A Scandalous Life: The Biography of Jane Digby

3 Lady Ellenborough 1825–1827

The honeymoon in Brighton lasted a mere three weeks and Lord Ellenborough was back at work in October. During the following period, though busy with affairs of great moment, he still found time to write poetry to his bride. The epithet ‘Juliet’ was only used in the first months of their marriage, probably as an allusion to Jane’s youth. Jane had a pet name for her husband – ‘Oussey’ – but in all surviving correspondence between the two she signed herself ‘Janet’, except in the following exchange:

Oh Juliet, if to have no fear

But that of deserving thee,

To know no peace when thou art near

No joy thou can’st not share with me

If still to feel a lover’s fire

And love thee more the more prospect,

To have on earth but one desire

Of making thee completely blest!

If this be passion, thou alone

Canst make my heart such passion know.

Love me but still, as thou hast done,

And I will ever love thee so.

Ellenborough, 12 November 1824

To which his bride of two months readily replied within twenty-four hours:

‘To love thee still as I have done’

Say, is it all thou ask of me?

Thou has it then, for thou alone

Reign in the soul that breathes for thee.

Edward, for thee alone I sigh

And feel a love unknown before

What bliss is mine when thou art nigh

Oh loved one still, I ask no more

As thou art now, oh ever be

To her whose fate in thine is bound

Whose greatest joy is loving thee

Whose bliss in thee alone is found.

And she will ever thee adore

From day to day with ardour new

Both now and to life’s latest hour

With passion, felt alas! … by few.

Juliet, 13 November 1824

Those words ‘whose greatest joy is loving thee’ hardly reinforce the image of a girl coerced into an unwanted marriage, nor charges that the marriage was a failure from the day of the wedding, and these facts are important in view of what was to follow. Visitors to Elm Grove found the couple happy together and living in terms of open affection.1 They rode out together most mornings when Edward was at Roehampton, often across Richmond Park.2 Joseph Jekyll, who visited the Ellenboroughs just before Christmas, wrote: ‘I dined and slept … at Roehampton to be presented by Lord Ellenborough to his bride. Very pretty, but quite a girl, twenty years younger than himself3 … The general subject was his lordship’s lamentation at being called away so frequently from his beautiful wife by debates and politics.’4

The poetry and literary love-making during Ellenborough’s absences continued for months, whenever Ellenborough was away from Jane, and some, such as the following extract from a poem written on New Year’s Day 1825 while he was staying at Boldrewood in Hampshire with Lord Lyndhurst, the Attorney-General and a close friend, is illuminating:

My bride! For thou art still a bride to me

And loved with all the passion of a soul

Which gave itself at once, nor would be free …

Yet I have had a roving eye, till now,

And gazed around on every lovely face

And still would, all enthralled to beauty, bow

But ne’er in fairest features could I trace

The sympathetic smile, and winning grace

Which beam aloft on thy illumined brow

And every thought of others is effaced

In dreams of bliss which heaven’s behests allow

So wedded truth alone, and love’s unbroken vow,

Ellenborough

Unless this poem came as a shock to her it seems that Jane was aware of Ellenborough’s reputation as a womaniser; he freely admits that he is still a potential rover were he not in love with his wife and her sympathetic smile and winning grace.

During her husband’s many absences Jane was initially content to get to know her new homes and learn the ordering of them. Steely was a visitor to Roehampton several times, as were Lady Andover and Lady Anson. Nor was Roehampton far from London, should Jane have felt the want of company. Once the 1825 season started, though, Jane removed to town and immediately her name featured regularly in the court page of the Morning Post as guest of socially prominent hostesses, often – but not always – accompanied by her husband, and also as the hostess herself of several formal dinners and a ball.

As the year wore on, however, hairline cracks began to appear in the fabric of the marriage. Lady Londonderry had earlier commended her former son-in-law for the five years of happiness he had given her late daughter, and Ellenborough’s biographers claim that the first Lady Ellenborough, Octavia, was the love of his life. Ellenborough is on record as saying that in his opinion whatever good he had done in his life was due to his first wife.5 Perhaps it is not surprising, then, that Jane, feeling rejected by her husband’s frequent absences and hurt by his apparent coolness, attributed the neglect not to his work but to his love for the dead Octavia.

