Transcriber’s Note: Illustrations have been moved from the original
position of the printed plates, in order to correspond better with the
flow of the text. The List of Illustrations therefore isn’t strictly
accurate in regard to where the illustrations may be found.
THE ROMANCE OF MADAME TUSSAUD’S
JOHN THEODORE TUSSAUD
[Illustration: MADAME TUSSAUD AT THE AGE OF 85
From the portrait by Paul Fischer, Court painter to H. M. George IV.]
THE ROMANCE
OF
MADAME TUSSAUD’S
BY
JOHN THEODORE TUSSAUD
WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY
HILAIRE BELLOC
ILLUSTRATED
[Illustration]
NEW YORK
GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY
COPYRIGHT, 1920,
BY GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
TO
MY WIFE
THROUGH WHOSE KINDLY URGING THESE LEAVES
HAVE GROWN TO THE DIMENSIONS
OF A BOOK
PREFACE
The earliest information we have concerning Madame Tussaud is that she
was born in Switzerland on the 7th of December, 1760, and was the only
child of Joseph and Marie Grosholtz. Her mother was the daughter of a
Swiss clergyman.
She married on the 20th of October, 1795, François Tussaud, who, it
appears, was her junior by seven years. We are able to trace his family
back as far as 1630, when his great-great-grandfather, one Denis
Tusseaud--for that is how he spelt his name--was born.
There is documentary evidence that Denis was brought from Burgy to Mâcon
in 1631, his family also coming from Burzy, close by, in 1658.
His descendants lived at Mâcon for more than a century, their occupation
being generally that of workers in metal.
The great-grandfather of François was Henry Tusseaud (1684-1717), and his
grandfather’s name was Claude (1716-1767).
François’ father (1744-1786) was the first of the family to adopt the
present spelling of the name, although we find that various members
of the family used the forms Tussot, Tusseau, Tuissiaud, Tussiaut,
Tusseaut, Tussiau, or Thusseaud.
Madame Tussaud’s marriage does not appear to have been a happy one,
for we learn that in 1800--two years before she came to England--she
separated from her husband, of whom we hear nothing further, although he
is known to have been living in Paris in the lifetime of his grandsons.
The foundress of the famous Exhibition had two sons, Joseph and Francis.
Francis (1800-1873) had several sons, the eldest of whom, Joseph Randall
(1831-1892), who was a student and exhibitor at the Royal Academy, was
the father of the author of this book.
Mr. John Theodore Tussaud was born in Kensington on the 2nd of May, 1858,
and at the age of six was sent to St. Charles’s College, London, where he
came under the influence of Cardinal Manning, who took a keen personal
interest in his welfare.
Some six years later he was transferred to Ramsgate, where he benefited
by the training he received from the Benedictine monks at St. Augustine’s.
In the year 1889 he married Ruth Helena, daughter of Thomas Grew. There
are seven sons and three daughters of the marriage.
Mr. Tussaud, like his father, has exhibited at the Royal Academy. His
occasional contributions to literature have been welcomed by thoughtful
readers, and he is a recognised authority on historical matters relating
to the French Revolution and the First Empire.
Seventeen great-grandsons of Madame Tussaud took an active part in the
war, all, without exception, serving in the British Army. Two were killed
and most of the others wounded.
WILLIAM E. HURT.
MIDDLE TEMPLE, LONDON
CONTENTS
PAGE
PREFACE BY WILLIAM E. HURT vii
INTRODUCTION BY HILAIRE BELLOC 25
CHAPTER I
MR. TUSSAUD FIRST ENTERS HIS FATHER’S STUDIO--_REVERIE_--MADAME
TUSSAUD’S UNCLE FORSAKES THE MEDICAL PROFESSION FOR
ART--MADAME’S BIRTH AND PARENTAGE--A PRINCE’S PROMISE 53
CHAPTER II
CURTIUS LEAVES BERNE FOR PARIS--THE HÔTEL D’ALIGRE--THE COURT
OF LOUIS XV--MADAME ARRIVES IN PARIS 59
CHAPTER III
LIFE-SIZE FIGURES--MUSEUM AT THE PALAIS ROYAL--EXHIBITION ON
THE _BOULEVARD DU TEMPLE_--BENJAMIN FRANKLIN--VOLTAIRE 65
CHAPTER IV
MADAME ELIZABETH OF FRANCE--MADAME TUSSAUD GOES TO
VERSAILLES--FOULON--THREE NOTABLE GROUPS--GALLERY OF NOTORIOUS
CRIMINALS 70
CHAPTER V
EVE OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION--NECKER AND THE DUKE OF
ORLÉANS--LOUIS XVI’S FATAL MISTAKES--HIS DISMISSAL OF THE
PEOPLE’S FAVOURITES 77
CHAPTER VI
MADAME TUSSAUD RECALLED FROM VERSAILLES--THE TWELFTH OF
JULY, 1789--BUSTS TAKEN FROM CURTIUS’S EXHIBITION--A _GARDE
FRANÇAISE_ SLAIN IN THE MÊLÉE 81
CHAPTER VII
HEADS OF THE REVOLUTION--MADAME’S TERRIBLE EXPERIENCES--THE
GUILLOTINE IN PAWN--MADAME ACQUIRES THE KNIFE, LUNETTE AND
CHOPPER 87
CHAPTER VIII
MADAME DINES WITH THE TERRORISTS MARAT AND ROBESPIERRE, MODELS
THEIR FIGURES AND SUBSEQUENTLY TAKES CASTS OF THEIR HEADS--SHE
VISITS CHARLOTTE CORDAY IN PRISON--DEATH OF CURTIUS--MADAME
MARRIES--NAPOLEON SITS FOR HIS MODEL 92
CHAPTER IX
MADAME TUSSAUD LEAVES FRANCE FOR ENGLAND, NEVER TO
RETURN--EARLY DAYS IN LONDON--ON TOUR--SOME NOTABLE
FIGURES--SHIPWRECK IN THE IRISH CHANNEL 98
CHAPTER X
THE BRISTOL RIOTS--NARROW ESCAPE OF THE EXHIBITION--A BRAVE
BLACK SERVANT--ARRIVAL AT BLACKHEATH 103
CHAPTER XI
AN OLD PLACARD--PRINCESS AUGUSTA’S TESTIMONIAL--GREAT SUCCESS
AT GRAY’S INN ROAD--MADAME INITIATES PROMENADE CONCERTS--BYGONE
TABLEAUX 108
CHAPTER XII
PLACARD (_Continued_)--THE OLD EXHIBITION--CELEBRITIES OF
THE DAY--TUSSAUD’S MUMMY--POETIC EULOGISM--REMOVAL TO BAKER
STREET--THE IRON DUKE’S REJOINDER--MADAME DE MALIBRAN 113
CHAPTER XIII
HOW THE WATERLOO CARRIAGE WAS ACQUIRED--A CHANCE CONVERSATION
ON LONDON BRIDGE--THE STRANGE ADVENTURES OF AN EMPEROR’S
EQUIPAGE--AFFIDAVIT OF NAPOLEON’S COACHMAN 120
CHAPTER XIV
NAPOLEON’S WATERLOO CARRIAGE--DESCRIPTION OF ITS EXTERIOR 127
CHAPTER XV
DESCRIPTION OF THE WATERLOO CARRIAGE (_Continued_)--ITS
INTERIOR AND PECULIAR CONTRIVANCES--BROUGHT TO ENGLAND AND
EXHIBITED AT THE LONDON MUSEUM 133
CHAPTER XVI
THE ST. HELENA CARRIAGE--NAPOLEON ALARMS THE LADIES--CERTIFICATES
OF AUTHENTICITY 139
CHAPTER XVII
FATHER MATTHEW SITS FOR HIS MODEL--TSAR NICHOLAS I. TAKES A
FANCY TO VOLTAIRE’S CHAIR--A REPLICA SENT TO HIM--THE REV.
