Father Mathew 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.
[Illustration: FATHER MATHEW, “THE NOBLE PRIEST OF CORK”
A great temperance leader whose striking resemblance to Napoleon I.
caused an odd confusion in the Museum when in renovating the wax figures
a servant put the head of Father Mathew on the shoulders of the deposed
Emperor.]
One of the greatest of all temperance reformers was Father Mathew, “the
Noble Priest of Cork,” who persuaded sixty thousand people in London
alone to become teetotallers and to take a pledge to that effect. The
apostle of temperance was induced to come to London in the early forties
to give a series of lectures.
Some were delivered at Hall’s Riding School (now a motor garage) in
Albany Street, opposite Holy Trinity Church and close to Great Portland
Street Station, and Mr. Francis Tussaud (grandfather of the writer)
modelled him in one of the rooms of that place. He was constantly
interrupted during the sittings by people of all classes and creeds
coming into take the pledge. Most of them insisted upon kneeling to
receive Father Mathew’s blessing. They were probably actuated by respect
for him, and also by the hope that the recollection of his blessing might
strengthen their teetotal vows.
At the close of the sittings Father Mathew detached from his breast his
temperance medal, which was attached to a ribbon round his neck, and
handed it to the artist that it might be placed upon his model.
Father Mathew bore so striking a resemblance in face and figure to
Napoleon I that the two were once oddly mistaken for each other by our
own servants.
We had occasion to renovate the portraits of the soldier and the
preacher. To do so it was necessary that the heads of both should be
detached. The assistant who was responsible for taking the figures to
pieces in this way mistook the one head for the other. The error was
fortunately soon detected by Mr. Francis Tussaud, who had modelled both
the heads, and he soon had the mistake rectified.
There are persons still living who remember Father Mathew. An old and
respected neighbour, Francis Draper by name, is one of the youngest men
of eighty-seven one could possibly meet. Although born in 1832, he still
possesses a wonderfully clear memory.
In 1842, when Father Mathew paid his visit to London, Mr. Draper--then
a boy of ten years--was introduced to him at the Riding School. In an
anteroom upstairs, to which Father Mathew retired between the times
when he administered the pledge, he saw an artist modelling his face
in clay, which he was told was for Madame Tussaud’s Exhibition. He had
an impression at the time that the artist was Francis, a son of Madame
Tussaud, and his surmise was accurate, for it was Mr. Francis Tussaud who
was executing the model.
For many years afterwards he saw “The Noble Priest of Cork” standing in a
group in Madame Tussaud’s, with his medal suspended round his neck, and,
he says, it was the best likeness of anyone in the rooms.
The assassination of Alexander II of Russia in March, 1881, recalls a
quaint story of Voltaire’s chair, which stands in a corner of one of the
Napoleon Rooms, not far removed from a collection of heads of leaders of
the French Revolution.
[Illustration: VOLTAIRE’S CHAIR]
This chair is one of our most treasured relics. It was made to Voltaire’s
own design, and is unlike any other chair we have ever seen.
After the _Entente Cordiale_ between France and England in the forties,
the visit to Queen Victoria of Louis Philippe was promptly followed by
the arrival in London, in 1844, of Alexander’s father, Nicholas I of
Russia, who, during his stay, was conducted over the Exhibition by Madame
Tussaud’s elder son, Joseph.
In the course of his tour round the galleries the Tsar’s attention was
arrested by the great Frenchman’s wonderful chair. Being struck by its
ingenious construction, he examined it very closely, and then, as so many
persons have done, gave himself the pleasure of occupying the seat in
which the famous satirist had spent many an industrious hour.
The chair was intended by Voltaire to facilitate his literary work,
and, evidently taking account of his incessant labours, he had the arms
extended without supports so that he could sit in any attitude and facing
any direction, while a movable writing-slope was attached to be always
within his reach.
So keen an interest did the Tsar take in the chair that we decided to
make a replica and send it to him as a pleasant surprise. This was done,
but no direct acknowledgment of the chair’s delivery was ever received.
Months afterwards, however, two cases--one containing a splendid gallery
portrait of Nicholas and the other a beautiful statuette of the same
monarch--arrived at the Exhibition. These presents were accepted as
a recognition, in practical form, of the chair. They could not have
signified an Imperial bid for a place in the Exhibition, for a most
lifelike model of His Majesty was already there.
[Illustration: NICHOLAS I., EMPEROR OF RUSSIA
Gallery portrait by Bothmann presented to Madame Tussaud’s by the Tsar.]
Nearly forty years later, on the assassination of Nicholas’s son,
Alexander--to which allusion has been made--there appeared in one of our
leading English illustrated papers, which gave pages to the story of the
assassination, a full double-page picture of the Imperial study at St.
Petersburg, and, behold, therein stood the identical chair which we had
sent to Nicholas I.
It is interesting to note that on Wednesday, the 20th of October,
thirty-six years later, a number of Princesses came to the Exhibition;
and among them was Princess Alix of Hesse, then a happy young girl of
eight, and now mourned as the late Tsarina, who, as reported, shared
with the Tsar and his family a terrible death at the hands of diabolical
assassins during the recent Russian Revolution. Among the royal party
which came on that day were our own Princesses Louise, Victoria, and Maud
of Wales.
A great Wesleyan preacher and lecturer in his day was the Rev. Peter
McKenzie, who died in November, 1895. He deserves a place in these
memoirs on account of his characteristic and rather eccentric behaviour
when he visited the Exhibition. In the course of his perambulation
through the galleries he, like most of our patrons, found his way to the
Napoleon Rooms, where Voltaire’s chair immediately arrested his attention.
Striking an indignant attitude in front of it, the Wesleyan preacher
exclaimed, “And this belonged to the man that was going to pull down the
edifice of Christianity and sweep the religion of Jesus Christ from the
earth!” So saying, he planted himself in the chair and, with a triumphant
wave of his hand, declaimed to the wondering visitors gathered round the
following verse of a well-known hymn:
Jesus shall reign where’er the sun
Doth his successive journeys run;
His kingdom stretch from shore to shore,
Till moons shall wax and wane no more.