A Scandalous Life. Mary S. Lovell

friendship’s tear thou wilt deny.

      Twas then a crime to love too well!

      Ah when did man e’er grateful prove

      To her whose heart has dared rebel

      Against the laws of man and God?³⁹

      There are more poems in this vein, written during the weeks that followed. They spoke of ‘love betrayed by a soft voice and sweet accents’; of how easy it had been for her to forget ‘in one wild, thrilling kiss’ that ultimately it would have to end. And now the man she adored ‘though chill neglect has snapped the silver cord … in the heart in which he reigned’.⁴⁰ With her cousin, Jane found a sexual joy and companionship that was perhaps missing in her relationship with her husband. She had mistakenly believed her first love affair to be the love of her life.

      Yet this makes the interlude with Madden all the more surprising. There were a few other occasions in her life when Jane indulged in casual sexual encounters, and it is obvious from diary entries in her middle age that she had a frank enjoyment of sex that was unfashionable in a world where brides-to-be were advised that sex was meant to be not enjoyed but endured. Her attitude has somewhat predictably led two (male) biographers to suggest ‘nymphomania’, but in fact her views on sex were similar to those of most women of the late twentieth century. Under normal circumstances Jane was faithful to the man with whom she was in love because, quite simply, each time she fell in love she believed the man to be the centre of her existence. Each time she thought that this man, this love, was the one she had been seeking. Between partners, however, she experienced no guilt in occasionally seeking ‘rapture’.

      Madden made no secret of the admiration he felt from the moment she arrived. Jane was flattered and tempted. Her sexual mores were already established. Had her relationship with George been stable, she would never have looked at Madden, but given the situation that prevailed she accepted his admiration and the solace of his obvious desire. On the following day she recalled Steely’s moralising and was remorseful. The pattern would repeat itself occasionally in the future.

      That visit to ‘dear old Holkham’ was to be almost the last. Many years later she would recall it in a letter to her brother Kenelm and explain how ‘Lord Ellenborough’s politics at that time prevented Holkham intimacy, which I always regretted.’⁴¹

      Jane’s twentieth birthday passed and suddenly, to her joy, George was back in her life for a few weeks, but by 23 May they had parted again, this time – as he made clear – permanently. The danger of discovery by their families and the potential damage to George’s military career were too great. He left London and ignored her notes to him, returning them unanswered. Jane continued to pour out her distress in poetry. She accepted the reasons for which he said they had to part, but his instruction to her at their last meeting to ‘forget him’ she could not obey. She could never forget him, she wrote in anguish – even if they were never to meet again.⁴²

      However, it was not to be as simple as that. Although she was not aware of it when she wrote her poem in May 1827, Jane was pregnant. And, as she would later confide to a friend, the father of her child was not her husband but George Anson.⁴³

       4 A Dangerous Attraction 1827–1829

      Jane’s state of mind as she parted from George Anson and discovered that she was pregnant is not a matter for speculation, for she was still using poetry as a sort of psychiatric couch, much as she used her diaries years later when there was no one in whom she could confide. Her pregnancy and subsequently the safe arrival of her child are mentioned briefly in surviving family correspondence, but from Jane herself there was a series of forlorn compositions written at Cowes, when she and Edward visited the Isle of Wight in August for the annual regatta. George Anson was also at Cowes and had returned to his former wild living. He was rarely seen there without a pretty woman on his arm and, as cartoonists noted, he was involved in a duel. Jane’s verse reveals her misery at the broken relationship and Anson’s present, hurtful, attitude towards her. Tormented by his calculated indifference, she found it hard to accept that he now regarded her as just another of the ‘host’ of pretty women who loved him.¹ All her life she had known only unconditional love and approval. George had sworn he loved her but clearly he did not, at least not as she had interpreted his declarations. As her body thickened she felt herself unattractive and deserted.

      Of her pregnancy she wrote nothing. She was a married woman enjoying a normal sex-life with her husband; the manner in which her love affair had been conducted had provoked no gossip. There was apparently no reason why Edward, or anyone else, should suspect the child was not his. Indeed, until her confinement confirmed the date of conception she may not have been entirely sure herself whose child she was carrying. Meanwhile her emotions were centred around the hurt she felt. She wrote despairingly of how, like many other women, she had succumbed to George’s ‘specious flatteries, breathed by lips none could resist’. Who could have refused to listen to George’s softly spoken words of love, she asked.

      Not I, alas! For I have heard and drank

      Delicious poison from those angel lips,

      And listening first believed, then tempted, fell

      By passion wrought to madness. I can see

      No shame in infamy, no hell beyond

      The doubts and jealous fears that rack my soul

      Lest thou should e’er forget her who has loved

      With more than woman’s love, and given thee all

      She had to give; a spotless name, and virtue.²

      For him and for his love she had risked everything: her marriage, hurting Edward, family honour and public contempt. Out of superstition, rather than penitence, she ceased to attend church as a communicant, lest she should provoke divine vengeance. George had taken her innocence and her unquestioning love and, it now seemed to her, tossed them in her face. She felt utterly betrayed. Her family saw none of this; she was, outwardly at least, the same sweet, smiling, brilliant Janet. Family letters to her are chatty and congratulatory.³

      Jane’s first child, a boy, was born on 15 February 1828. Ellenborough, who had longed for a son, was elated. Only a month earlier he had achieved his primary ambition, a Cabinet post; he was made Lord Privy Seal in Wellington’s new government. It was not a universally popular appointment. Lady Holland is said to have ‘nearly killed’ the messenger who brought her the news.⁴ A fellow member of the Upper House wrote of the new administration:

      and indeed, were it not for one blot, there is not a name I object to. The blot is Ellenborough. It is miserable and unworthy to stop his teasing babble by [giving him] one of the great offices of State and his appointment is an indignity to the memory of Canning which I regret was advocated in the House of Lords. He will be nothing; though he might be a worrying opponent and as a member of the cabinet will be unpractical and unmanageable.⁵

      Even Princess Lieven, whom, together with her husband, Ellenborough regarded as a friend, was less than happy, writing to Earl Grey, ‘You will imagine that I am not highly delighted at seeing Lord Ellenborough, a rabid Turk, in the Ministry.’⁶ And, though there were some who felt that Ellenborough had earned his appointment, clearly the King was not among them. He met the new Lord Privy Seal only once, out of courtesy. He was charming and polite but Ellenborough was never again invited into his presence.

      Ellenborough did not allow his monarch’s dislike to worry him. He wrote a triumphant personal note in his political diary:

      Janet has brought me a boy. I put this down as a political occurrence because I shall make him, if he lives and I live, a political Character. I shall ask the Duke of Wellington and Lord Dudley to be his Godfathers. Princess Esterhazy is to be his Godmother. A good diplomatic introduction to the world.⁷

      One must assume from this that Ellenborough accepted the child as his. The baby was