PETER MCKENZIE’S EXORCISM 143
CHAPTER XVIII
LANDSEER AND THE COUNT D’ORSAY VISIT THE EXHIBITION--A
FRIGHT--NORFOLK FARMER’S ACCOUNT OF QUEEN VICTORIA’S VISIT 148
CHAPTER XIX
WELLINGTON VISITS THE EFFIGY OF THE DEAD NAPOLEON, AND SITS
TO SIR GEORGE HAYTER FOR HISTORIC PICTURE--PAINTINGS FROM
MODELS--IS THE PHOTOGRAPH “TAKEN FROM LIFE,” OR--? 153
CHAPTER XX
THE STORY OF COLOUR-SERGEANT BATES’S MARCH THROUGH ENGLAND TO
PROVE ANGLO-AMERICAN GOODWILL--START FROM GRETNA--THE DOVE OF
PEACE 159
CHAPTER XXI
SERGEANT BATES’S JOURNEY FINISHES IN LONDON AMID A REMARKABLE
DEMONSTRATION--HIS GIFT TO MADAME TUSSAUD’S 164
CHAPTER XXII
MY FIRST MODEL--BEACONSFIELD’S CURL--GLADSTONE’S COLLAR--JOHN
BRIGHT AND THE CHINAMAN 171
CHAPTER XXIII
THE TICHBORNE “CLAIMANT”--NEARLY AN EXPLOSION--THE BIG
MAN’S CLOTHES--THE REAL HEIR--THE CLAIMANT’S RELEASE FROM
PRISON--CONFESSION AND DEATH 177
CHAPTER XXIV
H. M. STANLEY SITS TO JOSEPH TUSSAUD--THE STORY OF HIS
LIFE--HOW HE FOUND LIVINGSTONE--A MYSTERIOUS VEILED LADY--THE
PRINCE IMPERIAL 181
CHAPTER XXV
COUNT LÉON--THE SHAH OF PERSIA’S VISIT--A WEIRD SUGGESTION; NO
RESPONSE--KING KOFFEE--CETEWAYO 184
CHAPTER XXVI
THE BERLIN CONGRESS--LORD BEACONSFIELD AND THE “TURNERELLI
WREATH”--“THE PEOPLE’S TRIBUTE” FINDS A HOME AT TUSSAUD’S--THE
SCULPTOR’S DESPAIR--HE CONSTRUCTS HIS TOMBSTONE AND DIES 190
CHAPTER XXVII
THE PHŒNIX PARK MURDERS--WE SECURE THE JAUNTING-CAR AND
PONY--CHARLES BRADLAUGH--GENERAL BOULANGER--LORD ROBERTS
INSPECTS THE MODEL OF HIMSELF 197
CHAPTER XXVIII
MY FAVOURITE PORTRAIT--LORD TENNYSON POSES UNCONSCIOUSLY BEFORE
MY WIFE--“THIS BEATS TUSSAUD’S”--SIR RICHARD BURTON--HIS WIDOW
CLOTHES THE MODEL 203
CHAPTER XXIX
REMOVAL OF THE EXHIBITION TO THE PRESENT BUILDING--SLEEPING
FIGURES--HISTORY OF THE PORTMAN ROOMS--THE CATO STREET
CONSPIRACY--BARON GRANT’S STAIRCASE 208
CHAPTER XXX
THE KING OF SIAM’S VISIT--THE SHAHZADA’S CLOTHING--THE KING OF
BURMAH’S WAR ELEPHANT--TALE OF TWO MONKEYS 215
CHAPTER XXXI
QUEEN VICTORIA’S COPPERPLATES--ANOTHER ROYAL PERSIAN
VISIT--“PERISHED BY FIRE”--“VISCOUNT HINTON” AND HIS ORGAN--THE
COQUETTE’S JEWELS LOST AND FOUND 220
CHAPTER XXXII
ROYAL VISITORS--KING ALPHONSO AND PRINCESS ENA--THE LATE
EMPEROR FREDERICK--A PENNILESS TRIO--PRINCESS CHARLES--THE
PRINCE OF WALES AND PRINCE ALBERT 225
CHAPTER XXXIII
THE BEGUM OF BHOPAL PAYS US A VISIT--LORD ROSEBERY AND LORD
ANNALY--LORD RANDOLPH CHURCHILL--LADY BEATTY--LADY JELLICOE AND
MRS. ASQUITH 231
CHAPTER XXXIV
TUSSAUD’S AS EDUCATOR--QUEER QUESTIONS--WANTED, A “MODEL”
WIFE--QUAINT EXTRACT FROM AN INDIAN’S DIARY 236
CHAPTER XXXV
STARS OF THE STAGE IN MY STUDIO--MISS ELLEN TERRY HAS A CUP OF
TEA--SIR SQUIRE AND LADY BANCROFT--SIR HENRY IRVING AND THE
CABBY--WE COMPLY WITH A STRANGE REQUEST 242
CHAPTER XXXVI
LITERARY SITTERS--GEORGE R. SIMS’ IMPROMPTU--HIS ORDEAL IN THE
CHAMBER OF HORRORS. GEORGE AUGUSTUS SALA’S MASTERPIECE 249
CHAPTER XXXVII
G. A. SALA ON MARIE ANTOINETTE--THE ROYAL FAMILY--THE
QUEEN--HER “TRIAL,” CONDEMNATION AND DEATH--THE SANSONS--SALA’S
IMPRESSIONS 254
CHAPTER XXXVIII
MORE SITTERS--MR. JOHN BURNS WALKS AND TALKS--WE BUY HIS ONLY
SUIT--MR. GEORGE BERNARD SHAW HAS TO WORK FOR HIS LIVING--FOUR
LEADING SUFFRAGETTES--CHRISTABEL’S MODEL “SPEAKS”--THE CHANNEL
SWIMMER--GENERAL BOOTH 275
CHAPTER XXXIX
BANK HOLIDAY QUEUES--CUP-TIE DAY--GENTLEMEN FROM THE
NORTH--BACHELOR BEANFEASTS--THE MEMBER FOR OLDHAM--A SCARE 282
CHAPTER XL
THE MYSTERIOUS SUN YAT SEN’S VISIT--HIS ESCAPE FROM THE CHINESE
LEGATION--THE DARGAI TABLEAU--SIR WILLIAM TRELOAR ENTERTAINS
HIS LITTLE FRIENDS 287
CHAPTER XLI
A MISCELLANY OF HUMOUR--OUR POLICEMAN--THE MYSTERIOUS
LANTERN--THE DANGER OF OLD CATALOGUES--STORIES OF CHILDREN--SIR
ERNEST SHACKLETON’S MODEL 291
CHAPTER XLII
THE LURE OF HORRORS--BEGINNINGS OF THE “DEAD ROOM”--SIR THOMAS
LAWRENCE, P.R.A., SKETCHES A SUICIDE--BURKE AND HARE--FIESCHI’S
INFERNAL MACHINE--GREENACRE--EXECUTIONS IN PUBLIC--“FREE AT
LAST!” 297
CHAPTER XLIII
THE CHAMBER OF HORRORS RUMOUR--_NO REWARD HAS BEEN OR
WILL BE OFFERED_--THE CONSTABLE’S ESCAPADE--A NOCTURNAL
EXPERIENCE--DUMAS’S COMEDY OF THE CHAMBER--YEOMEN OF THE HALTER
307
CHAPTER XLIV
ANECDOTAL--“WHICH IS PEACE?”--MARK TWAIN AT TUSSAUD’S--DR.
