Heads of the Revolution--Madame’s terrible experiences--The
guillotine in pawn--Madame acquires the knife, lunette, and
chopper.
It is no part of our concern to trace the course of the Revolution
throughout, or to dwell too long upon its horrors. Nevertheless before
Madame Tussaud passed into tranquil days she had to suffer the severest
ordeal of her life, the memory of which she could never wholly efface.
We can hardly imagine her bitter experience when compelled to employ
her young hands in taking impressions of heads immediately after
decapitation, and this, strange to say, by the very same knife which may
be seen at this day among the relics of the Revolution at Tussaud’s.
[Illustration: GEORGES-JACQUES DANTON]
[Illustration: JEAN BAPTISTE CARRIER
Responsible for the butchery of the Vendean prisoners at Nantes during
the French Revolution. Impression of his head taken immediately after he
had been guillotined, 16th December, 1794.]
Thus she was compelled to reproduce the lineaments of Louis XVI, Marie
Antoinette, Hébert, Danton, Robespierre, Carrier, Fouquier-Tinville--the
best and fairest, and also the worst and vilest--who met their death on
the scaffold. Unthinkable were the gruesome tasks of faithfully recording
their features imposed upon the young woman who was destined to bring to
England that Exhibition the annals of which we now relate.
No wonder many a heated controversy has waged around these works, for it
is hard to realise that they are the actual impressions of those heads
that fell under the knife of the guillotine. Yet they are the selfsame
impressions that were shown at Christopher Curtius’s Museum in Paris.
That Madame Tussaud’s uncle would have had the temerity to exhibit
spurious heads to a crowd by no means in a humour to be trifled with, and
far too familiar with the features the casts portrayed to be deceived,
is more than unlikely; and we know such an imposition in his case would
have been quite unnecessary. The casts were undoubtedly taken under
compulsion, either with the object of pandering to the temper of the
people, or of serving as confirmatory evidence of execution having taken
place--perhaps both.
The idea of exhibiting the heads of those who had been done to death as
enemies of the people had asserted itself during the very earliest days
of the Revolution. Within a fortnight of the taking of the Bastille,
Foulon’s head had been severed from its body and paraded through the
streets of Paris at the end of a pike.
[Illustration: THE PRINCESS DE LAMBALLE
A friend and companion to Marie Antoinette.]
Later the noble features of the Princess de Lamballe had suffered the
same brutal degradation, with the added inhumanity of having been thrust
between the window-bars of the Temple Prison, wherein the unfortunate
Louis XVI and his wife were incarcerated.
[Illustration: THE GUILLOTINE
Showing the mode of execution in France. A facsimile with wax models now
in the Tussaud collection.]
On that terrible day, the 10th of August, 1792, when the Swiss Guard was
cut to pieces in defending the Tuileries, several of these brave soldiers
had their heads stuck upon pikes and exhibited to the mob. The Royalist
writer, Suleau, suffered the same fate.
How far had Madame Tussaud been implicated in the accomplishment of the
dreadful work of taking casts from decapitated heads?
It was during the autumn of 1789 that Christopher Curtius (who had by
this time adopted Marie as his daughter) insisted upon her withdrawing
from the service of Madame Elizabeth, to whom she had, with every
reason, become devotedly attached. For Curtius had, at the outset of
the disturbances in Paris, espoused the cause of the people, and, as an
adroit and far-seeing man, had become anxious for his adopted daughter’s
safety.
He, without doubt, desired she should return under his own roof to derive
the benefit of his protection. So it is that we find Marie in her uncle’s
studio adjoining his Exhibition, and where that gruesome work was so soon
to be undertaken.
Now during the year 1793 Curtius had been drawn into the service of the
National Convention, and on several occasions had to quit Paris for
many days at a time, leaving Marie and her mother to do the best they
could with the Exhibition during his absence. He was at this time “Envoy
Extraordinary of the Republic and War Commissary at Mayence.” On the last
occasion of his quitting the capital his absence extended over a period
of fully eighteen months.
Meanwhile heads were falling fast, and no one knew how long his own would
repose upon his shoulders. Then it was that Marie suffered the terrible
experience of having to take the impressions of so many heads that were
brought to her from the guillotine. We have it from her own mouth that it
was a task with which she dared not hesitate to comply.
It must have been known to many that only a few years back she had been
a member of the household of the King’s sister, Madame Elizabeth, at
Versailles, and not a few of those who were near and dear to her had
suffered death for a far less offence than that. But at last, as the
days wore on, the Jacobins themselves fell, and the Reign of Terror
gave way to the Directorate. Then easier times came, though still far
from tranquil. Nevertheless heads had ceased to fall, and Sanson, the
executioner, finding his occupation gone, pawned his guillotine, and got
into woful trouble for alleged trafficking in municipal property.
Years after Madame came to this country she sent her son to Paris to
search out this terrible instrument of death, and, with the help of the
executioner, who was still living, and who solemnly vouched for its
authenticity, she secured the knife, the lunette, and also the chopper
that was used as a standby, lest the great knife should fail.
[Illustration: KNIFE, LUNETTE AND CHOPPER OF THE ORIGINAL GUILLOTINE USED
IN PARIS DURING THE REIGN OF TERROR
Years after, Madame Tussaud, with the aid of the executioner, procured
these for her collection.]
It was only after much negotiation and the payment of a very considerable
sum of money that her object was attained. And now the dread knife
harmlessly reposes by the side of the impressions of those heads it so
ruthlessly struck off a century and a quarter ago--that of Louis XVI and
his Queen, Marie Antoinette, as well as those of Robespierre, Danton,
Fouquier-Tinville, Hébert, and the miscreant of Nantes, Carrier. From
the time they were first shown in Paris until the present day they have
been viewed by an ever-increasing throng, though the sight of them can
never have been pleasing, and those who gaze upon them shudder and pass
on.
Though Madame Tussaud did not witness the execution of Marie Antoinette,
yet she remembered seeing the Queen pass on a tumbril through the jeering
crowds to the scaffold. The once gay and light-hearted Queen was dressed
in white for her last pageant on earth, her hands tied behind her. The
spectacle brought back to Madame memories of the royal palace where
she had frequently attended to give lessons in modelling, and she was
so overcome that she fainted. Perhaps the most horrifying experience
undergone by Madame Tussaud during this terrible period was when the
mangled head of the greatly beloved Princess de Lamballe was brought to
her that a cast might be made. In vain did she protest that she could not
endure the ordeal. The brutal murderers compelled her to comply.
[Illustration: MARIE ANTOINETTE
Impression of her head taken immediately after she had been guillotined,
16th October, 1793.]