A Scandalous Life: The Biography of Jane Digby
By now Admiral Digby had realised that there was no hope of a reconciliation. Jane wanted the divorce as much as Ellenborough; she could not bear the thought of being married to any man but Felix. Therefore she agreed not to offer any defence. A few weeks later she received another visitor, a Mr Wigram, who presented her with a ‘Copy of a Bill for the Divorce to be Heard in the House of Lords’. She instructed him to refer the matter to her solicitor in England.
As the last stages of her pregnancy, coupled with the winter weather, confined her to her apartment, Jane felt increasingly lonely, bored and desperate. If only Felix would come to her, everything would be well. But her only relief from the continuous misery lay in the regular letters from Austria, promising that he would try to be with her in time for the birth of the child. It was not until 10 November, more than two months after her arrival in Basle, that Felix managed to visit Jane en route to his new appointment at the Austrian embassy in Paris. She had longed for this moment for months, but she was soon to suspect that his former feelings had undergone a subtle change, doubtless influenced by his family.
Their daughter was born two days later – nine months and one week after the fateful night spent in the Brighton hotel.16 They called the baby Mathilde (after Felix’s favourite sister), which was shortened to ‘Didi’. Seeing Jane’s distress when the time came for him to leave five days later, Felix promised to visit again within weeks and this time kept his promise, for he spent a further few days in December with Jane and his daughter. During this visit he promised to make arrangements for her to join him in Paris as soon as she and the child were well enough to travel.
Four weeks later tragedy struck the house of Ellenborough. Little Arthur Dudley Law, just a month short of his second birthday, had again been ill with a childish infection, and Ellenborough had sent him in the care of his nurse, Mrs Mowcock, to the seaside in the belief that the fresh air would help alleviate the symptoms. All seemed to be under control on 27 January:
My Lord,
Master Arthur is in very good spirits but his tonsils have been very [troublesome]… Mr March has been to see him today and says it is his teeth and he will bleed him tomorrow to correct it. He will be all the better for it but is much fawling [sic] away. The weather is so very wet so he could not go out today.17
The next letter, from Mr March himself, only two days later, must therefore have come as a shocking blow. Ellenborough noted on the envelope that he received it as he returned home from a Cabinet meeting:
Worthing 29th January 1830
My dear Lord,
I am distressed beyond description to be compelled to relate the melancholy fact that your dear infant has ceased to exist. He was attacked this morning by a convulsive fit which caused his extinction in a few minutes. Everything was done judiciously by the nursery assistant who was on the spot instantly but so violent was the attack that all was over before I could get to him.
He passed a tolerably quiet night till about 5… up to the time of the fit which seems to have been immediately caused by some accidental noises, there was no reason to consider the child in the slightest danger as everything was going well.18
It was distressing news for all concerned, the Digby grandparents as well as the father. The black-edged mourning letters expressing shock and grief, as well as concern for Ellenborough, carefully folded back into their original envelopes, still exist in a pathetic stack neatly tied with deep-purple ribbon among Lord Ellenborough’s papers.19
It might be assumed, because of the history of the marriage and the fact that the child had spent a lot of his time away from his parents, that his death was of no great moment to them. But Ellenborough, whose ambitions for his son now lay in ruins, mourned him with genuine grief. Like Jane he found consolation in writing poetry throughout his life, and on this occasion wrote:
Poor child! Thy mother never smiled on thee
Nor stayed to soothe thee in thy suffering day!
But thou wert all the world to me,
The solace of my solitary way.
Despite any bitterness he might have felt towards Jane, Ellenborough wrote to her, as always in a kindly manner, to break the news and thoughtfully enclose a lock of Arthur’s soft, fair hair. A messenger delivered the letter to her personally, under Ellenborough’s seal. She kept it with her, through all her travels, until her death.
A week later Jane set out for Paris with her baby daughter. It is clear, from a poem written in December 1830, when fresh tragedy struck, that she was distressed about Arthur’s death. She was also depressed after the birth of Mathilde, and worried about her future. Just as her father had warned, Felix had confirmed that his religion would not allow him to marry her and, further, her reputation could damage his career. Jane optimistically believed that once she joined Felix their former love would reassert itself and he might find a way. Meanwhile, at least they would be together.
