The Disastrous Mrs. Weldon

by Brian Thompson

  When he showed her these words, he asked, “Is that not a good portrait of you?,” and she was touched and flattered. But they apply equally to the patient and good-humored Harry. And if that is so, they give a line to the way Harry suffered the wilder excesses of his wife. Georgina tells us in her Mémoires how Harry detested the world of artists. This does not ring quite true either. The amiable Garrick member knew as little about the interior life of art as his wife—but how they lived, what they wanted from life, the troubles they made for themselves, of all this he had firsthand knowledge.

  In April when she came down to join them at St. Leonard’s on the Sussex coast, the three of them sat on the beach more like two brothers and their sister than anything else. Gounod made her a last gift, copyright in a musical setting of Lord Houghton’s poem “Ilala.” He was ill, he was tired, and he could see no way ahead. The permanent exile that he had proposed for himself was much less attractive in fact than in fantasy. The failed priest in Gounod, which had grappled for his own soul and struggled with the world and the flesh, was looking for a benign retirement. L’Abbé Gounod, the much-loved, much-respected putterer, surrounded by his books and his scores, his pipes and snuff, was a more attractive picture than Gounod the firebrand, the martyr to love and the law. He made a very unsuccessful Englishman, as his wife and friends had always pointed out. L’Abbé Gounod, adored by his congregation, at peace with God, talking to angels, could only exist in France. Chaffing Harry for stretching out on the shingle “like a lizard” and studying her dear old man covertly, Georgina did not realize that he had already written to Paris.

  Three days after her thirty-sixth birthday, the two of them set out from Tavistock House to visit Mrs. Brown at Blackheath. Georgina insisted on bringing two of her dogs, the decrepit Dan Tucker and a puppy called Whiddles. Along the way, the puppy began to scream frenziedly. It was having fits. They stopped the carriage and an anxious and angry crowd gathered, shouting, “Mad dog!” Georgina went to a nearby house to ask for a bowl of water. When she came back to the carriage, she found it surrounded by a mob. Inside, Gounod lay cowering against the cushions. The placidity he had shown in setting out was replaced by acute nervous excitement. She remounted the carriage and with the crowd battering on the doors, told the coachman to drive for his life. They arrived helter-skelter at the Browns’, Gounod “more dead than alive.” Before they could take lunch, ministrations had to be made of castor oil to Whiddles, who was locked up in an empty henhouse, and at the end of the afternoon Georgina drove away alone, leaving Gounod in the charge of Mrs. Brown. He was to stay the night to calm himself. But to her surprise and dismay, Gounod showed no signs of wishing to return home next day. After a week of anxiety and indecision she went back to Blackheath and found him in bed, “wandering in his mind.”

  The Browns were much upset, never having seen their friend in this state before. Georgina knew a great deal more about Gounod’s capacity for self-pity than Mrs. Brown and tried to rally the poor woman. The master was ill but would soon be better, of that she was sure. Gounod cowered in his bed, feigning sleep. Even Georgina in all her aberrancy could not have been completely prepared for the enormous thing that was about to happen. She ushered the Browns from the room and lay down on the bed beside him. After a long silence she suddenly felt herself covered by “an immense net with great meshes of rays of lights” and saw written in the air the sentence “Woman, Behold Thy Son.” These manifestations were as real to her as the jug and basin in the room, the wallpaper, the drawn curtains. They left her shaken but triumphant. She did not communicate the experience to Mrs. Brown.

  On June 6 she returned to Blackheath to find a strange Frenchman in the parlor, a young man named Gaston de Beaucourt. When she asked to see Gounod, de Beaucourt positioned himself in front of the door. “No, madame, Gounod is better, but you cannot see him.” She pleaded, she begged, she sobbed. She took herself off to a room adjoining the sick room and wailed at the wall, hoping to move the composer to call to her. Then she discovered that Gounod had been moved to another room altogether and she had been wasting her breath. She came back downstairs and pleaded with the company. Mrs. Brown was especially disturbed, and after an hour or so of entreaties de Beaucourt relented. Georgina might see him for five minutes. At this very moment, arriving pat upon cue like a character from one of his operas, Gounod appeared at the doorway, shocking her by his haggard appearance. His clothes seemed to hang from him.

