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Title: The Disastrous Mrs. Weldon
Author: Brian Thompson
Genre: Biography (Victorian)
Thingummies: 3
Synopsis: Girl from a family with aristocratic pretensions tries to pull a Vanity Fair; due to an amazing energy, voice, and capacity for self-delusion ends up instead running an orphanage into the ground, making a pet and then an enemy of one of the leading composers of the day, nearly getting institutionalized, and bringing 25 lawsuits.
Thoughts: Most biographies tend to focus of people who were successful. That this one focuses on one who was a walking disaster does make it stand out.
Mrs. Weldon was nuts, but not in the way she was accused of being. Narcissistic and somewhat delusional, she still didn't necessarily deserve to be institutionalized in the way that Britain dealt with the insane in Victorian times. So her rather remarkable escape from the doctors coming for her and then use of the legal system to turn the tables on her persecutors (which included her equally problematic but still long suffering family and husband) makes you want to declare her a hero. Which folks do.
But people don't fit neatly in boxes, and she never did particularly well as a folk hero. Because, well, nuts. Her fairly unintended abuse of both composer Gounod and a whole heap of hapless orphans does kill some of the sympathy. As does her ridiculous association with a pair of con men.
But it's an interesting look at a woman in a very weird social place in Victorian society.
Author: Brian Thompson
Genre: Biography (Victorian)
Thingummies: 3
Synopsis: Girl from a family with aristocratic pretensions tries to pull a Vanity Fair; due to an amazing energy, voice, and capacity for self-delusion ends up instead running an orphanage into the ground, making a pet and then an enemy of one of the leading composers of the day, nearly getting institutionalized, and bringing 25 lawsuits.
Thoughts: Most biographies tend to focus of people who were successful. That this one focuses on one who was a walking disaster does make it stand out.
Mrs. Weldon was nuts, but not in the way she was accused of being. Narcissistic and somewhat delusional, she still didn't necessarily deserve to be institutionalized in the way that Britain dealt with the insane in Victorian times. So her rather remarkable escape from the doctors coming for her and then use of the legal system to turn the tables on her persecutors (which included her equally problematic but still long suffering family and husband) makes you want to declare her a hero. Which folks do.
But people don't fit neatly in boxes, and she never did particularly well as a folk hero. Because, well, nuts. Her fairly unintended abuse of both composer Gounod and a whole heap of hapless orphans does kill some of the sympathy. As does her ridiculous association with a pair of con men.
But it's an interesting look at a woman in a very weird social place in Victorian society.
