The Disastrous Mrs.Weldon

I suspect that The Disastrous Mrs. Weldon was written at least in part to take advantage of the audience which enjoyed Amanda Foreman's Georgiana Duchess of Devonshire. On the surface the two women are quite similar (besides having nearly identical names.) Both were headstrong, passionate women who were ultimately self-destructive. The difference is that Georgiana Spencer Cavendish at least had a smattering of social conscience, enough to get involved in politics to help her Whig friends. Georgina Weldon, on the other hand, rarely seems able to look beyond her own immediate need for gratification. The Disastrous Mrs. Weldon is amusing and addictive (you'll be sorry when the book ends) and does point out that not all Victorians were rigid moralists, but ultimately it can't rise above the fact that its protagonist was shallow.

Brian Thompson reveals in _The Disastrous Mrs. Weldon: The Life, Loves, and Lawsuits of a Legendary Victorian_ (Doubleday) that Mrs. Weldon had an amazing life. She was falsely accused of lunacy by her family, fought the lunacy laws (and changed them for the public good), defended her married rights, ran an orphanage and several choirs, served as her own defense barrister in a score of cases, spent time in jail, and each time was released to the cheers of a rapturous crowd. At her last release, "her followers unshipped the horses from their shafts and dragged her carriage to Speakers' Corner in Hyde Park, from where she addressed a crowd estimated at 17,000."What makes this book so much fun is that Mrs. Weldon was a nut. She may not have been a lunatic, but she was far from normal. She didn't marry as her family directed, but estranged them by taking up with an army Lieutenant who eventually became a minor member of Victoria's court. She was a soprano of some untrained talent, and thought she could sing and manage a choir of orphans in order to get back into society. She lured the French composer Gounod away from his family to live in the orphanage with her; she was a tease, but wasn't much interested in sex, and he may just have been overpowered by her domineering personality. Her singing career was shaky and the orphanage was complete chaos.Her husband eventually would put up with Mrs. Weldon's foolishness no longer, but was unsuccessful in getting a writ of divorce. The climax of Mrs. Weldon's life was when Harry colluded with her family to have her committed to an insane asylum. The "mad-doctors" came one day in the guise of being interested in the orphanage, and asked Mrs. Weldon about her beliefs in spiritualism and phrenology. She barricaded herself in and escaped. It was the making of her. The lunacy laws enabled psychiatrists on the flimsiest of evidence to grab their targets off the street and keep them in highly profitable asylums from which there was no release. The families were happy to pay for the service of keeping troublesome members from being at large, and there is no doubt that Mrs. Weldon was troublesome. She began to give at-homes in the orphanage twice a week, when she would read from her pamphlets against the mad-doctors, would use her talents as a raconteuse, and would wind up the evening singing an aria by Gounod. She struck a blow against the lunacy laws and for women's rights, but was no heroine; she was simply boisterously pushing herself into the public eye, with enormous success for the years it lasted. When the whole silly show ran down, she retired to a religious hospital in France (which had taken some of the orphans off her hands years before) and wrote her life story, a six-volume opus in French of scandal, accusations, misinformation, and, of course, self-promotion.It was this work, forgotten and probably never read even when it was published, that Brian Thompson came across in a second-hand bo

This book provides plenty of evidence that the Victorians did occasionally have fun while putting on a moral face for the world at large. The author uncovered an enormously long memoir by Mrs. Weldon in 1996, and decided to write a biography about her. He certainly seems to have discovered one of the most colorful Victorians I have ever read about. When she was not luring older men to fall in love with her, not singing in public, not running her orphanage unsuccessfully, not failing as an impresario, not making a mess of her marriage, and not suing everyone in sight (and serving as her own barrister), she was making up fanciful stories about all and sundry and being cheated by anyone who could get near her. Other than that, she had a pretty normal life. Mr. Thompson does a fine job of using her memoirs, adding context from the writings of contemporaries, and providing historical references to put her escapades in perspective. Mrs. Weldon in her day was more outrageous than most people see Madonna today. Mrs. Weldon (and her father) had problems separating fantasy from reality. He ended up in an insane asylum. She almost did, as her husband was trying to bring her under control. Her manic energy drew men like moths to the light, and some she clearly captivated. One of the most interesting parts of the book covers the three years when Charles Gounod, the French composer, lived with the Weldons a house once owned by Charles Dickens in London. These were remarkably productive years for Gounod, although he escaped from her with difficulty and with complications Her ministrations would have put a lesser man into the hospital. Mr. Thompson also recounts her many brushes with notoriety that led Queen Victoria to refuse to attend a concert if she were to sing, and to lose her a rich husband when her potential mother-in-law caught her alone with a much older man where neither one should have been. As she got older, her mental problems got worse. She began to neglect details more and more. A French couple got together to steal from her, and a lot of the book recounts this period. I found this section overdone. Towards the end of her 40s, she discovered that a new act of Parliament would allow her to make legal actions in her own name. With the help of a friend to learn how to write writs, she began suing everyone in sight, and often represented herself. She didn't always win, and went to prison for six months at one time as a result of losing an action. But she became a popular heroine, Parliament changed the laws about committing spouses to insane asylums, and she was in demand for singing performances again. At 50, she lost her energy, and retired to a hospice in France where she worked on her memoirs for 12 years. When she self-published these, she managed to offend almost everyone whom she knew, and the book was mostly ignored.The memoirs end up compromising her reputation far beyond what would have happened if she hadn't writte