THE SKETCHER

Otago Witness, Issue 3714, 19 May 1925, Page 65

THE SKETCHER

ROMANTIC STORY OF MADAME TUSSAUD’S. Mr J. T. Tussaud’s Stories. Madame Tussaud’s, in Marylebone road, was the wonder show of the world. As an exhibition it was unique and, surrounded by the glamour of romance, was linked in an intimate way with the entertainment life of London. Visitors from abroad and “country cousins” did not consider they had “done ’ London until their tour had included a visit to the famous waxworks show. Madame Tussaud, the founder, was the niece of John Christopher Curtius, a sculptor, who lived in Paris during the time of Louis XVI. Her uncle took her to Paris a few years before the Revolution, and instructed her in the art of modelling in wax, which was then a fashionable craze. Marie G rosholz —as she was then—-be-came instructor to Mme. Elizabeth, sister of the King, and afterwards witnessed all the scenes of the Revolution and the succeeding Reign of Terror. -> Two days before the storming of the Bastille two busts she had made of Necker and the Duke of Orleans were seized by the mob and carried in procession after the prison had been stormed. Her connection with the Court led to her being imprisoned by the Jacobins; in the same prison with her was Mme. de Reauharnais, who afterwards became wife of Napoleon. During her imprisonment she was called upon to take the death masks of the King, of Marie Antoinette, Charlotte Corday, Marat, Robespierre. Her most awful task —which she was compelled to perform—was taking a cast of the mangled remains of the Princess de Lamballe. It was owing to her skill as a modeller that she escaped the guillotine. In 1795 she married Francis Tussaud. Before he left for Egypt Napoleon ordered her take his mask for his wife Josephine. After the signing of the Peace of Amiens in 1802 Madame took the opportunity to come to England. She brought her collection of models, and opened her first exhibition in the old Lyceum Theatre—then known as the English Opera House. After showing in London for about a year, she toured the provinces, and con tinued to travel for many years through all parts of the kingdom. On one occasion she and her models were wrecked while crossing the Irish Sea, and many valuable properties were lost. During the Reform riots in Bristol, in 1831, her exhibition was marked for destruction by the rioters. But a stalward negro door-keeper kept them at bay until the military arrived, and the collection was saved. Finally, Madame Tussaud took her ex hibition to a permanent home in London. In 1833 she took the Portman Rooms, in Baker street, and there the collection remained until 1884, when it was moved to the handsome building which was destroyed last night. Madame Tussaud always kept her collection up to date. In 1808 she modelled from life Queen Charlotte and George 111., and the Emperor of Russia in 1814. Mrs Siddons, Sir Walter Scott, Malibran and other notabilites were also modelled from life. She died in 1850 at the age of 90. Madame Tussaud left two sons, Francis and Joseph, who carried on the exhibition, which afterwards came under the care of Mr John Theodore Tussaud, her great grandson, tpe present managei. Mr John Theodore Tussaud is a director of and artist to Mme. Tussaud and Sons’ Exhibition. “Mr John” was born in 1859 in Kensington. He studied modelling and sculpture under his father when he was in his very early tens, and succeeded his father to the important post of artist to the great Show'. Some hundreds of the portrait, models destroyed last night were the handiwork of Mr John Theodore Tussaud. He has exhibited at the Royal Academy. He has also made several contributions to current literature, notably articles on the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Period. Since the war he published a very interesting work, “The Romance of Madame Tussaud's.” Mr J. Tussaud says that Sir Henry Irving was an ideal sitter. While his model was being made the conversation turned on the question of insuring Madame Tussaud’s against fire. Irving remarked that money would be a very poor consolation for the loss of an Irreplaceable collection, especially the Napoleon relics, and the heads of the French revolutionaries. The original idea of a Chamber of Horrors came from a Cambridge don. When Madamo Tussaud took her waxworks to Cambridge in 1818, figures ~ r criminals stood in the same rooms ns those of statesmen, churchmen, and othci celebrated people. The don suggested to Madame that thD was “indecorous,” and she adopted his Idea, placing her “criminals” in a

