Madame Tussauds

“ 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. ”

“ Her association with the Court of Louis inevitably brought Madame Tussaud under suspicion of the so-called Committee of Public Safety, and for a time [96] she was imprisoned with Madame de Beauharnais, who was later to become the Empress Josephine, whom Napoleon divorced to marry Marie Louise. The scene is changed, and we see Marie Grosholtz—Curtius having died about that time—wedded in 1795 to François Tussaud, by whose name she was henceforth to be known to posterity. ”

“ Cyril Maude, the actor, was taken to the Exhibition when a small boy, and it is recorded of him that the visit inspired him with the determination to become an actor. If that were so, then we may congratulate ourselves.
Some years ago a lady wrote to say that when scolding her child for being naughty, and impressing upon her that bad little girls would not go to heaven, the child naïvely replied, “Well, mother, I can’t expect to go everywhere, but I’ve been to Madame Tussaud’s.” ”

“ We cannot dismiss such works with cheap commonplaces about Madame Tussaud’s—and for aught I know there may be some very good stuff at Madame Tussaud’s—or sneer at them as though they must be all much of a muchness, and because the Orta chapels are bad, therefore those at Varallo must be so also. Those who confine themselves to retailing what they take to be art-tips gathered from our leading journals of culture, will probably continue to trade on this not very hardly earned capital, whatever may be urged upon the other side ”

“ The Tuscans, of all classes, appeared to me to be a very polished people, as if still retaining traces of their early civilisation. The peasants were far superior in every respect to those of other countries, and fewer crimes were at that time committed in Tuscany than in any other part of Europe.
On the 30th of April, 1791, we once more found ourselves in Rome.
The two French princesses, Madame Adelaide and Madame Victoire, aunts of Louis XVI., were lodged at Cardinal de Bernis’. The cardinal having declined to take the oath of allegiance to the republic, was no longer ambassador ”

“ I have spent many a bright hour with “Dagonet”—yes, even including those spent with him in the Chamber of Horrors.
I once chanced to have a book of his (the Dagonet Ballads) in my hand when he came into my studio, and I asked him to sign his name in it. Without a moment’s hesitation he wrote:
Dear Tussaud,
I’m a model man.
You’re a modeller.
Yours truly,
G. R. Sims.
Soon after we had decided to add Mr. Sims’s figure to the Exhibition, Mrs. G. A. Sala happened to meet him, and questioned him as to the sensations he experienced [250] in picturing himself as a waxen celebrity. ”

“ It is on record that he once made the Exhibition the scene of his operations. Getting into an advantageous nook, he stood stock-still in a line with other celebrities—waxen ones. People going by stopped and said:
“Ah, Grossmith; Capital likeness! How excellent! Dear little Grossmith, one would think he was alive!” and various remarks of the kind. Then suddenly the effigy nodded grotesquely, and slowly extended a comic Grossmithian hand. Everyone fled as though he had been shot at. ”

“ To the ministrations of this “patriotic” cleric, who was dressed in light grey coat and a bob-wig, Marie Antoinette had in the first instance declined to listen; but she occasionally spoke to him on her way to the fatal Place de la Révolution.
An immense mob, in which women were revoltingly numerous, crowded the streets throughout the entire line of route insulting the Queen and vociferating “Long live the Republic!” She seldom cast her eyes on the populace, but from time to time looked with some curiosity on the prodigious military force surrounding the cart. ”

“ Landseer suggested Madame Tussaud’s, an Exhibition which d’Orsay had never before seen; and to Baker Street they went. The Count, charmed with the novelty of the wax figures, was childishly delighted with all he saw, until a moment when he became conscious that his footsteps were being dogged by two suspicious-looking individuals.
“Do you see those men?” said d’Orsay. “They never take their eyes from me.” ”

“ Thus she was compelled to reproduce the lineaments of Louis XVI, Marie Antoinette, Hébert, Danton, Robespierre, Carrier, Fouquier-Tinville—the best and fairest, and also the worst and vilest—who met their death on the scaffold. Unthinkable were the gruesome tasks of faithfully recording their features imposed upon the young woman who was destined to bring to England that Exhibition the annals of which we now relate. ”

“ After the deposition of Louis, all the elements of grandeur in the character of Marie Antoinette began to manifest themselves. She showed the greatest courage during the dastardly attacks made on the Royal Family; and she appeared to be always more anxious for the safety of her husband and children than for her own. She shared their captivity with noble resignation, and her demeanour under the most trying circumstances never lost an iota of its dignity. In the presence of her judges her fortitude never forsook her ”

“ They shut me up in a room and fed me on bread and water, but all in vain; the mistress was obliged to write for my father.
“He sent my old nurse to fetch me away, and I confided the truth to her with many tears. She was very anxious to make a scene, give ‘madame’ a piece of her mind in the presence of her pupils; but I was so glad to get away from the school that I prevented her carrying out her intentions. I told her I should not be believed. The [187] fact was, one of the elder girls told me I was very foolish to make so much fuss about a kiss. ”

“ He was gazing up into her face with eyes whose piercing brightness would have frightened the nurse. There was no shyness now about Tussie. There never is about persons whose temperature is 102.
"Miserable?" repeated Priscilla. She tried to smile; looked helplessly at Lady Shuttleworth; looked down again at Tussie; and stammering "Because you are so ill and it's all my fault," to her horror, to her boundless indignation at herself, two tears, big and not to be hidden, rolled down her face and dropped on to Tussie's and her clasped hands. ”

“ There was no one with whom she liked more to drink coffee, no one to whom she gave her confidence in the same degree; they shared the same liking for household management, the same deep-rooted self-esteem and the same respect for family tradition.
Of Tushin himself there was little more to say than was revealed on a first occasion; his character lay bare to the daylight, with no secret, no romantic side. He possessed more than plain good sense, for his understanding did not derive from the brain alone, but from the heart and will. ”