GRACE’S STORY--MR. KIPLING’S MODEL--FILIAL PRIDE--BISHOP
JACKSON’S SALLY--GERMAN INACCURACY 315
CHAPTER XLV
ENEMY MODELS--A HOSTILE PUBLIC--BANISHMENT OF FOUR RULERS--OUR
REPLY TO JOHN BULL--ATTACKS ON THE KAISER’S EFFIGY--STORY OF AN
IRON CROSS 320
CHAPTER XLVI
TUSSAUD’S DURING THE WAR--CHAMELEON CROWDS--THE PSYCHOLOGY
OF COURAGE--MEN OF ST. DUNSTAN’S--POIGNANT MEMORIES--OUR
WATCHMAN’S SOLILOQUY 326
CHAPTER XLVII
THREE HEROES OF THE WAR: NURSE CAVELL, JACK CORNWELL, V.C.,
CAPTAIN FRYATT--LORDS ROBERTS AND KITCHENER--QUEEN ALEXANDRA’S
STICK AND VIOLETS--THE DUKE OF NORFOLK’S TIP 335
CHAPTER XLVIII
A CRINOLINE COMEDY--MR. BRUCE SMITH’S STORY--AN AMERICAN
LADY’S SHILLING--MY FATHER’S MEETING WITH BARNUM--THE
“CHERRY-COLOURED” CAT--“PAGANINI” AND THE TAILOR--GEORGE
GROSSMITH POSES 341
CHAPTER XLIX
WE VISIT THE OLD BAILEY FOR MEMENTOES--A MOCK TRIAL--RELICS OF
OLD NEWGATE--TWO FAMOUS CELLS--THE NEWGATE BELL 346
CHAPTER L
TUSSAUD’S IN VERSE--TOM HOOD’S QUATRAIN--“ALFRED AMONG
THE IMMORTALS”--A REFUGE FOR CABINET MINISTERS--TWO
DIALOGUES--“THIS IS FAME” 352
CHAPTER LI
LAST SCENE OF ALL--MADAME TUSSAUD’S APPEARANCE AND
CHARACTER--HER MEMOIRS PUBLISHED IN 1838--HER LAST WORDS 356
ILLUSTRATIONS
MADAME TUSSAUD _at the age of 85_ _Frontispiece_
PAGE
JOHN THEODORE TUSSAUD 32
CHRISTOPHER CURTIUS 56
LOUIS XVI AND THE DUKE OF ORLÉANS 56
THREE VIEWS OF VOLTAIRE’S HEAD 57
“THE DYING SOCRATES” 57
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN 57
MADAME TUSSAUD _at the age of 20_ 72
MARIE ANTOINETTE, THE DAUPHIN, AND THE DUCHESSE D’ANGOULÊME 72
MADAME ELIZABETH OF FRANCE 73
MADAME ELIZABETH OF FRANCE, SISTER OF LOUIS XVI 73
MODEL OF THE BASTILLE 73
M. NECKER 73
CAMILLE DESMOULINS 88
THOMAS CARLYLE 88
MARIE ANTOINETTE 88
JEAN BAPTISTE CARRIER 88
KNIFE, LUNETTE AND CHOPPER OF THE ORIGINAL GUILLOTINE 88
THE GUILLOTINE 89
CHARLOTTE CORDAY 89
JEAN PAUL MARAT 89
MAXIMILIEN MARIE ISIDORE ROBESPIERRE 89
THE PRINCESS DE LAMBALLE 89
DANTON 89
MADAME TUSSAUD _at the age of 42_ 112
HER ROYAL HIGHNESS THE PRINCESS CHARLOTTE OF WALES AND SAXE-COBURG 112
THE BRISTOL RIOTS 112
SIR CHARLES WETHERELL 112
HER MOST EXCELLENT MAJESTY QUEEN ADELAIDE 113
INTERIOR OF THE EXHIBITION 113
DANIEL O’CONNELL 113
MADAME DE MALIBRAN 113
JOSEPH TUSSAUD 113
THORWALDSEN’S CELEBRATED BUST OF THE GREAT NAPOLEON 128
NAPOLEON’S MILITARY CARRIAGE _General View_ 128
NAPOLEON’S MILITARY CARRIAGE _Scene of its capture at Jenappe_ 128
THE EMPRESS JOSEPHINE 128
NAPOLEON’S MILITARY CARRIAGE _The Interior_ 129
ARTICLES FOUND IN NAPOLEON’S CARRIAGE 129
NAPOLEON’S BAROUCHE 129
FATHER MATHEW 144
NICHOLAS I 144
VOLTAIRE’S CHAIR 145
SIR EDWIN LANDSEER, R.A. 145
WELLINGTON VISITING THE EFFIGY OF NAPOLEON 160
SIR GEORGE HAYTER 160
COLOUR-SERGEANT GILBERT H. BATES 161
WILLIAM COBBETT 161
RICHARD COBDEN 161
JOHN BRIGHT 178
TICHBORNE CLAIMANT 178
DR. LIVINGSTONE 179
THE PRINCE IMPERIAL 179
NAPOLEON III 179
COUNT LÉON 192
EDWARD TRACY TURNERELLI 192
THE TURNERELLI WREATH 192
KING CETEWAYO 193
GENERAL BOULANGER 193
LORD FREDERICK CAVENDISH 208
CHARLES BRADLAUGH 208
SIR RICHARD BURTON 209
HEAD OF LORD TENNYSON 209
VISCOUNT HINTON AND HIS ORGAN 240
THE SURRENDER OF GENERAL CRONJE 240
WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY 241
SIR SQUIRE BANCROFT 241
BUST OF GEORGE AUGUSTUS SALA 288
GEORGE AUGUSTUS SALA 288
T. W. BURGESS _The Channel Swimmer_ 288
EFFIGY OF DR. SUN YAT SEN 289
DR. SUN YAT SEN 289
THE CHILDREN’S LORD MAYOR 289
CHARLES PEACE 320
MARQUIS OF HARTINGTON 320
BURKE AND HARE 320
SIR THOMAS LAWRENCE 320
KEY OF THE BASTILLE 320
JOHN WILLIAMS 320
WILLIAM MARWOOD _The Hangman_ 321
DR. JACKSON _Bishop of London_ 321
COUNT ZEPPELIN 321
BISMARCK 321
JACK SHEPPARD 321
THE OLD NEWGATE BELL 321
EDITH CAVELL 352
JACK CORNWELL, V. C. 352
CAPTAIN FRYATT 352
FIELD-MARSHAL EARL KITCHENER 352
ALFRED AUSTIN 353
TOM HOOD 353
FRANCIS TUSSAUD 353
INTRODUCTION
BY HILAIRE BELLOC
INTRODUCTION
BY HILAIRE BELLOC
This is a fascinating book and its fascination consists in two things
attaching to its subject: first that the famous collection of modelled
portraits which has become a sort of national institution in England
under the name of “Madame Tussaud’s” has its roots in the greatest period
of modern history, the French Revolution; second, in that the complete
and growing record has passed through so many changes and has yet
survived.
Even though the famous collection had dealt with nothing more than the
main figures of the Revolution and of the great wars that followed it, it
would have been a possession of permanent and lasting historical value.
