In fact, in his first years in town George was in one scrape after another, tipping a boatload of cronies into the Thames near Kingston, getting drunk, behaving outrageously with older women.18 He was believed to be the organiser of the famous quadrille at Almack’s in which both George and the lady he would later marry danced together all evening, to the irritation of many matrons:
I went two nights ago to a costume ball at Almack’s. It was all very brilliant and there was a quadrille that was beautiful. All the prettiest girls in London were in it … the men were in Regimentals and each wore a bouquet. The quadrille, however, gave great offence for they danced together all night and took the upper end of the room which was considered a great impertinence.19
But Anson’s pranks were conducted with such innocent good humour and unselfconscious charm that he was instantly forgiven, particularly by women, who fell at his feet in droves. He was a cracking horseman and could drive a carriage ‘to an inch’; he was also one of the best shots in England.20
Jane had been a pretty schoolgirl with a schoolgirl crush on him, but, as they both grew older, on two counts – her being a virgin and a member of his own family – she was strictly forbidden territory to George. He was used to tougher meat, his name being linked by both Creevey and Mrs Arbuthnot with the fastest women in town: in particular, the young Duchess of Rutland and Mrs Fox Lane, who, though the latter was considerably older than he, were both said to be his lovers.21
In the summer of 1926 it was a different matter. Jane was a married woman and therefore a ‘safe’ target by the code of the day. She was among the most desirable women in London, her virginal sweetness having given way to a slim voluptuousness guaranteed to turn men’s heads. It was perfectly acceptable for George to escort his first cousin Jane to functions in the absence of her busy husband. George, as well as serving in several political posts, was now a colonel in the Guards, and Jane was delighted to have such a handsome and personable chaperon.
They were seen together often, at Almack’s, at the races, at a fireworks party. Almost certainly the affair began perfectly innocently with the touch of hands or a snatched kiss; but at some point it became something else. Two handsome young people, both with a healthy libido – ‘Oh it is heaven to love thee,’ she wrote, and ‘rapture to be near thee.’ If he only felt half the joy she experienced, then, ‘what ecstasy is thine!’ He swore undying love; she countered that he might – at some time in the future, when her beauty had gone – be seduced by others. Still, she claimed, she would be true to him, for ‘though all righteous heaven above, / Forbids this rebel heart to love, / To love is still its fate.’22
Gone now was all her resolution of quelling her ‘rebel sighs, for Edward’s sake’. She flung herself into the affair with passionate involvement. Such a remarkable couple could not escape attention; indeed, they were frequently mentioned in contemporary correspondence, and featured on the same guest lists of court pages, but at this stage there were no raised eyebrows and no gossip, because the pair were reasonably discreet. At Roehampton there was a side-door to the house from the garden which was little used and consequently kept locked. Jane gave the key to George so that he could come and go at night during Edward’s absences, without the servants seeing him.23
At the same time, in a more public manner, and to the sustained disapproval not only of her parents but also of Steely (who visited Roehampton every two months or so as a friend of the family), Jane infiltrated deeper into the set of cynical, worldly men and women who, while considered by many to constitute the haul ton, the people of high fashion, were not at all suitable companions for a girl of nineteen. They included at least a brace of Almack’s Patronesses – Princess Esterhazy, the wife of the Austrian Ambassador, and Princess de Lieven, the haughty and imperious wife of the Russian Ambassador – as well as other leading members of the diplomatic set who were also the intimates of the King in the so-called ‘Cottage Clique’.24 All were regular dinner guests at Lord Ellenborough’s London house and at Roehampton, and their reciprocated hospitality was accepted by both Edward and Jane.
The Digbys’ distress at Jane’s behaviour was increased on the publication of a novel which, under the title Almack’s, could hardly fail to be a bestseller. It was a roman-à-clef in which the anonymous author provided only paper-thin guises for the real-life characters that populated its pages. The beautiful Lady Glenmore was widely identified as Lady Ellenborough. Jane was amused, not recognising the damage it would inflict upon her reputation. It was no comfort to her family that the book, in fact written by a member of the family (Eliza Spencer-Stanhope’s sister-in-law Marianne), presented as fiction several true incidents in Jane’s life.
During one of her visits to Roehampton, having been primed by Lady Andover, Steely delivered a stern lecture on the importance of a woman’s reputation. Jane appeared to listen, but several days later, in a letter to her former governess, she brushed Steely’s concerns aside on the grounds that the persons to whom she and her parents objected were Edward’s friends and must therefore be perfectly acceptable.25 By now Steely was so concerned about Jane that she overrode any personal sensibilities and went to see Lord Ellenborough. Her case was that Jane was mixing too freely with associates who, she insisted, were ‘gay and profligate’. Significantly she did not include George Anson in her list.26 Ellenborough clearly did not know whether to be angry or amused at such an approach from a woman who, though undeniably gently bred, was, when all was said and done, a former employee of his wife’s family. In the end his sense of humour got the better of him; he laughed and told Steely that he thought she was being ‘too scrupulous’, stating that he had ‘unlimited confidence in Lady Ellenborough’.27
It is surprising that Ellenborough did not connect Steely’s warnings with what was happening at home, for when he wrote to Jane in September from Stratfield Saye (the Duke of Wellington’s country seat in Hampshire) he spoke of her recent ‘coldness and indifference’ towards him. ‘But all is now forgotten,’ he continued.28 Her ‘want of gaiety’ had certainly disappeared as she went about town on her cousin’s arm. Indeed, Edward misread all the signs that would have been obvious to a more concerned husband. Even Jane’s style of dressing should have alerted him. She set off to perfection the high velvet bonnets with huge upstanding pokes that framed her little heart-shaped face, and on Jane the modish high-waisted narrow gowns, worn with a short, demurely fastened spencer for walking out, looked exceptionally elegant. But the deep décolletage of her evening dress, though fashionable in that the edges of her nipples could be plainly seen, was thought unseemly by a visitor from Paris, who reported himself entranced with Lady Ellenborough but ‘sickened by her dress’.29
But among the smart set it was considered neither stylish nor particularly commendable to be faithful to one’s spouse. Despite Steely’s stern moral teaching Jane was impressionable and looking for justification that her behaviour with Edward was acceptable. She had only to look at her peers to conclude that it was. The women with whom she was most often seen