SILHOUETTES OF STRANGE WOMEN.

Auckland Star, Volume LIV, Issue 89, 14 April 1923, Page 19

SILHOUETTES OF STRANGE WOMEN.

** MADAME TUSSAUD." (Sculptress ln Wax, and founder of the freat Waxwork Exhibition.) (By V. METHLEY.) V. The quaint, demure figure of a tiny, old woman, dressed ln a Kack silk gown, and an antique bonnet, and with a wise, wrinkled face, was well known to Lon- | doners in the early half of the nineteenth century. And that quaint figure Is amongst us still, wearing the same black dress and ! old-fjshioned bonnet—exactly as in life. You may meet her any day you care to call at the big red building In the Marylebone Road, where the wax figure of Madame ; Tusaaud still stands, modest and retiring. jin the great exhibition which she founded, convincing proof that this small woman was a personality in her day, with those keen eyes and suppressed, humorous mouth. A strange, dramatic life waa that of little Marie Grosho't.z. daughter of a retired Army officer In Berne. She was born in i 1760, and. as a small girl, was adopted by ! her uncle, Jean Chrlstophe Curtlus, a modeller in wax. -His wonderful anatomical casts attracted the attention of the great Prince de Contl, and whilst the future Madame Tussau'd was still quite a child she went with her uncle to Paris, where | Curtlus set up a shop in the Palais Royal. Ho gave up his anatomical work and took to making mode's ln wax of celebrated people, life-size, life-coloured busts, or bas--1 reliefs framed in black behind glass, in a mode which waa very fashionable at that time, and of which exquisite epeclmens survive. Curtlus was A wonderfully skilful craftsman, and he soon found that his little i niece had inherited his skill. I At the age of six she began to "earn to j model ln wax, with those tiny, deft hands, I which remained tiny and deft to her life's . end. Whilst she was still onTy a young I girl, many famous men and women came to the Palais Royal to sit to her fpr their waxen portraits, and she was probably still ln her early teens, when she made the famous model of Voltaire—that model wblcb may still be seen at Tussaud's, and which gives us such an Impression of life and reality with its twisted smile and cynical glance. Somewhere about 1780 Mademoiselle Grosholtz was summoned to stay at Versailles, ln the very palace of the King, to give lessons in the fashionable art of waxmodelling to tho sister of Louis XVI., Madame Elizabeth. Mademoiselle Urosholtz mode*led many of tbe royalties and the courtiers. She executed a mask of the beautiful face of Marie Antoinette, which may still be seen in the exhibition—a won derfui reminder of that dead court life. She returned to the Palais Royal and her uncle's shop, and went on quietly with her work—whilst the first mntterings of the Revolution filled the air. They rose loud an* ominous—those muttering.—ln the Palais Royal, which was a very breedingground of sedition and disaffection; orators could be heard haranguing the crowds, day and night, ln the gardens outside the windows of Curtlus' shop. Then on a sultry day of July, _789, the storm broke, and 'Marie, ln her room overlooking the gardens, heard the shouts of the mob -which aej claimed -knllle Desmonlln.—which greeted | that speech of his, setting the match to the gunpowder of Revolution. | In the shop window stood wax busts of Necker and the Due d' Orleans, the two yopular idols of the bour. The mob surged ln, seated upon the busts, draped them in dags and carried them, shoulder high, at the head of the procession which went, shouting and singing through the Paris streets. A little later the man who carried the bust of Necker was killed by the King's soldiers, who opposed the mob—and after that all the King's horses and all the King's men could not quite disassociate Curtlus and his niece from the cause of the Revolution. The craze for wax models spread amongst the lower classes; the new leaders of the people came to have their portraits executed Instead of courtiers and royalties, and Curtlus dared not refuse their orders or offend the new powers, however much he and his niece may have sympathised with the Royal Family. Little Mademoiselle Grosholz had strange new models in those days; some of them you may still see amongst the exhibits ln Marylebone Road. There Is the "Sleeping . Beauty," for instance, who ln life wat, Madame Salnte-Amaranthe, a noted beauty of the revolution, who died later on the guillotine; there were Robespierre and Conthon, both great amongst the extremists; most gruesome client of all, she was called upon to model the dead face of Jean Jacques Marat,, murdered in his bath bj Charlotte Corday, and, for the moment, deified by the populace. But all the discretion and tact of th» little sculptress ln wax could not save her from falling under suspicion of "bad citizenShip" —that deadly sin of the Revolution. She was arrested and imprisoned for three i months, and such imprisonment was a very ghastly and nerve-wracking ordeal in those ; days, when there was no trust to be put in Justice. However, Mademolsene Grosholz ' was released and ln 1794 she married a cer- i tain Jean Tuss-aud, whose name has become more famous than his personality. ' We know little more of him than the fac ' that the marriage was a failure and that ' bis wife separated from him in 1800, a year after the death of her uncle. I That small Indomitable woman was now alone, with her little sons, and she set herself to make a living for herself and them. Tbe craze for wax portrait-modelling had passed its height, and France and Paris had become hateful to her. With eonsiderabl""culty she got permlss'on from the newly, made Emperor Napoleon, to leave France and carried her collection of models to En_land. She took premises ln the Strand, on the site of the present Lyceum Theatre, ana here she arranged her models. The idea of

the Chamber of Horrors—which made part of Madame Tussaud's exhibition from the first—she took from her uncle, Curtlus, . who had set up a display of models called the "Caverne dcs Grand Voleurs" during; the Revolution. Her exniMtlon was a new thing In London; her connection with tho victims and the authors of the Revolution made her something of a personality and drew people to the Strand out of ccrlosity. Madame worked lndefatlgably to add -jtr models to her collection, and began to plan the historical groups which are stlU one of Its features.

Soon it became necessary to move Into new premises, and ln 1833 the famous exhibition was established in Baker Street, where it remained until the final move in 1884. After the death of Napoleon, when hatred of him still prevailed and the reaction to acclaim him a great man had not set in, It was Madame Tussaud who seized the opportunity to buy all those relics which were brought to England, and whlcn the French Government of the diy best, tated to claim or purchase. Their valno at the time was scarcely realised—sho acquired the "Waterloo coach." the beon which the Emperor died, and manyother priceless relics, which are still to bo seen ln their separate rooms at the Exhibition, and which rank amongst the most Interesting souvenirs of Napoleon in tho world.

Madame Tussaud lived to a gre-it age-* until she was 00 years old, with her wits and her cleverness unimpaired. Up to ths> middle of the last century she remalned as a link with the times of the Empire and the Revolution, and died on April 16, ISSO. leaving lhat unique collection of her's to her son.