MADAME TUSSAUD.
One of the stock sights in London which every foreigner as well as every
man, woman and child from the country who goes to London, does with
great regularity, is Madame Tussaud's Museum. It is known the world over
and is as regular a thing to see as the Tower.
A great many years ago, some time since the flood, a Swiss woman named
Tussaud, who had studied art in Paris, took the brilliant notion into
her wise head that money was better than fame, and instead of spoiling
marble she commenced doing some very good things in wax. She brought her
figures to London and opened a museum, which she added to and enlarged
as men and women became of sufficient interest to attract attention,
until she got pretty much everybody of whom the world ever heard.
She died many years ago, but the collection was continued by her family,
three generations of which have waxed rich and gone to join those whom
they put so well in wax in life.
This wonderful museum, which actually deserves all the attention it
gets, is filled with really excellent figures of the entire line of
English Kings, dressed in the costumes of the period in which they
lived, including arms, although court dresses generally adorn them. As
the Tussaud family were, and are, artists, these figures are not the
limp, misshapen, grinning effigies usually exhibited, but are in size,
stature, color and general grouping, perfect.
I cannot say that the effigies of King Edward and Richard, and those
other ancient marauders, are correct, for I never saw them in life.
They died many years ago. But all you have to do is what Dicken's
Marchioness did with the orange peel wine: "Make believe very hard," and
they will do. The faces were modeled from portraits, and their dresses
were made from actual costumes preserved in the curious repositories of
which London is full. The visitor gets some notion of what the subjects
were like, and that ought to be and is satisfactory.
[Illustration: MADAME TUSSAUD.]
[Sidenote: AMERICAN WORTHIES.]
You see, standing or sitting, marvelous likenesses of all the great
soldiers and statesmen of England, but heavens! how our poor Americans
have been abused! Washington is about as like our Washington as he is
like an Ohio River coal-boat captain. Ex-President Grant has good cause
for action for libel, for such a face as they have put upon him could
not have been on a third corporal of the poorest company in the very
worst North Carolina regiment, and President Hayes and Garfield have
been similarly treated. That of Franklin is a tolerable likeness of the
maker of infernal maxims, but there was a malicious design evident on
the part of the artists to dwarf the Americans, as I fancy there was to
enlarge and exaggerate the Englishmen.
The groups are something wonderful. The Lying-in-State of the Czar, a
recent addition, is a miracle of naturalness and awful beauty, as is the
death of Pope Pius; and they are so natural that one cannot help feeling
that he is in the presence of actual death, and not a counterfeit
presentment.
[Illustration: WAX FIGURES OF AMERICANS.]
The Museum contains, among other curiosities that are of interest, the
identical coach used by Napoleon at the battle of Waterloo, with a vast
number of other relics of the great Corsican. From the number of
Napoleonic relics I fancy that the Madame was at heart a French woman,
though she was making her money from the English.
Great halls are filled with correct statuary in wax of the world's
great, or notorious men, all of which have to be "done," as a matter of
course.
But the great point, and one which no visitor ever fails to visit is the
"Chamber of Horrors." You pay a sixpence extra--there is always sixpence
extra in England--and you are introduced to the most cheerful assemblage
of monsters that the world has ever produced.
If there ever was a murder committed of an especially atrocious
description, one done under peculiarly horrifying and terrible
circumstances, here is a wax figure of the murderer, and, if possible,
of the victim.
There is the original guillotine which made the acquaintance of so many
necks during the various French revolutions. There is the identical
scaffold which was devised by a man condemned to be hung, and on which
he suffered, with forty-eight others afterward, before it was retired,
and there are ropes and delightful articles of that nature with which
criminals have suffered, and in such numbers that we come to the
conclusion that the principal business of the English and French is to
kill somebody and get hung for it.
The two criminals in which I took the liveliest interest were Messrs.
Burke and Hare, of Edinburgh, Scotland. These gentlemen had a contract
with the medical university of Edinburgh, to furnish the students with
corpses for dissection, which they did by resurrecting them from various
church-yards.
Mr. Burke, who was evidently the leader in the enterprise, remarked one
night to Mr. Hare,--that is, I presume he did:
"Why go out this dark and rainy night and dig in the damp earth for
corpses? Digging corpses is all wrong. If the friends of the deceased
should ever discover that a corpse had been abstracted it would occasion
the most profound feeling. We should have more respect for the survivors
than to raise their dead, and then, in the interest of science, we
should give the students fresher bodies for dissection. I am inflexibly
opposed to digging any more."
[Sidenote: THE CONSULTATION.]
"But how shall we get the corpses?" asked the obtuse Mr. Hare.
"It is far easier," replied Mr. Burke, "to knock a man on the head than
it is to dig him up, and, in addition to the other reasons I have
mentioned, a sand-bag or a club is cheaper than a spade."
[Illustration: "DIGGING CORPSES IS ALL WRONG."]
And Mr. Hare coinciding with Mr. Burke, they went out that night and
killed a man, and they kept going out and killing men till thirty had
disappeared. The authorities finally got upon their track, when Mr. Hare
turned States' evidence and hung Mr. Burke, and he went peacefully into
some other business.
[Illustration: THE IMPROVED PROCESS OF MESSRS. BURKE AND HARE.]
It is needless to add that a careful study of the faces of the two men
would not lead one to purposely encounter them in a dark alley after
twelve at night. Nothing earthly could be so villainous.
A little incident that occurred the day I explored the Museum
illustrates the perfection of the modeling and draping the figures.
There were in the party a gentleman and lady from Pennsylvania, the
former being a devotee of the alleged science of phrenology, and rather
fond of discussing the subject.
[Sidenote: THE SCIENCE OF PHRENOLOGY.]
A female figure was standing on the floor, which attracted his
attention. This was in the Chamber of Horrors.
"I want to call your attention," he said to his wife, "to this
illustration of the truth of phrenology. Could there be modeled a more
vicious face? Notice the development back of the ears, showing the head
to be all animal, and the pinched forehead and the general
insignificance of the front head as compared with the development of the
back portion. There is murder in every line of that face. Let me see who
it is."
"Thank you," exclaimed the figure as it moved away. It was a very
estimable American lady whom the phrenologist had mistaken for a wax
figure.
[Illustration: OSBORN HOUSE, ISLE OF WIGHT.]