In England, Ellenborough too was concerned for the future. The forthcoming divorce hearings would, he knew, be extremely unpleasant. Jane would not – could not – contest the charge of adultery. However, it was important that his own behaviour did not come under close scrutiny, for under the prevailing laws a divorce could not be granted if both he and Jane were found equally guilty to adultery. Yet with the death of his son and heir it was even more important, now, for him to obtain a divorce in order to remarry.
Jane decided to keep the name of Madame Einberg when she arrived in Paris. Felix had rented an apartment for her in the fashionable quarter of the Fauberg Saint-Germain,20 and she lived there for some weeks while she searched for something more suitable for herself and her child. Primarily, though, simply being with Felix was all she asked. It was perhaps just as well that she chose to live quietly under an assumed name. Within weeks she was to become the most notorious woman in England.
6 A Fatal Notoriety 1830–1831
Until comparatively recent years The Times newspaper was renowned for its front page which consisted of classified advertisements. In May 1966, when the front page was changed to a news format, there was an outcry of protest. However, there was a precedent: 136 years earlier, in April 1830, the editor broke with tradition and placed the Ellenborough divorce case on the front pages.
On 1 April the entire right-hand column of the first page and two-thirds of the second page were given over to the story. It was a sell-out. On 2 April virtually the entire front page and part of page 2 were given over to a complete transcript of the Ellenborough divorce hearing. For weeks the name of Lady Ellenborough was in every newspaper and Jane’s misdemeanours became the breakfast-table tittle-tattle of the entire country, causing her name to become a byword for scandalous behaviour for generations. Indeed, for decades small news items continued to appear (they were often incorrect) about her adventures, always referring to her as Lady Ellenborough, though after 1834 she never again used this name.
The preliminary hearing by the Consistory Court, held in relative privacy on 22 February, readily established from the assembled evidence that Jane was guilty of adultery. That was the easy part. But Ellenborough’s application for his marriage to be dissolved then had to be examined, under law, by both Houses of Parliament, in public. Divorce was a difficult and highly complicated legal matter. As a lawyer Ellenborough knew that only too well. The social ignominy and sheer cost of obtaining a divorce meant that few were applied for.
On 9 March 1830, in the House of Lords, the Clerk read out the Order of the Day:
being the Second Reading of the Bill entitled, ‘An Act to dissolve the marriage of the Right Honourable Edward Baron Ellenborough with the Right Honourable Jane Elizabeth Baroness Ellenborough his now Wife, and to enable him to marry again; and for other purposes therein mentioned’, and for hearing Counsel for and against the same, and for the Lords to be summoned.1
The witnesses were called, gave their evidence and were cross-questioned at length by Lord Ellenborough’s counsel and subsequently by any member of the House who wished to query the facts. Jane was not represented and offered no defence; no attempt was made to mitigate her actions. Ellenborough’s counsel, Mr Wigram, began calling staff from the Norfolk Hotel, who detailed the couple’s movements during their overnight stay in Brighton. Robert Hepple, the night porter on the evening of 7 February 1828, was questioned minutely about what he had heard after watching the prince go into Lady Ellenborough’s room at midnight:
Q: Did he lock the door after him?
A: He did.
Q: Did you still watch him?
A: I waited a short time at the door … a quarter of an hour the first time: then I went again … and remained there, I daresay, nearly an hour …
Q: How near to the door?
A: Quite close … I heard two persons talking, a man and a woman in the room … the language was foreign to me, it was not a language I understood at all.
Q: Did you hear anything more?
A: I heard him get into bed … and I heard them kissing.
The entire performance was repeated again in early April in the House of Commons, where radical members were not inclined to allow an easy passage of the reading to accommodate Lord Ellenborough. Not surprisingly, Jane’s grandfather did not take his seat for the hearing. On this occasion Robert Hepple was constrained to take his answer at the same point in the proceedings a step further:
Q: What did you hear then?
