THE FAMOUS WAXWORKS

Otago Witness, Issue 3865, 10 April 1928, Page 76

THE FAMOUS WAXWORKS

Madame Tussaud’s,” that most famous of all waxwork exhibitions, enters upon another chapter of its unique history when it re-opens its doors after the tragic fire of two years ago, (say s a writer in John o London s Weekly). And of all the stories related of its exhibits, of tho gußloane that severed the fair head of Marie Antoinette of the military carriage that conveyed Napoleon to Waterloo, of the original key of the Bastille, noite is so charged with interest and adventure as the romance of the exhibition itself, and of the gallant little lady who brought it frol P France to England 126 years ago. Mme Tussaud, who was born at Strasburg in 1761,. was the only child of Swiss parents, Joseph and Marie Grosholtz. boon after her busband’s death Mme. Grosholtz, with her baby daughter, went to live; at Berne in the house of; her brother, Christopher Curtius, who is important in that it he who.must. be u’ > 'i?-v. e - d re ril founder of the Tussaud Exhibition. He was at that time a> -young medical, man fast gaining a name for.-him-self, not in medicine, but as an artist Jn coloured wax miniatures. After five years’ rapid rise to fame and comparative wealth, Curtius brought liis sister and her six-year-old child to live with him in Paris. Mme. Tussaud very quickly showed aptitude for modelling, and in her early ’teens began to be of great assistance to her uncle. It is on record that, among others, she entertained Benjamin Franklin, and also met, and helped to execute moael busts of Voltaire, who was then within a few months of his death. About this time her uncle broke fresh ground in his art when he began to model life-size figures clothed in the garments of the originals. He wa B now extending the range of his subjects by combining notorieties with celebrities. The former he placed ■in a special room in his exhibition on the Boulevard du Temple, which he called the des grands Voleurs,” the forerunner o, le Chamber of Horrors. At the age or 2? Mme. Tussaud became a bosom friend of I^ n g s 17-year-old sister, . Mme. Elizabeth <5? T2. ance ; young princess was greatly atti~n«~. by the fascinating art of her protegee, afret finally persuaded Mme, Tussaud to go and live with her at Versailles. Towards the end of her stay, however, Paris and France began to tremb'e with the symptoms of the coming Reign of Terror. Curtius promptly recalled Mme. Tussaud from Versailles. She was only just in time, for on June 12, two days before the capture of the Bastille, the first blood was shed. Stung by the banishment of the beloved Necker, and suspicious of the presence, of the foreign troops, a formidable mob with leaves in their caps in honour of their hero’s green livery marched to Curtius’s Museum to obtain the effigies of Necker and the Duke of Orleans. Covering the busts With crape, the growing throng paraded the excited streets, until, by the time the Place Louis XV was reached, the mob was 6000 strong. Here the German cavalry charged with drawn sabres. The figure of Necker was cleft in two; its bearer was wounded in the leg; and another man who defended the model of the Duke was killed. Thus began the Revolution, and, it may be said, with Curtius’s models as its figurehead,. Throughout the bloody days of France’s travail, Mme. Tussaud :was in unwilling employment. The heads of Louis XV, Marie Antoinette, Hebert, Danton, Carrier, Fouqiiier-Tinville, all found their way in turn to the studio on the boulevard. An hour after Charlotte Corday had stabbed Marat in his bath, Mme. Tussaud was called to his house, and Republicans stood over her while she immortalised his repulsive features. Robespierre’s head had left -his shoulders but a few minutes when she was called upon to perform the same loathsome task. ' In after years madame would-'recall with tears the tragic moment when- she watched the white-clad figure of Marie Antoinette, her hands tied behind her, erect upon the tumbril. ' Madame survived tRe ' Revolution,,,and on the death of her uncle married Francois Tussaud in 1795. Her marriage was not a success, and five years later she separated from her husband. In 1802 she left Paris, never to return, taking with her the remarkable collection of wax figures thafe for over 40 years nad been a feature bf Parisian entertainments. She came to London, though not to the famous site in Baker street; indeed, .it was not until 1835 that the exhibition came to rest these after 33 years of adventurous wandering. -For the fi-st six or seven years .after her arrival in this country, madame showed her models at various places in London: at the Lowther arcade in the Strand, in F'eet street, and at the Old Lyceum Theatre. A tour of the big provincial towns of England, Scotland, and Ireland followed. Many precious exhibits were lost when the ship carrying ithem to Dublin was partially wrecked. And during the notorious Bristol riots,.the building used for the nriribition was among those marked for burning by the mob! A stalwart Negro who was in madame’s employ, however, kept the rabble at bay for many hours, threatening to kill with a blunderbuss the first man to lay his hands on the building. His loyal stand saved the exhibition, for that same evening a regiment of infantryrestored order. When madrime was. 74 years of age she came at last to Baker street, there to enjoy increasing prosperity and fame in fhe closing years of her adventurous career. She died at the age of 90. and lies buried in the catacombs of St. Mary’s Church, Cadogan place, Chelsea.