separate chamber, which, it is said, i 3 eften visited by the relatives of the murderers whose images it shelters. —DaiD Chronicle. THE LINER’S GREATEST PERIL. By Richard Worth, in the Daily Mail. It is a lovely starlit night. The giant liner, her turbines purring loudly, is steaming as fast as an express train. Suddenly, without warning, she is wrapped in an impenetrable blanket of clammy, sticky fog. Her fog-horn blares. A moment s pause and again its hoarse, impassioned note breaks the silence. It is impossible to see the waves thrown up by the ship’s bows as she cuts through the water. A bell in the engine-room rings. Almost on the instant comes the check. From twenty-five knots she comes down to fifteen—to ten. With every hundred yards or so that she covers she bellows out her warning to other sea traffic. Up on the bridge the officer of the watch is straining his eyes, peering ahead for that sudden, shapeless mass which may tell him, too late, that another vessel is directly in his path. High up in the bows stands another look-out man with the same fixed attitude of unwavering attention. In their hands are the lives of more than a thousand souls. “Hoo! Hoo-hoo-hoo-oo!” Like the cry of a lost soul, the horn’s deep voice cries out its warning. All around is silence like that of the grave. Wireless has, of course, done a great deal towards helping the sailor to fight the fog-fiend. There are many instances where the captains of ocean greyhounds have steered their living freight by the aid of wireless towards the safety of their home port through forty-eight hours of fog, and then, when it finally lifted, have scarcely been out of their reckoning. Close your eyes for the fraction of a minute next time you walk abroad and continue your progress, then think what it means to steer a vessel of thirty or forty thousand tons hundreds of miles across the trackless waste of water with such a handicap. A SCULPTOR OF SHOES. In Paris there is a shoemaker who so thoroughly knows his metier, and what is required to make a shoe fit perfectly, that customers pay him something like 10,000 francs for a concession, a guarantee to secure his master-services to make their shoes. He has made his artistry a life study and hobby, which is individualised in the moulding shapes for the covering of their feet (writes “Sylvis” in the Evening Standard). A simple man, understanding human nature quite a lot. The first thing he does when you enter his saloon is to observe the way you place your feet while standing, sitting—then he asks you to walk. Perhaps it happens to be in the morning you call—therefore, if you are correctly dressed—he sees you in your tailormade walking shoe attire. He proceeds to take youf measurements, then probably will ask you to return for a preliminary trial fitting in the afternoon, when, of course, you will be wearing an afternoon dressy shoe, which will enlighten him further, and he offers to come to your home or hotel in the evening, just for a few minutes before you go out to dinner. Why? To have an opportunity to study your walk in evening slippers, your mannerisms, the way you move, place or fold your feet dressed in dinner—or ballroom—attire, just as he has done in the morning and afternoon for your other shoes. With this gathered knowledge and his skill he is going to make for you the footwear of perfection—specially invented models. of marvel, line, and craftsmanship that should go on your feet to give you most comfort and ease. A shoe which seems to belong to your “own” foot, with characteristics imparted of your own individuality, and so to let the feet express their particular language. Very different from a thing ready made, and not at all “you”—just a shape made for a thousand similar feet, and into which you really only gro>v by the time they are nearly out of shape. LENDING MY FACE. I have just lent my faco to a sculptor (writes Anne Marvell, in the Daily Mail). The poor man was in despair. Professional models were, he said, dull and expressionless; paying sitters wished to be nattered in clay as well as in words. Where was the being, neither indifferent to art nor in love with herself, who would collaborate with him in a work destined for posterity? I offered myself as a passive partner in high enterprise, and was gratefully accepted. My face was borrowed as impersonally as a painter would have taken a vase of flowers, a tablecloth, and two teacups. I parted my hair severely in the centre, according to instructions. It made me look 10 years older, according to my mirror, but that was not my affair. Prettiness and art are incompatible. The sittings were delightful. There was only one drawback. Involuntarily my