I am not sure that if it had so remained, stopped short at the effigies
of those now long dead, it would not now receive a greater respect. It
might well in that case have become something recognised as a national
possession, protected and preserved by the national government. For
the prolongation of the record right on into our own time, while it
very greatly increases the real value of the collection as a piece of
historical evidence, yet deprives it of that illusion which men cannot
avoid where history is concerned: the illusion that things thoroughly
passed are in some way greater and of more consequence than contemporary
things.
This continuity of the great collection--so long as it is maintained
with judgment in selection and without too much yielding to momentary
fame is none the less a thing to be very thankful for. Already those
of us who, like the present writer, are well on into middle age, can
judge how the younger generation is beginning to regard as historical
these simulacra, which, when they were first modelled, seemed in our
own youth insignificant because they were contemporary. To our children
(who are now grown and are young men and women), Disraeli, Gladstone,
Bismarck--all the group that were old but living men in the eighties
(Disraeli died at the beginning of them, Bismarck long after their
close)--are what to us were Louis-Philippe, Garibaldi, Palmerston, and
the process properly continued will be invaluable. We have already more
than 130 years of record. There is no reason why it should not extend to
the two centuries.
It often happens that a thing of great value to history, a piece of
evidence which we now find invaluable, has come to us by an accident, the
motive of its creation not historical at all nor really connected with
record. Indeed of the bulk of historical evidence which we use to-day
for the reconstruction of the past only a small proportion--official
documents--are of the nature of deliberate records. And that proportion
of evidence is on the whole the worst as material, for official
documents always have a motive underlying them, and they never give one a
vivid picture. The great bulk of the material with which we used to build
up the past and make it live again for ourselves is accidental. And so it
is with this great collection.
The motive at first was merely that of a waxwork show. The remarkable
woman who created the collection did so as a matter of business. The
exhibits were intended to satisfy no more than contemporary curiosity.
But they have become a piece of historical evidence which increases
in value with every year. Whatever you may read (and the accounts are
always contradictory) of some man prominent in the past, whatever picture
or sculpture you may find of him (and these are often deliberately
flattering or in some other way untrue) the physical impression of him
will never be so full and so exact as in the case of an effigy made by a
contemporary who saw him, watched him, knew him, _and whose whole motive
was exactitude in reproduction_.
Here there does indeed arise the question of the medium. You cannot
conceive of a better medium than wax among all the known mediums for
production of effigies of human beings. Yet it is not perfect. And it is
precisely because the likeness is so great, precisely because the effect
is so parallel to that of reality, that we note the minor details in
which illusion is not achieved. When a man sees a bust of marble he does
not expect to find illusion. The greatest portrait statuary can never be
more than a symbol. But the wax effigy aims at exact reproduction. To
put it in extreme terms, the ideal of the modeller in wax would be to
reproduce a figure such that one knowing the original could be deceived
and think he had found again his friend dead or sleeping. When a wax
effigy reproduces a known and real person, especially a person whom we
ourselves have come across, the discrepancy between reality and its copy
is clearer. But there is this strong evidence in support of the success
which modelling in wax has reached, that where we are dealing with
something unknown, some imaginary person, it is possible to create, in
spite of the immobility of the figure, an illusion of life. Everyone who
has visited these collections will testify to that. With a person whom
one has seen in the flesh the little details in which the wax does not
tally with the flesh nor immobility with life, stand out clear. That is
especially the case with those whose complexion is difficult to imitate.
It is also the case in the attachment of the hair. And I have further
noticed that the direction of the eyes makes a difference, the figure
being more lifelike as a rule when the eyes are cast down or averted,
than when a direct look is imitated. But it remains true that with an
imaginary person when you are free to suppose that the person had a
complexion of the sort easily imitated in wax, and where you are further
free to presume the pose, you can get as near to reality in this medium
as it is possible for human art to achieve.
Therein, then, lies the great value of this thing. It is a witness to
history, and as I have said, one increasingly valuable as time proceeds.
Still it is with what is chiefly historical in this gallery of figures
and _especially with the tradition of the French Revolution and the
Napoleonic Wars, that we are most concerned_. And the Tussaud collection
has this added interest that it sprung as it were from the revolutionary
time. Its origins lay in that. Its first fame was due to an emigration
from France into England, and it still remains much the best effort at
physical reconstruction which we have to-day.
The reason is that the lady who founded this institution was not only
herself a contemporary of but an actor in the principal events of that
time. She came by a series of accidents into direct touch with one
personality after another. She left a record of each. She was a personal
and convincing witness and her work remains. She is just as much a person
of the Revolution and of the Napoleonic period as any one of those whom
she modelled for our benefit. And that is (let us remember) of special
value _in that one is in the spirit of one’s time_.
The artist deliberately reconstructing a bust through plastic art is
always in danger of failing through a lack of the necessary sympathy
between the time in which he lives and the time in which his subject
lived. The truth of this is expressed very sharply in modern attempts at
reconstructing mediæval sculpture. It has been done. It is singularly
successful, for instance, in the central porch of Notre Dame in Paris.
But as a rule it fails. The modern man either works from a modern model,
or at any rate with modern expressions and modern features at the back
of his mind. One conspicuous instance occurs to me, the modern figures
upon Lichfield. They are as grievously out of their supposed time as are
the figures of Tennyson’s “Idylls of the Kings.” The Knights of the Round
Tables of Tennyson’s version are the gentlemen of pegtopped trousers who
were contemporary with the poet. They have been to public schools and to
universities. They would be horrified at the dropping of aitches, and
they have often attended at services which were fully choral. They would
have called the inhabitants of the country which they visited “natives.”
That is what Tennyson made of Geraint and Launcelot and his odious Arthur.
I am afraid one cannot say much more for the sculptures that I have in my
mind. They are dressed in mediæval armour, but the faces that look out
from the helmets are the faces to be seen in the London clubs to-day.
They are faces devoid of simplicity and strength. They are not the faces
of the Middle Ages.
You have the same thing in historical painting, and that is why
historical painting usually looks so ridiculous in the generation
after it was made. We all know those historical paintings which our
grandfathers bought and which still disfigure the large rooms of private
houses, where you have Richard I of England charging the Saracens (he, an
Angevin!), his face glowing with the emotions of the football field.
Now this prime difficulty and error in pictorial and plastic record in
the past you can only avoid by the advantage of contemporary work, and
this is where the great value of this collection comes in. All its
work is contemporary, and we can to-day, after an interval of more than
a hundred years, weigh the importance of that point. The revolutionary
figures sometimes look odd to us precisely because their real aspect has
been so vividly preserved. The hand that modelled Marat was a hand of
Marat’s age. It touched the flesh of the dead man. The eyes that received
the conception reproduced by the hands, gazed upon Marat himself as he
lay back dead.
And here it is convenient to introduce that essential character in the
great collection--the genius of its originator.
The whole thing, its character, long tradition and establishment--is the
creation of one remarkable woman, and of her we ought to have some full
biography. I know of none. She has at least the rare advantage of having
propagated her name justly and the thing she created is identified with
her. It is not often that history acts with so little irony and with so
much generosity. Her energy was much more remarkable than that of those
very few women who have created and organised permanent businesses, for
it was not only her judgment and initiative which created the commercial
side of the collection: it was also her own talent and industry, the work
of her own hands, that laid the foundation of it all. Most of the early
portraits were the direct product of her skill and it is from her that
the continuous tradition of the place descends. Her sons learnt their art
from their mother and carried it on to the third generation which still
continues it. It was she who took all the critical decisions, she who
steered the fortunes of the family through the crisis of the Revolution,
who determined to take the collection over to England, who conceived the
idea of making it a permanent record by adding contemporaries year after
year.