In a poem to him, written about the time of the first anniversary of their wedding, answering Edward’s comment on her ‘lack of gaiety’, she asked his forgiveness for her jealous fears that Octavia ‘thy love of former years still reigns, while every thought and wish of mine is breathed for thee alone’. Beyond doubt she believed herself in love with her husband when she asked plaintively, ‘did her passion equal mine? Her joy the same when thou art near? And if not present did she pine?’

And here I am the fond, the young,

The blest in all that earth can give,

By men beloved, by lovers sung,

Yet silent, loveworn do I grieve.6

Why did this marriage, which had begun so well, run into trouble so quickly? On the face of it Jane had everything most women of her world could have wished: love, wealth and social position. At least Edward’s poetry proclaimed love, and whatever his faults he was always generous. Jane had a ‘pin-money’ allowance that her female relatives regarded with envy,7 and on their marriage he presented her with a green leather box of family jewels. Even a year after their marriage he habitually returned from short absences with a costly gift of jewellery such as the emeralds for which Lady Ellenborough became envied. However, it becomes clear from her diary in later years that these gifts were not appreciated by Jane as much as would have been a display of warmth from her husband.8

During the London season it was inconceivable that she would not attract the attention of admiring young men prepared to offer a solace her husband could not or would not give. Ellenborough might have smiled at the stir his wife created whenever she appeared in company, indeed basked in the thought that he possessed what other men so desired. Or he may have been so preoccupied and immersed in his work that he did not notice that the only time his bored young wife came to life was when she was the adored centrepiece of a crowd of young men.

Perhaps it is not surprising that Jane began to move away from her husband, in fantasy if not in deed. The next poem is almost certainly about George Anson, and was written after the visit of a horseman whom, at first sight from a distance, Jane mistook for her cousin. She recalled his winning look and had to ‘quell each rebel sigh’ at the thought of him. But then loyalty to Edward overtook her fantasy:

I may not think, I will not pause

One look behind my faith to shake.

Henceforth must buried be the past

Nor in my heart shall e’er awake

Its echo, for dear Edward’s sake.9

So far as one can take this surviving written work as evidence of the pattern of their marriage, it is possible to conclude that Jane felt neglected by her husband and believed he no longer loved her. Given Ellenborough’s age and disposition, and Jane’s lively but romantically inclined personality, such a situation was always probable. Had she confided in her mother or Steely, she would undoubtedly have been advised to accept that Edward must be about his business. It would be wrong, however, not to produce another piece of the jigsaw at this stage. Edward had a mistress, and within six months of the marriage Jane apparently discovered a portrait of this woman in their home.10

At this point, although the couple clearly had problems, the marriage survived a potential crisis. The Ellenboroughs spent some weeks in Paris during the autumn of 1825,11 and, at least to observers who would later testify to the fact, all seemed perfectly normal. In the following April, when seen by a member of the family at an early season ball, she was ‘on the arm of her Lord looking devastatingly handsome in black velvet and diamonds’.12 Two nights later she was noted by Mrs Arbuthnot at a Spanish ball held at the Opera House, where the company ‘Polonaised all around … Lady Ellenborough looked quite beautiful … it was altogether as magnificent a fete as I ever saw.’13 No event of any note, it seems, was held without the presence of this lovely young woman. And she was never without her crowd of male admirers. At the end of the season the couple spent several weeks in Brighton, staying at the Norfolk Hotel in a suite which they habitually engaged for regular visits to the seaside town.

The appearance of serenity was, however, a front. The eighteen-year-old Jane, still more child than woman, left more and more in her own company, was inexorably sucked into the glittering and sophisticated world of the European diplomatic set, to whom she had first been proudly introduced as Ellenborough’s fiancée. They were Edward’s friends and now they were hers too. She was intelligent enough to see that their rules on behaviour were not those of her own family, but it seemed to her that if these highly regarded people behaved in such a manner then she too could play by their rules. Her husband’s infidelity may have caused the new note of defiance in her conduct.

Jane’s activities were remarked by friends of the family, who were concerned that the young woman should be given a hint in order to correct any danger of being thought ‘fast’. Predictably, when her parents remonstrated with her, Jane defended herself vigorously, provoking an estrangement with her father which lasted some months.14 Steely spoke to her and, receiving no satisfactory response, took the matter up with Lady Anson. This conversation caused George Anson to be charged with keeping an eye on his young cousin, escorting Jane about town and guarding her reputation. It was an unfortunate commission. That summer, only two years after her marriage, Jane embarked upon a romantic liaison that had been waiting in the wings, so to speak, for several years.