eyes longed to watch the artist’s vigorous hands with the moulding thumbs that pulled and pushed and smoothed the yielding clav as they willed, but my eyes were ordered to gaze straight ahead, at the pattern of the wallpaper facing me. We talked from time to time, but he conversation was serious I was not allowed to laugh, for then the muscles around my mouth altered their position. It was difficult at one moment, when the artist darted with quick little steps to the right and the left of me, appraising my eyebrows or my chin with intent, bird-like glances, but I took my duties as a model sufficiently seriously to avoid the temptation. “There! You can get down.” Diffidently I approached the bust and gazed at it with ardent, impersonal curiosity. The damp clay gave it an air of liveliness, but tne magic of the sculptor’s fingers gave it an appearance of inner life, which arrested and held the onlooker. There seemed to be keen thoughts behind those deep-set enigmatic eyes; secrets behind the tightly closed lips. The hair curled around the faco with a life all its own. The more I looked at the face, the more difficult it became to realise that it had been inspired by my own. The features were analogous, certainly; the resemblance was unmistakable, but from the artist’s fingers there had passed some substance of his own mind into the bust. It might be me—it certainly was his. “Let us say,” he explained, “it is my impression of a person who affects me like that.” “I am quite satisfied,” I answered. A CURE FOR BLUES. (By a Student of Medicine, in the Daily Chronicle.) I have a friend who changes the arrangement of the furniture in his house every year. He is a doctor who works harder, per haps, than any other man I ever knew. I confess that I was very much when he told me recently that he believes part of the secret of his energy lies in these annual removals. His idea is that surroundings to which one has grown accustomed exercise no influence. They induce a sense of monotony, even of depression. Thus other people’s houses are apt to seem more attractive than our own. But with change comes an awakening of interest and even enthusiasm. In a “new” environment we realise a new side of our natures. We see our own possessions in a fresh light, and that revelation enables us to extend our vision to the world lying beyond. Thus, both work and play become suddenly more interesting. A similar effect is produced when a man puts off his ordinary clothes and dons evening dress. He is never quite the same individual in these garments as in his working wear. If he goes further and arrays himself in fancy, dress, he may almost fail to recognise himself. Who has not gasped at the antics of a sober companion posing for the night as clown or pierrot? The truth would seem to be that most of us are content to “live in one-room houses.” All the other “rooms” of our spirits are kept locked up, shuttered and empty, or are opened only on high days and holidays. Thus, we resent even the slight disturbance of habit occasioned by the sending of a favourite armchair to be re-covered or by a change in the position of a writingdesk We have possessions, but we never see them, because they are always in exactly the same places. To live in a world of that sort is to live in darkness. It is to grow blind without the loss of sight. Change of environment, on the other hand, is the oldest cure for depression in the world. ADMIRABLE AUNTS. The well-meaning aunt, the interfering aunt, the aunt with the benevolent or eccentric testamentary intentions, each has her place in the vast category of aunthood; but we arc concerned, for the moment, with the aunt admirable (writes Dorothy M. Stuart in the Daily Telegraph.) Surely the foremost place in this illustrious sisterhood must be assigned to Miss Catherine Portcn, at whose name Edward Gibbon felt on five different occasions five separate and distinct tears of gratitude trickle down his ample cheek. When Mrs Gibbon left the infant Edward perdu at Putney and dashed off to enjoy the social whirl elsewhere, it was Miss Porten who installed herself in the chair thus left empty by the side of her nephew’s cradle. It was she who steered the author of the “Decline and Fall” through the many and menacing ailments of his precarious childhood, who drew out and helped to develop his early intelligence, and who. when he was sent to Westminster School, took a house in Dean’-s Yard so that, as he puts it, “instead of audaciously mingling in the sports, the quarrels, and the connections of our little world, I was cherished at home under the maternal wing of my aunt.” Whom shall wc set beside Miss Porten on the dais of honour? If imaginary aunts be eligible, it must surely be Miss Betsey Trotwood, even at the risk that she might at any moment leap fromPher lofty place with the loud slogan, “Janet, donkeys!” But, should we hesitate to set a figment, however convincing, beside an historic reality, I doubt if we could find a more worthy neighbour for Miss Porten than Miss Scott, of Sandy Knowe, Sir Walter’s “kind and affectionate aunt,” who charmed bis crippled c£!ldhood with Border ballads, and read “Hardyknute” so often in response to bis reiterated appeals that be soon bod long passages of that rococo epic by heart,

