Lady Jane Elizabeth Digby el Mezrab
|
Jane Digby in 1824 at the time of her marriage to Lord Ellenborough |
The
Hon. Jane Elizabeth Digby was born on 3 April 1807 at Forston House
in Dorset She
died in Damascus 11 August 1881
|
|
Jane Digby had everything: beauty, aristocratic connections,
money,and, as revealed in her letters, poetry, and intimate diaries,a
highly original mind . . .She was an intrepid traveler and finally
found she happiness in Arabia, where she married a sheik and divided
her time between the oasis of Damascus and the hard life of Bedouin
nomads. Odette
Lind 1999 (Fifth
cousin of Jane Digby) |
 |
|
Jane Digby was born into the English
aristocracy, growing up privileged by beauty as well as birthright.
Her ancestors included Everard Digby - who had been involved in the
Gun Powder Plot and her ancestry can be claimed back to Aelmar, "Anglicus-Saxonus"
. Her affair with an Austrian prince and consequent divorce in
1830 from, Lord Ellenborough, caused a sensation, and from that time
until her 1891 death, "her name was rarely out of the newspapers
as she featured in one outrageous tale after another." I was
it untenable for her to remain in or return to England; she then had
a succession of lovers and husbands, including, by the time she was
in middle age, "the love of her life," a Bedouin sheikh
young enough to be her son. |
|
 The only known portrait of Jane Digby in Arab dress |
Jane's husband - Sheikh
Midjuel El-Mesrab of the Sbaa tribe of Syria |
 The only known image |
||
| The Orientalists in the TSR Museum - read about the paintings | ||||
Her grave in Damascus |
||||
Visit the Links
below to find out more about Jane Digby: