And so face after face peers down upon me, carrying the mind back with unfailing steps until is reached the true source from which this dramatic story springs.
CHRISTOPHER CURTIUS
Uncle of Mme. Tussaud and founder of the Museum in Paris during the French Revolution in the Boulevard du Temple. A Portrait Study by John T. Tussaud.
In the year 1758, so far afield as the city of Berne, a certain young Swiss, named Christopher Curtius, was earnestly employing his days as a medical practitioner.
With the object of improving himself in his profession he had taken to modelling the limbs and organs of the human body in wax. He soon extended the scope of his labours to the execution of many miniature portraits in that same plastic material, and gained the patronage of many of the leading members of the aristocracy. In this work he succeeded well, and towards his latter days in Berne he practised rather as an artist than as a family doctor.
It is as the maternal uncle of Madame Tussaud, the subject of these memoirs, that Christopher Curtius comes under our consideration.
Madame Tussaud was the child of one Joseph Grosholtz, who lost his life when serving on the Staff of General Wurmser during the Seven Years’ War, a couple of months or so before she was born. He was of purely Swiss parentage, and the family to this day prides itself on being of Burgundian Swiss stock.