Mary Lovell - A Scandalous Life - The Biography of Jane Digby

It is surprising that Ellenborough did not connect Steely’s warnings with what was happening at home, for when he wrote to Jane in September from Stratfield Saye (the Duke of Wellington’s country seat in Hampshire) he spoke of her recent ‘coldness and indifference’ towards him. ‘But all is now forgotten,’ he continued. 28 Her ‘want of gaiety’ had certainly disappeared as she went about town on her cousin’s arm. Indeed, Edward misread all the signs that would have been obvious to a more concerned husband. Even Jane’s style of dressing should have alerted him. She set off to perfection the high velvet bonnets with huge upstanding pokes that framed her little heart-shaped face, and on Jane the modish high-waisted narrow gowns, worn with a short, demurely fastened spencer for walking out, looked exceptionally elegant. But the deep décolletage of her evening dress, though fashionable in that the edges of her nipples could be plainly seen, was thought unseemly by a visitor from Paris, who reported himself entranced with Lady Ellenborough but ‘sickened by her dress’. 29

But among the smart set it was considered neither stylish nor particularly commendable to be faithful to one’s spouse. Despite Steely’s stern moral teaching Jane was impressionable and looking for justification that her behaviour with Edward was acceptable. She had only to look at her peers to conclude that it was. The women with whom she was most often seen were the subject of open gossip. One gentleman wrote: ‘My whole time for the past week has been devoted to the Belgrave’s Chester committee. I am very thankful for a violent cold which came to my assistance on Saturday and has prevented my further attendance. There can be nothing in life so disagreeable, not even sleeping with Mme Lieven.’ 30 While Princess Esterhazy had been the subject of scurrilous gossip for years, ‘said Esterhazy has been in Cheltenham for three weeks, where the people, being a moral race, were shocked at her having a fresh lover for every week. The order ran thus: 1st week Castlereagh; 2nd Viner; 3rd Valerfrie.’ 31 So Jane’s liaison with the handsome and universally popular George Anson undoubtedly did her no discredit in their eyes. Her other intimates were George’s former lovers, the Duchess of Rutland and the notorious Mrs Fox Lane. If the approbation of these high-flyers should be insufficient, her husband’s affair with the pretty daughter of a confectioner in Brighton was common knowledge and provided justification enough. 32

There was, however, nothing calculated in Jane’s affair with her cousin, no deliberate attempt at retribution. She believed that the frothy romance with Edward was true love. A degree of ingenuousness would explain an incident which occurred the following spring, when Jane visited Holkham to see the latest addition to her grandfather’s growing new family. 33

As usual Holkham was full of guests during March and April, including Jane’s parents, her maternal aunts – Anne, Lady Anson and Eliza Spencer-Stanhope – as well as sundry other family members who came and went, an archdeacon, a Captain Greville, various neighbours who called in casually and the diarist Thomas Creevey. There was also a man described by Creevey as ‘a young British Museum Artist who is classing manuscripts’.

He was Frederick Madden, aged twenty-six, an academic who specialised in and spoke Norman-French and Anglo-Saxon, and who was also a noted scholar in ancient manuscripts. In the spring of 1827 Madden was working in a freelance capacity with Mr William Roscoe of the British Museum, cataloguing Mr Coke’s manuscripts and hoping it might lead to a permanent position. Paid employment would enable him to marry his fiancée Mary, about whom Madden wrote each day, longingly, in his diary. Mary lived in Brighton with her widowed mother, who disapproved of Madden, having no wish to see her daughter married to an impecunious man, no matter how scholarly he might be.

It is Madden’s diary, rather than the more famous one of Creevey, that provides the clearest surviving description of Jane at that period, and also of the daily routine at Holkham. Frederick Madden was a conscientious man, and, as he meticulously recorded, he spent each day, from 10 a.m. until 4 or 5 p.m., working hard in the library. This was his second visit to Holkham; like the first, it would last a month or so. Everything went on as usual until Wednesday, 14 March, when something occurred to change his routine:

Wednesday 14th. In library from ten until five and went over some of the Greek Fathers which will, as before, prove the most tedious.

Lady Ellenborough, daughter of Lady Andover, arrived to dinner and will stay a fortnight. She is not yet twenty and one of the most lovely women I ever saw, quite fair, blue eyes that would move a saint, and lips that would tempt one to forswear heaven to touch them. 34

One look and the sober scholar was smitten. It was completely normal for someone on meeting Jane to note before anything else her beautiful appearance; this started when she was in the cradle and would continue until she was over seventy. But Madden was infatuated. He found it impossible to concentrate on his work, and within two days he was finding excuses to finish work at noon to spend time with his host’s granddaughter. ‘Lady Ellenborough is such a charm that I find the library become a bore, and am delighted to be with her, and hear her play and sing, which she is kind enough to do.’ A day later he recorded: ‘From four till half past five with Lady Ellenborough in the saloon; she sings to me the most bewitching Italian airs, the words of which are enough to inflame one, did not the sight of so lovely a creature sufficiently do so.’ 35

Poor Madden. ‘Dearest Mary’ appears to have been forgotten and instead his diary is filled each day with Lady Ellenborough: tête-à-tête walks around the mile-long lake with her; sitting in the salon while she plays the guitar and sings to him; strolling in the garden with her past the bronze lions that guard the house’s entrance, to the extravagant fountain depicting Perseus and the Medusa; rides to the nearby fishing village of Wells-next-the-Sea, and back along the sweeping sandy beaches in her company; heads bent together over her sketchbooks; playing écarté in the drawing-room with her each evening. Madden was furious when a visitor, Captain Greville, called and robbed him of an opportunity to be alone with her. 36

Ten days after her arrival Madden’s diary entry has degenerated into a hurried scrawl:

Saturday 24th. In library till 4 o/c. Then out. In the evening drew pictures for Lady Anne Coke and Miss Anson. Also played whist and won. Lady E. lingered behind the rest of the party and at midnight I escorted her to her room——Fool that I was!——I will not add what passed. Gracious God! Was there ever such good fortune?

Sunday 25th. Chapel in the morning. In the afternoon, walked out with Lady E. She pretended to be very angry at what had passed last night, but I am satisfied that, she——!

Satisfied that she what? Satisfied that she was at least as much to blame as he? Satisfied that she was as eager as he? Satisfied that she intended it to happen? We shall never know. Madden’s irritating slashes across the page convey only that he was emotionally overwrought.

Jane cold-shouldered him for a couple of days, advising her family that she intended to leave as planned in three days’ time. The day before her departure she relented her cool behaviour to the bewildered scholar:

Wednesday 28th. In library till 2 o/c then went with Lady E. tête-à-tête around the lake, and remained in one of the hermitages with her until 5 o/c. We have completely made it up. She is a most fascinating woman! Whist in evening. Won. Afterwards drew pictures in Lady E’s album, cupid on a lion.