Because the Victorians have such a reputation for rectitude, they are common targets for books showing them being otherwise. Thus, The Disastrous Mrs. Weldon. Most Victorian scandals would be not be much news today; discrete fumbling between a married – but not to each other – couple in an anonymous hotel room; a vicar who spent a little too much time with the choir boys; a schoolmistress who displayed more enthusiasm than necessary when caning her charges for disobedience. Georgina Weldon, nee Thomas, didn’t do stuff by halves like that, though. As a teen, her father (attempting to make the family’s fortune) offered her for marriage to the highest bidder (minimum offer £10000). Georgiana may have inspired the idea herself by displaying a talent for seducing older men, including a 63-year-old Methodist minister (when she was 15), and the family butler. However, she thwarted Dad’s plans by eloping with a penniless and prospectless hussar lieutenant, Harry Weldon. Their life together was chaotic; Georgina became the mistress of a series of men, including composer Charles Gounod, and Harry kept his own mistress on a houseboat in the Thames. Somewhere along the line Georgina persuaded the College of Arms, by means unknown, to make Harry Rouge Dragon Pursuivant in Arms Ordinary, despite his having absolutely no background in heraldry. (To everybody’s surprise, Harry turned out to be good at the job, eventually ending his career as Clarenceux King of Arms.) In the meantime Georgina took up running an orphanage as a hobby; she had plans to train the orphans in music and selected Tavistock House (once the home of Charles Dickens) as a venue because it had a small theater). Everybody agreed that despite her numerous character flaws Georgina was an accomplished soprano; this didn’t carry over to herding orphans and she eventually let them go feral; visitors were dismayed to find Georgina’s menagerie of dogs, birds, monkeys and orphans barefoot, louse-ridden, and not fully housebroken. She seems to have beaten one child to death and buried the remains in the garden; there were rumors about it and years later she acknowledged in her memoirs that perhaps she had hit orphan Freddie a little too hard. Somewhere in the middle of this she went bisexual and took a French ex-prostitute as a lover, while allowing her husband/pimp to manage her affairs. Harry finally couldn’t take it anymore and decided to have Georgina committed (possibly because the law had no provision for divorce for adultery if the other party was also a woman). At the time getting someone adjudged a lunatic could be done on the signature of two doctors. Since most lunatic asylums were run as private profit centers, it was relatively easy to find a couple of accommodating “mad doctors” and a pair showed up at Tavistock House with commitment papers. Georgina responded by barricading herself in the library (using bound musical scores for ramparts). She managed to hold out until the commitment papers expired and emerged triumphant. At about this time, Parliament passed the Married Women’s Property Act, mostly intended to allow women to keep property after marriage but containing what was probably thought to be a minor provision: women were now legally allowed to appear in court in their own name. Filled with righteous indignation, Mrs. Weldon became almost the first woman to take advantage of the provision, filing 20-odd lawsuits against the “mad doctors”, her husband, Gonoud, various music impresarios, her own lawyers, and whoever else came to mind. She represented herself in almost all these, and actually won damages in a few, despite having absolutely no legal knowledge. She temporarily became something of an icon to the budding feminist movement, sufficiently famous that letters addressed to “Mrs. Weldon – London” reached her.


Alas, it came tumbling down. Georgina had always set herself up for disaster by trusting the most inappropriate people, as long as they flattered he considerable ego. In this case the inappropriate person was her lover, Angele, the ex-prostitute. Angele persuaded Georgiana to sign over all her property (Tavistock House was long gone and the couple was living in more modest accommodations). Georgina went into one of her frequent histrionic fits when Angele disappeared for a while, and confronted her with a numbered list of her faults when she came back; Anglele calmly responded by noting that she owned the house they were living in and ordering Georgina to take her dogs, birds, monkeys and luggage and get lost. All passion spent, Georgian meekly complied and headed off to a convent in France, where she spent most of her remaining years compiling and privately printing an eight-volume set of memoirs. She died in 1914, back in England.


This is novelist Brian Thompson’s first biography; his writing is entertaining, although I would have preferred more footnotes documenting some of the more astounding facts of Mrs. Weldon’s life. He was inspired by encountering her memoirs in a French bookstore; reading them must have been laborious as he describes them as “rambling and incoherent” and the few passages he quotes directly are exactly that; there are apparently some very titillating passages where Georgina describes various activities with her lovers in non-Victorian terms but the effort of sorting through all the verbiage probably isn’t worth the small gratification. Worth a look if you want to be disabused of the idea that Victorian life was all pantaloons on the piano legs. ( )

Georgina Weldon lead quite the life. She flung away a wealthy suitor, eloped with a poor soldier, sought a career in singing, ran an orphanage and a school for music/choir, kept lovers (including a woman), brought well over 100 lawsuits to courte (many of which she presented herself), and brought about reform of asylum/insanity laws and marriage laws.

Of course, it all sounds romantic and idealistic when you put it like that, but Brian Thompson also makes clear than any benefits she gave to society happened more as side effects of her own manic energies and selfish and vindictive tendencies than any philanthropic efforts on her part. She was beset with delusions of grandeur, believing herself worth much more than she received, but unwilling to face the realities that might otherwise have allowed her to achieve it. She is not called disastrous here for nothing.

But despite her many, many flaws, which Thompson points out in loving detail, there is something endearing in this woman who was mostly unlikeable to her peers and almost entirely oblivious to what her wild energies released into her English world. I enjoyed this book thoroughly. True it was often with the same fascination might have as watching a train wreck, but also because of the determination and spitfire of the woman in an age when women were expected to be silently submissive in the world of men. ( )