Free Scandalous Women: The Lives and Loves of History's Most Notorious Women by Elizabeth Mahon Page B

accounts, so she left him. No sooner had she settled into a new home, when she suffered the devastating loss of her six-year-old, Leonidas, who died falling from a balcony when he tried to slide down the railing to greet her.
    Jane, beside herself with grief, believed it was a punishment for her actions. Leaving Greece, she wandered disconsolately around the Mediterranean. For a time she became the mistress of an Albanian general and was thrilled to share his rough outdoor life as queen of his brigand army, living in caves, riding fiery Arab horses, and hunting game in the mountains for food—until she found that he, too, was unfaithful, with her maid, no less, and left him on the spot.
    Now middle-aged but still stunningly beautiful, and vowing to renounce men, she headed for Syria, to see Damascus. Speaking Turkish, dressed in a green satin riding habit, she hired a Bedouin nobleman, Sheikh Medjuel el Mezrab, who was twenty years her junior, to escort her. Smitten by her courage and zest for life, Medjuel proposed but Jane wasn’t interested. On her second trip to Damascus, she began to see him in a different light. When he proposed again, she asked for only two things: that he divorce his wife and that he remain faithful to her. Despite the advice of the British consul and her family, she threw caution to the wind. At the age of forty-six, she had finally found the great love of her life. Medjuel gave her the love and devotion that she had been longing for, and an adventurous life among the Bedouin.
    Jane made one last visit to England in 1856. She found English society rigid and straitlaced under the reign of Victoria and Albert. They found her shocking; not only had she married an Arab but she also had three ex-husbands who were still living! Jane realized just how far she had moved away, not just physically but mentally. Victorian England was no place for her. After six months, she kissed her family good-bye and returned to Medjuel and the desert.
    During the remainder of her life she adopted for six months of each year the exotic but uniquely harsh existence of a desert nomad living in the famous black goat-hair tents of Arabia; the remaining months she spent in the splendid palace she built for herself and Medjuel in Damascus. Accepting Arab customs, although she never converted to Islam, she dressed in traditional robes, her blond hair dyed black. As wife to the sheikh and mother to his tribe she found genuine fulfillment. She learned to milk camels, she hunted, she rode into battle at Medjuel’s side during the frequent intertribal skirmishes, and she raised Thoroughbred horses. Diplomats and scholars came to visit her, regarding her as an authority in the area. Middle Eastern expert and adventurer Sir Richard Burton called her the cleverest woman he’d ever met.
    With her husband by her side, she passed away at the age of seventy-four. Obeying her final wishes, he had her buried in the Protestant cemetery in Damascus. Then her grief-stricken widower rode out into the desert and sacrificed one of his finest camels in her memory.
    Jane Digby’s worst sins were an overwhelming hunger for love and adventure, and an astonishing naiveté about men. Despite her romantic disappointments, she never allowed herself to become bitter or jaded. She always believed that the perfect lover was out there, one who would fulfill her body and soul. Some historians and biographers have regarded Jane as promiscuous or a nymphomaniac. But Jane was a serial monogamist. In every relationship, she gave her full heart; each time she was sure that she had found “the one.” She could never be content with maintaining the discreet appearance of respectability. Jane also had a healthy sexual appetite in an era when women weren’t supposed to enjoy sex. If she had been a man, she would have been admired and patted on the back.
    Jane lived a remarkable life but she paid a high price for the choices she made, ostracized by most of her