and proceeded to “work them off” on the disconcerted “meenister” of the parish. Wc catch a last glimpse of “Aunt Jenny” when, as an “ancient maiden lady,” she had established herself at Kelso, in a small cottage surrounded by a garden which her nephew has described in phrases Annihilating all that’s made To a green thought in a green shade. “It was full,” says Sir Walter, “of long straight walks between hedges of yew and hornbeam, which rose tall and close on either side. There were thickets of flowery shrubs, a bower, and an arbour. In the centre of the bower was u splendid Platanus, or Oriental plane, a huge hill of leaves.” May the ghosts of all good aunts dwell for ever in the ghosts of just such a garden. SCHOOLBOY “HOWLERS.” Much of the contents of the average school magazine is scarcely interesting, if even intelligible, to anyone except a present or old boy. But those magazines that record the “howlers” of the term can (writes a Manchester Guardian correspondent) count on readers outside their immediate constituency. The latest issue of a periodical of this class in the West Country gives us a few that deserve a wider circulation. Some arise evidently from confusions between words of similar sound, as:— “An aristocrat Is a man who performs tricks oft the stage.” “Volcanoes throw out saliva,” and “In 1743 Anselm completed his voyage round the worl if” Reminiscences of the popular teashops probably help to account for “The valley of the Rhone grows tea, which is packed at Lyons.” New light is cast on a much controverted question by the statement that “Bacon was the man who thought he wrote Shakespeare,” and on the function of the Press by the information that “newspapers are useful for reporting calamities, such as deaths, marriages, &c.” But the “howler” that surely leads ail the rest is that “Bass is a beverage made from the fish of that name.” The following is a selection made by the Daily Mail from a collection of schoolboy mistakes which won the prize in a competition promoted by the University Correspondent:— A fugue is what you get in a room full of people when all the windows and doors are shut. An Irish bull is a male cow. Evolution is what Darwin did; revolution is a form of government abroad ; devolution is something to do with Satan. Cereals are films shown at the pictures and which last 15 weeks. The Court of Chancery is so called because it takes care of property when there is no chance of the owner turning up. The people in Ireland are called Equinoxes. A cuckoo is a bird what lays other birds’ eggs in its own nest and viva voce. A glazier is a man who runs down mountains. Queen Elizabeth was called the Virgil Queen because she knew Latin. Wordsworth wrote the imitations of immortality. Sienna is famous for being burnt. Chesterton committed suicide at Bristol. He was only 19, and very thin hungry. A limited monarchy is a Government by a monarch who, in case of bankruptcy, would not be entirely responsible for the national debt. You have the same thing in private life with a limited liability company. Gravity is that which, if there were none, we should all fly away. MUSICAL CHILDREN. (By Richard Capell, in the Daily Mail.) The question was asked the other day, What becomes of musical “wonder-cliil-dren”? It arose out of a book about an Hungarian boy musician who was much talked of some 12 or 15 years ago. At six he was “amazing,” “prodigious, ' as executant and improviser. As a grown man lie is said to be an estimable pianist, but his name is not generally familiar. He may still surprise the world, but the chances are against his fulfilling the hopes of those who hastily called linn another Mozart. Mozart showed a marked love toi music at three, and was soon playing and composing. At six he undertook Ka first European tour as an infant prodDy seven he was charming Paris, xnd the next year (1764) London lionised him Compositions of his 17th year still delight, us. Before his death, at 35. he had enriched the world with hundreds of pieces of a pure loveliness that nothing in the whole of art surpasses. While no other of the greatest composers was actually lamous as an infant prodigy, all were distinctly musical as children. Schubert took so to music ns u small boy that no one seems to have troubled about teaching him. Handel, in defiance of an unmusical father, had taught himself something about the organ at seven, and might have figured as n prodigy if his father, like Mozart’s father, wanted to exploit him. Mendelssohn played in public when he was nine, but the boy-Wagner’s gifts seemed at first literary rather than musical. • • • • • It does not follow that a precocious child-musician is going to be a great man. Still less does it mean future greatness when tlieso gifted children are dragged round the world to be exhibited in the way of a performing seal. The crowd may gape, but the public exploitation of a child-musician (often overworked) is rarely justifiable. I recall a positively sad spectaclo at a London Philharmonic concert, years ago, of a

