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.
One of the most bloodthirsty of all the red Terrorists was Jean Paul
Marat, who was slain in his bath by Charlotte Corday on the 13th of July,
1793.
[Illustration: CHARLOTTE CORDAY]
Marat, as a young man, had lived in this country for some time, and was
well known to Madame Tussaud through visits he paid to the house of her
uncle, Curtius, at 20 Boulevard du Temple.
Immediately after his assassination she was called upon to take a cast
of Marat’s head. “They came for me,” she relates, “to go to Marat’s
house at once, and to take with me what appliances I needed to make an
impression of his features. The cadaverous aspect of the fiend made me
feel desperately ill, but they stood over me and forced me to perform the
task.” Marat’s model is still to be seen in the Exhibition lying in the
bath in which he was stabbed by the heroic young Norman girl.
Charlotte Corday had addressed a letter to Marat stating that she had
news of importance to communicate, and when she called he readily
admitted her. She amused him with an account of the Deputies at Caen,
when he said. “They shall all go to the guillotine.” “To the guillotine!”
exclaimed she, and as he took up a pencil to write the names of his
intended victims Charlotte plunged a knife into his heart.
Madame Tussaud afterwards visited Charlotte Corday in the Conciergerie
Prison, and described her as tall, well-mannered, and possessed of many
graces of character and appearance. The brave young woman, who paid for
her avenging act with her life, wrote in a letter to her father that
she had done what was right. After the heroine’s death Madame Tussaud
obtained a record of Charlotte Corday’s beautiful face.
[Illustration: JEAN PAUL MARAT
One of the most bloodthirsty of the terrorists, stabbed in his bath by
Charlotte Corday, 13th July, 1793. A wax model made immediately after his
death.]
The actual model, now in our Exhibition, of Marat dying in his bath, was
exhibited during the Revolution at the Museum of Curtius in Paris, and
attracted crowds, who were loud in their lamentations, for at that time
Marat was a national idol.
Robespierre visited the Museum, and took the opportunity of haranguing
the people at the door. In flamboyant language he said, “Enter, citizens,
and see the image of our departed friend, snatched from us by the
assassin’s hand, guided by the demon of aristocracy. Marat was the
father of the poor, the defender of the weak, and the consoler of the
wretched. As his heart poured forth the sweet emotions of sympathy for
the oppressed, so did the vigour of his mind emit its thunder against the
oppressor.” Then, descending to bathos, the cunning demagogue exclaimed,
“What did he get for it all? Five francs were found in his house!”
Surprise has sometimes been expressed by visitors that the bath in which
Marat was stabbed to death should be so small and of such a curious shape.
Marat was murdered in a “slipper” bath, which was more like a “halt boot”
than a slipper, so that the water would come up to the shoulders of the
bather without flowing over. This kind of bath was greatly in vogue at
the time of the French Revolution. Its object was to save water, which
in those days was not freely supplied. When the bather was in the bath a
small quantity of water would fill it.
Maximilien Robespierre had sent numerous people to their death during the
Reign of Terror. His own turn came at last, when he too met his death
from the sharp tongue of La Guillotine. The revulsion of feeling that had
set in against Robespierre was very bitter. He was shot at point-blank
range by a man named Meda in the Salle d’Égalité, a room in the Hôtel de
Ville, but was only wounded, and he went to the guillotine on the 28th of
July, 1794, with his broken jaw swathed in a white linen cloth.
[Illustration: MAXIMILIEN MARIE ISIDORE ROBESPIERRE
Impression of his head taken immediately after he had been guillotined,
28th July, 1794. One of the impressions done by Madame Tussaud, then a
young girl, by order of the authorities.]
An hour after the head of Robespierre rolled from the lunette Madame
Tussaud, reluctantly obeying a demand that an impression should be taken
of the severed head, set about the shuddering task. The cast therefrom
is now shown in one of our Exhibition rooms containing relics of the
Revolution. Her feelings may be imagined as she sat with the head of the
callous Terrorist confronting her.
Although Madame Tussaud took an impression of the features of Robespierre
directly after his execution, she had taken a portrait of him long before
his fall. He expressed a wish that his figure should be introduced
standing near that of Marat, as also those of Collot d’Herbois and
Rosignol. He proposed that they should send their own clothes in which
the figures might be dressed, to afford additional accuracy. The
likenesses were taken and apparelled as desired.
In those days Madame Tussaud often sat next Robespierre at dinner. She
describes him as always extremely polite and attentive, never omitting
those little acts of courtesy which are expected from a gentleman when
sitting at table with a lady, anticipating her wishes, and taking care
that she should never have to ask for anything. In this particular, says
Madame Tussaud, he differed from Marat, who was so selfishly eager to
supply his own wants that he never troubled himself with the needs of
others.
Robespierre’s conversation was generally animated, sensible, and
agreeable, but his enunciation was not good. There was nothing
particularly remarkable in his conduct, manners, or appearance when in
society. If noticed at all, it could only be as a pleasant, gentlemanly
man of moderate abilities. This was a strong admission for a lady who was
always a Royalist at heart and had been long detained in Paris against
her will.
Her association with the Court of Louis inevitably brought Madame Tussaud
under suspicion of the so-called Committee of Public Safety, and for
a time she was imprisoned with Madame de Beauharnais, who was later
to become the Empress Josephine, whom Napoleon divorced to marry Marie
Louise. The scene is changed, and we see Marie Grosholtz--Curtius having
died about that time--wedded in 1795 to François Tussaud, by whose name
she was henceforth to be known to posterity.
Madame Tussaud, it would appear, made the acquaintance and gained the
favour of Napoleon himself.
A Parisian publication, _La Belle Assemblée_, gives a circumstantial
account of Madame Tussaud being sent for to take the likeness of
Napoleon--when he was First Consul--at the Tuileries as early as
six o’clock in the morning. It would appear that Madame went at the
invitation of Napoleon’s first wife, Josephine, who was desirous of
having a permanent record of her husband’s features. The young modeller
was ushered into a room at the palace where the great soldier waited for
her. _La Belle Assemblée_ states that Josephine greeted Madame Tussaud
with kindness, and conversed much and most affably. Napoleon said little,
spoke in sharp sentences, and rather abruptly.
He would have shown her special consideration had she chosen to remain
in France; but it is not to be wondered at that Madame Tussaud cared no
longer to remain amid the sorrowful recollections of the Revolution, and
that she seized the opportunity, on the signing of the Peace of Amiens,
to leave France for ever. It was to England she turned for refuge and
the prosecution of her life’s work. Madame boldly transported across the
Channel to England her uncle’s two Paris Exhibitions, which, as already
related, had been made into one. Here she decided to settle, and here her
descendants have lived ever since.
[Illustration: MADAME TUSSAUD AT THE AGE OF 42
When she left France for England, never to return.
A Portrait Study by John T. Tussaud.]