“Prior to the date of your letter the pack had already been reshuffled, and the figures to which you refer had been relegated to a much less conspicuous position than they had previously occupied. When your letter was penned they were conspiring against the peace of Europe in a small room which contains the tableau representing ‘The Destruction of Messina’—a scene of ruin which seems to be in keeping with this Machiavellian group.
“Like yourself, other visitors had frequently suggested that the quartette should be placed in another famous—or infamous—part of the Exhibition; but the trouble was that Burke and Hare, Charles Peace, Greenacre, and Wainwright, whom you name, and their comparatively innocuous companions, would not hear of their abode being thus desecrated.
“What were we to do?
“I am now pleased to inform you that after considering your remarks a solution has been arrived at: the pack has been shuffled again, and, by a remarkable feat of legerdemain, the four knaves have now disappeared altogether.”
We congratulate Messrs. Tussaud on this happy solution to the problem.
The restoration of two of the figures was due to a very singular circumstance. Our overseas soldiers soon began to visit Madame Tussaud’s in large numbers, and they frequently expressed disappointment at not being able to see the two enemy Emperors whose armies they had come so far to fight.
Sympathising with their point of view, we had the Kaiser and Francis Joseph readmitted, placing them in an isolated position, with the “All-Highest” at one time confronting the Messina tableau, and more recently faced by the tableau of the Ruhleben horse-box in which British prisoners had to spend four long weary years of separation from home and family. In the same room are models of Prince Bismarck and Count von Moltke.
PRINCE BISMARCK