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A Scandalous Life: The Biography of Jane Digby. Mary Lovell S.
Читать онлайн.Название A Scandalous Life: The Biography of Jane Digby
Год выпуска 0
isbn 9780007378449
Автор произведения Mary Lovell S.
Жанр Биографии и Мемуары
Издательство HarperCollins
Jane and Lord Ellenborough met in early April around the time of Jane’s seventeenth birthday, possibly at Almack’s. Less than eight weeks later Ellenborough sought permission from Admiral Digby to address Miss Digby (he always called her Janet) and a week later, on 4 June, Coke’s friend Lord Clare was writing to a mutual acquaintance, ‘I hear Ellenborough is going to be married to Lady Andover’s daughter.’13
They were a handsome couple and each had much to offer a partner, but there was an obvious disparity in age and experience. Ellenborough was twice as old as Jane and a friend of her father, though at thirty-four he was hardly the raddled ancient roué that some Digby biographers have implied.14 The difference in years is anyway of questionable importance when within Jane’s own family there was ample evidence that April could successfully marry December. However, Ellenborough was an ambitious and mature politician who had little time to spare for social obligations unless they might further his work or career, and even less to cherish and instruct – let alone amuse – a child bride. Here was a man who, when obliged to entertain, would inevitably fill his table and his guest rooms with minor members of the royal family, ambassadors and senior politicians.
Jane was a young girl who only a few weeks earlier would have needed her governess’s permission even to ride her horse. This marriage would place her at a stroke in charge of an elevated domestic establishment, hostess to the country’s leaders and responsible for dozens of servants. Jane’s family connections were considerable, but Ellenborough had no need of them to further his career. Perhaps he fell in love with the enchanting girl, or at least was so charmed with her that he was willing to overlook her lack of experience. He desperately wanted an heir and her family had a record of healthy fecundity. It was said that he ‘courted her with the impatience and persistence of an adolescent boy’.15
That Jane chose to marry Lord Ellenborough when, to judge from her family’s correspondence, she might have chosen a bridegroom nearer her own age is equally surprising. Previous biographers have speculated that Jane was compelled to marry Ellenborough by her parents, but there is no evidence to substantiate this. Jane could twist her father – whom she called ‘darling Babou’ – round the proverbial little finger, as surviving letters show, and it would have been out of character for either of her doting parents to coerce Jane into an unwanted marriage. Furthermore, Jane was so young that, even had she not found a match she liked in her first season, she could have returned again – as many girls did – for a second shot, still not having reached her eighteenth birthday. It seems far more likely that she was flattered by the attentions of an older, experienced man and that she romantically concluded that she was in love with him. This is borne out by poems that the couple sent each other, and by subsequent entries in Jane’s diaries. One of Lord Ellenborough’s poems tells of Jane’s love for him:
O fairest of the many fair
Who ruled, or seemed to rule my heart
The first I have enthroned there
Without a wish my bonds to part.
The thought that I am loved again
And loved by one I can adore,
That I have passed through years of pain
And found the bliss I knew before.
O ’twould have ta’en away my mind
But thy sweet smile a charm has given
And love’s wild ecstasy combined
With deepest gratitude to heaven.16
His Lordship’s other poems spoke of ‘joy in the present day’ because of her and the bliss of knowing that ‘the next will be yet happier than this … Oh! this is youth and these the dreams of youth … And heaven itself is realised on earth.’17
During their whirlwind courtship society found a synonym for Jane’s sobriquet ‘Light of Day. ‘Aurora’ was a name with which Jane could not have found fault in view of the fact that her father had once captained a ship of the same name, and it had a pretty sound. However, it was almost certainly intended to be less flattering to her suitor, Jane being cast in the role of Lord Byron’s sixteen-year-old heroine Aurora Raby, with Lord Ellenborough as the debauched, ageing, eponymous subject of the best-selling Don Juan:
there was indeed a certain fair and fairy one
Of the best class and better than her class,
Aurora Raby, a young star who shone
O’er life, too sweet an image for such glass.
A lovely being, scarcely formed or moulded,
A rose with all its sweetest leaves yet folded.18
It was not to be supposed because of the speed of the courtship that the marriage could be held with similar haste. During June the engaged couple enjoyed the last days of the season with its military reviews, balloon ascents, race meets and ridottos. As his fiancée Jane could ride publicly in Lord Ellenborough’s glossy phaeton, with his groom in attendance. She must be introduced to her prospective in-laws, Edward’s sister Elizabeth and his brothers, Charles and Henry. There were also the Londonderrys, his former in-laws, a valuable relationship he wished to maintain. When Lady Andover received a letter from Lady Londonderry congratulating her upon Jane’s betrothal and eulogising Lord Ellenborough,19 it must have been comforting to know that her cherished daughter was to marry such a paragon.
At the end of July, Edward visited Holkham, where he met the Cokes, Digbys, Ansons and Spencer-Stanhopes.20 It was not his first visit, but Jane must have derived immense pleasure from showing him some of the treasures of the great house, and riding with him in the parkland bordering the beaches. However, Edward and Mr Coke, having once been allies, had now moved apart politically; consequently his future visits to Holkham, and eventually Jane’s own, were few.
Shopping and fittings for the bridal clothes were time-consuming, and Jane must be taken over her future homes – an elegant pillared and porticoed town-house in Connaught Place, whose rear windows today overlook Marble Arch, and Elm Grove, Lord Ellenborough’s country house at Roehampton near Richmond.21 Yet somehow, during this time, Jane must have been instructed in her duties as chatelaine, for, although she would have had domestic instruction as she grew up, she would have had little reason to put such knowledge to practical use. Her mother wrote a treatise, which subsequently served as a model for other brides-to-be within the Coke family, upon the qualities requisite for ‘members of the household’, including that most valuable servant, the Lady’s maid:
Essentials for a Lady’s maid
She must not have a will of her own in anything, &