Transcriber’s Note: Illustrations have been moved from the original position of the printed plates, in order to correspond better with the flow of the text. The List of Illustrations therefore isn’t strictly accurate in regard to where the illustrations may be found. It links directly to the illustration, rather than to the page number indicated.

THE ROMANCE OF MADAME TUSSAUD’S

JOHN THEODORE TUSSAUD

MADAME TUSSAUD AT THE AGE OF 85

From the portrait by Paul Fischer, Court painter to H. M. George IV.

THE ROMANCE
OF
MADAME TUSSAUD’S

BY
JOHN THEODORE TUSSAUD

WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY
HILAIRE BELLOC

ILLUSTRATED

NEW YORK
GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY

COPYRIGHT, 1920,
BY GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

TO

MY WIFE

THROUGH WHOSE KINDLY URGING THESE LEAVES
HAVE GROWN TO THE DIMENSIONS
OF A BOOK

PREFACE

The earliest information we have concerning Madame Tussaud is that she was born in Switzerland on the 7th of December, 1760, and was the only child of Joseph and Marie Grosholtz. Her mother was the daughter of a Swiss clergyman.

She married on the 20th of October, 1795, François Tussaud, who, it appears, was her junior by seven years. We are able to trace his family back as far as 1630, when his great-great-grandfather, one Denis Tusseaud—for that is how he spelt his name—was born.

There is documentary evidence that Denis was brought from Burgy to Mâcon in 1631, his family also coming from Burzy, close by, in 1658.

His descendants lived at Mâcon for more than a century, their occupation being generally that of workers in metal.

The great-grandfather of François was Henry Tusseaud (1684-1717), and his grandfather’s name was Claude (1716-1767).

François’ father (1744-1786) was the first of the family to adopt the present spelling of the name, although we find that various members of the family used the forms Tussot, Tusseau, Tuissiaud, Tussiaut, Tusseaut, Tussiau, or Thusseaud.

Madame Tussaud’s marriage does not appear to have been a happy one, for we learn that in 1800—two years before she came to England—she separated from her husband, of whom we hear nothing further, although he is known to have been living in Paris in the lifetime of his grandsons.

The foundress of the famous Exhibition had two sons, Joseph and Francis. Francis (1800-1873) had several sons, the eldest of whom, Joseph Randall (1831-1892), who was a student and exhibitor at the Royal Academy, was the father of the author of this book.

Mr. John Theodore Tussaud was born in Kensington on the 2nd of May, 1858, and at the age of six was sent to St. Charles’s College, London, where he came under the influence of Cardinal Manning, who took a keen personal interest in his welfare.

Some six years later he was transferred to Ramsgate, where he benefited by the training he received from the Benedictine monks at St. Augustine’s.

In the year 1889 he married Ruth Helena, daughter of Thomas Grew. There are seven sons and three daughters of the marriage.

Mr. Tussaud, like his father, has exhibited at the Royal Academy. His occasional contributions to literature have been welcomed by thoughtful readers, and he is a recognised authority on historical matters relating to the French Revolution and the First Empire.

Seventeen great-grandsons of Madame Tussaud took an active part in the war, all, without exception, serving in the British Army. Two were killed and most of the others wounded.

WILLIAM E. HURT.

Middle Temple, London

CONTENTS

ILLUSTRATIONS

INTRODUCTION
BY
HILAIRE BELLOC

INTRODUCTION
By Hilaire Belloc

This is a fascinating book and its fascination consists in two things attaching to its subject: first that the famous collection of modelled portraits which has become a sort of national institution in England under the name of “Madame Tussaud’s” has its roots in the greatest period of modern history, the French Revolution; second, in that the complete and growing record has passed through so many changes and has yet survived.

Even though the famous collection had dealt with nothing more than the main figures of the Revolution and of the great wars that followed it, it would have been a possession of permanent and lasting historical value. I am not sure that if it had so remained, stopped short at the effigies of those now long dead, it would not now receive a greater respect. It might well in that case have become something recognised as a national possession, protected and preserved by the national government. For the prolongation of the record right on into our own time, while it very greatly increases the real value of the collection as a piece of historical evidence, yet deprives it of that illusion which men cannot avoid where history is concerned: the illusion that things thoroughly passed are in some way greater and of more consequence than contemporary things.

This continuity of the great collection—so long as it is maintained with judgment in selection and without too much yielding to momentary fame is none the less a thing to be very thankful for. Already those of us who, like the present writer, are well on into middle age, can judge how the younger generation is beginning to regard as historical these simulacra, which, when they were first modelled, seemed in our own youth insignificant because they were contemporary. To our children (who are now grown and are young men and women), Disraeli, Gladstone, Bismarck—all the group that were old but living men in the eighties (Disraeli died at the beginning of them, Bismarck long after their close)—are what to us were Louis-Philippe, Garibaldi, Palmerston, and the process properly continued will be invaluable. We have already more than 130 years of record. There is no reason why it should not extend to the two centuries.

It often happens that a thing of great value to history, a piece of evidence which we now find invaluable, has come to us by an accident, the motive of its creation not historical at all nor really connected with record. Indeed of the bulk of historical evidence which we use to-day for the reconstruction of the past only a small proportion—official documents—are of the nature of deliberate records. And that proportion of evidence is on the whole the worst as material, for official documents always have a motive underlying them, and they never give one a vivid picture. The great bulk of the material with which we used to build up the past and make it live again for ourselves is accidental. And so it is with this great collection.

The motive at first was merely that of a waxwork show. The remarkable woman who created the collection did so as a matter of business. The exhibits were intended to satisfy no more than contemporary curiosity. But they have become a piece of historical evidence which increases in value with every year. Whatever you may read (and the accounts are always contradictory) of some man prominent in the past, whatever picture or sculpture you may find of him (and these are often deliberately flattering or in some other way untrue) the physical impression of him will never be so full and so exact as in the case of an effigy made by a contemporary who saw him, watched him, knew him, and whose whole motive was exactitude in reproduction.

Here there does indeed arise the question of the medium. You cannot conceive of a better medium than wax among all the known mediums for production of effigies of human beings. Yet it is not perfect. And it is precisely because the likeness is so great, precisely because the effect is so parallel to that of reality, that we note the minor details in which illusion is not achieved. When a man sees a bust of marble he does not expect to find illusion. The greatest portrait statuary can never be more than a symbol. But the wax effigy aims at exact reproduction. To put it in extreme terms, the ideal of the modeller in wax would be to reproduce a figure such that one knowing the original could be deceived and think he had found again his friend dead or sleeping. When a wax effigy reproduces a known and real person, especially a person whom we ourselves have come across, the discrepancy between reality and its copy is clearer. But there is this strong evidence in support of the success which modelling in wax has reached, that where we are dealing with something unknown, some imaginary person, it is possible to create, in spite of the immobility of the figure, an illusion of life. Everyone who has visited these collections will testify to that. With a person whom one has seen in the flesh the little details in which the wax does not tally with the flesh nor immobility with life, stand out clear. That is especially the case with those whose complexion is difficult to imitate. It is also the case in the attachment of the hair. And I have further noticed that the direction of the eyes makes a difference, the figure being more lifelike as a rule when the eyes are cast down or averted, than when a direct look is imitated. But it remains true that with an imaginary person when you are free to suppose that the person had a complexion of the sort easily imitated in wax, and where you are further free to presume the pose, you can get as near to reality in this medium as it is possible for human art to achieve.

Therein, then, lies the great value of this thing. It is a witness to history, and as I have said, one increasingly valuable as time proceeds.

Still it is with what is chiefly historical in this gallery of figures and especially with the tradition of the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars, that we are most concerned. And the Tussaud collection has this added interest that it sprung as it were from the revolutionary time. Its origins lay in that. Its first fame was due to an emigration from France into England, and it still remains much the best effort at physical reconstruction which we have to-day.

The reason is that the lady who founded this institution was not only herself a contemporary of but an actor in the principal events of that time. She came by a series of accidents into direct touch with one personality after another. She left a record of each. She was a personal and convincing witness and her work remains. She is just as much a person of the Revolution and of the Napoleonic period as any one of those whom she modelled for our benefit. And that is (let us remember) of special value in that one is in the spirit of one’s time.

