For her affair with George Anson was in trouble. Indeed, there was no possibility that it would prosper in the long term, even supposing George had wished such a thing. Marriage to Jane was out of the question. The average divorce-rate was two a year at that date, and the publicity and expense surrounding such a course was usually sufficient to ruin the applicants and their families, socially as well as economically. A divorce would have finished George’s career in the army, and both cousins would have been aware that the closely linked Anson, Coke and Digby families would never countenance their union.
There is no evidence, however, that George ever regarded the affair as anything more than a light-hearted romance with his pretty cousin. It was Jane who elevated it to a more serious level. Her poetry implies no thought of divorce, nor indeed what might come of such a relationship, but in her romantic and impractical way she expected things to continue, and George to be faithful to her. Too late Colonel Anson recognised that this affair was not like his others and that Jane was not an experienced woman-about-town who could insouciantly treat a liaison for what it was, but a still-naive girl who was bound to be emotionally hurt. His way of handling the problem was to stay away from Jane, trusting she would recognise the implication of his actions. There is a strong possibility, too, that a senior officer or member of the family warned George that his behaviour would not do. Whatever the reason, there came a time when George was forced to tell her that their affair must end.
So when Jane made her visit to Holkham in March 1827 she was desperately unhappy. Unseasoned in the art of sophisticated dalliance, she had believed George when he had sworn to love her no matter what. She had never been refused anything, and could not believe the hurt occasioned by George’s rejection. Reared in the age of Byron, when strong emotions were often channelled into verse, she wrote a series of poems to George, attempting to convey her feelings. The following was written when she retired to her room on 19 March. According to Madden’s diary, she had spent that evening playing the guitar and singing Italian love songs.
… is passion’s dream then o’er
Is tenderness with love then fled?
So soon cast off, beloved no more.
Yes! Nought of all I’ve done for thee
Will e’er awake a pitying sigh
Or should my name, remembered be
E’en 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