more importantly, of the tribal life as Jane experienced it: "My heart warms towards these wild Arabs," she wrote. "They have many qualities we want in civilised life, unbounded hospitality, respect for strangers or guests, good faith and simplicity of dealing amongst themselves, and a certain high-bred innate politeness." I “stole” this quote from Loeky´s mail (she could not participate in the Zoom), where she adds, “it is now lost”. Yet, in our time in Syria, before this terrible war started, it was still very much present among the “civilised” inhabitants of Damascus.


Blanka