It is not often that one has this intimate admixture of personality
with an institution, and when one gets it it has an astonishing effect
in vivifying the whole. When an institution is thus the product of a
character at once highly energetic and highly individual, it is as though
a living thing continued on long beyond the term of a human life. It is,
in the strict and original sense of the word, “inspired.” You get that
quality, of course, in all literature, and in some of the corporations
which remarkable men and women have founded, but very rarely in a piece
of business in an institution of affairs. Here you get it, and the more
you read of the woman’s life and character the more you understand the
success of her effort and its vitality.
[Illustration: JOHN THEODORE TUSSAUD]
It was an astonishing life! There lies behind it the story of her uncle
Curtius, a Swiss who left medical practice in the middle of the 18th
century and took to modelling in wax. It was a taste which had grown
upon him from his habit of modelling parts of the human body for the
purposes of his profession. He extended it to portraits and at last he
abandoned medicine for his new art. He had firmly established himself in
it and had already been taken up by members of the French Royal Family
who had visited Switzerland, when under their protection he left for
Paris. And there his sister, Madame Grosholtz, and her child, then five
or six years old, joined him. There she learnt her uncle’s trade and
thence in her twentieth year she went to live at Versailles as a sort
of companion to Madame Elizabeth, Louis XVI’s sister, a girl about four
years older than herself. She was the close friend and companion of the
princess right up to the moment of the Revolution. Madame Elizabeth like
her brother had a delight in manual work. With her it took the form of
modelling under the guidance of Marie Grosholtz and it was these nine
years that formed the character and that remained the liveliest memory
throughout all the very long life that this remarkable woman was to live.
It would be interesting to discover (I know of no such document that
could tell me, but there must be some) whether the young companion
whom Madame Elizabeth thus took under her protection, and to whom she
thus gave a unique opportunity for the observation of contemporary
life, was in race German or French. Berne would seem to be the origin
of the family, and the uncle’s Latin name and the family name of his
brother-in-law point to German origin. All his associations on the other
hand were French, and when he came to Paris it was hardly as a foreigner.
The story reads as though they were French-speaking on their arrival.
Perhaps in some future edition of the work this point will be settled. It
is one of considerable moment to our judgment of the art.
It was a moment when the connection between Switzerland and French
society was very close. It was to Switzerland that Voltaire had retired.
It was from Switzerland that the genius of Rousseau proceeded. The
unfortunate Necker, with his caution and his avarice, played his great
part in the early Revolution as a Swiss. To Switzerland also he went back
when he had failed--and there, by the way, in his retirement we have
an amusing picture of him listening to the daily recital of the news
from Paris as the Revolution proceeded, wagging his head solemnly, and
perpetually saying, “I told you so.”
Madame de Staël, his famous daughter, whom Pitt so much desired to marry
for her money, and whom Napoleon so hated, was thoroughly Swiss. She
shows it in every line of her writing. She is from the heart of Geneva in
her traditions and ideas.
The family coming thus to Paris were part of a general movement and even
their connection with Versailles can be paralleled. It would not have
taken much, had things proceeded quietly, for Switzerland to have fallen
into the orbit of the French monarchy within the next hundred years.
After these nine formative years in the continued company of Madame
Elizabeth, Marie Grosholtz enters the Revolution, and the connections of
the family with the origins of the great upheaval are close, curious,
and of intense interest. It was, it will be remembered, the bust of
Necker from the collection of Curtius, then on exhibition, which the mob
carried round at the beginning of the insurrection. The show of figures
already well-known in Paris became the starting-point for the future
collection. It was because the Revolutionaries from the very beginning of
the movement showed so much acquaintance with those effigies that the
continuous stream of further portraits began. That is why Marie Grosholtz
was sent for time after time to take a death mask, to model a famous
living man, to establish what afterwards became the invaluable record we
still have.
From 1787-89, the preliminary years when she was already at work, right
on to 1802, a matter of 15 years, the most crowded of all history, the
newly developed art went on actively without interruption. There is
not, I think, in all history a parallel to so astonishing and lucky a
chance. It was almost as though fate had designed a reporter, or a state
portraitist for the benefit of posterity. You do get the same thing now
and then in the shape of a chronicler who happens to keep out of the
turmoil and mark the detail of his time, but it is extremely rare and in
the case of plastic art, unique. The nearest parallel to-day--which may
raise a smile on account of the extreme difference in time and manner--is
that of Holbein’s portraits of the English Court. There also you get the
living record marvellously preserved for future times.
It is to our advantage that the character of this foundress does not
diminish in energy with the passage of time. We see her doing the work of
three people all through the years of her middle age and making decision
after decision upon the fortunes of her house. And while she was thus
conducting with one hand the financial side of the business, with the
other she was herself still modelling perpetually, and with a third and
quite separate faculty she was creating a school of her own, as it were,
for the continuation of the modelling after her time. If ever there was
the maker of an important thing it was this woman and if ever there was
an important thing proceeding entirely from one individual, that thing is
the collection which still remains to us.
There is a sort of parallel which can be drawn between Madame Tussaud and
Madame Campan. Both of them have seen, and worked at, the Palace of Louis
XVI, under and in connection with his Queen. Both were much of an age,
Madame Campan eight years senior to Madame Tussaud. Both lived on through
the Revolution and the Empire, the one till 1822, the other beyond the
revolutionary year of 1848. Both had something of the same strength. Both
carried on the tradition of the old attachment to the Bourbons. Both have
left the legend of a strong personality, the one through an effect on
education in France which was deeper than has been generally recognised,
the other in a more lasting manner through her plastic work. In this
connection one muses upon what would have been Madame Tussaud’s fate had
she continued her career in the country where it had begun, and had she
not taken over the collection in its origins to England at the Peace of
Amiens. I think she would have been a great figure in the France of the
Restoration and of the bourgeois Monarchy. A continuous unbroken link
with all the great years up to 1848 and presenting a whole gallery of the
past for a new generation to witness would have been something the French
and Paris would have made much of, and a great deal that was lost on the
other side of the Channel through lack of understanding would have been
preserved. I mean that too many of those figures were for those who saw
them in an alien atmosphere jests or shades, whereas in France they would
have been an intimate part of the great national story.
This removal to England also in some degree affected the proportion of
the collection and in the same degree diminished its great international
value. Not that figures of international moment had not been
included--the great figures are all there--but that Paris would have been
a better general centre for watching and recording the moving history of
the 19th century, than London. The Musée Grevin in Paris supplemented
the Tussaud collection in England. One imagines that it would have been
better for history as a whole had one great collection, preferably in
Paris, served for a permanent and continuous chronicle of what living men
had been.
When we come to details of the personalities from the period before
the Revolution to the Peace of Amiens (the foundation of the whole
Exhibition) we are struck, I think, by the great difference in our
appreciation. Some of the figures are just what we should have thought
these men would have been. Others offend us or puzzle us by what seems to
us discrepancy. But we must remember that the error is in ourselves and
not in the contemporary record.
Of the great historical figures Voltaire (which is the first of them) is
least specially illuminated by what I may call “the Tussaud tradition.”
And that is because we already know pretty well all that there is to
know about Voltaire. His story was a simple one, his genius obvious,
not complex, and the time of life in which Madame Tussaud’s uncle came
to sculp him (to model his face in wax) was just at the very end, when
public fame and his own great pride in himself had combined to put him
into full evidence, even to the details of his daily life. It was just
at the end of that life, in 1778, that Voltaire sat to Curtius, Madame
Tussaud’s uncle, the original founder of the whole gallery, and the tutor
of his niece in her art.
