More sitters--Mr. John Burns walks and talks--We buy his
only suit--Mr. George Bernard Shaw has to work for his
living--General Booth--Four leading suffragettes--Christabel’s
model “speaks”--The Channel swimmer.
The most restless of all my sitters was the Right Honourable John Burns,
when he was plain John Burns.
I modelled him in the year 1889 or 1890, at the time of the great Dock
Strike. Mr. Burns was then throwing all his magnetic personality into the
cause of the workers, and he brought some of that magnetic personality
into my studio. Only in a technical sense did he “sit” to me. He was
walking and talking all the time.
These were very turbulent days, and Mr. Burns had figured in the
Trafalgar Square riots. Shipowners and shipbuilders--and everybody, I
imagine, having more than £500 a year--were the objects of his implacable
distrust. He was a younger and poorer man then.
Mr. Burns wore the blue reefer suit which had survived the jostlings of
many a crowd, but he did not bring to my studio the famous straw hat of
which so much was written in the Press at that time. When I spoke to him
about the hat he rather fenced the question, and to this day I believe
that hat to be somewhere in Mr. Burns’s possession as a treasured
souvenir of his stressful past. I have never seen Mr. Burns wearing any
other kind of clothes than blue serge.
I struck a bargain with the dockers’ champion that he should let me
have the suit he was wearing with which to clothe his portrait in the
Exhibition, and so complete the realism of the model. Mr. Burns demurred
at first, and then it appeared he had an extremely good reason for doing
so. It was the only suit he possessed, and we agreed that I should have
it as soon as I provided him with a new one to take its place on his own
back.
Mr. Burns told the story of this transaction in reply to an interrupter
at a public meeting.
“Where did you get that suit?” asked the interrogator.
“I got it,” said Mr. Burns frankly, “from Madame Tussaud’s. When my
portrait was put in the Exhibition you may, or you may not, have noticed
that it was wearing my old suit. As I had no other clothes the management
gave me the suit I am wearing now, and I hope you will agree that I made
a pretty good bargain.”
The audience cheered the speaker and booed the heckler.
Mr. Burns’s portrait has been brought up to date since then, but it
still wears the old reefer suit, and the fact of this being out of the
fashion and rather skimpy only adds to the effectiveness of the picture
by recalling the working man the late Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman raised
to Cabinet rank.
They tell me Mr. Burns is getting white, but when I modelled him his hair
was black and plentiful.
_Judy_ commemorated the suit incident in the following verse, depicting
Burns making figure eights on the ice:
’Ave ye seen Johnny Burns
Strikin’ figgers on the hice?
’Ave ye seen his twists and turns?--
Sure, an’ can’t he do it nice!
In his Tussaud’s suit of navy blue
’N’ his famous old straw hat,
With his Hacmes ’n’ his knobstick too,
A reg’lar ’ristocrat!
A contrast to Mr. Burns, though possibly of similar socialistic opinions,
was Mr. George Bernard Shaw, whom I long wanted to sit to me.
I had not made the acquaintance of the brilliant satirist, and somehow
hesitated about approaching him. Eventually I wrote to Mr. Shaw making
known my wish, and, without delay, I received from him a good-humoured
letter, in which he said that it would give him much pleasure to “join
the company of the Immortals.”
A little later he wrote making an appointment, and, in due course, Mr.
Shaw came to my studio and gave me a delightful hour of his company.
He took up his position on the dais in the most natural manner, and there
was nothing more for me to do than proceed with my modelling. I do not
know who was the more amused, Mr. Shaw or myself--I by his sayings, and
he by the novelty of the situation.
He talked freely as I went on with my work, and one thing among his many
whimsical sayings I well remember:
“I took to writing with the object of obtaining a living without having
to work for it, but I have long since realised that I made a great
mistake.”
As we walked through the Exhibition he took a general interest in all he
saw, but it was the Napoleonic relics that detained him, as is generally
the case with distinguished people.
I thought I detected a certain shyness about Mr. Shaw in the Chamber of
Horrors. He was very reserved, and surveyed the faces of degenerate men
and women without offering any criticism. I remember that the crafty,
and yet not wholly repulsive, face of Charles Peace engaged Mr. Shaw’s
attention several minutes.