The artist deliberately reconstructing a bust through plastic art is always in danger of failing through a lack of the necessary sympathy between the time in which he lives and the time in which his subject lived. The truth of this is expressed very sharply in modern attempts at reconstructing mediæval sculpture. It has been done. It is singularly successful, for instance, in the central porch of Notre Dame in Paris. But as a rule it fails. The modern man either works from a modern model, or at any rate with modern expressions and modern features at the back of his mind. One conspicuous instance occurs to me, the modern figures upon Lichfield. They are as grievously out of their supposed time as are the figures of Tennyson’s “Idylls of the Kings.” The Knights of the Round Tables of Tennyson’s version are the gentlemen of pegtopped trousers who were contemporary with the poet. They have been to public schools and to universities. They would be horrified at the dropping of aitches, and they have often attended at services which were fully choral. They would have called the inhabitants of the country which they visited “natives.” That is what Tennyson made of Geraint and Launcelot and his odious Arthur.

I am afraid one cannot say much more for the sculptures that I have in my mind. They are dressed in mediæval armour, but the faces that look out from the helmets are the faces to be seen in the London clubs to-day. They are faces devoid of simplicity and strength. They are not the faces of the Middle Ages.

You have the same thing in historical painting, and that is why historical painting usually looks so ridiculous in the generation after it was made. We all know those historical paintings which our grandfathers bought and which still disfigure the large rooms of private houses, where you have Richard I of England charging the Saracens (he, an Angevin!), his face glowing with the emotions of the football field.

Now this prime difficulty and error in pictorial and plastic record in the past you can only avoid by the advantage of contemporary work, and this is where the great value of this collection comes in. All its work is contemporary, and we can to-day, after an interval of more than a hundred years, weigh the importance of that point. The revolutionary figures sometimes look odd to us precisely because their real aspect has been so vividly preserved. The hand that modelled Marat was a hand of Marat’s age. It touched the flesh of the dead man. The eyes that received the conception reproduced by the hands, gazed upon Marat himself as he lay back dead.

And here it is convenient to introduce that essential character in the great collection—the genius of its originator.

The whole thing, its character, long tradition and establishment—is the creation of one remarkable woman, and of her we ought to have some full biography. I know of none. She has at least the rare advantage of having propagated her name justly and the thing she created is identified with her. It is not often that history acts with so little irony and with so much generosity. Her energy was much more remarkable than that of those very few women who have created and organised permanent businesses, for it was not only her judgment and initiative which created the commercial side of the collection: it was also her own talent and industry, the work of her own hands, that laid the foundation of it all. Most of the early portraits were the direct product of her skill and it is from her that the continuous tradition of the place descends. Her sons learnt their art from their mother and carried it on to the third generation which still continues it. It was she who took all the critical decisions, she who steered the fortunes of the family through the crisis of the Revolution, who determined to take the collection over to England, who conceived the idea of making it a permanent record by adding contemporaries year after year.

It is not often that one has this intimate admixture of personality with an institution, and when one gets it it has an astonishing effect in vivifying the whole. When an institution is thus the product of a character at once highly energetic and highly individual, it is as though a living thing continued on long beyond the term of a human life. It is, in the strict and original sense of the word, “inspired.” You get that quality, of course, in all literature, and in some of the corporations which remarkable men and women have founded, but very rarely in a piece of business in an institution of affairs. Here you get it, and the more you read of the woman’s life and character the more you understand the success of her effort and its vitality.

JOHN THEODORE TUSSAUD

It was an astonishing life! There lies behind it the story of her uncle Curtius, a Swiss who left medical practice in the middle of the 18th century and took to modelling in wax. It was a taste which had grown upon him from his habit of modelling parts of the human body for the purposes of his profession. He extended it to portraits and at last he abandoned medicine for his new art. He had firmly established himself in it and had already been taken up by members of the French Royal Family who had visited Switzerland, when under their protection he left for Paris. And there his sister, Madame Grosholtz, and her child, then five or six years old, joined him. There she learnt her uncle’s trade and thence in her twentieth year she went to live at Versailles as a sort of companion to Madame Elizabeth, Louis XVI’s sister, a girl about four years older than herself. She was the close friend and companion of the princess right up to the moment of the Revolution. Madame Elizabeth like her brother had a delight in manual work. With her it took the form of modelling under the guidance of Marie Grosholtz and it was these nine years that formed the character and that remained the liveliest memory throughout all the very long life that this remarkable woman was to live.

It would be interesting to discover (I know of no such document that could tell me, but there must be some) whether the young companion whom Madame Elizabeth thus took under her protection, and to whom she thus gave a unique opportunity for the observation of contemporary life, was in race German or French. Berne would seem to be the origin of the family, and the uncle’s Latin name and the family name of his brother-in-law point to German origin. All his associations on the other hand were French, and when he came to Paris it was hardly as a foreigner. The story reads as though they were French-speaking on their arrival. Perhaps in some future edition of the work this point will be settled. It is one of considerable moment to our judgment of the art.

It was a moment when the connection between Switzerland and French society was very close. It was to Switzerland that Voltaire had retired. It was from Switzerland that the genius of Rousseau proceeded. The unfortunate Necker, with his caution and his avarice, played his great part in the early Revolution as a Swiss. To Switzerland also he went back when he had failed—and there, by the way, in his retirement we have an amusing picture of him listening to the daily recital of the news from Paris as the Revolution proceeded, wagging his head solemnly, and perpetually saying, “I told you so.”

Madame de Staël, his famous daughter, whom Pitt so much desired to marry for her money, and whom Napoleon so hated, was thoroughly Swiss. She shows it in every line of her writing. She is from the heart of Geneva in her traditions and ideas.

The family coming thus to Paris were part of a general movement and even their connection with Versailles can be paralleled. It would not have taken much, had things proceeded quietly, for Switzerland to have fallen into the orbit of the French monarchy within the next hundred years.

After these nine formative years in the continued company of Madame Elizabeth, Marie Grosholtz enters the Revolution, and the connections of the family with the origins of the great upheaval are close, curious, and of intense interest. It was, it will be remembered, the bust of Necker from the collection of Curtius, then on exhibition, which the mob carried round at the beginning of the insurrection. The show of figures already well-known in Paris became the starting-point for the future collection. It was because the Revolutionaries from the very beginning of the movement showed so much acquaintance with those effigies that the continuous stream of further portraits began. That is why Marie Grosholtz was sent for time after time to take a death mask, to model a famous living man, to establish what afterwards became the invaluable record we still have.

From 1787-89, the preliminary years when she was already at work, right on to 1802, a matter of 15 years, the most crowded of all history, the newly developed art went on actively without interruption. There is not, I think, in all history a parallel to so astonishing and lucky a chance. It was almost as though fate had designed a reporter, or a state portraitist for the benefit of posterity. You do get the same thing now and then in the shape of a chronicler who happens to keep out of the turmoil and mark the detail of his time, but it is extremely rare and in the case of plastic art, unique. The nearest parallel to-day—which may raise a smile on account of the extreme difference in time and manner—is that of Holbein’s portraits of the English Court. There also you get the living record marvellously preserved for future times.

It is to our advantage that the character of this foundress does not diminish in energy with the passage of time. We see her doing the work of three people all through the years of her middle age and making decision after decision upon the fortunes of her house. And while she was thus conducting with one hand the financial side of the business, with the other she was herself still modelling perpetually, and with a third and quite separate faculty she was creating a school of her own, as it were, for the continuation of the modelling after her time. If ever there was the maker of an important thing it was this woman and if ever there was an important thing proceeding entirely from one individual, that thing is the collection which still remains to us.