It is interesting to compare the little miniature (one of several) which
Curtius made--it is far more lifelike than the larger figure--with the
famous Houdon. Houdon’s is much the greater thing, of course, and the
more living, but though Houdon was the greatest of portraitists by
far, the greatest renderer of the human face that ever lived, there
is something intimate in the little wax miniature of Curtius which no
great sculptor could have given. For instance, you have here admitted,
as it were, almost photographed, the domestic insufficient quality of
Voltaire’s famous smile. Houdon could not help making that smile--or
grin--have something heroic about it; or at any rate great. But the
Tussaud work undoubtedly shows you the thing as it actually was; as his
servants and his intimates saw it.
I learn, by the way, from this book (I had not known it before) that
Houdon had himself worked for Curtius--a considerably older man--and the
connection is as curious as it is interesting. It is striking to find a
record of the connection in this book, but not astonishing that it should
be absent from others, for there has been no good comprehensive work on
Houdon written that I can recollect. I am told that there is some German
encyclopædic work or other but no proper study of the man and his life.
Next after Voltaire we have to note side by side with the collection
a small work of Curtius’s own in miniature, the very striking profile
of the Duke of Orléans. How it helps one to understand that base and
extraordinary career! Everyone reading the story of the Revolution
should concentrate upon that man’s ambition, weakness and intrigue.
The origin of the whole business was his false idea (unfortunately for
himself confirmed by circumstances for many years) that Louis XVI and
Marie Antoinette would have no children. He came to regard himself as the
heir, and the natural result was that when the first child came after so
perplexing a delay (a delay the cause of which I have explained in an
appendix to my own monograph on Marie Antoinette) Philippe Égalité felt
himself aggrieved. His grievance was illogical and unjust, but it was
there and in that grievance you find no small part of the motive force
that impelled the early Revolution.
The family tradition carried on by the Tussauds from the Revolution was
what may be described as the “orthodox” tradition. It is the tradition
which appears in this book. I am not sure that the historian can wholly
agree with it.
This “orthodox” tradition is the tradition of an equable and happy
society overthrown into a sort of chaos at the head of which chance
scoundrels floated, each to disappear in turn, struck by a sort of
anarchic doom proceeding from their fellow anarchs. The Revolution was
rather a resettlement of society from a state which had become unstable
to a new and more stable state, and its leaders were upon the whole,
though suffering under the exaggeration from which leaders at such a time
invariably suffer, men of capacity--especially on the military side.
Further, those who were made responsible in popular tradition for the
worst excesses were hardly the principal authors of them.
Thus, the real director of what is called the Terror was Carnot, not
Robespierre. Carnot was a perfectly sane man and a genius to boot,
attached to the new democratic principle, but a soldier, and working for
the highly practical ends which a soldier has in view. He thought of
the Terror as a piece of martial law, and it is significant that under
his direction by far the greater number of those who suffered in Paris
suffered through a direct breach of the temporary regulations (such as
those against the export of money or communication with the enemy) which
were necessary for the prosecution of the campaign.
Robespierre was not the director of the Terror at all. He was a man
singularly restricted in nature, but of powerful effect in oratory in
spite of his close academic style. He was a man of complete sincerity,
much too narrow in doctrine, but because he exactly expressed with more
lucidity than anyone else, and with more conviction, what was the
passionate creed of the time, he became for something like two years at
once the idol and the symbol of the revolutionary masses. As the Terror
looked like an intensive application of the Revolution men associated it
with Robespierre’s name, and Robespierre, suffering from the very grave
defect of vanity (common in men who reach a public position), was willing
to allow the false imputation, and to enjoy the title of ruler, when he
was really in the Central Council of the Republic, singularly impotent.
He paid a heavy price for that falsehood. It cost him his life and--what
was worse--his reputation.
What we know positively of Robespierre’s action during the Terror is
that he attended the Central Council less and less frequently, and that
he tried, if anything, to stop the Terror. In fact it was precisely on
this account, his interference with the rigour of the martial law, that
his enemies brought him to the guillotine. But, by a curious irony not
uncommon in history, the death of this man who was not the leader of the
Terror, and who had if anything attempted to check it, and who was put to
death because he attempted to check it, caused the Terror to cease. Men
had so universally (and so falsely) identified him with the extremity of
the republican military régime that when he passed it was impossible to
continue it.
In the matter of Marat what I may call “the Tussaud tradition” is
sounder. The man was unbalanced to the point of lunacy, and when Madame
Tussaud was called in to take the impression of his face just after
death, her use of the word “fiend” though exaggerated is comprehensible.
This effigy of Marat which you may see in the famous gallery and
which was modelled immediately after his death--an immediate piece of
historical evidence of the first value--was shown in Paris when it was
completed. It is an astonishing thing to have that piece of continuity
with us.
But all these death masks of the Revolution are of the highest value.
There is an extraordinary dignity in the full features of the Queen,
looking younger than she did in the last years of her life, and a
singular and awful reality in the mask of Robespierre. I know only two
representations of Robespierre which really recall the man. One is this
effigy exactly modelled from the face itself after these last thirty-six
hours of agony, and the other is the portrait which Greuze made of him
and which is now in Lord Rosebery’s collection. And of these two, of
course, the death mask, though repulsive, is the more actual.
But of all these revolutionary figures, by far the most interesting to
me is that of Carrier. The contrast between that strongly exact, clearly
cut face and the story of Carrier’s madness at Nantes, is one of the
things that make one understand not only the Revolution but in general
mankind at white heat. Here is a man who, if features mean anything,
might have been some sharp, self-contained, disappointed, ironic speaker,
or even poet. It is the face of a man who certainly knew his own mind,
who despised other men, which is a weakness, but who followed some great
idea within. It is a face human in its self-repression and exactitude.
Were we familiar with it in connection with some great name of peaceable
activity, were it the face of one of those who settled the Congress of
Vienna, or of some monarch, or of some writer, it would be famous as an
index of genius. As it is, the name--especially to those who do not know
the face--suggests nothing but a mad infamy, and indiscriminate shooting
and drowning in batches of the wretched Vendean prisoners. And I myself
when writing thus of Carrier have a right to be balanced in my judgment
for he came very near to guillotining my grandfather’s father, from whom
he differed in politics. And here in the case of Carrier is an excellent
example of the historical value of that which I postulate as the first,
much the greatest, character in a collection such as this: for had we
not the bust of the living Carrier, itself almost a living thing, taken
immediately after death, we should hardly have guessed what Carrier was.
But the face combined with the history explains him well enough.
The story of Madame Tussaud seeking for Sanson’s guillotine, or rather
for one of his guillotines after the Peace of Amiens and sending her
son over to Paris to look for the man and his implements (which the
executioner had pawned) and getting it at last at great cost, is
characteristic of her energy and business sense. She lived at a time when
the material relic was the _clou_ of her collection. If to-day it rather
detracts from the sober historical value of the figures, it remains an
excellent witness to her indefatigable initiative. And so it is with the
collection of Napoleonic relics, notably the Waterloo carriage, which
she secured just at the moment when it was of the greatest value to her
business.
Her modelling of the dead in the revolutionary time included, by her own
account, the head of the Princess de Lamballe, when that unfortunate and
rather insipid young woman (but gracious and kind) was so foolishly and
so atrociously murdered. The record would seem to correspond more or
less with the judgment of Michelette, and Michelette’s portrait mostly
produced by chance illusion is the best I know.