A: I could hear them kissing, and a noise that convinced me that the act of cohabitation was taking place.
A word-for-word transcript of the Commons hearing was reproduced in The Times. Thus respectable ladies might sit in their own drawing-rooms or boudoirs and learn the shocking nature of Lady Ellenborough’s guilt from Mr John Ward, the prince’s neighbour in Harley Street. Mr Ward testified that Jane was a frequent visitor to the house opposite, disguised with a white veil. Sometimes he saw her in the upper-floor room which faced this drawing-room:
Q: Have you ever observed anything in particular passing between them?
A: On one occasion I saw Prince Schwarzenberg assisting in dressing the lady.
Q: In what state was the lady at this time?
A: The Prince was lacing her stays.
Jane’s groom, William Carpenter, was as economical with his answers as could possibly be while remaining truthful under oath. For his loyalty to his mistress he was told that he was the most difficult and unwilling witness it had ever been counsel’s misfortune to examine. Yet even young William had to admit that he had accompanied Lady Ellenborough when she went to the Castle Hotel, Richmond, one afternoon with the prince. Yes, he had put the horses up there, and yes, he had lied to the head groom about where he had been that afternoon. Was there another similar occasion at Highgate? Yes. And yes, he had ridden out with his mistress on many other occasions when she met the prince. Yes, he had looked after her horse on many occasions while she visited a house in Harley Street. No, he did not know which house; he presumed it was her father’s house. Why should she ask him to wait so far from her father’s door? He did not know the reason why. Yes, she had left him in charge of her carriage after they left the Countess St Antonio’s house; Lady Ellenborough travelled with the prince in his closed chaise until they were within sight of Elm Grove at Roehampton where she transferred back to her own carriage again.
As William Carpenter stood down, a Member of the House intervened in the hearing. Mr Joseph Hume, Member for Montrose, bravely objected per se to the entire case on the grounds that
in this country a woman is punished severely for faults which in the husband are overlooked. For a single slip she is banished from society. And yet if justice is to be done to Lady Ellenborough, can anyone overlook the gross neglect on Lord Ellenborough’s part that has led to the unhappy events of the past couple of years? Ought not the charge to be read as one of criminality against Lord Ellenborough, who had permitted and even encouraged his wife’s association with the persons responsible for her downfall, rather than one of marital infidelity against an unfortunate lady whose youth and immaturity ought to have been safeguarded by her natural protector? What is a young lady to do who is neglected by her husband? Is she to stop at home all day long?
Touching upon the present line of questioning, in which the prosecution were clearly suggesting that while in the closed chaise together Lady Ellenborough and the prince indulged in a sexual encounter, Mr Hume asked seriously: ‘would anyone believe that a lady dressed to go out to dinner could be guilty of anything improper?’ Indeed, with the stays and panniers, wigs and feathers of a decade earlier, impropriety might have been difficult. However, fashions had changed in recent times, and the ribald laughter and sallies which greeted the Honourable Member’s final remarks left no one in any doubt that a number of members of the House had experienced little difficulty in misbehaving under similar circumstances.
Next the prince’s maid provided evidence that on the frequent occasions when Jane had called on her master the couple had usually spent the afternoon in bed together. How could she tell, asked the prosecutor? By the rumpled and marked bedlinen, replied the maid.
Miss Margaret Steele’s evidence served to damn Jane completely. She gave her answers quietly, so quietly that The Times journalist in the gallery missed some of her answers and complained about it indignantly in his column. She acknowledged that she was a personal friend of Lady Andover and Lady Anson and that for six years she had taken responsibility for the upbringing of Lady Ellenborough prior to her marriage. She told how she had been summoned to Roehampton on the occasion of the couple’s separation, how she accompanied Jane to the West Country, of her discovery that Jane was pregnant and of Jane’s confession that she had spent the night with the prince at the Norfolk Hotel:
Q: Did you ask Lady Ellenborough any questions as to why she supposed the child was not Lord Ellenborough’s?