“ Poor Tussie. It is a grievous thing to love any one too much; a grievous, wasteful, paralyzing thing; a tumbling of the universe out of focus, a bringing of the whole world down to the mean level of one desire, a shutting out of wider, more beautiful feelings, a wrapping of one's self in a thick garment of selfishness, outside which all the dear, tender, modest, everyday affections and friendships, the wholesome, ordinary loves, the precious loves of use and wont, are left to shiver and grow cold. Tussie's mother sat outside growing very cold indeed. ”

“ She had brought violent discord into a hitherto peaceful vicarage, thwarted the hopes of a mother, been the cause of a bitter quarrel between her and her son, brought out by her mysteriousness a prying tendency in the son that might have gone on sleeping for ever, entirely upset the amiable Tussie's life by rending him asunder with a love as strong as it was necessarily hopeless, made his mother anxious and unhappy, and, what was perhaps the greatest achievement of all, actually succeeded in making that mother cry. ”

“ None in all the world can surpass in beauty the Tuscan women—dark, tragic, with eyes that flash quickly in love or hatred, with figures perfect, and each with an easy-swinging gait that a duchess might envy. ”

“ Sickness, however, forced him again to migrate, this time to Fairsted in Essex, the tithes of which place he farmed for some time with little success. He then came to London, and his third son, Edmond, was baptised at St. Giles's, Cripplegate, on 13 March 1572–1573. But the plague which raged in London during 1573–4 forced Tusser to take refuge once again in Cambridge, where he matriculated as a servant of Trinity Hall, at what date is not certainly known. ”

“ I will not permit thee to lay a snare to delude this young man from the right way, after the fashion of the wanton daughters of this evil age, neither shalt thou go forth with him to make him a shame and a byword and a laughing-stock before the multitude. Therefore, in one word, answer me. Wilt thou take this young man to thy husband?"
"No!" cried Audrey, her cheeks flaming. "It is a shame and an insult to speak so to me, a defenceless girl. Does Captain Harrison commission you to purvey him a wife in all haste for his journey, as he would send for a cloak-bag, or a pair of riding-boots? ”

“ Miss Thusa is one instance out of many, of a being with strong mind and warm heart, cheated of objects on which to expend the vigor of the one, or the fervor of the other. The energies of her character, finding no legitimate outlet, beat back upon herself, wearing away by continued friction the fine perception of beauty and susceptibility of true enjoyment. ”

“ His mistress was also "Dutch," a "great swabby, fat woman," with a very ill disposition. Master and mistress were both members of the Episcopal Church. "Mistress drank, that was the reason she was so disagreeable."
Townsend had been a married man for about seven months only. In his effort to obtain his own freedom he sought diligently to deliver his young wife. They were united heart and hand in the one great purpose to reach free land, but unfortunately the pursuers were on their track; the wife was captured and carried back, but the husband escaped. ”

“ Both mother and child seem to belong to the happy, every-day working world. Mary has the straight figure, full throat, and square shoulders of a Tuscan peasant girl. Her only aristocratic feature is the shapely hand. She holds her chin level, like a country maiden used to carrying burdens on the head. It may be that the artist had seen her like in some market-place in Florence. The boy too has the square shoulders and sturdy frame of a child of the people. ”

“ Don't let the old man disturb you, dear Mr. Tussmann. You believe in the old times; you're fond of old Thomasius. I go a good deal further back. What I care about is the time to which, as you see, my dress partly belongs. Aye! my good friend, those were the days! It is to them that that little spell belongs which you saw me putting into practice to-night at the Town-house Tower."
"I don't quite understand you, Herr Professor,'' Tussmann said.
"Well," said the goldsmith, "there used to be splendid weddings in those old days in the Town-hall--very different affairs from the weddings nowadays. ”

“ Tusser's huswife, warned by the matin cock, called up her maids and men at four in the summer, at five in the winter. She packed them off to bed at ten or nine at night, according to the season, and, it would appear, to bed in the dark. She made her own candles, and feared also a fire, which will account for that. There was no early tea for Mistress Tusser's maids, let me tell you:
Some slovens from sleeping no sooner get up
But hand is in aumbry and nose is in cup.
Nothing of the kind with Mrs. Tusser. On the other hand, hard work all round: "Sluts' corner" to be ridded ”

“ God forgive you for insulting a poor, sick, helpless girl in this wild swamp!"
"My wife is dead to me, Virgie. You is the only wife I has now. Here we shall sleep and forgit my children and my little home that was enough fur me, gal, till your beauty come and tuk me from it."
"Stop!" the girl called, with her face blanched even in her fever, though not with fear, as her white blood rose proudly. "If you do not keep away, I will throw myself in that deep pool and drown. I would rather die than cheat your good wife as you have done."
"Nothing is yer," the negro said, "but you, an' me, an' Love. ”

“ I can't believe that you've changed your mind about marrying my daughter; that you are screening yourself behind all sorts of incredible nonsense and stuff which nobody can believe a word of; that you are going to say to me, 'Commissionsrath: You and I are men of the world, and I can't marry your daughter, because, if I do, the Devil will bolt away with my legs and beat me black and blue!' It would be too bad, Tussmann, if you were to try on a trick of that sort upon me. ”

“ As the children grew, Her Majesty’s attachment for their governess grew with them. All that has been said of Tasso’s Armida was nothing to this luxurious temple of maternal affection. Never was female friendship more strongly cemented, or less disturbed by the nauseous poison of envy, malice, or mean jealousy. ”