Soon after receiving this letter Jane left England in the face of all entreaties from her distraught mother to remain. She could not bear to be separated from Felix and believed that he would find some way of joining her if she went, as he advised, to Basle. Her father told her that if she went ahead with this plan Ellenborough would have no option but to divorce her. Her reputation, he said, though damaged, might yet be partly restored if she were to remain in England and lead an exemplary life. Furthermore, it was not impossible that Ellenborough might be persuaded to reconsider; no man in his position would wish to be involved in a divorce. Gossip about the affair was confined to her own class and, after a time, would be overlooked if not forgotten. But the inevitable consequences, if she ran away now, were that she would never be permitted to resume her place in society. Nor could she depend upon marriage to the prince; his Catholic faith precluded it. What she was contemplating was lifelong exile from her country and her family, and total disgrace.
For anyone but Jane, with her entire family pleading for her to give Felix up and remain in England under their protection, there would surely have been some wavering of resolve at this point. She adored her parents and her brothers, and the feeling was reciprocated, as letters and diaries would show. But her love for Felix was transcendent. His frequent letters to her, swearing eternal devotion if not promising marriage, bolstered her insistence that there was no future happiness for her without him. She must join him whatever the cost.
Edward Digby accompanied Jane and Steely to the east coast, where they took the packet ferry to the Continent. Steely travelled as far as Brussels and then returned home. Jane continued on with her maid to Basle, where she assumed the name of Madame Einberg at the accommodation arranged by Felix. By then she was six months pregnant.
Rumours had already started to swirl in London, and the ripples quickly spread outward to Jane’s greater family in Norfolk.12 With the open intelligence that Jane had fled to Europe to have Schwarzenberg’s child, Ellenborough’s original plan of a formal separation was dropped in favour of his seeking a legal divorce. This was the man who had once alienated the King by expressing disapproval when George IV attempted to divorce Caroline of Brunswick. He was also, and remained long afterwards, a friend of Jane’s father. The two men met and reached an amicable agreement; obviously they decided to make the best of a bad business.
News of Ellenborough’s intention to seek a divorce spread like a bushfire. Some tried to excuse Jane – ‘but think of being very pretty and very young and just finding oneself married to such a monster of odiousness as Lord Ellenborough, and then discovering that he wanted the only quality for which women ever forgive monsters’.13 These allusions to Ellenborough’s lack of sexual ability, or alternatively his extreme licentiousness, were common, and summed up by one correspondent: ‘Ellenborough’s divorce is going on – so we shall soon know, I hope, whether he is as Lady Holland says, impotent, or as others say given to bad women and blessed with a family of natural children.’14
Meanwhile, Jane was quite alone in Basle apart from her servants. Contrary to legend, her family did not abandon her but stayed in constant touch by letter. There is a report that her husband visited her, and indeed Ellenborough made a visit of several weeks to the Continent in early September 1829.15 There is no way of verifying this rumour, for such a visit would have been the subject of greatest secrecy to avoid any accusations of collusion between the divorcing parties. However, in view of what followed it is more than likely that Ellenborough visited Jane to ensure that she fully realised how the mechanism of divorce worked.
By now Admiral Digby had realised that there was no hope of a reconciliation. Jane wanted the divorce as much as Ellenborough; she could not bear the thought of being married to any man but Felix. Therefore she agreed not to offer any defence. A few weeks later she received another visitor, a Mr Wigram, who presented her with a ‘Copy of a Bill for the Divorce to be Heard in the House of Lords’. She instructed him to refer the matter to her solicitor in England.
As the last stages of her pregnancy, coupled with the winter weather, confined her to her apartment, Jane felt increasingly lonely, bored and desperate. If only Felix would come to her, everything would be well. But her only relief from the continuous misery lay in the regular letters from Austria, promising that he would try to be with her in time for the birth of the child. It was not until 10 November, more than two months after her arrival in Basle, that Felix managed to visit Jane en route to his new appointment at the Austrian embassy in Paris. She had longed for this moment for months, but she was soon to suspect that his former feelings had undergone a subtle change, doubtless influenced by his family.
Their daughter was born two days later – nine months and one week after the fateful night spent in the Brighton hotel.16 They called the baby Mathilde (after Felix’s favourite sister), which was shortened to ‘Didi’. Seeing Jane’s distress when the time came for him to leave five days later, Felix promised to visit again within weeks and this time kept his promise, for he spent a further few days in December with Jane and his daughter. During this visit he promised to make arrangements for her to join him in Paris as soon as she and the child were well enough to travel.
Four weeks later tragedy struck the house of Ellenborough. Little Arthur Dudley Law, just a month short of his second birthday, had again been ill with a childish infection, and Ellenborough had sent him in the care of his nurse, Mrs Mowcock, to the seaside in the belief that the fresh air would help alleviate the symptoms. All seemed to be under control on 27 January:
My Lord,
Master Arthur is in very good spirits but his tonsils have been very [troublesome]… Mr March has been to see him today and says it is his teeth and he will bleed him tomorrow to correct it. He will be all the better for it but is much fawling [sic] away. The weather is so very wet so he could not go out today.17
The next letter, from Mr March himself, only two days later, must therefore have come as a shocking blow. Ellenborough noted on the envelope that he received it as he returned home from a Cabinet meeting:
Worthing 29th January 1830
My dear Lord,
I am distressed beyond description to be compelled to relate the melancholy fact that your dear infant has ceased to exist. He was attacked this morning by a convulsive fit which caused his extinction in a few minutes. Everything was done judiciously by the nursery assistant who was on the spot instantly but so violent was the attack that all was over before I could get to him.
He passed a tolerably quiet night till about 5… up to the time of the fit which seems to have been immediately caused by some accidental noises, there was no reason to consider the child in the slightest danger as everything was going well.18
It was distressing news for all concerned, the Digby grandparents as well as the father. The black-edged mourning letters expressing shock and grief, as well as concern for Ellenborough, carefully folded back into their original envelopes, still exist in a pathetic stack neatly tied with deep-purple ribbon among Lord Ellenborough’s papers.19
It might be assumed, because of the history of the marriage and the fact that the child had spent a lot of his time away from his parents, that his death was of no great moment