Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- Acknowledgements
- List of Abbreviations
- Georgina Weldon’s Archive and her Biographers
- Prologue
- 1 Georgina
- 2 Mayfield
- 3 Harry
- 4 Beaumaris
- 5 Friends and Relations
- 6 Discontent
- 7 Gwen
- 8 Gounod
- 9 Tavistock House
- 10 Maestro or Marionette
- 11 Loss
- 12 Separation
- 13 Orphans
- 14 Argueil
- 15 Mad-Doctors
- 16 Home Again
- 17 Rivière
- 18 Covent Garden
- 19 Disaster
- 20 Conjugal Rights
- 21 Revenge
- 22 The New Portia
- 23 Swings and Roundabouts
- 24 Holloway
- 25 Gower Street
- 26 Gisors
- 27 The Trehernes
- 28 A New Century
- 29 Sillwood House
- 30 Angel or Devil?
- Bibliography
- Index
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- Acknowledgements
- List of Abbreviations
- Georgina Weldon’s Archive and her Biographers
- Prologue
- 1 Georgina
- 2 Mayfield
- 3 Harry
- 4 Beaumaris
- 5 Friends and Relations
- 6 Discontent
- 7 Gwen
- 8 Gounod
- 9 Tavistock House
- 10 Maestro or Marionette
- 11 Loss
- 12 Separation
- 13 Orphans
- 14 Argueil
- 15 Mad-Doctors
- 16 Home Again
- 17 Rivière
- 18 Covent Garden
- 19 Disaster
- 20 Conjugal Rights
- 21 Revenge
- 22 The New Portia
- 23 Swings and Roundabouts
- 24 Holloway
- 25 Gower Street
- 26 Gisors
- 27 The Trehernes
- 28 A New Century
- 29 Sillwood House
- 30 Angel or Devil?
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
Georgina's tour of the provinces had been, as she herself admitted, ‘a complete failure’. As usual, she believed that this was the fault of the journalists and critics who had libelled and boycotted her, and the theatre managers who had failed to advertise her properly. The next three years were to see a series of increasingly desperate attempts to keep herself in the public eye and to air her many grievances. The costs of her unsuccessful legal battles mounted up and she desperately needed to supplement her income of little more than £600 a year.
At first Georgina's confidence in her popularity in London seemed to be well founded. On 8 November (1886) she ‘went off gaily on my tricycle and got quite safe to the Law Courts’. She spent the day there until, according to The Times:
About 4 o’clock considerable commotion was caused outside the main entrance of the Royal Courts of Justice by the appearance of Mrs Georgina Weldon on a tricycle, on which was painted in large letters ‘Mrs Weldon's Crystal Tricycle’. It appears that on the conclusion of her business at the Courts Mrs Weldon was on her way to a rehearsal at Sanger's Amphitheatre, where she is to appear on Thursday next as Sargent Buzfuz in the sketch of ‘Bardell v. Pickwick’. So large a crowd, however, had been attracted by the appearance of the tricycle in the Strand bearing her name that her progress thereon was entirely stopped, and she was obliged to abandon her vehicle to the care of a friendly cabman and take refuge within the Courts again.
For the next eighteen months or so she found it easy to get engagements in London music halls. In December she appeared for five nights at Deacon's in Clerkenwell, ‘a beastly bouge [dump]’. The audiences there were disappointing. She was more successful in Peckham early in the following year. The house was ‘packed, immensely enthusiastic’. She sang Gounod's ‘Oh! dille tu!’ and her own composition, ‘Song of the sparrow’, with ‘Annie Laurie’ as an encore. On the same evening she went on to Shoreditch and sang ‘I can't get my conjugal rights’, a comic song which had been written specially for her.
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- Georgina WeldonThe Fearless Life of a Victorian Celebrity, pp. 363 - 377Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2021