I call to mind the visit paid by General Boulanger shortly after that Meteoric ex-Minister of War quitted Paris for London to avoid arrest. It will be remembered that Boulanger was wounded in a duel with Floquet, his political antagonist, and that he dramatically ended his chequered life by shooting himself on the grave, in Brussels, of the woman to whom he was fondly attached.
GENERAL BOULANGER
Meteoric Minister of War for France, who ended his life in Brussels by shooting himself on the grave of the woman to whom he was devoted.
As we stood before his facsimile, which had been only recently modelled, and, as it happened, represented him as considerably younger than his years, the General smiled and said, when I invited him to grant me a special sitting, “It is very, very good; do not touch it.” I fancied that, like most people, Boulanger had no objection to a flattering youthful reproduction of himself.
Boulanger’s inclusion at Madame Tussaud’s was the subject of a full-page cartoon by Tenniel in Punch, showing the be-medalled General standing in his stirrups on horseback and waving his hand as though in the act of delivering an important command. The cartoon was entitled “Chez Madame Tussaud’s.” An Exhibition employé was represented as saying to the little black-bonneted Madame—with a covert allusion to the General’s political reverses—“Where is he to be put now, ma’am?”
It was with a certain amount of surprise that I realised a short time ago, when the question was put to me by a prominent member of the Press, that during the thirty years I have been exclusively responsible for the modelling here, together with the fifteen or sixteen years in which I was working under my father, I must have produced, with studies, close upon a thousand models.
It is, of course, quite natural that many celebrities who pay a visit to the Exhibition, well knowing that their likenesses, have a place within it, are not escorted round the galleries. For the most part, coyly and shyly they seek out their own models, and, more often than not, approach them with a concern born of a too-studied indifference that is sometimes extremely amusing.
“Bobs” was not of that order; he was a notable exception to the general rule.
“Where’s my figure?” he asked plump and plain, and around it he stepped, quizzically examining it from various points of view. When he had satisfied himself that it was a fairly true representation, he ejaculated, “Not at all bad! Not at all bad!” and walked off to inspect the relics of the great Napoleon.