The much married Victorian beauty, Jane Digby, (April 3, 1807 to August 11, 1881 ) was motivated to leave various husbands and lovers by a thirst for exotic adventure, according to Lesley Blanch, whose The Wilder Shores of Love, (1954) is one of many biographical accounts of this improbable life. The Economist (volume 173) noticed Blanch's book. They summarize the variety of Digby's conquests in these words:
Not the least amazing of .her conquests which included a Bavarian nobleman, a brace of kings, and an Albanian brigand chief, was that of her French maid who followed her erratic and passionate meanderings with a devotion that did not baulk at maintaining a travelling menagerie of horses, donkeys, dromedaries, a pelican, Persian hounds, parrots and a hundred cats, each one having its own plate.
Not the least amazing of .her conquests which included a Bavarian nobleman, a brace of kings, and an Albanian brigand chief, was that of her French maid who followed her erratic and passionate meanderings with a devotion that did not baulk at maintaining a travelling menagerie of horses, donkeys, dromedaries, a pelican, Persian hounds, parrots and a hundred cats, each one having its own plate.
The maid, was Eugenie, and when Digby, discovered her (third) husband was sleeping with Eugenie, she left the marriage, but kept the maid, and, one hopes, the pets. It may have been harder to find someone so careful with the pets, than a husband.
Blanch notes Balzac's comment on Digby: "J'ai remarque depuis, que la plupart des femmes qui montent bien a cheval ont peu de tendresse." And glosses it: Yet like so many daughters of Albion, she always showed an overwhelming love and tenderness towards animals, a contradiction which never fails to bewilder and exasperate other nationalities.
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