  “ ‘My Mimi,’ said he folding me in his arms and kissing me over and over again, ‘what a long time it is since I have seen you! Why do you desert me?’ I gave M. de Beaucourt a look. He was sitting just behind Gounod, and he was making signs to me to leave, pointing at his watch. I, stupefied, confused, agitated, pulled from behind by the two women, said suddenly to him—‘Goodbye, my dear old man.’”

  She left the house with a heavy presentiment of the end. The next day Dr. Blanche arrived from Passy. It at last became clear to Georgina what had been arranged. Gounod was leaving for Paris and would never return. In her heart she suspected he was not so much being spirited away as fleeing: she knew him well enough to see that his feeble protestations to the contrary were a pretense. With Blanche and de Beaucourt in the house, responsibility for his own actions had been nicely delegated and he could play the part of the wandery invalid. On Monday she returned to Blackheath and gave him a letter she had written, stained with her tears. He did not read it but put it in his jacket. They then sat at the piano and in a grotesque parody of what they had been together, he accompanied her in this:

  Watchman, what of the night?

  Do the dews of morning fall?

  Have the Orient skies a border of light

  Like the fringe of a funeral pall?

  Right to the end farce was mixed with real emotions. The two Frenchmen bustled him to his feet. Gounod jammed on a panama Harry had once given him and took tearful and repetitious farewell of Mrs. Brown and her daughter. His bags were put into a carriage along with those of his two keepers, and he drove to Charing Cross, followed by Harry and Georgina in their victoria. On the platform of the boat train, where four years earlier German students had sung and chanted “Nach Paris!” on their way home to fight for the fatherland, the composer orchestrated his feeble farewells, into which were mixed protestations that they would meet again within the month.

  I did not shed one tear, nor even had tears in my eyes. Gaston de Beaucourt must have seen that I was able to “control myself.” The railways clock marked 1.20. Gounod was in the carriage: my husband and I both stood near the door.

  He sobbed, he yet held our hands tight in his, without being able to utter a word.

  “Come, my dear old man,” said my husband to him tenderly. “Don’t cry so much. I promise you that Mimi shall rejoin you in ten days!” The guard came up— “Take care, sir—the train’s off.”

  Georgina went back to Tavistock House and slept for four hours. As surely as if he had been Moncorvo, she knew she would never see him again. What made it all the more poignant was that in the house were the pitiable relics of a three-year relationship: the rest of his clothes, his pens, his pipes, books and manuscript papers, his evening dress, the bits and pieces of a man’s wardrobe that in the absence of the man himself become ugly somehow, and foreign. In a drawer downstairs was the only copy of his Polyeucte. Even that had been sacrificed in the absolute necessity for him to get away.

  Tavistock

  1

  Three years on, Georgina published at her own expense The Story of My Orphanage, a rambling and sometimes incoherent background to the Gounod years. The house is suddenly peopled with minor characters like the brazen orphan Rosie Strube, whom she seems to have picked up in the street when she was eight, and the four children of the Rawlings family, who had been fathered by a blind man from over the river in Lambeth. He formed them into a bell-ringing act and then sent them to live with Georgina with his best wishes. The number of actual orphans in the house from day to d
ay, week to week, is difficult to establish, and Georgina herself ducks the issue. To the question of exactly how old the youngest children were, she answers blithely that when a child loses its first teeth, one can form an approximate idea of its age. In one case, she is more certain. Katie, for whom she had a special affection, could read when she was two and a little later “converse with people in three languages.”

  The children ran about in bare feet. The idea for this had come originally from orphan Tommie, who asked her politely if he could take off his shoes and a day or so later whether he could also dispense with socks. Soon everybody followed suit. She saw some advantages in this and commends the children for using their discarded shoes as toys, pushing them about the lawns and filling them with mud. Bare feet made the house quieter and saved work for the maid, who would otherwise have to dress the younger children. Orphan Dagobert, who wore a brace made for him by Pratt’s of Oxford Street, was an exception to the shoeless regime, but brought home from Mr. Pratt the welcome advice that there was no harm in the other children going without footwear.