There is a sort of parallel which can be drawn between Madame Tussaud and Madame Campan. Both of them have seen, and worked at, the Palace of Louis XVI, under and in connection with his Queen. Both were much of an age, Madame Campan eight years senior to Madame Tussaud. Both lived on through the Revolution and the Empire, the one till 1822, the other beyond the revolutionary year of 1848. Both had something of the same strength. Both carried on the tradition of the old attachment to the Bourbons. Both have left the legend of a strong personality, the one through an effect on education in France which was deeper than has been generally recognised, the other in a more lasting manner through her plastic work. In this connection one muses upon what would have been Madame Tussaud’s fate had she continued her career in the country where it had begun, and had she not taken over the collection in its origins to England at the Peace of Amiens. I think she would have been a great figure in the France of the Restoration and of the bourgeois Monarchy. A continuous unbroken link with all the great years up to 1848 and presenting a whole gallery of the past for a new generation to witness would have been something the French and Paris would have made much of, and a great deal that was lost on the other side of the Channel through lack of understanding would have been preserved. I mean that too many of those figures were for those who saw them in an alien atmosphere jests or shades, whereas in France they would have been an intimate part of the great national story.

This removal to England also in some degree affected the proportion of the collection and in the same degree diminished its great international value. Not that figures of international moment had not been included—the great figures are all there—but that Paris would have been a better general centre for watching and recording the moving history of the 19th century, than London. The Musée Grevin in Paris supplemented the Tussaud collection in England. One imagines that it would have been better for history as a whole had one great collection, preferably in Paris, served for a permanent and continuous chronicle of what living men had been.

When we come to details of the personalities from the period before the Revolution to the Peace of Amiens (the foundation of the whole Exhibition) we are struck, I think, by the great difference in our appreciation. Some of the figures are just what we should have thought these men would have been. Others offend us or puzzle us by what seems to us discrepancy. But we must remember that the error is in ourselves and not in the contemporary record.

Of the great historical figures Voltaire (which is the first of them) is least specially illuminated by what I may call “the Tussaud tradition.” And that is because we already know pretty well all that there is to know about Voltaire. His story was a simple one, his genius obvious, not complex, and the time of life in which Madame Tussaud’s uncle came to sculp him (to model his face in wax) was just at the very end, when public fame and his own great pride in himself had combined to put him into full evidence, even to the details of his daily life. It was just at the end of that life, in 1778, that Voltaire sat to Curtius, Madame Tussaud’s uncle, the original founder of the whole gallery, and the tutor of his niece in her art.

It is interesting to compare the little miniature (one of several) which Curtius made—it is far more lifelike than the larger figure—with the famous Houdon. Houdon’s is much the greater thing, of course, and the more living, but though Houdon was the greatest of portraitists by far, the greatest renderer of the human face that ever lived, there is something intimate in the little wax miniature of Curtius which no great sculptor could have given. For instance, you have here admitted, as it were, almost photographed, the domestic insufficient quality of Voltaire’s famous smile. Houdon could not help making that smile—or grin—have something heroic about it; or at any rate great. But the Tussaud work undoubtedly shows you the thing as it actually was; as his servants and his intimates saw it.

I learn, by the way, from this book (I had not known it before) that Houdon had himself worked for Curtius—a considerably older man—and the connection is as curious as it is interesting. It is striking to find a record of the connection in this book, but not astonishing that it should be absent from others, for there has been no good comprehensive work on Houdon written that I can recollect. I am told that there is some German encyclopædic work or other but no proper study of the man and his life.

Next after Voltaire we have to note side by side with the collection a small work of Curtius’s own in miniature, the very striking profile of the Duke of Orléans. How it helps one to understand that base and extraordinary career! Everyone reading the story of the Revolution should concentrate upon that man’s ambition, weakness and intrigue. The origin of the whole business was his false idea (unfortunately for himself confirmed by circumstances for many years) that Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette would have no children. He came to regard himself as the heir, and the natural result was that when the first child came after so perplexing a delay (a delay the cause of which I have explained in an appendix to my own monograph on Marie Antoinette) Philippe Égalité felt himself aggrieved. His grievance was illogical and unjust, but it was there and in that grievance you find no small part of the motive force that impelled the early Revolution.

The family tradition carried on by the Tussauds from the Revolution was what may be described as the “orthodox” tradition. It is the tradition which appears in this book. I am not sure that the historian can wholly agree with it.

This “orthodox” tradition is the tradition of an equable and happy society overthrown into a sort of chaos at the head of which chance scoundrels floated, each to disappear in turn, struck by a sort of anarchic doom proceeding from their fellow anarchs. The Revolution was rather a resettlement of society from a state which had become unstable to a new and more stable state, and its leaders were upon the whole, though suffering under the exaggeration from which leaders at such a time invariably suffer, men of capacity—especially on the military side. Further, those who were made responsible in popular tradition for the worst excesses were hardly the principal authors of them.

Thus, the real director of what is called the Terror was Carnot, not Robespierre. Carnot was a perfectly sane man and a genius to boot, attached to the new democratic principle, but a soldier, and working for the highly practical ends which a soldier has in view. He thought of the Terror as a piece of martial law, and it is significant that under his direction by far the greater number of those who suffered in Paris suffered through a direct breach of the temporary regulations (such as those against the export of money or communication with the enemy) which were necessary for the prosecution of the campaign.

Robespierre was not the director of the Terror at all. He was a man singularly restricted in nature, but of powerful effect in oratory in spite of his close academic style. He was a man of complete sincerity, much too narrow in doctrine, but because he exactly expressed with more lucidity than anyone else, and with more conviction, what was the passionate creed of the time, he became for something like two years at once the idol and the symbol of the revolutionary masses. As the Terror looked like an intensive application of the Revolution men associated it with Robespierre’s name, and Robespierre, suffering from the very grave defect of vanity (common in men who reach a public position), was willing to allow the false imputation, and to enjoy the title of ruler, when he was really in the Central Council of the Republic, singularly impotent. He paid a heavy price for that falsehood. It cost him his life and—what was worse—his reputation.

What we know positively of Robespierre’s action during the Terror is that he attended the Central Council less and less frequently, and that he tried, if anything, to stop the Terror. In fact it was precisely on this account, his interference with the rigour of the martial law, that his enemies brought him to the guillotine. But, by a curious irony not uncommon in history, the death of this man who was not the leader of the Terror, and who had if anything attempted to check it, and who was put to death because he attempted to check it, caused the Terror to cease. Men had so universally (and so falsely) identified him with the extremity of the republican military régime that when he passed it was impossible to continue it.

In the matter of Marat what I may call “the Tussaud tradition” is sounder. The man was unbalanced to the point of lunacy, and when Madame Tussaud was called in to take the impression of his face just after death, her use of the word “fiend” though exaggerated is comprehensible. This effigy of Marat which you may see in the famous gallery and which was modelled immediately after his death—an immediate piece of historical evidence of the first value—was shown in Paris when it was completed. It is an astonishing thing to have that piece of continuity with us.

But all these death masks of the Revolution are of the highest value. There is an extraordinary dignity in the full features of the Queen, looking younger than she did in the last years of her life, and a singular and awful reality in the mask of Robespierre. I know only two representations of Robespierre which really recall the man. One is this effigy exactly modelled from the face itself after these last thirty-six hours of agony, and the other is the portrait which Greuze made of him and which is now in Lord Rosebery’s collection. And of these two, of course, the death mask, though repulsive, is the more actual.

But of all these revolutionary figures, by far the most interesting to me is that of Carrier. The contrast between that strongly exact, clearly cut face and the story of Carrier’s madness at Nantes, is one of the things that make one understand not only the Revolution but in general mankind at white heat. Here is a man who, if features mean anything, might have been some sharp, self-contained, disappointed, ironic speaker, or even poet. It is the face of a man who certainly knew his own mind, who despised other men, which is a weakness, but who followed some great idea within. It is a face human in its self-repression and exactitude. Were we familiar with it in connection with some great name of peaceable activity, were it the face of one of those who settled the Congress of Vienna, or of some monarch, or of some writer, it would be famous as an index of genius. As it is, the name—especially to those who do not know the face—suggests nothing but a mad infamy, and indiscriminate shooting and drowning in batches of the wretched Vendean prisoners. And I myself when writing thus of Carrier have a right to be balanced in my judgment for he came very near to guillotining my grandfather’s father, from whom he differed in politics. And here in the case of Carrier is an excellent example of the historical value of that which I postulate as the first, much the greatest, character in a collection such as this: for had we not the bust of the living Carrier, itself almost a living thing, taken immediately after death, we should hardly have guessed what Carrier was. But the face combined with the history explains him well enough.

