Literary sitters--George R. Sims’s impromptu--His ordeal in the
Chamber of Horrors--George Augustus Sala’s masterpiece.
Mr. G. R. Sims was a cheery, entertaining sitter; not, perhaps, what most
artists would consider a helpful one. His active mind busied itself with
every object of interest around him. He would know all about them, and
tell each off with some droll quip or whimsical jest.
I have spent many a bright hour with “Dagonet”--yes, even including those
spent with him in the Chamber of Horrors.
I once chanced to have a book of his (the _Dagonet Ballads_) in my hand
when he came into my studio, and I asked him to sign his name in it.
Without a moment’s hesitation he wrote:
DEAR TUSSAUD,
I’m a model man.
You’re a modeller.
Yours truly,
G. R. SIMS.
Soon after we had decided to add Mr. Sims’s figure to the Exhibition,
Mrs. G. A. Sala happened to meet him, and questioned him as to the
sensations he experienced in picturing himself as a waxen celebrity.
“I feel very frightened indeed,” he promptly replied, “and more than
that, exceedingly sorry that I ever promised to become a waxwork, for I
have been told since that if the public grow weary of your presence, or
the Tussauds get offended with you, they melt you down, and build up a
more popular fellow out of your dripping. Nasty idea, very!”
Mrs. Sala said it certainly _was_ a very nasty idea; but if there were
any truth in the melting-down story, G. R. could enjoy the satisfaction
of thinking that he might have arisen in his waxen grandeur from the
“dripping” of someone less popular than himself.
Mr. Sims said that so long as the public only stuck pins into him, or
stamped on his toes, he did not mind; but he should feel it very much if
they were to bang him about the head with an umbrella, or take him by the
collar and shake him.
It must have been in the early winter of the year 1891, while I was
modelling him, that Mr. Sims had the following interesting and somewhat
unpleasant experience, which he himself describes. He says:
“I have been penetrating the secrets of Tussaud’s lately, and had a
specially quiet half-hour alone with the murderers in the Chamber of
Horrors, just to see what it was like.
“The idea came to me one night when I had been sitting late to Mr. John
Tussaud. I wanted to see what it would feel like to be all alone with
those awful people with only one dim jet of gas lighting up their fearful
features.
“After the door was shut I walked about and whistled, and stared
defiantly at William Corder and James Bloomfield Rush, and even went
so far as to address M. Eyraud in French. But wandering about in the
semi-darkness I stumbled and fell, and when I got up and looked around me
I found I was in Mrs. Pearcey’s kitchen.
“Then I made one wild rush at the closed door, and hammered at it until
the kindly watchman came and let me out. I never want to be shut up alone
at night in the Chamber of Horrors again as long as I live.”
Humorously describing my studios at the time, Mr. Sims says:
“At Madame Tussaud’s I am at present in rather a curious condition. There
is a good deal of the Thames mystery about me. It is not given to every
man to see his legs in one room, his hands hanging up in another, and his
head on a shelf, looking about anxiously for his body.
“I can’t say I quite like looking at my head on a shelf. It suggests
decapitation and Madame de Lamballe’s head on a pike as Louis caught
sight of it when the mob held it up at the window.
“But I am assured that I shall be put together next week, and that my
limbs will once more be found together as Nature intended they should be.
“I don’t know what that Scotch sixpenny which refers to me in highly
uncomplimentary terms about seven times in every column will say, but
the exigencies of space at the Marylebone Museum have compelled the
management to put me next to Lord Tennyson. I am sure that this will be
such a shock to my modesty that I shall go hot and melt the very first
day that the weather is at all warm.
“Fortunately, I shall have a brother journalist to support me and keep
me in countenance, for while Lord Tennyson is seated writing poetry in
his study, Mr. George Augustus Sala in _his_ study sits next door to him,
dashing off one of his brilliant leaders for the _Daily Telegraph_. It is
in a study built up on the other side of Lord Tennyson that the visitor
to Madame Tussaud’s will at an early date find himself face to face with
‘Dagonet.’”
There George R. Sims has been seated ever since. Twenty-eight years ago!
Time has wrought many changes, but during the whole of that period I have
uninterruptedly enjoyed Mr. Sims’s valued friendship.
[Illustration: GEORGE AUGUSTUS SALA
The bust of the eminent journalist, first exhibited at the Royal Academy,
London, in 1890, by John T. Tussaud.]
George Augustus Sala sat to me about the same time, and a very good
sitter he was. The celebrated journalist lived in a flat at Victoria
Street, Westminster, where I called on him, and I remember his saying to
me with pride:
“I’m taking up modern Greek in my sixtieth year. What do you think I am
reading? I am reading an excellent account in Greek of the Stanfield Hall
murder.”
During the autumn of 1889 I had seen a good deal of Mr. Sala, for we were
at that time discussing the details for the rewriting of our Exhibition
Catalogue.
He had always taken a great interest in Madame Tussaud’s, and, like
many other literary men, had found it useful as a place of reference
on matters of portraiture and costume. He entered upon the scheme for
producing a better and larger Catalogue with great enthusiasm, but I
soon discovered that the work was hardly likely to receive that equable
treatment necessary for a book of the kind.
There were certain subjects his mind positively ran riot on, while others
scarcely aroused the slightest interest.
Marie Antoinette and Mary, Queen of Scots, stirred his imagination most
of all, and to the ill-fated Queen of Louis XVI he reverted so often that
it seemed the book was likely to be over-weighted with matter dealing
with her sad career, to the exclusion of so much else of vital importance
to our handbook.
Whenever he stood in front of the decapitated head of Marie Antoinette he
always contemplated it in silence--and invariably passed from it without
making any remark, as if it were a subject too sad for ordinary comment.
“I have done the Marie Antoinette biography,” greeted me long before the
work had been definitely agreed upon, and six or seven pages of essay
were pressed into my hands as an accomplished undertaking that positively
left no room for further consideration. This matter was printed in full
in our Catalogue, and remained there until the difficulty in procuring
paper during the war necessitated its temporary elimination. It is,
perhaps, the best thing, from a purely literary point of view, that Sala
ever wrote.
It is reprinted as the following chapter.