  The children addressed her by command as “Grannie.” Every morning, prayers were conducted, including an orison from the Dominican rule, something very scandalous to those Protestants who heard it. It was followed by a quarter of an hour’s organized yelling, to get the naughtiness out of their systems. There was little formal instruction in anything other than music, though when she was away from the house, Georgina did demand of those who could write that they send her a daily letter, to which she invariably replied. Every child, no matter how young, was part of the Monday evening concerts she arranged for them at the Langham. They were transported to and from these engagements by a typical piece of Georgina improvisation. For £25 she bought and had converted a milk float, painted it brown, and with the words “Mrs. Weldon’s Orphanage” emblazoned down the side, sent it out into the teeming streets. On Mondays it took the children to their performances, heaving through the fog like a toy omnibus. The concerts, and the name “Weldon,” were also advertised daily by sandwich men patrolling in Oxford Street and Charing Cross Road. The point of performing in public, their patroness insisted, was not to exhibit the children like freaks, but to raise money. This happened seldom, and the orphanage ran at a considerable loss, even under the austere management Georgina employed for it. Nevertheless, it was an accusation made by some who went to the Langham that the children were in effect participating in organized beggary. The whole enterprise was poised between laughter and tears.

  Alfred has been very ill these two days he has a very bad stomachach and todays dinner was lovely only the meat was salt and Ernest liked the opera very much indeed and Willie has his too ears bad Ernest has his heel so bad and his big toe His bad and Margret’s finger is much better it broke last night and all the matter came out but she cannot use it well yet the children are playing in the dining room Willie is playing at clappers and Johnnie with the top of the House-Maid’s box and Ernest and Willie is playing at dinners now they are pretending to cry and Ernest is crying because he has a nock on the nose and Katie is taking the books from the bookcase I remain yours affectionate pupil Rose Strube.

  The adults who came to the house to participate in the Gounod Choir were understandably surprised to find, as well as the master, this tribe of orphans scattered about, yelling and banging, chasing the dogs, and kicking up mischief. An intelligent and willing young girl named Marian Westmacott was a sort of liaison between the orphans and the choir, the grumpier members of which were quick to relay the shocking things they encountered. They had plenty to complain about, for it was a music school like no other in London. Each member of the adult choir paid two guineas for a seasonal subscription for the honor of being conducted by M. Gounod, but did not always see him, except at performance. When they did, they discovered he reserved his cooing, affectionate side for more distinguished company. On one occasion he stormed into a rehearsal in the new music room to insist they were singing out of tune and the noise was driving him mad. Georgina calmly handed him the baton, returning only when his exasperation had reached combustion point and all his English was dissipated.

  Life in the choir was not all Exeter Hall either. For one engagement Georgina laid out £50 in publicity and got back £2.50 in receipts. Sometimes they found themselves engaged to sing out of town, but without rail tickets to get there. Georgina explains frankly that she was running both the choir and the orphanage from 1870 to 1874 on the £100 sent to her by her mother for clothes and makeup. Gounod had no money of his own other than royalties and for a long time paid nothing toward his upkeep. Harry had yet to formalize any agreement with his wife about the use of the premises. As a business venture, Tavistock House was a mess. What hurt most of all was that part of the bad publicity she received came from those very people she intended to benefit. What was worse—to have a child wet herself onstage, or to have it broadcast to the world by an indignant Gounodist who really could not care less what the Evangelist was instructing Mrs. Weldon to do with some very disagreeable children?