The story of Madame Tussaud seeking for Sanson’s guillotine, or rather for one of his guillotines after the Peace of Amiens and sending her son over to Paris to look for the man and his implements (which the executioner had pawned) and getting it at last at great cost, is characteristic of her energy and business sense. She lived at a time when the material relic was the clou of her collection. If to-day it rather detracts from the sober historical value of the figures, it remains an excellent witness to her indefatigable initiative. And so it is with the collection of Napoleonic relics, notably the Waterloo carriage, which she secured just at the moment when it was of the greatest value to her business.

Her modelling of the dead in the revolutionary time included, by her own account, the head of the Princess de Lamballe, when that unfortunate and rather insipid young woman (but gracious and kind) was so foolishly and so atrociously murdered. The record would seem to correspond more or less with the judgment of Michelette, and Michelette’s portrait mostly produced by chance illusion is the best I know.

In the fate of all those men and women, but particularly in that of Madame de Lamballe, the main element of tragedy is their bewilderment. They could not conceive what cause or motive lay behind the fierce hatred which concentrated upon them. It was for them a nightmare, something irresponsible like a cataclysm of nature, and yet something human, and something that ought, therefore, to be explicable. Oddly enough the one person who did get a glimmer of the human motive at work was Marie Antoinette herself. It is astonishing how rapidly not only the general character but the intelligence of Marie Antoinette developed in these years. She became the true daughter of Maria Theresa—too late!

They suffered (of course) through that illusion which is the curse of publicity. They were tortured and they were killed for a label, not for their very selves. But the tragedy is increased in their case, I think, because they did not seek publicity. Your politician, often a mountebank, whose appetite is for strutting upon a stage, who loves the limelight, whose meat and drink it is to hear his name repeated perpetually by the populace, deserves what he gets. And he nearly always gets what the fates reserve for such vanities. In a greater or less degree these creators of their own label suffer in the end: at the least disappointment and neglect, at the most death. But as I have said they deserve what comes to them. They have had their reward. It was not so with the stable hereditary publicity of the Bourbon royal family and its adherents. They could not help the light which beat upon them. They did not seek it. The absurd legends in which any public figure is necessarily clothed as with a wrap of falsehood is not one of their seeking or of their making. They suffer for those legends and for the consequences of those legends precisely after the fashion which dramatic irony demands that the victim of any great tragedy should suffer—in spite of themselves and with no understanding of how the thing came.

What could be more ridiculous than the figment of Louis XV—obese, good-natured, slow, irresolute in morals, irresolute in policy—as a tyrant. Or what could be more absurd than the fiction of a libertine Marie Antoinette? Or of a democratic Duke of Orléans? Or of a patriot Necker?

It was, I think, this element of undeserved and awfully ironic tragedy which burnt into the soul of all those who had come into contact with the harmless but sometimes dignified and always splendid circle of Versailles. One of the few sincere emotions of Burke’s life was, I think, the moment when he broke out into rhetoric on the fate of the Queen. This middle-class man had seen her, and the grotesque disproportion between herself and her fate moved him to real feeling. It is to his credit, for not many things that Burke said were genuine. He was an advocate taking pay from people who wanted arguments and I think he would have argued just as well for better pay on the other side.

This appassionate sympathy with and support of the victims was very conspicuous in Madame Tussaud herself. And she carried it through the whole of that period when she was at first unwillingly modelling the revolutionaries, often with disgust compelled to take the mask of a dead face, or later (she was in prison with Josephine) associated with the figures of the period of the Directorate and the Consulship.

Of those personal interviews when that handsome woman now in middle age was still engaged at her task of modelling and sculpture in wax, there is none of which we would rather have a full record than the modelling of Napoleon. It is mentioned in Mr. Tussaud’s book only by way of quotation from a contemporary journal—the Belle Assemblée. It would be interesting to know if there is any family record giving full details, for we have not even the date, though we have the hour of the day—six o’clock in the morning—that she first met the Emperor. He was not Emperor yet and we can fix an inferior and a superior limit easily enough for the portrait was made at the Tuileries, after Napoleon as First Consul had gone there, and before the Peace of Amiens. It must, therefore, have fallen within a period of only just over two years; it must have been done either in 1800 or in 1801.

It is in connection with Napoleon that the shifting of values, which I have suggested took place through the transference of the collection to England, may be noted. The exhibition once fixed in London took on the English point of view and to that extent distorted a full European impression. For instance, one of the great features in the story of the collection is the visit of the Duke of Wellington to the effigy of Napoleon, and a well-known and almost famous picture was made of the incident. I am old enough to remember many people who spoke of it as though it was a most dramatic moment in the history of the nineteenth century. But no one with the full European sense would feel like that. Wellington was not the great protagonist against Napoleon. He was but one of fifty men opposed to the Emperor. The defeat of Napoleon was in Russia, and at Leipsic and at Waterloo, not at Waterloo alone, and the victors of Waterloo were Wellington and Blücher, neither of whom could have succeeded without the other.

Of the figures added to the great collection after Madame Tussaud’s death, of the figures which carry on the historical record and continue to add to its value, I am sure that the one of most interest for an Englishman is that of Richard Burton. It was not (apparently) modelled directly from life. But it was modelled under the eye of Lady Burton herself, and satisfied that critic.

The inclusion of such a figure is an example of what I mean when I say that such a collection is a valuable and continuous piece of historical evidence. The greatness of Burton was missed. He was subject to a boycott due in the main to his exposure of the ritual murder at Damascus. His energetic but isolated character did not square with that of the most of his countrymen. And yet to have an Englishman so uniquely English and to have recognised what a part he was of the record of his time shows a sure instinct.

It is here that the chief danger imperilling the value of the collection appears. And with that after so much praise I would conclude.

Madame Tussaud, it will be remembered, decided at some time early in the 19th century to make continuous additions to her collection as time went on, to keep it up to date, to make it contemporary. It was a natural decision and obviously necessary to the conduct of the thing as a business enterprise. For contemporaries will always desire to look at the portraits of those who are for any reason notorious, rather than to preserve the historical record. But save in quite exceptional times, such as that of the Revolution, which gave the collection its origin, there is always the danger of a change in values. In the first place, for a man to be notorious is not the same thing as for a man to deserve fame. His notoriety may be of the quality of fame rather than mere notoriety, and may mature into fame, and yet not be a fame of that first class which warrants an historical record. In either of these two cases there is the danger of disproportion in the collection, regarded as something of slight historical value. But that disproportion may be remedied by the removal of the figures.

The third danger attaching to the system is not remediable. It is omission, and that is what I had in my mind in the case of Burton. It is very unlikely that a man producing a series of contemporary portraits in the early part of James I’s reign would have included William Shakespeare; or in the end of Victoria’s reign a man so remarkable (though, of course, not on a great scale) as Samuel Butler. There is always a certain proportion of men in any generation with regard to whom the careful observer can say with fair certitude that posterity will require to know much more of them, and who are yet for the moment not in the public eye. Now the commercial necessities of an exhibition cannot consider these men. They are of no value to the crowd, and therein, I say, lies the danger. Let me give an example.

I do not think (I may be wrong as I am speaking in the negative of what is only a detail), I do not think that there is in the Tussaud collection any model of the great Carnot. Carnot was on the whole the most virile of all that virile revolutionary group, and he was one of the first half dozen of those who created the modern world. In a military sense Carnot was the tutor and creator of Napoleon. But it would certainly not have occurred to any observer of popular feelings (even if Carnot had been included) at the time, especially of popular feelings with an eye to the English market, that Carnot was worth preserving. To-day I think most students of history would rather have a really accurate study of Carnot than of even Robespierre.

If ever, which is possible, a collection of this sort comes under the aid or patronage of the state, the peril I speak of might in theory be removed: for the state will endow. But as things are, the peril exists. I mention it because I do sincerely regard this body of effigies not as something concerned with as ephemeral a function in the state as popular curiosity, still less as a mere commercial venture, but rather—what I have called it throughout this essay—a unique piece of historical record. And history, I take it, is the indispensable memory with which citizens should furnish themselves if they are to understand their own state and civilisation.

