I should have attached no importance to the matter had I not, my curiosity being whetted, asked a few questions of the caller.
It then transpired that the model was to represent his ideal woman whom he had been unable to discover in real life. He was anxious to have a woman about the house “pleasing to the eye, but at the same time somewhat less loquacious than the usual run of females,” as he put it.
He proposed that the model should be placed in an adjustable chair and be jointed, so that at meal-times it could sit at the head of his lonely table and at other times could recline at ease beside the fire, opposite his own armchair.
Needless to say, the commission was not accepted.
It is very natural that such an institution as Madame Tussaud’s should include the “curious” among its diversified store of anecdote.
One quaint document in our archives is the published diary of an Indian officer, Jemadar, No. 1427, Abdur Razzak, of the 15th Madras Lancers, from which I give the following extract relating to a visit he paid to the Exhibition:
On the 5th June, 1893, we went to see the Wax Work “Madame Tussaud,” where we first saw a woman in red dress with a basket full of different kinds of flowers all made in wax with her, which was very difficult to make out that she was an image, but when we entered the building we saw lots of images of emperors and kings, and remarkable persons both men and women with rich and poor dresses on.
I really say that I was very much admired to see these images, and was in many places in the buildings mistook the visitors to be of them when they were standing still, but when they moved was very much ashamed on account of my misunderstanding; by this we made our minds to be little far from both the images and the visitors and servants in the building.
We saw the throne of Her Majesty just the same we have seen on the 9th May, 1893, besides this one more image in shape with Her Majesty in a room writing something on a table with a candle on it, and this too quite astonishing.