CHAPTER VI.
MADAME TUSSAUD.
ONE of the stock sights in London which every foreigner as well as every man, woman and child from the country who goes to London, does with great regularity, is Madame Tussaud’s Museum. It is known the world over and is as regular a thing to see as the Tower.
A great many years ago, some time since the flood, a Swiss woman named Tussaud, who had studied art in Paris, took the brilliant notion into her wise head that money was better than fame, and instead of spoiling marble she commenced doing some very good things in wax. She brought her figures to London and opened a museum, which she added to and enlarged as men and women became of sufficient interest to attract attention, until she got pretty much everybody of whom the world ever heard.
She died many years ago, but the collection was continued by her family, three generations of which have waxed rich and gone to join those whom they put so well in wax in life.
This wonderful museum, which actually deserves all the attention it gets, is filled with really excellent figures of the entire line of English Kings, dressed in the costumes of the period in which they lived, including arms, although court dresses generally adorn them. As the Tussaud family were, and are, artists, these figures are not the limp, misshapen, grinning effigies usually exhibited, but are in size, stature, color and general grouping, perfect.
I cannot say that the effigies of King Edward and Richard, and those other ancient marauders, are correct, for I never saw them in life. They died many years ago. But all you have to do is what Dicken’s Marchioness did with the orange peel wine: “Make believe very hard,” and they will do. The faces were modeled from portraits, and their dresses were made from actual costumes preserved in the curious repositories of which London is full. The visitor gets some notion of what the subjects were like, and that ought to be and is satisfactory.