THE ROMANCE OF MADAME TUSSAUD’S

CHAPTER I

Mr. Tussaud first enters his father’s studio—Reverie—Madame Tussaud’s uncle forsakes the medical profession for art—Madame’s birth and parentage—A Prince’s promise.

It was at the age of fourteen and in the year 1872 that I first entered my father’s studio, and well I remember the bright summer morning I passed its threshold to place myself under his tuition.

It was an odd rememorative sort of place, the eeriness of which sat uneasily on the mind of, I fear, a somewhat jocose and irresponsible youth.

The surroundings somehow seemed to force upon my mind the memories of men and things I must have heard about or dreamt of, or with whom I had been in some way made familiar. Moreover, the place was so out of touch with the ordinary affairs of life, so reposeful and secluded amid the din and turmoil of the world outside.

The studio stood well in the rear of an old-world residence, known as Salisbury House, in the parish of Marylebone. Here the family had long lived. The house confronted what, in my early days, was then still designated the New Road. Upon its site there has been since erected the imposing classic palace designed to accommodate the hitherto poorly housed Corporation of the borough.

Whenever I recall this eventful day there readily springs to my mind the circumstance that I found my father busily engaged in modelling a new portrait of the Prince of Wales—the late King Edward—for whose recovery from a very dangerous illness the nation had recently held a Day of Thanksgiving.

From this day onward I may claim to have acted as something more than a mere spectator of that long procession of models wrought by my father’s diligent hands. Each one necessitated the making of some small sketch, some characteristic study, that has helped to swell as strange a collection of memorials as ever existed of men and events of bygone days.

It is amid these surroundings that I now sit to begin the writing of these chapters; and a strangely engrossing retrospect they reveal. Five generations of my family have contributed towards them, and now, on a modelling stool by my side, there stands the promising work of a son who will, I trust, one day follow me to carry on the work.

During the quietude of those hours that succeed the labours of the day, and when the last studio hand has closed the door behind him, I take the opportunity of penning this brief history. Often in the moving shadows of the twilight or in the flickering flame of a falling ember I fancy I see life and movement in the faces that gaze down upon me, quickened, as it were, to respond to the memories their features evoke.

But for me, at least, there is little that is disquieting in their scrutiny. For the most part they are old familiars, and a long acquaintance has set us wonderfully at our ease.

As the eye passes from the semblance of one celebrity to that of another, how vividly they carry one’s thoughts back through King Edward’s reign, the long years Queen Victoria sat upon the throne, the days of William IV, the reign and regency of “The First Gentleman of Europe,” and far back into the days of good “Farmer George”!

Even though set among the strong and characteristic features of the leading men of these memorable reigns, the striking countenance of Napoleon can be discerned without hesitation, and his familiar features force me in imagination to undergo the ordeal of crossing the Channel to retrace the course this narrative takes and discover my ancestress under the domination of the First Consul, then pushing in hot haste his fortune at the point of the bayonet, and fast traversing the hazardous road leading to the throne of France.

Somehow we do not find this long and curious retrospect illumined by any very strong ray of human happiness. Even the overshadowing head and shoulders of the great Napoleon do not conceal from our vision the dismal heads of the revolutionists; indeed, if they had been hidden from our sight, could these ghoulish impressions ever be effaced from our memory? And so, behind Bonaparte, one’s eyes sight the sinister heads of Robespierre, Fouquier-Tinville, Carrier, Hébert—merciless creatures who gambled with the lives of their fellow men for high positions, and multiplied these awful human stakes that they might hold themselves secure.

There, too, in the falling light, one perceives the faces of Louis XVI and his Queen, Marie Antoinette, the two most notable and pitiful victims of the Reign of Terror—a reign, forsooth, in which these ill-starred sovereigns, the descendants of generations of kings, were but the poorest and saddest of subjects.

The vista is long and hazy, but it is not too dim for one to observe upon a bracket the visage of the great Voltaire, with its leering eyes and sardonic grin. His bust is vis-à-vis with the ponderous head of the idealist Rousseau, with its heavy forehead and its short, narrow chin.

And so face after face peers down upon me, carrying the mind back with unfailing steps until is reached the true source from which this dramatic story springs.

CHRISTOPHER CURTIUS

Uncle of Mme. Tussaud and founder of the Museum in Paris during the French Revolution in the Boulevard du Temple. A Portrait Study by John T. Tussaud.

In the year 1758, so far afield as the city of Berne, a certain young Swiss, named Christopher Curtius, was earnestly employing his days as a medical practitioner.

With the object of improving himself in his profession he had taken to modelling the limbs and organs of the human body in wax. He soon extended the scope of his labours to the execution of many miniature portraits in that same plastic material, and gained the patronage of many of the leading members of the aristocracy. In this work he succeeded well, and towards his latter days in Berne he practised rather as an artist than as a family doctor.

It is as the maternal uncle of Madame Tussaud, the subject of these memoirs, that Christopher Curtius comes under our consideration.

Madame Tussaud was the child of one Joseph Grosholtz, who lost his life when serving on the Staff of General Wurmser during the Seven Years’ War, a couple of months or so before she was born. He was of purely Swiss parentage, and the family to this day prides itself on being of Burgundian Swiss stock.

Although Marie Grosholtz was not married until the year 1795, it will be well to refer to her henceforth as Madame Tussaud, under which name she is universally known.

Madame Grosholtz and her child seem to have been the only relatives possessed by Curtius, who later induced his sister to take up her residency with him, doubtless with the object of taking control of the affairs of his household.

It was when Curtius had fully established himself as an artist in Berne that an incident took place, about the year 1762, which led to important consequences.

The Prince de Conti had been losing favour at the Court of his royal cousin, Louis XV, a circumstance mainly due, we are told, to the Prince’s excessive popularity with the Army and a certain independent bearing he adopted towards the King and his favourites. The King’s mistress, Madame de Pompadour, did not hesitate to show her resentment at de Conti’s lack of deference.

According to all accounts, the Prince did not take his position very much to heart, for, in truth, an estrangement between the Court and the representatives of his house afforded little in the nature of a new experience. At any rate, he shook the dust of the capital off his boots, and set out on a tour through Europe.

On this journey he tarried for some days in the city of Berne, betraying a keen desire to participate in all that mediæval town could afford him by way of interest and entertainment.

Among these Curtius’s studio—which had now acquired something of the dignity of a private museum—was not allowed to escape his attention. No account of his visit to this establishment has been handed down, but a few words uttered by the Prince on leaving conveyed, beyond all doubt, his genuine admiration for the doctor-artist’s skill in his new profession as a sculptor in wax.

“If you will leave Berne and come to Paris, I will undertake to find you a suitable atelier in which to carry on your work, and hold myself responsible for your receiving as many commissions as you feel disposed to executive. Come,” he urged. “You will not regret it.”

One wonders what kindred foibles, what curious traits of disposition in common, existed between this Prince and the artist that there should have been struck so readily a chord of sympathy between them. For the offer, as we shall hereafter learn, had not been lightly made, nor had its ready acceptance been inspired without betraying a ready confidence most men would have deemed it highly imprudent to concede.

CHAPTER II

Curtius leaves Berne for Paris—The Hôtel d’Aligre—The Court of Louis XV—Madame arrives in Paris.

In response to the Prince de Conti’s invitation, Curtius left Berne for Paris a few months later, and for once the time-honoured adage proffering a warning to those prone to rely upon the promises of princes had no bearing, for this Prince kept his word.

On his arrival at Paris, Curtius found a handsome suite of apartments awaiting him at the Hôtel d’Aligre, hard by the Croix du Trahoir in the Rue St. Honoré. They were spacious and well furnished, and in style and comfort far exceeded his expectation. The Rue St. Honoré on the north, the Rue Bailleul on the south, the Rue de l’Arbre Sec on the east, and the Rue des Poulies on the west, outline to this day the ground on which the hotel, with its gardens, then stood.

The Hôtel d’Aligre was a place that had seen better days. It had, like so many of the great family dwellings that existed in Paris towards the end of the eighteenth century, demanded of its owners a longer and more speedily replenished purse than they possessed. The sheltering of a stately and magnificent household had long been unknown to this once famous residence, and its handsome rooms had been divided up and let as separate tenements.

