MADAME TUSSAUD.

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXIX, Issue 5276, 18 May 1928, Page 4

MADAME TUSSAUD.

FOUNDER OF FAMOUS WAXWORKS HISTORY OF THE VENTURE. The recent cabled announcement of the reopening of ‘Madamu Tussaud’s famous waxworks in Baker Street, London, serves as a reminder of the unique history which lies behind the, venture. Of all the stories related of its exhibits, of, the guillotine that severed the fair head of Marie Antoinette, of the military carriage that convoyed Napoleon to Waterloo, of thq original key of the Ba&tille, none is so charged with interest and adventure as the romance of the Exhibition itself, and of the gallant little lady who brought it from France to England' 126 yea.rte ago, says a writer in “ John O’Lonldon’s Weekly.”

Mme. Tussaud, who was bor;i' at Strasburg in 1761. was the* only child of Swiss parents, Joseph and Marie Grosholtz. Soon after her, husband’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 is he who must be counted the real founder of the Tussaud Exhibition. He was at that time a young medical mail, fast gaining a ira.me for himself, not in medicine, but as. an artist in coloured wax miniatures. After five years of rapid risei to fame and comparative weajth, Curtius brought his sister and 1 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 recoijd tha.t, among others, she entertained Benjamin Franklin, and also met, and helped* to execute, model busts of Voltaire, who was then witliin 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 garment sof the originals. He wa,s no.w 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, whioh he called the “Caverne des grands Voleuns,” the forerunner of the, Chamber, of Horrors. At the age of nineteen Mme. Tua 1saud became a bosom friend, of the King’s seventeen-ye|ar-o]d sister, Mme. Elizabeth of Fra.nce, The young Pijincess: was greatly attracted by the facinsating art of her protegee, ind finally persuaded Mme. Tussaud to go and live with 'her at Versailles. Towards the end of her stay, however, Parjs and France began to tremble with the symptoms; of the coming Reign of Terror. Curtius promptly recalled v Min. 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 crepe, the growing throng paraded the excited streets, until, when 1 the Place Louis XV. was reached the mob six thousand; strong. Here the German cayajry charged with drawn sabijes. The figure of Necker. was cleft in two; its : bearer was wounded ini 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 fig’ urehea.d.

Throughout the bloody days of France’s travail Mme. Tussaud was in unwilling employment. The headb of Louis XVI., Marie AntoinQtte, Herbert Carrier, Fouquier-Tinville, all. found their way in turn to the studio oiii the boulevard. An hour after. Chaylotte Corday had stabbed Marat in his bath Mme Tussaud was called to his 'house, and Republicans stood ove.r her while she inimorta.liseid his repulsive features. Ro.'bespiei’r,e’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 w’hitei-clad figure of Marie Antoinette, her hands tied behiirtT her, erect upon the tumbril.

Madame survived the Revolution, and onl the death of her uncle married Francois Tussaud in 1795. Her marriage was not a success, and 1 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 that for over forty years had been a feature of Parisian entertainments. She came to London, though not to tlje famous s’te in, Baker Street; indeed, it was not until 1835 that the Exhibition came to rest there after thirty-three years of adventurous wandering. For the first six or seven years after, heir arrival i.n> this country Madame shewed her models at various places in London ; a.t the Lowther Arcade in the Strand, in Fleet Street, and at the Old Lyceum Theatre. A tour, of thq big provincial towns of England, Scotland, and Ireland followed.

Many precious exhibits were lost When the ship carrying them to Dublin was partially wrecked. And during the notorious Bristol riots the building used foi; the Exhibition was among thos ; c marked for burning by the mob I A stalwart Negro who was in Madame’s employ, however, kept the rabble at bay for many hours, threatening to kill with a blunder/buss the first man to lay his hamfe on the building. His loyal stand saved the Exhibition, for that same evening a regiment of infantry restored order. When Madame was seventy-four years of age she came at last to Baker. Street, there to‘enjoy increasing prosperity and fame in the closing years df her adventurous career, she died at the age of ninety, and lies buried in the catacombs of St. Mary’s Church, Cadogan Place, Chelsea;