“Then I made one wild rush at the closed door, and hammered at it until the kindly watchman came and let me out. I never want to be shut up alone at night in the Chamber of Horrors again as long as I live.”
Humorously describing my studios at the time, Mr. Sims says:
“At Madame Tussaud’s I am at present in rather a curious condition. There is a good deal of the Thames mystery about me. It is not given to every man to see his legs in one room, his hands hanging up in another, and his head on a shelf, looking about anxiously for his body.
“I can’t say I quite like looking at my head on a shelf. It suggests decapitation and Madame de Lamballe’s head on a pike as Louis caught sight of it when the mob held it up at the window.
“But I am assured that I shall be put together next week, and that my limbs will once more be found together as Nature intended they should be.
“I don’t know what that Scotch sixpenny which refers to me in highly uncomplimentary terms about seven times in every column will say, but the exigencies of space at the Marylebone Museum have compelled the management to put me next to Lord Tennyson. I am sure that this will be such a shock to my modesty that I shall go hot and melt the very first day that the weather is at all warm.
“Fortunately, I shall have a brother journalist to support me and keep me in countenance, for while Lord Tennyson is seated writing poetry in his study, Mr. George Augustus Sala in his study sits next door to him, dashing off one of his brilliant leaders for the Daily Telegraph. It is in a study built up on the other side of Lord Tennyson that the visitor to Madame Tussaud’s will at an early date find himself face to face with ‘Dagonet.’”
There George R. Sims has been seated ever since. Twenty-eight years ago! Time has wrought many changes, but during the whole of that period I have uninterruptedly enjoyed Mr. Sims’s valued friendship.
GEORGE AUGUSTUS SALA