MANY LOVERS

Southland Times, Issue 25359, 10 August 1935, Page 11

MANY LOVERS

Jane Digby’s Strange Life

These Hollywood wenches with their romantic records pale to anaemia beside the full-blooded story of Jane Digby, which Mrs E. M. Oddic has given us under the title of “Portrait of lanthe.” She was born 118 years ago, and a hundred years ago she was the wife of Lord Ellenborough. Neglected by her husband, she was ready, at the age of seventeen, to receive the tender approaches of the young bloods at Almacks and to begin a social career that was scandalous and exciting. This lady belongs to the Regency and early Victorian days. She was a baronet’s daughter and a peer’s grand-daughter; she was lovely, loving, faithless, but never vicious. She numbered among her lovers kings, earls, barons, and counts, and ran across Europe intoxicating the young men, and some of the old men.

Such was the lady who was born the Hon. Jane Elizabeth Digby, and who married officially Lord Ellenborough, Baron Venningen, Sheik Medjuel elMezrab and romantic Count Spyridon Theotoky, of the magnificent whiskers, and, unofficially, an aristocratic cad, Prince Felix von Schwarzenberg, mad Ludwig of Bavaria, King Otto of Greece, Balzac, and a number of lesser romantics. Her father traces his descent back through the Digbys to Edward the Confessor. Her mother was the daughter of Coke of Norfolk. Mrs Oddie says the Cokes went back to the reign of King John, but the line is not unbroken. Coke of Norfolk was the son of Wenman Roberts, who had assumed the name of Coke as the result of Major Philip Roberts’s marriage to the Earl of Leicester’s only surviving child, Anne Coke. Hoikham, with its grandeur, gave Jane a background, and her marriage with Ellenborough, who was 34, appeared to give her the title and setting she needed. But Ellenborough quickly tired and Prince Felix Schwarzenberg was her first _ lover Ellenborough obtained a divorce, after a sensational trial, and as von Schwarzenberg would not marry her Jane s position was difficult, but she had other husbands and other lovers. She was not a vicious woman, but she was certainly a light one, although there is the strong fact that when she died at the age of 73 she was wholly in love with her husband, the Sheik Medjuel of el-Mezrab. Mrs Oddie makes much of this romantic episode, which, after all. has more to recommend it than bales of words spilt over unreal romance in artificial deserts. According to Mrs Oddie Medjuel saw lanthe buried. He had galloped to the scene on her favourite horse: He spoke his thoughts to none. He watched them while they buried m the bosom of the earth the queer sweet woman who had loved him. Then he galloped back to the desert where he belonged. Mrs Oddie has recalled from the past a remarkable figure and the value of the material she has gathered, together with her understanding ensures for the book an enthusiasm sufficiently to overlook some lapses in style. “Portrait of lanthe” by E. M. Oddie (Messrs Jonathan Cape Ltd., London.)