THE ROMANCE OF MADAME TUSSAUD’S
CHAPTER I
Mr. Tussaud first enters his father’s studio—Reverie—Madame Tussaud’s uncle forsakes the medical profession for art—Madame’s birth and parentage—A Prince’s promise.
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 under his tuition.
It was an odd rememorative sort of place, the eeriness of which sat uneasily on the mind of, I fear, a somewhat jocose and irresponsible youth.
The surroundings somehow seemed to force upon my mind the memories of men and things I must have heard about or dreamt of, or with whom I had been in some way made familiar. Moreover, the place was so out of touch with the ordinary affairs of life, so reposeful and secluded amid the din and turmoil of the world outside.
The studio stood well in the rear of an old-world residence, known as Salisbury House, in the parish of Marylebone. Here the family had long lived. The house confronted what, in my early days, was then still designated the New Road. Upon its site there has been since erected the imposing classic palace designed to accommodate the hitherto poorly housed Corporation of the borough.