  In the pamphlet she published about the orphanage, Georgina says little about her charitable purpose. Nor does she explain how she acquired the children, though it is possible that some at least found their way there by their own efforts and others were left on the doorstep or abandoned in the overgrown gardens. There is the hint that one or more were sold to her, not as orphans, but as the bastards of rich people evading a scandal in the family. Nobody came to inspect what was going on; contrariwise, none of the staff of the house rebelled enough to go to the police. Harry was once again the pivotal figure. The master of the house was indirectly a member of the Queen’s Court and by day went off to trace the genealogy of the greatest in the land. If at night he came home and could tolerate the presence of ten or so squalling brats, who were they to raise a voice against them? Georgina found no problem with the children either; she claimed she raised them much as she would have done her own. For the servants it was more entertaining to speculate about her relationship to the gloomy French gentleman. Quite in keeping with her personality, Georgina did not feel the need to justify to servants what to her was a perfectly ordinary state of affairs. One of the people one would like to talk to across the grave is the Tavistock cook.

  My Orphanage has nothing to say about the children in any detail. They are not the story. Instead, Georgina first puts into words her disillusion with the world she had left behind and the difficulties she has in understanding the music business she had joined. She advises her readers to grasp the concept that the music press is not objective, but led by a desire for profit and tied to the fortunes of a very few artists and performers, whose fame it has helped create. She admits that she had never before considered things in this way, any more than she has asked the very pertinent question of why her former society friends never patronized the popular concerts, which were now the battleground for her own exertions. Taken all together, she has blundered into a dark room without knowing the exact position of any of the furniture. She invents some characteristic reasons for having got into this situation. She is incurably shy, enough to blight a professional career as a solo vocalist, and that has driven her back into choirs, where there is safety in numbers. In this way, her light is always hidden under a bushel. Her husband is too concerned about his social position to be of any real help to her. Gounod’s ill health and lack of business sense force her to give up her own voice. And so on.

  The question arises: who would read such a book and with what result? Georgina’s sense of justice sprang directly from her perception of what had befallen her as monstrous examples of ingratitude and vindictiveness. The jury in the case—the ideal reader of My Orphanage—was someone she had never met and probably did not exist. Nowadays we would call the work a green ink effusion: addressed blind, filled with excruciating and obsessive detail, deaf to humor, lacking in self-reproach, and grindingly self-justifying. It is a view of the world where only the writer is marching in
step. The tone wobbles badly.

  Certainly it is my opinion, which I have never hidden—Mr. Weldon should have been made to horsewhip M. Gounod. My feelings as to what honour is are perhaps exaggerated, but I believe I would deserve to be calumnified and despised if I lived with a man who was not anxious to protect his wife and himself against the most atrocious public gossip; and that, if I had abandoned my School, I would have given the right to those who said (M. Gounod himself said it) that Mr. Weldon closed his eyes to my dishonour in the hope of getting rid of me and receiving large damages from M. Gounod as co-respondent. M. Gounod, counting on my despair, has hurried to say on every occasion that this Englishwoman lured him into her net under the guise of charity; that her orphans were myths; her School a swindle and the children (of whom he has spoken in his own published letters) were no more than three little pug dogs who made messes everywhere in the house.

  If Georgina was looking for revenge on Gounod by means of press publicity, she was disappointed. Nobody picked up in any detail on Mrs. Weldon’s story. Some of the reason for that was the perception that if there was an injured party in the affair, it was surely Harry. If there was a reputation to safeguard, it was his and not hers. The Garrick, which was patronized by many journalists and editors, was his bastion and refuge in this respect. Squire Bancroft was one of the most assiduous and popular Garrick members of the period, an actor manager with a genius for social networking. It could be said of Bancroft that he only ever met the right people. He was put up for membership by the editor of Punch and counted as one of his earliest friends in the club the Marquis of Anglesey. In his memoirs Bancroft had no hesitation in describing Harry as his wife’s dearest and closest friend. In Bancroft’s hail-fellow-well-met view of the world, a man who could have his French chum Gounod elected to membership of the Royal Yacht Club, which Harry had done, was hardly likely to be a bad egg. (Harry’s own membership is a curious and intriguing detail in his biography, until we learn where his illicit second home was. For more than twenty years he kept Annie Lowe on a moored houseboat on the Thames at Windsor.)