The Romance of Madame Tussaud's

MADAME DINES WITH THE TERRORISTS MARAT AND ROBESPIERRE, MODELS THEIR FIGURES AND SUBSEQUENTLY TAKES CASTS OF THEIR HEADS--SHE VISITS CHARLOTTE CORDAY IN PRISON--DEATH OF CURTIUS...

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...

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...

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 rel...

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...

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.

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...

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 ful...

It is no part of our concern to trace the course of the Revolution throughout, or to dwell too long upon its horrors. Nevertheless before Madame Tussaud passed into tranquil day...

Madame dines with the Terrorists Marat and Robespierre, models their figures, and subsequently takes casts of their heads--She visits Charlotte Corday in prison--Death of Curtiu...

There is considerable difficulty in tracing her movements during the first few years after her arrival. The information points to her having remained in London with her Exhibiti...

The Bristol riots in the autumn of 1831 again brought the Exhibition into serious jeopardy. Madame Tussaud had just arrived in the city of the West Country, when the Recorder, S...

An old placard now in our possession informs us that at Blackheath the Exhibition was housed in the Assembly Room at the Green Man Hotel. The exact date when it left there is no...

Portrait likeness of the Rev. John Clowes, of St. John’s Church, Manchester, and late Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, taken (with permission) from life within the last ten...

But what we are particularly concerned to tell at this moment is the story of the strange coincidence by which the Waterloo carriage was secured for the Exhibition. In all the w...

Ever since it first came to the Exhibition it has excited the most lively interest, and, until it was covered in by a glazed case, visitors enjoyed the privilege of sitting insi...

We find therein provision for a couple of passengers only. Here are two deep and roomy seats, divided by a tall movable arm-rest, offering the occupants unusual freedom and comf...

On his first arrival at St. Helena he took much exercise in the saddle, but during and after the year 1818, until he ceased venturing beyond the precincts of Longwood, he made c...

One of the greatest of all temperance reformers was Father Mathew, “the Noble Priest of Cork,” who persuaded sixty thousand people in London alone to become teetotallers and to...

About the year 1845 the celebrated Count d’Orsay, being, as usual, in a desperate state of impecuniosity, was absolutely afraid to venture out of Gore House (where now stands th...

Wellington gazing upon the effigy of Napoleon is one of the many instances of a really fine picture being produced from an original work executed in our studios. Upon it hangs a...

An ephemeral celebrity of a bygone day, who fittingly comes into the picture at the present time--for we are still dealing with events that happened in the seventies--was Colour...

At Bolton he was presented with a piece of silver-plate, and a pedestrian gave him a pocket-knife; but this gift was followed immediately afterwards by a letter in which the wri...

The year 1872 was remarkable for several noteworthy events. Two or three, in addition to the National Thanksgiving Day for the recovery of the Prince of Wales from serious illne...

I can hardly allow this period to pass without making some reference to the fact that from 1872 till 1874--when he was sentenced, on the 28th of February, to fourteen years’ pen...

In 1873 the nation was saddened by the death at Ilala of Dr. Livingstone, the great missionary-explorer, who, some time before, had disappeared in the trackless wastes of Centra...

About this time I met Count Léon, the natural son of Napoleon the Great. The Count was then nearing seventy years of age, and had taken refuge in this country after the great _d...

The year 1876--in which we find the Prince of Wales arriving at Calcutta, the commercial metropolis of India; “Empress of India” added to the royal titles of Queen Victoria; and...

The requirements of the business have often necessitated our sending fairly far afield in quest of exhibits, and this has seldom been done without success, as people with desira...

Of all the portraits of my own modelling, I think, if I may be permitted to express an opinion, I like that of Lord Tennyson as well as any. It revives pleasant memories, and I...

After fifty prosperous years at the old Baker Street Rooms--now known as the Portman Rooms--it became necessary that Madame Tussaud’s should find more commodious premises to mee...

The King of Siam and the Shahzada of Afghanistan are linked in my memory because of the peculiar interest King Chulalongkorn took in the Afghan Prince, whose model appeared in a...

In the early part of 1898 we purchased from an enterprising journalist four interesting copperplates--three of them etched by Queen Victoria and one by the Prince Consort. Of th...

Madame Tussaud’s was one of the last places visited by the King of Spain and Princess Ena before they left this country for their wedding at Madrid in May, 1906.

She was in London for the coronation of King George and Queen Mary. As the Begum was a Moslem, we were somewhat concerned as to how we should receive Her Highness, it being rumo...

An American visitor to the Exhibition once said to me, “You know, this show is a liberal education, a history of Europe in kind. I never learned so much history in any one after...

It is very much with my work as it is with the work of a sculptor. There is practically only this distinction in principle--the sculptor reproduces his work in marble or bronze,...

Mr. G. R. Sims was a cheery, entertaining sitter; not, perhaps, what most artists would consider a helpful one. His active mind busied itself with every object of interest aroun...

There are some stories so dreadful in the immensity of human misery which they reveal--there are some tragedies of which the catastrophe is one of such unmitigated horror, that...

I modelled him in the year 1889 or 1890, at the time of the great Dock Strike. Mr. Burns was then throwing all his magnetic personality into the cause of the workers, and he bro...

On each of them the precincts of Tussaud’s show signs of activity long before the average Londoner is astir. The length of any of the queues has never been actually measured, bu...

A message reached me late on a Saturday night that Dr. Sun Yat Sen, the first President of the Chinese Republic, wished to visit the Exhibition on the following Sunday morning....

Many of our visitors will remember the model of the policeman which stands at the entrance to the main gallery in the Exhibition. Hundreds--I might say thousands--of visitors ha...

In citing the old aphorism that society itself creates the crimes that most beset it, we shall in no way be tempted to regard the popularity of the Chamber of Horrors as due to...

We have speculated much upon the origin of what has come to be called “The Chamber of Horrors Rumour,” relating to a popular delusion that Madame Tussaud’s will pay a sum of mon...

As I proceed with my narrative, having already travelled through the memories of many years, there seem to crowd at my heels, so to speak, a great collection of humorous and cur...

At the beginning of hostilities the Kaiser, Count Zeppelin, and other German objectionables were relegated to a less conspicuous position than they had formerly occupied. The en...

At the outbreak of hostilities the attendance suffered a severe check. This disquieting effect was in the main, I believe, due to the great wrench suffered by the public mind th...

There are three figures, added during the past few momentous years, which possess the rare distinction of being models of abiding interest. Out of the many portraits placed in t...

In the dressing of the models attention must naturally be paid to the varying styles of both sexes. For this reason visitors are able to mark the changes Dame Fashion has decreed.

As soon as I learned in the winter of 1903 that the Old Bailey was to be demolished and its mementoes sold by auction, I hastened to the historic court-house, armed with a catal...

On very many occasions Madame Tussaud’s has been the subject of prose and verse in the public Press. I have already given a few extracts. Here are other quotations, some of whic...

If I have recounted many stories relating to incidents that have taken place long after Madame Tussaud passed away, it is because the flow of anecdote prompted by her genius has...