A: When she first disclosed the circumstances of her guilt to me, I was told to keep it a secret. I think I made no further inquiry, and seeing me much agitated, and being very much agitated herself, she merely said to me, as I have stated, ‘God knows what I shall do, for the child is not Lord Ellenborough’s but Prince Schwarzenberg’s.’ That is to the best of my recollection. At that time I asked her no further questions. She was always very modest in her manner to me.
Miss Steele explained that Jane had asked her husband if she might sleep alone, having told him that she did not wish for another child. Questioned on the state of the marriage generally, Steely said she thought the couple had always appeared very happy together. ‘You do not recollect seeing Lord Ellenborough ever treat her with harshness, either in word or manner?’ On the contrary, replied the witness, ‘he was always remarkably kind and attentive to her.’ Indeed, she said, she had found Lord Ellenborough to be an unfailingly kind and considerate husband in every way. Indulgent? Very much so, indeed! She had been astonished when the separation occurred.
Her memory failed her only when it came to the conversation she had had with Lord Ellenborough a year earlier on the subject of his wife’s behaviour. She recalled that Lady Ellenborough had been ‘indiscreet, giddy and very regardless of consequences’. She could not recall exactly in what manner, nor from whom she had heard the report. Her answers were weak, and she knew it, and so did her interlocutor:
Q: What particular acts were indiscreet?
A: I heard of her riding a good deal.
Q: Was there anything indiscreet in a lady riding?
A: I think in her riding alone there was.
Q: Did she ever ride without a servant?
A: No, with a servant. I thought it very indiscreet.
Q: Is that all the acts of indiscretion you ever heard of?
A: … I cannot recollect.
She did, however, recollect that she had advised Lord Ellenborough about some of the friends to whom he had introduced his wife before their marriage, and who were frequent guests of the Ellenboroughs. Making it clear that she placed the full blame for Jane’s behaviour on the example set by these unnamed persons, she nevertheless hedged and weaved for what must have been some twenty minutes of questioning. When asked directly for names she murmured a short reply which was drowned in loud cries of ‘No! No!’ by angry members.
Q: Were these associates men or women?
A: Both … I thought them very bad companions … I cannot mention names, it might implicate many persons.
Q: Were they persons universally accepted at respectable houses in London?
A: At houses called respectable. (Laughter.)
Q: In the best society in England?
A: In fashionable society. (Laughter.)
Q: Can you recollect what answer Lord Ellenborough made to your warning?
A: He laughed.
Several times during the long interrogation Miss Steele asked to be allowed to sit down and sip at a glass of water. Later the men and women she alluded to were identified by the broadest of hints in the newspaper leaders, and they would complain loudly that their behaviour had been judged by a person they thought their social inferior.
It was undoubtedly an ordeal for Steely. This modest and moral woman elected to stand up before several hundred men and discuss the sexual behaviour of her former pupil, knowing that it would be widely reported in the newspapers. No one would have forced her to do so, but Lady Andover had begged it as a favour and Steely complied, knowing that her evidence would clinch Lord Ellenborough’s case. She must have known that this would ensure a decision that would provide the freedom Jane wanted, but only at the cost of Jane’s reputation.
The last of the twenty-one witnesses (many were called twice or three times during the Commons’ exhaustive hearing, the rest consisting of prying neighbours and hotel staff, post-boys and coachmen, maids, grooms and lawyers’ clerks) was Thomas Kane, the Ellenboroughs’ butler. He testified that as far as he and the other servants could see their master and mistress lived in happiness and affection, they generally called each other Edward and Janet, and had until two years ago frequently gone out together in the evening, less often after that. Prince Schwarzenberg had never been a guest at either house. All the servants (there were many) knew that the Ellenboroughs latterly slept in separate beds. Yes, it had been discussed in the servants’ hall but no one had taken it to mean that the couple were estranged.