In the fate of all those men and women, but particularly in that of
Madame de Lamballe, the main element of tragedy is their bewilderment.
They could not conceive what cause or motive lay behind the fierce hatred
which concentrated upon them. It was for them a nightmare, something
irresponsible like a cataclysm of nature, and yet something human, and
something that ought, therefore, to be explicable. Oddly enough the
one person who did get a glimmer of the human motive at work was Marie
Antoinette herself. It is astonishing how rapidly not only the general
character but the intelligence of Marie Antoinette developed in these
years. She became the true daughter of Maria Theresa--too late!
They suffered (of course) through that illusion which is the curse of
publicity. They were tortured and they were killed for a label, not for
their very selves. But the tragedy is increased in their case, I think,
because they did not seek publicity. Your politician, often a mountebank,
whose appetite is for strutting upon a stage, who loves the limelight,
whose meat and drink it is to hear his name repeated perpetually by the
populace, deserves what he gets. And he nearly always gets what the fates
reserve for such vanities. In a greater or less degree these creators
of their own label suffer in the end: at the least disappointment and
neglect, at the most death. But as I have said they deserve what comes
to them. They have had their reward. It was not so with the stable
hereditary publicity of the Bourbon royal family and its adherents. They
could not help the light which beat upon them. They did not seek it.
The absurd legends in which any public figure is necessarily clothed as
with a wrap of falsehood is not one of their seeking or of their making.
They suffer for those legends and for the consequences of those legends
precisely after the fashion which dramatic irony demands that the victim
of any great tragedy should suffer--in spite of themselves and with no
understanding of how the thing came.
What could be more ridiculous than the figment of Louis XV--obese,
good-natured, slow, irresolute in morals, irresolute in policy--as a
tyrant. Or what could be more absurd than the fiction of a libertine
Marie Antoinette? Or of a democratic Duke of Orléans? Or of a patriot
Necker?
It was, I think, this element of undeserved and awfully ironic tragedy
which burnt into the soul of all those who had come into contact with
the harmless but sometimes dignified and always splendid circle of
Versailles. One of the few sincere emotions of Burke’s life was,
I think, the moment when he broke out into rhetoric on the fate of
the Queen. This middle-class man had seen her, and the grotesque
disproportion between herself and her fate moved him to real feeling. It
is to his credit, for not many things that Burke said were genuine. He
was an advocate taking pay from people who wanted arguments and I think
he would have argued just as well for better pay on the other side.
This appassionate sympathy with and support of the victims was very
conspicuous in Madame Tussaud herself. And she carried it through the
whole of that period when she was at first unwillingly modelling the
revolutionaries, often with disgust compelled to take the mask of a dead
face, or later (she was in prison with Josephine) associated with the
figures of the period of the Directorate and the Consulship.
Of those personal interviews when that handsome woman now in middle
age was still engaged at her task of modelling and sculpture in wax,
there is none of which we would rather have a full record than the
modelling of Napoleon. It is mentioned in Mr. Tussaud’s book only by
way of quotation from a contemporary journal--the _Belle Assemblée_. It
would be interesting to know if there is any family record giving full
details, for we have not even the date, though we have the hour of the
day--six o’clock in the morning--that she first met the Emperor. He was
not Emperor yet and we can fix an inferior and a superior limit easily
enough for the portrait was made at the Tuileries, after Napoleon as
First Consul had gone there, and before the Peace of Amiens. It must,
therefore, have fallen within a period of only just over two years; it
must have been done either in 1800 or in 1801.
It is in connection with Napoleon that the shifting of values, which I
have suggested took place through the transference of the collection
to England, may be noted. The exhibition once fixed in London took on
the English point of view and to that extent distorted a full European
impression. For instance, one of the great features in the story of
the collection is the visit of the Duke of Wellington to the effigy of
Napoleon, and a well-known and almost famous picture was made of the
incident. I am old enough to remember many people who spoke of it as
though it was a most dramatic moment in the history of the nineteenth
century. But no one with the full European sense would feel like that.
Wellington was not the great protagonist against Napoleon. He was but
one of fifty men opposed to the Emperor. The defeat of Napoleon was in
Russia, and at Leipsic and at Waterloo, not at Waterloo alone, and the
victors of Waterloo were Wellington and Blücher, neither of whom could
have succeeded without the other.
Of the figures added to the great collection after Madame Tussaud’s
death, of the figures which carry on the historical record and continue
to add to its value, I am sure that the one of most interest for an
Englishman is that of Richard Burton. It was not (apparently) modelled
directly from life. But it was modelled under the eye of Lady Burton
herself, and satisfied that critic.
The inclusion of such a figure is an example of what I mean when I say
that such a collection is a valuable and continuous piece of historical
evidence. The greatness of Burton was missed. He was subject to a boycott
due in the main to his exposure of the ritual murder at Damascus. His
energetic but isolated character did not square with that of the most of
his countrymen. And yet to have an Englishman so uniquely English and to
have recognised what a part he was of the record of his time shows a sure
instinct.
It is here that the chief danger imperilling the value of the collection
appears. And with that after so much praise I would conclude.
Madame Tussaud, it will be remembered, decided at some time early in
the 19th century to make continuous additions to her collection as
time went on, to keep it up to date, to make it contemporary. It was a
natural decision and obviously necessary to the conduct of the thing as
a business enterprise. For contemporaries will always desire to look at
the portraits of those who are for any reason notorious, rather than to
preserve the historical record. But save in quite exceptional times, such
as that of the Revolution, which gave the collection its origin, there is
always the danger of a change in values. In the first place, for a man
to be notorious is not the same thing as for a man to deserve fame. His
notoriety may be of the quality of fame rather than mere notoriety, and
may mature into fame, and yet not be a fame of that first class which
warrants an historical record. In either of these two cases there is the
danger of disproportion in the collection, regarded as something of
slight historical value. But that disproportion may be remedied by the
removal of the figures.
The third danger attaching to the system is not remediable. It is
omission, and that is what I had in my mind in the case of Burton. It is
very unlikely that a man producing a series of contemporary portraits
in the early part of James I’s reign would have included William
Shakespeare; or in the end of Victoria’s reign a man so remarkable
(though, of course, not on a great scale) as Samuel Butler. There is
always a certain proportion of men in any generation with regard to whom
the careful observer can say with fair certitude that posterity will
require to know much more of them, and who are yet for the moment not in
the public eye. Now the commercial necessities of an exhibition cannot
consider these men. They are of no value to the crowd, and therein, I
say, lies the danger. Let me give an example.
I do not think (I may be wrong as I am speaking in the negative of what
is only a detail), I do not think that there is in the Tussaud collection
any model of the great Carnot. Carnot was on the whole the most virile
of all that virile revolutionary group, and he was one of the first half
dozen of those who created the modern world. In a military sense Carnot
was the tutor and creator of Napoleon. But it would certainly not have
occurred to any observer of popular feelings (even if Carnot had been
included) at the time, especially of popular feelings with an eye to the
English market, that Carnot was worth preserving. To-day I think most
students of history would rather have a really accurate study of Carnot
than of even Robespierre.
If ever, which is possible, a collection of this sort comes under the
aid or patronage of the state, the peril I speak of might in theory be
removed: for the state will endow. But as things are, the peril exists.
I mention it because I do sincerely regard this body of effigies not as
something concerned with as ephemeral a function in the state as popular
curiosity, still less as a mere commercial venture, but rather--what
I have called it throughout this essay--a unique piece of historical
record. And history, I take it, is the indispensable memory with which
citizens should furnish themselves if they are to understand their own
state and civilisation.