The building contained a fine salon, which at one time was placed by a Chancellor d’Aligre at the service of the Grand Council, and so late as the year of Curtius’s arrival in Paris we hear of it being used for an exhibition of pictures displayed under the ægis of the Académie de Saint Luc. Of this académie Curtius was soon elected a member, and it may be presumed that some of his own works were shown in the exhibition.

During its latter days the hotel figured under a dual appellation, the ancient name of d’Aligre being prefaced by that of the renowned Schomberg. Finally it was known to the good citizens of Paris, shortly before its total disappearance, as the Old Hôtel Schomberg d’Aligre.

This building occupied a position that could hardly have been better chosen for Curtius’s purpose, for it stood in the very heart and throng of the busy capital—that is to say, close to the Louvre and at no great distance from the Tuileries—and was surrounded by the houses of the wealthiest and most influential inhabitants of the city.

We should like to follow the footsteps of Curtius, and enter with him into his new home in Paris; but with the meagre information we have concerning these early days in his career we can only picture him as settling down to his work and drawing around him many famous patrons, to some of whom we shall have to refer as we make progress with our story.

Doubtless the ideals he had conceived of the French capital as a citizen in far-off Berne would not have squared with the actual state in which he found the city when he took up his domicile within it.

Report had carried the splendours of Versailles far beyond the frontiers of France, and might well have enlivened the imagination of an artist like Curtius, who, doubtless, would have hoped to enjoy the pleasure of witnessing them for himself; but on his arrival in the capital he found the glories of the palaces had set, and that the Court of Louis XV had not only grown dull, but had even gone out of fashion.

The King himself had become weary of the great Court functions and sumptuous entertainments, and now preferred to indulge in complete seclusion the appetites that still remained to him. The military exploits of his reign had not brought him any great renown, and in recent years he had suffered reverses that had cast a gloom over these closing days of his life.

He had also been reminded more than once that the levelling hand of Death took no heed of rank and power. That dread visitor had already unceremoniously claimed the King’s son (the Dauphin) and his wife, and his own neglected Queen, Marie Leczinska, was fast failing in health.

The temper of the people towards the King had undergone a great change, and the days of “Well-Beloved”-ness had long since departed. During the reign of his predecessor, Louis XIV, the excessive taxation and the state of semi-serfdom had been borne by the lower classes with something like resignation, for they had received some compensation through the glory of his military achievements and the extension of his power. But small reason had they for so patiently bearing the ever-increasing burdens that had signalised the reign of his successor, Louis XV, whose military exploits had brought the country little by way of glory, and whose career had naught to show but a long life of wanton extravagance, combined with a painful disregard for the welfare of his people.

What Curtius did in the four years that succeeded his arrival in Paris one cannot say for certain; but there is little doubt that he was busily engaged in executing commissions for his numerous and ever-increasing list of patrons, whose liberality and kindness not only equalled, but far surpassed, the Prince de Conti’s promises.

It is quite evident that soon after his arrival Curtius tried his deft hands upon a model of the Queen of Louis XV, and it is this comparatively early work that constitutes one piece among a mere half-dozen examples that have been handed down to us. Probably the influence of his friend, the Prince de Conti, aided him in obtaining this commission.

It was after having practised his profession as artist for some years that Curtius repaired to Berne for the purpose of fetching his sister and her little daughter.

That was in the year 1766, and Madame Tussaud was then about six years old. On the authority of her Memoirs, published in 1838, it would appear that she was born at Berne in the year 1760; but documentary evidence exists which appears to indicate that her birth actually took place a year later. Be that as it may, we first hear of her when she accompanied her mother to Paris as the guest of her uncle.

This brief review will not permit us to dwell long on the early days of the young girl in Paris, nor on those events that prefaced the outbreak of the Revolution. Truth to say, between 1766 and 1789—a matter of twenty-three years—the details concerning the lives of Curtius and his niece are neither very full nor very clearly defined. This seems to be all of a piece with the nature of the work they produced, for it is astonishing, having regard to the considerable output, how small a quantity of it has been handed down to us.

One has, therefore, little material to assist him in gaining an insight into the artists’ careers, or to guide in the forming of a just opinion either as to the exact character of their work or the nature of their subjects. Miniatures in coloured wax, modelled in fairly high relief and framed and glazed in the ordinary way as pictures, seem to offer a general idea and the best conception of the work that emanated from the studio during these momentous years, so pregnant with meaning for the near future.

LOUIS XVI AND THE DUKE OF ORLEANS

Specimens of the few existing examples of Curtius’s miniature work. Modeled from life shortly before the outbreak of the French Revolution.

The pity of the loss is that the work, taken direct from life, afforded a faithful record of important personages. Of this there is ample proof, and that the models should have been of so ephemeral a character is a matter of great regret, extending far beyond the feelings of the artists’ descendants. Yet, when one remembers the hatred of the populace towards the aristocrats and those holding authority under the Old Régime, it is not to be wondered at that many portraits should have shared, with their originals, the destructive effects of the antipathy that was shown both to patrons of art and to the art itself. It goes without saying that during the Reign of Terror people would be disposed to hide, or even to destroy, any art subject in their possession indicating their attachment to the Royalists.

CHAPTER III

Life-size figures—Museum at the Palais Royal—Exhibition on the Boulevard du Temple—Benjamin Franklin—Voltaire.

A good deal of hearsay and some incontestable evidence helps to fill the hiatus between the time Curtius came to Paris and the outbreak of the Revolution.

Although the many years spent by Curtius in the production of miniatures in coloured wax do not appear to have brought him a very great or a very wide reputation, yet they were the means of leading him to the modelling of life-size portraits in this same material, with the express intention of forming them into a collection solely for the object of exhibiting them to the public.

Now it is to this important departure in the treatment of his works that we owe the present Madame Tussaud’s Exhibition, an establishment with which his name must be for ever associated.

He seems to have set his mind upon this venture round about the year 1776, and some years later to have opened a Museum of life-size portrait models at the Palais Royal, an enterprise that was soon to be followed by the opening of a second Exhibition of a far more renowned and interesting character on the Boulevard du Temple, to which we shall have occasion to refer more than once.

The Museum at the Palais Royal seems to have proved a lucrative concern, and to have been devoted to the portraits of men and women of position, holding for the time being a prominent place in the public eye. Little is known concerning it, except for a few meagre and commonplace references in the literature of the period, and it may, to all intents and purposes, be considered as relegated to the domain of the forgotten past.

We shall not, however, find ourselves able to dispose of the Exhibition on the Boulevard du Temple without rendering an account of it, for in the course of a few years it figured very largely in the Revolution, and had associated with it several incidents of an important and far-reaching character.

There is the record about this time of an acquaintance between the sculptor and Benjamin Franklin, the American statesman and philosopher.

Franklin had come to Paris in December, 1776, “to transact the business of his country at the Court of France,” his chief purpose being to obtain political and financial assistance in consolidating the newly formed United States of America.

Curtius and his niece—now a young woman of sixteen years—had the pleasure of entertaining the Doctor, who took considerable interest in their work. Not only did he commission them to execute several distinct portraits of himself, but he also ordered models of many other notable characters of the day. One of his own portraits is the identical figure which has been shown at Madame Tussaud’s ever since.

BENJAMIN FRANKLIN

Modeled from life, in Paris, by Christopher Curtius for his Exhibition.

This model was executed in 1783, in which year Franklin assumed great prominence as one of the signatories to the Treaty of Peace between the Mother Country and the United States, which recognised the latter as an independent nation. The figure in question is a life-size one; but, in addition to this, Curtius, aided by his capable niece, who was now earnestly supporting her uncle in his work, produced several miniature portraits of the statesman which went directly into his possession. Indeed, it is well known that Franklin had in his rooms in Paris many works that had emanated from Curtius’s studio.

In Franklin’s Autobiography there is an account of his home in Market Street, Philadelphia, in which he finally settled, and the following extract under the date 13th July, 1787, from a journal kept by an old friend of his, the Reverend Dr. Manasseh Cutler, a distinguished scholar and botanist, of Hamilton, Massachusetts, who had recently paid him a visit, shows that he took with him from Paris a number of miniatures, many of which he had obtained from Curtius:

Over his mantel he has a prodigious number of medals, busts and casts in wax or plaster of paris, which are the effigies of the most noted characters in Europe.

