Lieutenant William Henry Weldon was the son of a coal merchant from the Sheffield area. According to Georgina, writing in later years, old Mr Weldon actually delivered coal in sacks on a horse and cart, a piece of spite that may or may not have been true. Harry’s father died when he was a child and his mother now lived in a two-bedroom cottage in Beaumaris. There was a grandmother still alive from whom he would inherit and he claimed to be coming into a trust fund two months hence when he reached his majority. In letters which he had the extreme impertinence to send to Morgan, he diminished the value of this fund’s income from the £2000 which he may have boasted of to others. In fact he halved it, perhaps out of prudence or maybe as a demonstration of his good faith.
If he hoped to impress his prospective father-in-law by such honesty, the plan backfired badly. When he offered to have his solicitor write to clarify matters further, Morgan ordered the long-suffering Antonio to reply to the letter, not deigning to take up his own pen. Unfortunately, Harry Weldon was either having trouble reading these signals or had badly misjudged the fanatically snobbish Trehernes. Ten days after he had first been shown the door, Louisa burst in on her daughter while she was still in bed.
‘Here’s a letter from that blackguard Weldon. And look what he’s written! Oh the vile swindler! A thousand a year when he’s twenty-one on the 8th of April. Another £2000 when his 84-year-old grandmother dies and another two thousand when his mother dies. And she’s still young – what is it, hardly forty! Oh, I’m very happy he doesn’t have two thousand a year now – you’d be mad enough to want to marry him! Two thousand a year is beggary, but a thousand a year is starvation, it’s to die of hunger!’
If Louisa really spoke these words she stands accused of the same mania that afflicted her husband. Georgina may have recalled the conversation precisely because it threw a bad light on a snobbish and not very worldly woman. What alarmed and infuriated her mother, however, were the circumstances which had led to the letter. They took some explanation. It is unlikely (a crowded ballroom being what it is) that the two had passed more than twenty minutes in each other’s company unchaperoned. What, then, had been said? The question was not one of Harry’s income, but Georgina’s commonsense. He had met and been smitten by a pretty girl. Of all the things she may have told him about herself, it would seem the only thing she had not mentioned was the situation with regard to Merthyr Guest. Nor the volcanic temperament of her father.
Or maybe she did – maybe riding over to Mayfield was for him the romantic equivalent of the forlorn hope, beloved of gallant (and suicidal) officers in every army of every epoch. Maybe she did tell him that her father would have him for breakfast and the sheer thrill of that was enough for him to volunteer himself. He knew next to nothing of society, had no connections of any kind, and in every sense nothing to lose: why not make his play for her in as gallant a way as he knew how? Proposing to pretty young women was not a crime and Georgina’s father was hardly likely to shoot him from an upstairs window. (Luckily for a great many people in the nineteenth century, Morgan and firearms seem to have been strangers. That is among his own kind. Poachers in Mayfield spoke darkly of his use of spring guns, aiming to blow the head off anyone daring to take a pheasant on Treherne land.) There was one further possibility. Maybe Harry saw her, was bowled over by her, and what Mr Treherne interpreted as confounded impudence was an advanced form of love sickness. He must have that girl or destroy himself in the attempt.
Morgan invented a sobriquet for the unfortunate Hussar. He was swiftly known over the Gate House breakfast table as Ananias, the foolish man who lied to God and paid the penalty. The story comes from the Bible, Acts 5:1–6:
But a certain man named Ananias with Sapphira his wife, sold a possession and kept back part of the price, and brought a certain part and laid it at the apostle’s feet. But Peter said, ‘Ananias, why hath Satan filled thy heart to lie to the Holy Ghost, and keep back part of the price of the land? Whiles it remained, was it not thine own? And after it was sold, was it not in thine own power? Why hast thou conceived this thing in thine heart? Thou hast not lied unto men but unto God.’ And Ananias hearing these words fell down and gave up the ghost; and great fear came on all those who heard these things. And the young men arose, wound him up and carried him out and buried him.
In later life and in the full knowledge that Harry would read her words, Georgina declared the nickname well-merited. If she thought so at the time, it throws a lurid light on the whole Treherne family. Was Morgan really to be compared to the apostle Peter, or to God? And had it escaped all of them that a little while after, Sapphira followed her husband into the same grave?
In the short term the problem resolved itself. The 18th Hussars were ordered away back to Yorkshire. If it had been a case of lovesickness, the traditional cure seems to have worked. Harry Weldon reflected without bitterness that though he had lost this particular skirmish, he had hardly lost the war. In April he came into his trust money, which had appreciated to £7,500. He was young and good-looking and the world was filled with more or less beautiful women. Were he to stay in the 18th, he might become at the very least a Major. If he exchanged into an Indian regiment, he might one day have his own command. Instead, according to Georgina, he went through the whole of his inheritance in eighteen months, which hardly bespeaks a broken heart. He was easy-going and venal in just the right proportions; a model of a certain kind of junior officer who might continue exactly as Georgina had discovered him: a supernumerary at balls and banquets, a cheerful card-player and a modest rake. But if he thought it was all over, he was wrong. Thackeray at his most cynical could not have dreamed up a better twist to the plot.
In May, Merthyr Guest came to his mother and wished her permission to propose to Miss Treherne. Lady Charlotte was startled, for it seemed to her that Georgina was no more than a friend to him and a cruelly joshing one at that. Merthyr explained otherwise. He confessed that he had been seeing Georgina and corresponding with her for much longer than his mother suspected: in fact, since the winter of 1856. He could not now contemplate life without her. Charlotte Schreiber did everything she could to dissuade him. The first favourable impressions Georgina had made had begun to wear off and, while Lady Charlotte enjoyed her chats with Tennyson, the rest of the coterie at Little Holland House filled her with the deepest suspicions. However, her own second marriage placed her in a weak position. She grudgingly gave her consent to an engagement, on condition that it remain secret for a while and that Merthyr should not attempt to marry without her permission. Overjoyed, Merthyr went down to Mayfield to ask Morgan for his daughter’s hand. He was hardly greeted with open arms. As soon as he left, Morgan began bombarding the Schreibers with letters that did not waste time on felicitating the young couple. He wished to know the exact extent of the fortune involved. So far as Morgan was concerned this was the best offer he was going to get for his daughter and it merely remained to settle terms.
The tone of these letters was deeply offensive to Lady Charlotte. It seemed her son had been trapped by an adventuress. At Exeter House there were tears and recriminations, Georgina first saying she must obey her father’s wishes and in the next breath saying she must marry Merthyr or perish. A good-hearted compromise was worked out, without Morgan’s knowledge. No decision of any kind would be made until Merthyr came of age in January of 1859. Then, if the two young people were still of the same mind, matters could be straightened out with the ogre of Mayfield. Meanwhile, they might continue under the tacit understanding of an engagement. This seemed to please Georgina and it delighted Merthyr. It was the Long Vacation and Ivor Guest invited his brother to accompany him to Scotland. Georgina was annoyed at this and tried to prevent Merthyr from going. They parted acrimoniously.
Only a month after Merthyr’s interview at Mayfield and while he was still in Scotland with his brother, Lady Charlotte paid an afternoon visit to Little Holland House, probably to check up on one of her daughters, a young woman who had also been taken by the free and easy atmosphere of the house. Instead of her daughter, she discovered Georgina ‘closeted alone with Lord Ward in Watts’s studio, Watts being absent at Bowood’. The location was shocking in itself – nobody but the painter crossed the threshold of the red baize door, unless by invitation. The two might as well have been discovered in Mrs Prinsep’s bedroom, so great was the impropriety. The identity of the man found with Georgina was the second awful surprise. William Ward