A Monkey Among Crocodiles: The Life, Loves and Lawsuits of Mrs Georgina Weldon – a disastrous Victorian [Text only]
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This Edition does not include illustrations.A hilariously funny history of a bizarre 19th-century life of the woman who was a proto-type Pankhurst. The non-fiction debut of one of the most talented comic historians of social manners.Georgina Weldon was born in 1837 and, although almost no one will have heard of her, the only talent she really had was for self-advertisement. She is one of the great undiscovered and unsung eccentrics of the 19th-century.Her ego was monstrous and manifested itself in the 6-volume record of her life which she sold through a spiritualistic medium. Her garrulous work was composed in a convent cell in Gisors where she lived with her pet monkey Titilehee. She was born to parents on the margins of aristocracy and spent her early life in Florence. After a string of liaisons which ‘ruined her reputation’ she had an affair with a penniless Hussar officer called Harry Weldon and eloped with him to a two-bedroom cottage in Beaumaris. She opened a singing academy in a house formerly owned by Dickens but, with things going characteristically awry, she met the composer Gounod, who came to live with them. The singing ladies were dumped in favour of orphans who drove around the West End of London in a converted milk float advertising their weekly concerts at the Langham Hotel. With her husband trying to commit her for lunacy, Georgina fled to France, only to flee back again when Harry threatened divorce. It was at this point that she discovered her metier – dragging people through courts. She published pamphlets, embraced spirtualism, had a lesbian affair with a French lady and eventually lived out her days in Gisors surrounded by 37 tea chests and many trunks filled with paper.Brian Thompson’s gift is as a narrative historian. He excels at writing human-interest stories which embrace both his love of social history and his warm embrace of the eccentric, original, bizarre aspects of human nature.There was no other Victorian woman like Georgina Weldon. With this book Brian Thompson will establish himself as a new original and utterly sublime commercial and hilariously funny historian.
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A Monkey Among Crocodiles
THE LIFE, LOVES AND LAWSUITS OF MRS GEORGINA WELDON
BRIAN THOMPSON
FOR WALTER
I don’t think there’s ever been a human being put down on this earth afflicted by a temperament as shy and reclusive as mine. A shyness pushed to the point of suffering by a nervousness nothing could overcome. There’s nothing more marvellous, nothing’s ever happened that’s more singular that I, among all the women in the world, find myself so to speak engulfed by the stormy existence that has been my lot since 1868.
My Orphanage, 1877
Look at Sarah Bernhardt – does she have my beauty, my voice, my worth, etc? So from where does she get her fortune? Fame!
Georgina to her mother, 1877
Quand on tombe, on tombe jamais bien.
Dumas fils
CONTENTS
One rainy evening in September 1889 the nuns of a small hospice in Gisors on the north bank of the Seine answered the night bell to find on their doorstep an Englishwoman called Mrs Georgina Weldon. The luggage at her feet was modest – two pugs, some aged birds and, peering from his wicker basket, a bedraggled monkey called Titileehee. Mrs Weldon, who spoke rapid and idiomatic French, was not a woman to be argued with and she was soon inside and shaking out her cape. The lateness of the hour was quickly explained. She had come hotfoot from London, her house stolen from under her by an accursed Frenchwoman she had considered to be a lifetime partner. In the background of the story was an estranged husband connected to the College of Arms, a man who was a friend to princes. As she rattled on in her guileless, headlong fashion the startled nuns learned how the less proximate cause of her ruin was the cowardice and ingratitude twenty years earlier of the composer Gounod. Here at least was a name they could identify. Gounod was a revered national figure in his seventies, as much noted for his piety these days as for the operas he had composed in his golden years.
Over the next few days, the garrulous Mrs Weldon continued her catalogue of misfortunes. In her time, she had been falsely accused of lunacy, fought vigorous actions in the English courts in defence of her married rights, run an orphanage and several choirs. She had served a prison sentence in Newgate for publishing ‘a false and scandalous libel’, only to be driven through the streets by her adoring public on her release. She served a second term in Holloway for an identical offence and this time on her release her followers unshipped the horses from their shafts and dragged her carriage to Speaker’s Corner in Hyde Park, from where she addressed a crowd estimated at 17,000. The nuns grew nervous. This was many more than the population of Gisors. Ah yes, Mrs Weldon went on, but it didn’t end there – she was famous in so many ways! Her face had appeared in advertisements for Pear’s soap on Clapham omnibuses and, as well as singing at the Paris Opera, she had in more needy circumstances trod the boards of the London music halls. Nor was she in Gisors by chance. Twelve years ago she had found this selfsame hospice a haven and a blessing for a few months, as some of the older nuns might remember. And now here she was again at the mercy of the good sisters, seeking only calm and repose. A thought crossed her mind: had she mentioned she was once accused of going to look for Gounod with a loaded revolver?
The nuns admitted her out of charity and she stayed for twelve years, remaining more or less within the walls of the hospice all that time and seldom venturing outside. It was soon clear she was not there from considerations of piety. She was not a Catholic, nor was she very devout in any other direction, unless an alarming and scandalising enthusiasm for summoning the spirits of the departed could be counted as such. Though her bills were paid more or less on time there was much that was vexing about her behaviour. She insisted on adopting the working dress of the hospice, which she wore with a theatrical dash quite contrary to the spirit of humility it signified. Her French was salted with Parisian slang and she used it to command all those little things that were to her the necessities of life: stamps and writing paper, food for her pets. She played no part in the religious observances of the establishment but was not above criticising its management. (It was a matter of awe to some of the nuns that shortly after she arrived the cesspit was emptied at her insistence for the first time in thirty years.) She was fond of gardening and threw herself into the reorganisation of the herb and vegetable plots, as well as designing and having built a better sort of cold greenhouse. She developed a passion for beekeeping and corresponded vigorously with local experts. Her peas, she asserted, were the admiration of all who saw them. You might travel by train to Paris without seeing better.