I have no knowledge whether Mr. Shaw ever called to see his portrait.
It is quite likely that he did, and it is no less likely that his visit
passed unobserved.
It was inevitable that so prominent a figure in the religious world as
the late General Booth should find a place in Madame Tussaud’s Exhibition.
I went to see the General at the instance of some of his friends, who
thought that the portrait of him already included would be all the better
for being brought up to date. I recollect being impressed by General
Booth’s force of character as manifested alike in his manner and in his
appearance. He had a keen eye and classic aquiline features.
Though he made no mention of the matter himself, it was pretty plainly
hinted to me that permission to include the General’s portrait should be
accompanied by some expression of gratitude on the part of the Exhibition
authorities “for the good of the cause.”
I also went to Exeter Hall to study the General’s demeanour while
addressing a large audience.
What I remember mostly about that visit was that a “converted” sailor
mounted the platform and made a rambling speech. So frank were the
confessions of the artless tar that General Booth found it necessary to
bundle him unceremoniously off the platform, to the great amusement of
the congregation.
I was much interested in modelling a quartette of leading suffragettes,
Mrs. Pankhurst, Mrs. Pethick Lawrence, Miss Christabel Pankhurst, and
Miss Annie Kenney.
The group is conspicuously shown in the Grand Hall to-day. The ladies
came separately, several mornings, and took as much interest as I did
in the production of their portraits, a process that was in no sense
tedious, as their conversation whiled away the time most pleasantly.
I very soon became aware that the suffragette on the political warpath is
a very different woman from the suffragette in other circumstances.
None of them in the least degree frightened me or hectored me; in
fact, political questions were discussed by them in the quietest, most
sensible, and most intelligent manner, giving me the impression then that
the extension of the vote to women would not find such women unqualified
to make reasonable use of the privilege so long withheld from them.
After the figures were added to the Exhibition, two of the four
ladies very good-humouredly hinted to me that the portraits were not
very flattering. I remember the ladies in question coming to see the
group, and I promised I would make what alterations seemed possible
and desirable. As I have not heard from them since, I gather that the
likenesses have proved satisfactory.
Months later, after a batch of laughing damsels had left the building, a
paper disc, bearing the words “Votes for Women,” was discovered fixed to
a button on Mr. Asquith’s coat.
It was soon after the figures of the quartette had been placed in the
Exhibition that an incident occurred which comes to me through the medium
of a Fleet Street artist in black and white attached to a well-known
paper.
This gentleman had been instructed to attend a meeting some distance away
from town for the purpose of taking some sketches of Miss Christabel
Pankhurst, who was announced to speak. Having left things till the last
moment, he discovered, to his dismay, that he had missed his train, and,
not knowing what to do, he was bewailing his misfortune to a fellow
artist, when the latter slapped him on the back and said:
“Never mind, old fellow, you just go to Tussaud’s Exhibition and take as
many pictures of the fair Christabel’s figure as you like. The model is a
speaking likeness, and you can take it from me that the sketches will be
all right; they will be quite as good as if drawn from life.”
The advice was no sooner given than acted upon, and the result, I am
told, was most satisfactory.
Another sitter was Mr. T. W. Burgess, who came to my studio a few days
after he swam the Channel.
The burly Yorkshireman laughed as he entered and remarked:
“I am in pretty good training, but I would rather swim the Channel again
than sit still for you, Mr. Tussaud. However, I will do the best I can.”
He sold the clothes he took off before he entered the water, and these
clothes are worn by his portrait, now in the Exhibition. He also parted
with the goggles and indiarubber cap he had worn during his swim, and the
cup from which he took nourishment. Unfortunately one of Burgess’s too
ardent “admirers” purloined his hero’s cup from us.
[Illustration: T. W. BURGESS, THE CHANNEL SWIMMER
Modeled from life by John T. Tussaud. In common with many of the
models in Madame Tussaud’s, this model is dressed in the subject’s own
clothing.]