The Disastrous Mrs. Weldon: The Life, Loves and Lawsuits of a Legendary Victorian [Paperback]

Brian Thompson (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 12, 2002

Born to fanatically snobbish Victorian parents, Georgina Weldon grew up to wreak havoc on almost everyone she met. She was supposed to marry well and restore the family fortune, but soon proved to have other ideas. Her scandalous affair with a married man and her defiant marriage to the less-than-prosperous young hussar officer Harry Weldon were just the first signs that she was no ordinary girl. In a plot that could have been constructed by Dickens himself, Georgina acquired a string of lovers, was stung by con artists, betrayed by her parents, and narrowly escaped being committed to a mental institution. She rose to the challenge and became one of the first Victorian women to represent herself in court and later helped to overturn England’s infamous Lunacy Laws. Like the best Victorian novels, The Disastrous Mrs. Weldon marries the adventures of an intrepid protagonist with delightfully revealing glimpses of Victorian society. A tale of sex and scandal, bravado and bravery, Mrs. Weldon’s life is wild, wicked, and totally irresistible.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Disastrous is precisely the right adjective to apply to Georgina Weldon (1837-1914), who caused trouble for everyone her path crossed, but most especially for herself. Yet the catalog of calamities that constitutes this eccentric Englishwoman's life is vastly entertaining to read, thanks to Brian Thompson's smooth prose and keen sense of the absurd. You can't help but laugh at poor Georgina, so sublimely self-absorbed and so pathetically inept at getting what she wants. There's something magnificent about the whirlwind way she pursues crackpot ventures, from establishing a "singing academy" (no one came to the concerts) to running a chaotic orphanage whose charges ran wild in her London home. Her behavior was so outrageous that she narrowly escaped being committed to an asylum by her infuriated husband. Indeed, Weldon's one claim to historical fame comes from her pioneering use of the 1882 Married Women's Property Act to sue the doctors who tried to put her away; the resulting court cases made public the arbitrary, often vindictive nature of England's lunacy laws. But Thompson, a novelist and scriptwriter who turned to biography after reading Weldon's over-the-top memoirs, is less interested in her lawsuits than in her turbulent affair with French composer Charles Gounod, her tangled relations with a pair of French con artists, and her overall inability to lead anything resembling a normal life. No need to feel guilty about enjoying her tale of woe, since Georgina seems never to have doubted herself and always to have blamed other people. It's all great fun, and it really ought to be made into an opera. --Wendy Smith --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly

Born on Princess Victoria's birthday in 1837, Georgina Treherne Weldon lived her life with the conviction that she was destined to be one of the great figures of the age; she did, in fact, achieve a kind of celebrity, although not for the reasons she had initially imagined. Instead, she eloped with a near-penniless army officer and found herself alienated from her family for the rest of her life. From that point on, her story is so fantastically melodramatic that it might have been penned by one of the sensationalist novelists so popular among her Victorian contemporaries. Described as having a kind of maniacal energy, and fueled by delusions of grandeur, she more or less shoved her husband into a prominent career, parlayed her pleasant singing voice into a position as a minor musical celebrity, befriended and was widely believed to be having an affair with the famous French composer Gounod, turned her home into an orphanage and singing school, ran off to France with a female lover, was sued for libel and imprisoned at Newgate, barely escaped being locked up as a lunatic by her husband and finally retired to a nunnery to write her memoirs. What earned her the most fame were her more than 100 lawsuits, in which, by going after her detractors with a kind of monomaniacal vengeance, she brought to light a number of the inequities in British law, particularly as it pertained to married women and lunatics. Replete with endless psychodramas, hers is indeed a fascinating story, and although novelist Thompson's telling of it is perhaps more muted in tone than it deserves, his portrait of Weldon is both well-rounded and evenhanded. (Apr.)Forecast: Georgina Weldon's entertaining story is innately appealing and, with its graceful handling by Thompson, should receive good reviews and healthy sales.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 368 pages
• Publisher: Broadway (March 12, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0767906357
• ISBN-13: 978-0767906357
• Product Dimensions: 5.5 x 0.8 x 8.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,575,799 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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16 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Hilarious Disaster, May 2, 2001

By 

R. Hardy "Rob Hardy" (Columbus, Mississippi USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Disastrous Mrs. Weldon: The Life, Loves and Lawsuits of a Legendary Victorian (Hardcover)

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 bookstore. The poor fellow has read it all, but he has also drawn upon more reliable sources to give this amazing history of a whirlwind in woman's garb. It is a dark story in parts, but is mostly hilarious, and he has told it with wit and understanding.

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars No Georgiana Devonshire here!, June 22, 2001

By 

John D. Cofield - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Disastrous Mrs. Weldon: The Life, Loves and Lawsuits of a Legendary Victorian (Hardcover)

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.

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A Notorious Victorian Flirt and Modern Portia, April 14, 2001

By 

Donald Mitchell "Jesus Loves You!" (Thanks for Providing My Reviews over 109,000 Helpful Votes Globally) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Disastrous Mrs. Weldon: The Life, Loves and Lawsuits of a Legendary Victorian (Hardcover)

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 written it. That was pretty typical of her.

Although I liked the book, this level of scandal can be found in modern life. Those who are interested in the Victorian period will probably find it more titillating and intriguing than I did. I thought that the book repeated her most consistent foibles far too much. Clearly, the woman was a hazard. A number of children in her orphanage certainly suffered from her neglect. But, as a reader, I only need a few examples. This one buried me in them, and I graded it down one star for that.

If you are ever tempted to "stretch the truth a little" to impress someone, think of Mrs. Weldon and where that led her. I think you'll be more careful of what you say. In conversing, less is more.

If you can't say something good about someone, don't do what Mrs. Weldon did and make up fantastic, negative stories about them.

Seriously, the woman accomplished a lot considering what she had to work with. Without her mental problems and character flaws, she could have been a heroine who would have been remembered for a long time.

Focus on service, rather than ego.