When Franklin returned to America in 1785 there sailed with him, on board the same ship, Houdon, the eminent French sculptor, who had been in his early student days a friend and companion of Curtius, who engaged his services, and to whom he rendered considerable assistance in his work.

Houdon’s skill was highly appreciated by Franklin, and the object of the journey to America was that the sculptor might execute a statue of Washington for the State of Virginia, the instructions for the work coming from both Franklin and Jefferson. The voyage was made in the London Packet, and the date of the embarkation was the 27th of July, 1785.

Perhaps the most famous man of this period was the satirist, philosopher, and dramatist, Voltaire, who, throughout the whole of his long life, had championed the cause of the people against arbitrary and despotic power.

THREE VIEWS OF VOLTAIRE’S HEAD

Modeled from life by Christopher Curtius in Paris during the spring of 1778, a few weeks before Voltaire’s death.

After an absence of twenty-eight years the aged Voltaire left his home on the shores of Geneva and returned to Paris, arriving there on the 10th of February, 1778. He was welcomed by an ovation that might well have befitted the homecoming of a great conqueror.

Curtius’s reputation at that time stood at its highest, and Voltaire gave him several sittings soon after his arrival. It is owing to this circumstance that the artist was able to place among the models of his recently opened Exhibition on the Boulevard du Temple a life-size standing figure of this popular idol.

It is a matter of exceptional interest that the selfsame figure still exists, and is shown to-day as one of the most attractive and notable objects in Madame Tussaud’s, where it has stood for just upon a century and a half.

Besides producing this figure, Curtius took the opportunity the sittings afforded him of executing several miniature models, one of them representing the philosopher during his last moments. To this he gave the title of “The Dying Socrates.” Several copies of this are known to exist, and we give an illustration of the one in the Tussaud collection. These were the last portraits produced of him from life, and they were completed none too soon.

“THE DYING SOCRATES”

Portrait of Voltaire at the time of his death. Wax miniature modeled by Christopher Curtius.

The stirring reception accorded Voltaire on his arrival in Paris, to which he responded with great energy, coupled with the strenuous effort and anxiety attending his personal superintendence of his new tragedy, Irene, soon affected his health. The sittings were given during the months of March and April, and on the following 30th of May his eventful life terminated at the age of eighty-four.

CHAPTER IV

Madame Elizabeth of France—Madame Tussaud goes to Versailles—Foulon—Three notable groups—“Caverne des Grands Voleurs.”

In the year 1780 the ill-fated Louis XVI had been six years on the throne, and Curtius by this time had become well ingratiated with the followers of the New Régime.

MADAME ELIZABETH OF FRANCE

The Sister of Louis XVI and Patroness of Madame Tussaud. A Portrait Study by John T. Tussaud.

Among the many distinguished visitors who honoured Curtius’s studio with their presence in 1780 was one who was destined to exercise a great influence on Madame Tussaud’s life. This was the King’s sister, Madame Elizabeth of France, who, at the time we speak of, was sixteen years of age. Her disposition was singularly sweet and charming, and the keen interest she took in the models and mysteries of the studio caused her to bestow upon the niece of Curtius very special attention.

Madame Elizabeth, according to her young protégée, was of medium height and slight build, her forehead was high and intellectual, and she had kind, soft, blue eyes. Her expression and demeanour were most sympathetic, and on the slightest provocation her amiable countenance became wreathed in smiles, the parting lips revealing a perfect set of teeth.

So infatuated did Madame Elizabeth become with this pleasant work of modelling in coloured wax, which was soon to become a veritable craze, that she asked Madame Tussaud to instruct her in the art, and for that purpose invited her to live with her in her apartments at the Palace of Versailles, for the Princess seldom visited Paris.

Her overtures to his niece met with little opposition on the part of Curtius, who, in spite of the fact that he had decided leanings towards the cause of the people, yet, in order to further his relative’s interests, readily gave his permission to her accompanying the Princess. This concession Curtius must have made at some sacrifice, for it deprived him of his niece’s society and of the help she was then rendering him in his studio.

Madame Tussaud accordingly bade her uncle farewell, and left Paris for Versailles.

MADAME TUSSAUD AT THE AGE OF 20

Madame Tussaud, as the young and beautiful Marie Grosholtz, at the time she was compelled by the National Convention to take impressions of the dead features of Louis XVI, his Queen Marie Antoinette and many leaders of the French Revolution. A Portrait Study by John T. Tussaud.

The quarters then occupied by Madame Elizabeth were situated at the end of the façade of the south wing of the palace, and looked out upon the Swiss Lake.

One wonders whether the fascinating work of modelling in wax was the sole influence that prompted Madame Elizabeth’s friendly feeling towards Madame Tussaud. The Princess had already shown a marked predilection for the Swiss, for both at the palace and on her own private estate of Montreuil hard by she had many Swiss people about her.

Unfortunately, little is known of the life of Madame Tussaud either at Versailles or at Montreuil, which the King presented to his sister with the understanding that she should continue to make Versailles her official home until she attained the age of twenty-four.

MADAME ELIZABETH AT MONTREUIL

From a painting by Ricard in Versailles.

We are told that the Princess was very fond of modelling sacred subjects, and many of these works produced by her own hands she gave away to her friends. She showed her attachment to Madame Tussaud in many ways, and required her to sleep in an adjoining apartment.

Curtius’s niece often found herself engaged in many duties besides those associated with modelling in wax, and it was no unusual thing for the girl to be made the means of conveying alms to the Princess’s numerous pensioners.

For nine years she enjoyed the confidence and almost daily company of her patroness, and throughout the long life vouchsafed to her she deemed them the happiest she had known. Seldom could she be brought to dwell upon these days, or call to mind the fate of her illustrious pupil and the other members of the Royal Family she then so often encountered, without the tears, sooner or later, welling to her eyes. Indeed, not even after the passage of some sixty years, when her own days were drawing to a close, and when one might have expected her grief to have become assuaged, could she restrain her emotion at the memory of their sad and tragic end.

We have already referred to the second and larger Exhibition opened by Curtius on the Boulevard du Temple. A collection of wax figures representing famous personages, living and dead, attired in their everyday costume, and exhibiting their usual pose and attitude, was known as a “Cabinet de Cire.”

The house wherein Curtius opened this second Exhibition was formerly occupied by Foulon, the Minister of Finance, who earned public execration by his ill-timed suggestion that if the people could not get sufficient bread they might eat hay. When the Revolution broke out Foulon was one of the first victims for the mob to vent its rage upon. They hanged him, decapitated the body, and then paraded the streets with his head stuck on a pike, between his lips being placed a wisp of hay in memory of the cruel sneer at the people’s want.

For his Exhibition Curtius modelled several notable groups. Three of these call for some mention.

The first was a representation of the Royal Family dining in public, a curious ceremonial of that period. There was, within the walls of the Palace of Versailles, a chapel whither the family repaired to hear mass every morning; and on Sundays, after returning from prayer, they held a grand couvert in the palace. The dining-table was in the form of a horseshoe, the Cent Suisse (or Swiss Bodyguard) formed a circle around it, and, between them, the spectators were permitted to view the august party at their dinner.

To this spectacle everyone had access, provided the gentlemen were fully dressed—that is, had a bag-wig, sword, and silk stockings—and the ladies were correspondingly attired. Even if their clothes were threadbare the visitors were not turned back; nor were they admitted, however well clad, unless they presented themselves as etiquette prescribed.

The costume of the Swiss Bodyguard was magnificent, being similar to that worn by Henry IV of France. It comprised a hat with three white feathers, short robe, red pantaloons or long stockings (all in one, and slashed at the top with white silk), black shoes with buckles, sash, sword, and halbert.

The Royal Family generally remained three-quarters of an hour at table. The spectacle was such an interesting one that Curtius, ever alive, as his successors have been, to satisfy the popular imagination, modelled a group for his Exhibition depicting the incident.

The second tableau represented an Indian group. In the grounds of the Palace of Versailles are two residences, the Grand Trianon and the Petit Trianon, the latter having been a favourite retreat of Marie Antoinette because of its secluded position and charming attractions.