After Kane stood down, the Honourable Members debated the matter. The arguments raged back and forth. Jane had many champions who said that Ellenborough ought to have been more vigilant, that an experienced and worldy man ought not to have left his young wife so alone and unprotected that she had opportunity to behave so badly. Besides, said several, she had behaved no better nor worse than her peers, people who were also personal friends of her husband. And how had this husband reacted when warned by those closest to his wife that she was in moral danger? He had laughed. When one speaker asked what arrangements had been made to secure Lady Ellenborough’s future he was advised by Ellenborough’s barrister that Lord Ellenborough had made arrangements which ensured ‘she should not want for any of the comforts and conveniences which her rank in life required’. The barrister then produced what he described as a letter written by Lady Andover to Lord Ellenborough absolving him of responsibility for the break-up of the marriage, but the members of the House refused to allow it to be admissible.
Those who supported Ellenborough argued that a husband could not possibly watch over his wife every minute of the day. There was no man in the House, said one Member, whose wife and daughters did not go out during the fashionable hours of the afternoon. Where did they go? Did the Honourable Members know every move of their womenfolk? Of course not. Were they then to suspect them of being false?
The newspapers had their say too. The Times stated that there was little doubt about Jane’s adultery. However, it pointed out that there were other facts to be proven before a divorce might be granted. The editor hoped that there was no ‘collusion or connivance with the wife, [or] gross negligence of her morals or comforts … or gross profligacy on his part which might prevent the divorce going through’2 – especially, said the editorial suspiciously, in view of the fact that Lady Ellenborough had made no attempt to contest the divorce, nor offer any defence for her behaviour.
Denying the rumour that Prince Schwarzenberg had offered marriage to Lady Ellenborough if she obtained a divorce, the editor pointed out that in Austria, a Catholic country, such a thing was impossible. However,
as there has been no opposition by Lady Ellenborough or her family to this bill, we must conclude that neither she nor they have any objection to let the divorce be completed
Now this is a state of things which naturally begets the idea of collusion between the parties … the party seeking relief must come into court with clean hands. An adulteress cannot lawfully divorce her profligate husband. Nor can an adulterer his adulterous wife.
… it seems to us, from reports that are current that an enquiry might be advantageously directed to what might be called ‘the Brighton affair’.3
The open reference to the ‘Brighton affair’ – widespread reports of Ellenborough’s affair with the daughter of a confectioner from Brighton – was astonishing unless there was some evidence to back up the accusations. Yet it was mentioned in several papers, including The Times, and the word ‘collusion’ was raised a great deal by many in the debate.4 At one point it looked as though George Anson’s name might be brought into the proceedings, but to the relief of the family this dangerous ground was skated over.5
The cheaper papers were less circumspect than The Times. The Age, having questioned a former servant, claimed that Jane had found a portrait of Ellenborough’s current mistress ‘within six months of their marriage’ which ‘insulted the delicate sensibility of an affectionate wife’. Openly accusing Ellenborough of neglecting Jane not because of his work, but because of other women, the editor asked his lordship to answer publicly certain statements being made by many people, namely:
you have been an adulterer yourself, you have seduced and intrigued with females, more than one or two in humble life, one of whom has a child of which you are the father, and whom you refused to aid in her poverty and misery until fear of exposure tempted you to grant her a pittance …
The Times says boldly that there was an affair with a confectioner’s daughter at Brighton. Now this is downright slander or downright truth. Lord Ellenborough is bound, in justice to the public, to deny in toto the verity of such a charge.6
The same paper continued the attack a week later, referring also to an alleged relationship with another young woman, which led to a ‘recontre in Portland Place and even to a personal conflict’ between Ellenborough and a young doctor.7
Ellenborough loftily ignored the press, and so apparently did his peers, for after a third reading in the week of Jane’s twenty-third birthday, on 7 April, the bill was passed. Royal Assent was duly granted and the Clerk of the House gravely announced, in time-honoured fashion, ‘Soit fait comme il est désiré.’8 The Times, seeing the end of its best lead story since the King’s attempt to brand Queen Caroline an adulteress in order to divorce her, contented itself with a huffy statement: