Enemy models--A hostile public--Banishment of four rulers--Our
reply to _John Bull_--Attacks on the Kaiser’s effigy--Story of
an Iron Cross.
We now come to the eventful period that began in August, 1914.
[Illustration: COUNT ZEPPELIN
Model of the inventor of the Zeppelin airship on view at Madame
Tussaud’s.]
At the beginning of hostilities the Kaiser, Count Zeppelin, and other
German objectionables were relegated to a less conspicuous position than
they had formerly occupied. The enemy had not at that time gained the
animosity which his subsequent acts of “frightfulness” earned for him,
but he soon showed himself in his true colours.
It was in the spring of 1910 that a renewed portrait of the German
Emperor had been given a place of honour, with the Empress by his side,
near our own royal group. Not very long afterwards the British public
began to suspect the Kaiser of evil designs upon this country, and
visitors frequently indicated their displeasure in front of his model.
With the outbreak of war, naturally enough, came an outburst of general
reprobation, and the atrocities committed by the German Army and Navy
provoked impulsive patriots to visible and audible manifestations of
anger. More than once the Kaiser had his figure struck by men, while
women shook their fists and umbrellas in the face of the world’s greatest
homicide.
As a matter of fact, to the Kaiser belongs the distinction of having been
expelled from Madame Tussaud’s for several months--a distinction that was
shared by the late Francis Joseph, Emperor of Austria.
This was done in deference to public opinion, which had become very
hostile to their models being shown at Madame Tussaud’s. Letters had
appeared to this effect in the Press, and one periodical published a
large cartoon showing the Kaiser and his associates in the prisoners’
dock in the Chamber of Horrors.
Originally four enemy monarchs had pedestals in an obscure corner of Room
No. 4. They were the Kaiser, the late Emperor of Austria, the Sultan of
Turkey, and King Ferdinand of Bulgaria.
The Sultan of Turkey, as an unkind friend remarked, “found his level in
the melting-pot” some time ago; and the Kaiser twice had to undergo a
surgical operation as the result of bouts with ultra-patriotic visitors.
Ferdinand of Bulgaria also had some narrow escapes, especially from our
“handymen,” who have a short way with all enemies.
Some time ago my attention was called to the fact that one of the
“spikes” of the Kaiser’s moustache had been clipped off, giving him a
ludicrously woebegone appearance. I have always suspected the Colonials
of that “cut,” and if I am wrong--well, I apologise. Perhaps the “spike”
will be heard of some other day as a souvenir of the war.
Feeling ran so high after the sinking of the _Lusitania_ that we readily
yielded to the public demand, and evicted the Huns from the house.
On the 16th of September, 1916, _John Bull_ had addressed to us the
following open letter on the subject of the presence of the objectionable
figures:
To the Directors, Madame Tussaud & Sons, Ltd., Baker Street, W.
GENTLEMEN,
Being an admirer of your Moral Waxworks, I am sure you will
excuse me if I indicate a blot upon your interesting and
intellectual display. As a matter of fact, there are four blots.
They occur in your Grand Hall, No. 4, and they take the form of
effigies representing, with a fidelity almost lifelike, those
malodorous monarchs the Sultan of Turkey, King Ferdinand of
Bulgaria, the Emperor of Russia, and that arch-villain Kaiser
Bill.
Do, please, reshuffle the pack, gentlemen. Take the sinful
quartette out of your Grand Hall, which they desecrate, and
place them in that other room of yours which seems specially
designed for their accommodation--the Chamber of Horrors.
In the company of Burke and Hare, Charles Peace, Greenacre, and
Wainwright, they will be quite at home.
JOHN BULL.
_John Bull_ on the 14th of November printed the following, containing my
reply:
BRAVO, TUSSAUD!
PATRIOTIC ACTION OF THE GREAT EXHIBITION.
We have received the following interesting letter from Mr. J.
T. Tussaud:
“As a regular reader of your valuable and most instructive
paper, my attention was drawn to your letter, addressed to my
company, which appeared in your issue of the 16th September.
“In it you call attention to what you describe as a blot--or
rather four blots--upon ‘our interesting and intellectual
display,’ namely, the inclusion of the Sultan of Turkey, the
King of Bulgaria, and the Emperors of Austria and Germany in
our collection of celebrities and notorieties. Of course,
such a letter from such an influential person could not pass
unnoticed, and it was brought before my Board of Directors at
the earliest opportunity.
“Prior to the date of your letter the pack had already been
reshuffled, and the figures to which you refer had been
relegated to a much less conspicuous position than they
had previously occupied. When your letter was penned they
were conspiring against the peace of Europe in a small room
which contains the tableau representing ‘The Destruction of
Messina’--a scene of ruin which seems to be in keeping with
this Machiavellian group.
“Like yourself, other visitors had frequently suggested
that the quartette should be placed in another famous--or
infamous--part of the Exhibition; but the trouble was that
Burke and Hare, Charles Peace, Greenacre, and Wainwright, whom
you name, and their comparatively innocuous companions, would
not hear of their abode being thus desecrated.
“What were we to do?
“I am now pleased to inform you that after considering your
remarks a solution has been arrived at: the pack has been
shuffled again, and, by a remarkable feat of legerdemain, the
four knaves have now disappeared altogether.”
We congratulate Messrs. Tussaud on this happy solution to the
problem.
The restoration of two of the figures was due to a very singular
circumstance. Our overseas soldiers soon began to visit Madame Tussaud’s
in large numbers, and they frequently expressed disappointment at not
being able to see the two enemy Emperors whose armies they had come so
far to fight.
Sympathising with their point of view, we had the Kaiser and Francis
Joseph readmitted, placing them in an isolated position, with the
“All-Highest” at one time confronting the Messina tableau, and more
recently faced by the tableau of the Ruhleben horse-box in which British
prisoners had to spend four long weary years of separation from home and
family. In the same room are models of Prince Bismarck and Count von
Moltke.
[Illustration: PRINCE BISMARCK]
It was some little time after the Kaiser’s reinstatement that a British
sailor, who was quite unable to control his feelings, after glowering for
several minutes at the figure, made a run at it and knocked it over. The
head was smashed and the figure badly damaged.
The tar’s friends, who were much concerned at their companion’s escapade,
strove to pacify him, and contrived to get him out of the building
without further trouble; but the Kaiser had to go into hospital for
repairs.
The sailor was carried away by an impulse thousands have with difficulty
controlled out of respect for the Exhibition and the law which makes it
an offence to destroy other people’s property.
Two days after the incident a little boy inquired of an Exhibition
attendant where he could see the pieces of the Kaiser, as he would like
to take a bit away.
A party of twenty-eight American soldiers happened to be passing the
curtained room where the dismembered model of the Kaiser lay, and one of
them made the request that they should be shown the “All-Highest” lying
in state.
“And a very bad state, too,” replied the attendant, who could not oblige.
The second serious attack upon the Kaiser’s effigy took place two or
three months after the first.
On this occasion it was a Colonial soldier who, seeing the restored
monarch gazing at him in a supercilious fashion, as he imagined, drew
from its scabbard the sword of the defunct Austrian Emperor, whose model
sits close by, and stabbed the Kaiser’s figure in the face.
The force with which the thrust was delivered was such that off came the
monarch’s head, and again the model had to be taken to hospital for the
surgical operation of restoring the head and refixing it to its trunk.
Count Zeppelin, whose name will for ever be associated with the
introduction of aerial warships and the dropping of bombs upon
defenceless people, has had many a clenched fist shaken at him standing
there beside the portraits of Roger Casement and Tribich Lincoln.
Though never actually assaulted, it was only the stolidity of the British
character that kept people’s hands off his effigy during the Zeppelin
raids on London. Visitors were too proud, I suppose, to touch him, and
from the time the first German airship was brought down in flames on
British soil Count Zeppelin’s model began to be ignored.
A British matron quietly remarked, as she stopped an instant in front of
the portrait, “So you’re going the way of all our enemies--beaten at your
own game.”
* * * * *
In the early months of the war we borrowed from a soldier an Iron Cross
that he had taken from the breast of a dead German officer whom he had
found lying in a wood at Zillebeke, near Ypres, in November, 1914.
According to the story of the soldier--Drummer Newman, of the Grenadier
Guards--our men, comprising Grenadier Guards, Irish Guards, and
Oxfordshire Light Infantry, were opposed to the Prussian Guards, who were
driven out of the wood, leaving behind them several hundreds of their
dead.
Newman was searching for despatches when he happened upon the cross in
question. I remember him coming to my studio with the trophy. He was
a typical soldier, and he greatly amused me by his description of the
way in which old soldiers--bearing in mind one of the trite sayings of
Frederick the Great--would hearten their comrades, saying, just before
going over the top, “Now then, boys, you don’t want to live for ever, do
you?”
The Iron Cross was exhibited with other relics, and used to be handed
round for inspection, until one day it was missing. That was in October,
1915, and, although we made inquiries of the police and learned that it
had been seen in the neighbourhood of the Exhibition, we heard no more of
it till, several months later, it was traced by detectives to a gentleman
at Warrington who had innocently purchased it from an invalided soldier.
We willingly refunded the amount that had been paid for the cross, and it
has now been restored to our collection.
* * * * *
No sooner was London subjected to the terrible ordeal of air-raids than
we received, as was only to be expected, offers of bombs that had been
dropped by enemy aircraft.
As a matter of fact, we acquired one of the first of these missiles,
and it proved of great interest to our visitors, especially to our own
airmen, who never tired of describing to their friends the construction
of the bomb and the way in which it was dropped.
We found it necessary, however, to discourage the bringing of ammunition
to the Exhibition, as we had no desire that the building should be
wrecked by the untimely explosion of a live bomb or shell.
Reverting for a moment to the attacks upon the effigy of the ex-Kaiser,
I am reminded of one or two occasions when figures have incurred the
animosity of beholders, although not to the same extent.
A professional rider, expelled from the Jockey Club, used to visit the
Exhibition very often for the sole purpose of venting his spleen against
the image of his supposed enemy, Fred Archer, the jockey who won five
Derbys; and he was heard to remark that it was “so like the beggar, I
would give anything to smash it.”
In August, 1893, an old man, whose whole get-up spoke of better days, was
seen to walk up to the effigy of the late Jabez Spencer Balfour, shake
his withered, palsied fist in its face, and totter out of the building.