Curtius—assisted by his niece, who was now a full-grown woman, sensible of her responsibilities, and able to execute commissions of her own—modelled a group of figures, consisting of the envoys of Tippoo Sahib and several sepoys in their picturesque Eastern costumes, which was arranged under a tent placed in the Grand Trianon.

Tippoo Sahib was the Sultan of Mysore, and he had sent to Louis XVI to invoke his assistance in expelling the British from his dominions.

On the 10th of August, 1788, after spending the night at the Grand Trianon, the envoys were escorted to the Palace of Versailles, and received with great pomp.

This was one of the last occasions on which Madame Elizabeth appeared in public at the palace and on which the King was able to receive freely the representatives of a foreign Power. The winter that followed was long and severe, and had much to do with hastening the outbreak of the Revolution and the downfall of the monarchy.

We do not know for certain whether the commission for the third group was prompted by Madame Elizabeth or by Marie Antoinette herself, but we know for certain that it was one of the groups shown in the Petit Trianon before those disturbing elements manifested themselves that heralded the terrible upheaval which was to come. The tableau comprised the seated figures of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette with their young children, the Dauphin and the Duchesse d’Angoulême, all attired in full Court costume.

MARIE ANTOINETTE, THE DAUPHIN, AND THE DUCHESSE D’ANGOULÊME

Models taken from life and exhibited for some time in Le Petit Trianon at Versailles.

A very special interest attaches to this group, inasmuch that, except for the renovation necessitated by the long passage of time, it is now shown within the walls of the present Exhibition exactly as it was when first modelled.

While Madame Tussaud was fully occupied at Versailles her uncle was busy with his Museum in Paris.

In 1783 Curtius added to his collection on the Boulevard du Temple the “Caverne des Grands Voleurs,” which we may fairly regard as the forerunner of the present Chamber of Horrors.

There seems to be some doubt as to the distinctive character of Curtius’s two Exhibitions. One authority informs us that his rooms at the Palais Royal contained the effigies of famous and celebrated men, and that the venture on the Boulevard du Temple was devoted to those of notorious and infamous scoundrels. One cannot say for certain what were the characteristics of the two collections at this time, but there can be no doubt that both attracted great numbers of people for a very long period.

The descriptive accounts of Parisian amusements of the time make mention of Curtius’s “Cabinet de Cire”—or, to make use of the titles given to it on a copperplate etching of that period by Martial, “Théatre des Figures de Cire, ou Théatre Curtius”—as a sight well worthy of inviting the attention of persons of rank and condition. “One may see,” said Dulaure in 1791, “waxen coloured figures of celebrated characters in all stations of life.”

Upon closing the Exhibition at the Palais Royal, Curtius conveyed its figures to the Boulevard du Temple, wherein merged all the models that had been previously on view, thus combining the peculiar characteristics of the two establishments and constituting the Madame Tussaud’s Exhibition as we know it to-day.

CHAPTER V

Eve of the French Revolution—Necker and the Duke of Orléans—Louis XVI’s fatal mistakes—His dismissal of the people’s favourites.

We are now approaching the day when the long-pent-up storm, threatening for so great a while, was about to burst, and we must contemplate King Louis XVI and his advisers seeking for a means to placate a people at last stirred to resentment through the cruel and unjust burdens it had for generations been made to bear.

The murmurings which had long been general and indefinite were now resolving themselves into a hatred fast becoming focused upon the rich and the powerful, many of whom, it must be added, were also arrogant and dissolute.

A rude awakening among some of these, who had at last been brought to realise the imminence of the convulsion, induced them to advocate with much haste and little discretion certain concessions. These were obviously granted as acts of expediency, and with as little derogation as possible from their own interest, rather than out of any sympathy for a distressed and desperate people clamouring for relief.

So, early in 1789, the King was prompted to resort to an expedient which had not been adopted since the year 1614. He summoned the States-General to meet together at Versailles on the 5th of May, 1789.

In the deliberations of this National Council the King and his Ministers looked for support and guidance to meet the difficulties that beset them. But matters took an unexpected course. The Deputies of the Third Estate, which out-numbered the First and Second put together, demanded that all three Estates should sit and vote as one whole indissoluble body. In spite of opposition they pushed their demand to a successful issue, and, grasping control of both legislative and executive power, forthwith resolved themselves into a permanent constitutional assembly.

The King soon found himself confronted by an irresistible authority, including a majority of men who betrayed little concern for his prerogative, and manifested a strong sympathy with the cause of the people.

In such stirring times as those which were now being experienced in France, Curtius turned to the advocates of the people’s cause for many of his subjects for his new Exhibition. Among these were many who were to figure largely in the Revolution.

Special mention must be made of two figures, added about this date, namely, Necker and Philippe, Duke of Orléans, for their models had an important bearing upon the events that followed.

Necker, at the time his model was made by Curtius and Madame Tussaud, was the French Minister of Finance. In 1775 he had claimed for the State the right of fixing the price of grain and, if necessary, of prohibiting exportation; a year later he was made Director of the Treasury, and in 1777 he became Director-General of Finance.

His retrenchments were bitterly opposed by Queen Marie Antoinette; and his famous Compte Rendu, in 1781, occasioned his dismissal at that time. Some of his measures, such as his adjustment of taxes and his establishment of State-guaranteed annuities and State pawnshops, were a boon to suffering France. He retired to Geneva, but in 1787 returned to Paris, and, when M. de Calonne cast doubt on the Compte Rendu, he published a justification which drew upon him his banishment from Paris.

Recalled to office in September, 1788, he quickly made himself a popular hero by recommending the summoning of the States-General, to which reference has already been made.

On the 11th of July, 1789, he received the royal command to leave France at once; but the fall of the Bastille, three days later, frightened the King into recalling him, amid the wildest popular enthusiasm.

MODEL OF THE BASTILLE

The Duke of Orléans, the famous Égalité, was another hero of the people at this time. He was looked upon coldly at Court owing to his dissolute habits.

London was frequently visited by him, and he became an intimate friend of the Prince of Wales, afterwards George IV. He infected young France with Anglomania in the form of horse-racing and hard drinking, and made himself popular among the lower classes by profuse charity.

In 1787 he showed his liberalism boldly against the King, and as the States-General drew near he lavished his wealth in flooding France with seditious books and papers. In the following year he promulgated his Délibérations, written by Laclos, to the effect that the Third Estate was the nation; and in June, 1789—the month that preceded the fall of the Bastille—he led the forty-seven nobles who seceded from their own order to join that Estate.

The Duke presumed to become constitutional King of France, or at least Regent; but he was only a comparatively small fragment that drifted into the vortex of the Revolution itself. In 1792, when all hereditary titles were swept away, this “citizen” adopted the name of Philippe Égalité.

He was the twentieth Deputy for Paris in the National Convention, and voted for the death of the King; but in the following year retribution overtook him, for he himself was found guilty of conspiracy and guillotined.

The public distrust of the King’s party, the fatal error in bringing the foreign troops to Paris and its environs, and, finally, the banishment of Necker and the Duke of Orléans, the great champions of the people, must be regarded as the immediate cause of the catastrophe that followed.

CHAPTER VI

Madame Tussaud recalled from Versailles—The 12th of July, 1789—Busts taken from Curtius’s Exhibition—A Garde Française slain in the mêlée.

It must be remembered that the “romance” of Madame Tussaud’s began in the French capital one hundred and fifty years ago.

As we view to-day the quaint little figure of Madame which stands in the Exhibition she helped to found in France and established in this country, we must imagine her in the full vigour of her young womanhood, sensible to the dangers and terrors of the Revolution in which she was about to be involved. The Exhibition was as yet in its infancy; but stirring times were approaching, and the days were pregnant with meaning for the France that was to be—a time of bloodshed and grim ruthlessness born of a people’s desire for freedom, and attended by ghastly scenes in Paris that revealed the extremities to which unbridled human passions could go.

We must see through her eyes the sights that marked the red dawn of the French Revolution; and hear the first low rumble that gave warning of the approach of the Reign of Terror. Her uncle recalled her from the Court of Versailles, an order that he might afford her his protection, and she did not leave a whit too soon.

Now we come to the fateful days of July.