THE ROMANCE OF MADAME TUSSAUD’S
CHAPTER I
Mr. Tussaud first enters his father’s studio--Reverie--Madame
Tussaud’s uncle forsakes the medical profession for
art--Madame’s birth and parentage--A Prince’s promise.
It was at the age of fourteen and in the year 1872 that I first entered
my father’s studio, and well I remember the bright summer morning I
passed its threshold to place myself under his tuition.
It was an odd rememorative sort of place, the eeriness of which sat
uneasily on the mind of, I fear, a somewhat jocose and irresponsible
youth.
The surroundings somehow seemed to force upon my mind the memories of men
and things I must have heard about or dreamt of, or with whom I had been
in some way made familiar. Moreover, the place was so out of touch with
the ordinary affairs of life, so reposeful and secluded amid the din and
turmoil of the world outside.
The studio stood well in the rear of an old-world residence, known as
Salisbury House, in the parish of Marylebone. Here the family had long
lived. The house confronted what, in my early days, was then still
designated the New Road. Upon its site there has been since erected the
imposing classic palace designed to accommodate the hitherto poorly
housed Corporation of the borough.
Whenever I recall this eventful day there readily springs to my mind the
circumstance that I found my father busily engaged in modelling a new
portrait of the Prince of Wales--the late King Edward--for whose recovery
from a very dangerous illness the nation had recently held a Day of
Thanksgiving.
From this day onward I may claim to have acted as something more than a
mere spectator of that long procession of models wrought by my father’s
diligent hands. Each one necessitated the making of some small sketch,
some characteristic study, that has helped to swell as strange a
collection of memorials as ever existed of men and events of bygone days.
It is amid these surroundings that I now sit to begin the writing of
these chapters; and a strangely engrossing retrospect they reveal. Five
generations of my family have contributed towards them, and now, on a
modelling stool by my side, there stands the promising work of a son who
will, I trust, one day follow me to carry on the work.
During the quietude of those hours that succeed the labours of the day,
and when the last studio hand has closed the door behind him, I take the
opportunity of penning this brief history. Often in the moving shadows of
the twilight or in the flickering flame of a falling ember I fancy I see
life and movement in the faces that gaze down upon me, quickened, as it
were, to respond to the memories their features evoke.
But for me, at least, there is little that is disquieting in their
scrutiny. For the most part they are old familiars, and a long
acquaintance has set us wonderfully at our ease.
As the eye passes from the semblance of one celebrity to that of another,
how vividly they carry one’s thoughts back through King Edward’s reign,
the long years Queen Victoria sat upon the throne, the days of William
IV, the reign and regency of “The First Gentleman of Europe,” and far
back into the days of good “Farmer George”!
Even though set among the strong and characteristic features of the
leading men of these memorable reigns, the striking countenance of
Napoleon can be discerned without hesitation, and his familiar features
force me in imagination to undergo the ordeal of crossing the Channel to
retrace the course this narrative takes and discover my ancestress under
the domination of the First Consul, then pushing in hot haste his fortune
at the point of the bayonet, and fast traversing the hazardous road
leading to the throne of France.
Somehow we do not find this long and curious retrospect illumined by
any very strong ray of human happiness. Even the overshadowing head
and shoulders of the great Napoleon do not conceal from our vision the
dismal heads of the revolutionists; indeed, if they had been hidden from
our sight, could these ghoulish impressions ever be effaced from our
memory? And so, behind Bonaparte, one’s eyes sight the sinister heads
of Robespierre, Fouquier-Tinville, Carrier, Hébert--merciless creatures
who gambled with the lives of their fellow men for high positions, and
multiplied these awful human stakes that they might hold themselves
secure.
There, too, in the falling light, one perceives the faces of Louis XVI
and his Queen, Marie Antoinette, the two most notable and pitiful victims
of the Reign of Terror--a reign, forsooth, in which these ill-starred
sovereigns, the descendants of generations of kings, were but the poorest
and saddest of subjects.
The vista is long and hazy, but it is not too dim for one to observe upon
a bracket the visage of the great Voltaire, with its leering eyes and
sardonic grin. His bust is _vis-à-vis_ with the ponderous head of the
idealist Rousseau, with its heavy forehead and its short, narrow chin.
And so face after face peers down upon me, carrying the mind back with
unfailing steps until is reached the true source from which this dramatic
story springs.
* * * * *
[Illustration: CHRISTOPHER CURTIUS
Uncle of Mme. Tussaud and founder of the Museum in Paris during the
French Revolution in the Boulevard du Temple. A Portrait Study by John T.
Tussaud.]
In the year 1758, so far afield as the city of Berne, a certain young
Swiss, named Christopher Curtius, was earnestly employing his days as a
medical practitioner.
With the object of improving himself in his profession he had taken to
modelling the limbs and organs of the human body in wax. He soon extended
the scope of his labours to the execution of many miniature portraits
in that same plastic material, and gained the patronage of many of the
leading members of the aristocracy. In this work he succeeded well, and
towards his latter days in Berne he practised rather as an artist than as
a family doctor.
It is as the maternal uncle of Madame Tussaud, the subject of these
memoirs, that Christopher Curtius comes under our consideration.
Madame Tussaud was the child of one Joseph Grosholtz, who lost his life
when serving on the Staff of General Wurmser during the Seven Years’
War, a couple of months or so before she was born. He was of purely
Swiss parentage, and the family to this day prides itself on being of
Burgundian Swiss stock.
Although Marie Grosholtz was not married until the year 1795, it will be
well to refer to her henceforth as Madame Tussaud, under which name she
is universally known.
Madame Grosholtz and her child seem to have been the only relatives
possessed by Curtius, who later induced his sister to take up her
residency with him, doubtless with the object of taking control of the
affairs of his household.
It was when Curtius had fully established himself as an artist in Berne
that an incident took place, about the year 1762, which led to important
consequences.
The Prince de Conti had been losing favour at the Court of his royal
cousin, Louis XV, a circumstance mainly due, we are told, to the Prince’s
excessive popularity with the Army and a certain independent bearing he
adopted towards the King and his favourites. The King’s mistress, Madame
de Pompadour, did not hesitate to show her resentment at de Conti’s lack
of deference.
According to all accounts, the Prince did not take his position very
much to heart, for, in truth, an estrangement between the Court and the
representatives of his house afforded little in the nature of a new
experience. At any rate, he shook the dust of the capital off his boots,
and set out on a tour through Europe.
On this journey he tarried for some days in the city of Berne, betraying
a keen desire to participate in all that mediæval town could afford him
by way of interest and entertainment.
Among these Curtius’s studio--which had now acquired something of the
dignity of a private museum--was not allowed to escape his attention.
No account of his visit to this establishment has been handed down,
but a few words uttered by the Prince on leaving conveyed, beyond all
doubt, his genuine admiration for the doctor-artist’s skill in his new
profession as a sculptor in wax.
“If you will leave Berne and come to Paris, I will undertake to find
you a suitable atelier in which to carry on your work, and hold myself
responsible for your receiving as many commissions as you feel disposed
to executive. Come,” he urged. “You will not regret it.”
One wonders what kindred foibles, what curious traits of disposition in
common, existed between this Prince and the artist that there should have
been struck so readily a chord of sympathy between them. For the offer,
as we shall hereafter learn, had not been lightly made, nor had its ready
acceptance been inspired without betraying a ready confidence most men
would have deemed it highly imprudent to concede.