A Scandalous Life: The Biography of Jane Digby. Mary Lovell S.

great talent, reduced some of his subjects to a contemporaneous ideal. Technically speaking, his portrait of Jane set against a typically classical background captures perfectly the sumptuousness of her clothes, the richness of her colouring, the transparency of her skin, the symmetry of her features. But the quicksilver quality which was Jane’s real beauty eluded Stieler. At the time of this portrait Jane was in her mid-twenties and just coming into her full magnificence, and Stieler himself wrote that, of all the women in the Schönheits-Galerie, Jane was the only one who could rival in beauty the exquisite Marchesa Marianna Florenzi.²⁸ Jane herself some time later nevertheless made the comment that it was not ‘very like’. A white marble bust of Jane that Ludwig commissioned Josef Bandel to sculpt a month later confirms the slender voluptuousness hinted at in Stieler’s portrait.

      Arguably, her intelligent vivacity as much as her physical beauty attracted Ludwig, and also brought Charles Venningen back to her time and again. But it was her own physical needs that broke her sexual fast in November. It is not entirely clear whether this was with Ludwig or with Charles, but the reawakened desire provoked by the encounter created difficulties, as she told Ludwig in a letter:

      Forgive me, dearest Lewis, if our last night’s conversation pained you, but your openness, affection and sincerity encourage mine.

      It is not to be denied that rapture, untasted for six months, has [now] reawakened passions I flattered myself were nearly if not quite extinguished. Still, dearest, I repeat my intentions remain unchanged … My word of honour I regard as a sacred vow and I dare not, dare not, give it lightly.

      What would [you]… think if after all my promises to the contrary I fell a victim? Do not be thus unhappy. I vow not to deceive you, I never will.²⁹

      In her latest letter to Felix she had begged him to allow her to come and live near him in Berlin. If he would not agree, she wrote, she would go into a convent and take Didi with her.³⁰