small, pale boy playing (of all unchildlike pieces!) Brahms violin concerto. His name is unknown to-day. Not that a child-musician can begin too young. Those musicians have incomparably the best chance who are from the very first immersed in music. What great poet sang except in the tongue he learnt at his mother’s knee"? The wise parent may be proud, but will be jealous. The most wondrous child’s actual achievements are nothing. But in his promise may be—everything ! OUR OWN FIDGETS. To be able to fidget as one chooses (remarks “Pilgrim” in an Engltsn paper) is the minimum of liberty in any acceptable sense. And this attenuated freedom is the last hold op realities which many can enjoy just now. For the return to “the land of counterpane” (in R. L. Stevenson’s phrase) is being thrust upon numerous readers owing to tho mysterious visitation of sickness that at present prevails. A term of imprisonment the influenza certainly brings; but why make it a period of penal servitude? At the worst it should bo spent in the second division. During sickness the difference between penal servitude and the second division is the freedom to manage our our fidgets. The pages of literature reveal the pleasures and pains of illness in a striking way. Charles Lamb has chanted the former in his famous essay, “The Convalescent.” He depicts the invalid as the recipient of privileges denied to those in good health. “To be sick is to enjoy monarchal prerogatives. Compare the silent tread and quiet ministry, almost by the eye only, by which he is served—with the careless demeanour, the unceremonious goings in and out (slapping of doors or leaving them open) of the very same attendants, when ho is getting a little better—and you will confess that from the bed of sickness (throne, let me rather call it) to the elbow chair of convalescence, is a fall from dignity amounting to a deposition.” But these prerogatives of sickness must include the management of our own fidgets. Walter Bagehot is the leading case on the point, and his support to some of us just now is invaluable. His sister-in-law tells us that his wife lay by his side cutting open the leaves of a new copy of “Rob Roy,” which he read. “In the afternoon he exerted himself moving his pillows, and when my sister tried to help him he said, ‘Let me have my own fidgets.’ ” Like some of us, Bagehot welcomed the ministering angel, “when pain and anguish wring the brow,” but he ob jected to the abject surrender on which the ministering angel has the habit of insisting. For sickness is only an interlude, and we cannot be expected to forgo all the freedom of existence. We must submit, perforce, to the regimen of the doctor and his aids, but “our own fidgets” must be kept within control. Otherwise we become of all men the most miserable. Wherefore, prisoners all, ye that languish beyond the ken of your fellow?, keep your own fidgets to yourselves. If you hold on to them lopg enough you will certainly be left with them! WHERE ENGLISH MUSIC SHINES. (By Richard Capell, in the Daily Mail.) The English music of the last 30 years is singularly rich in one form—-a modest form, and one not often discussed. Other countries have produced more brilliant and popular operas and symphonic poems. But the harvest of small choral songs that have come from a score of our composers from Elgar onwards is something mute our own. and there is nothing in foreign music quite to be compared with it. In the English part-song writing of our times there is a great mass of charming music unknown to those whose musical! interests lie onlv in the opera and the symphony concert. This revival of the part-song is often dated from Elgar’s early piece, the beautiful “Mv Love Dwelt in a Northern Land” (1F88). This brought to the partsong a. new delicacy of feelim*- and richness of harmony. Since then Sir Edward has many times added still lovelier things to the store—chief of them the exquisite part-song. “Go, Song of Mine.” which Olie can hear over and over again at a day-long Competition Festival without tiring- # # # # Hardlv one of our composers has failed to contribute, each in his manner—from the strong simplicity of Sir Hubert Parry (whoso choral of Farewell.” including the noble “There is an Old Belief,” are built to endure) to the immense elaboration of ArnoM Bax with his masterly “Mater Ora Filium.” Vaughan Williams and Holst have written sheaves of most delightful part-songs, touched with the bucolic spirit of English folk-tune. The new nart-song has even lured such instrumental composers as Delius, Bantock, and Holbrooke away from the orchestra. Concerts which begin with old English madrigals and wind up with new Englrah part-songs, such as are given hv choirs like the London Oriana and the Glasgow Oreuhus, are a musical pleasure peculiar to this country, and one worth recommending to the notice of the foreign critics ■who ignore our past and disparage our present.