George Anson was ten years older than Jane, yet they had known each other for ever. Perhaps he had not recognised the hero-worship of his pretty cousin that had begun when he returned as a handsome eighteen-year-old subaltern from the battlefield of Waterloo. Three years later, when Jane was still only twelve, Anson had just been elected to Parliament as the Member for South Staffordshire.15 He quickly became acknowledged by men of character as a likeable sprig and ‘a top sawyer’, despite a well-earned reputation for womanising.16 ‘George Anson is to have all the married women of good character in London this year,’ wrote one to another good-naturedly. ‘And so he ought, for he is the best looking man I know.’17

In fact, in his first years in town George was in one scrape after another, tipping a boatload of cronies into the Thames near Kingston, getting drunk, behaving outrageously with older women.18 He was believed to be the organiser of the famous quadrille at Almack’s in which both George and the lady he would later marry danced together all evening, to the irritation of many matrons:

I went two nights ago to a costume ball at Almack’s. It was all very brilliant and there was a quadrille that was beautiful. All the prettiest girls in London were in it … the men were in Regimentals and each wore a bouquet. The quadrille, however, gave great offence for they danced together all night and took the upper end of the room which was considered a great impertinence.19

But Anson’s pranks were conducted with such innocent good humour and unselfconscious charm that he was instantly forgiven, particularly by women, who fell at his feet in droves. He was a cracking horseman and could drive a carriage ‘to an inch’; he was also one of the best shots in England.20

Jane had been a pretty schoolgirl with a schoolgirl crush on him, but, as they both grew older, on two counts – her being a virgin and a member of his own family – she was strictly forbidden territory to George. He was used to tougher meat, his name being linked by both Creevey and Mrs Arbuthnot with the fastest women in town: in particular, the young Duchess of Rutland and Mrs Fox Lane, who, though the latter was considerably older than he, were both said to be his lovers.21

In the summer of 1926 it was a different matter. Jane was a married woman and therefore a ‘safe’ target by the code of the day. She was among the most desirable women in London, her virginal sweetness having given way to a slim voluptuousness guaranteed to turn men’s heads. It was perfectly acceptable for George to escort his first cousin Jane to functions in the absence of her busy husband. George, as well as serving in several political posts, was now a colonel in the Guards, and Jane was delighted to have such a handsome and personable chaperon.

They were seen together often, at Almack’s, at the races, at a fireworks party. Almost certainly the affair began perfectly innocently with the touch of hands or a snatched kiss; but at some point it became something else. Two handsome young people, both with a healthy libido – ‘Oh it is heaven to love thee,’ she wrote, and ‘rapture to be near thee.’ If he only felt half the joy she experienced, then, ‘what ecstasy is thine!’ He swore undying love; she countered that he might – at some time in the future, when her beauty had gone – be seduced by others. Still, she claimed, she would be true to him, for ‘though all righteous heaven above, / Forbids this rebel heart to love, / To love is still its fate.’22

Gone now was all her resolution of quelling her ‘rebel sighs, for Edward’s sake’. She flung herself into the affair with passionate involvement. Such a remarkable couple could not escape attention; indeed, they were frequently mentioned in contemporary correspondence, and featured on the same guest lists of court pages, but at this stage there were no raised eyebrows and no gossip, because the pair were reasonably discreet. At Roehampton there was a side-door to the house from the garden which was little used and consequently kept locked. Jane gave the key to George so that he could come and go at night during Edward’s absences, without the servants seeing him.23

At the same time, in a more public manner, and to the sustained disapproval not only of her parents but also of Steely (who visited Roehampton every two months or so as a friend of the family), Jane infiltrated deeper into the set of cynical, worldly men and women who, while considered by many to constitute the haul ton, the people of high fashion, were not at all suitable companions for a girl of nineteen. They included at least a brace of Almack’s Patronesses – Princess Esterhazy, the wife of the Austrian Ambassador, and Princess de Lieven, the haughty and imperious wife of the Russian Ambassador – as well as other leading members of the diplomatic set who were also the intimates of the King in the so-called ‘Cottage Clique’.24 All were regular dinner guests at Lord Ellenborough’s London house and at Roehampton, and their reciprocated hospitality was accepted by both Edward and Jane.