This would not be surprising to those who knew her, or who were acquainted with the circumstances in which they were written. She seldom could be brought to speak of herself and her own painful experiences; and at no time did she betray the slightest disposition to thrust herself upon the public. She was seventy-eight years old at the time, and her desire for seclusion grew stronger as years advanced, until her entourage became narrowed down to the simple companionship of her immediate family circle.
The Memoirs came to be written in this wise:
Her two sons, Joseph and Francis, in collaboration with an old literary friend of the name of Francis Hervé, settled in their minds that the old lady should be induced to leave behind her an account of her career.
FRANCIS TUSSAUD
Younger son of Madame Tussaud. Born 1800, died 1873. Modeled by his son Joseph and exhibited at the Royal Academy.
As she had declared her unwillingness to busy herself with the task of compiling her autobiography—and in certain matters we knew her to have been immovable—they decided that the best way of accomplishing their design would be to record the substance of those conversations in which they rightly surmised they would have little difficulty in inducing her to take part when in the humour.
In spite of the facilities these gentlemen had for obtaining the matter used in their publication, it may be well conjectured that they did not always find their course run smooth, and at times they must have been put to odd shifts and a good deal of careful strategy when gathering what they wanted from the shrewd old lady without arousing her suspicions.
For these reasons the Memoirs have failed to supply what is best worth knowing, such as details giving an insight to her own life—an omission which, I fear, can never now be made entirely good. That work is, therefore, made up of disjointed, scrappy matter, avowedly well written, but somehow obviously strung together for the making of a book.
In perusing its pages the reader thus finds himself confronted by a mere procession of notables whom the old lady happened to have known or to have seen in her day, each with an encyclopædic quantum of information tagged to his or her name that might well have been culled from any biographical treasury. So it is she is to be found speaking of others when her reader’s one desire is that she should be induced to talk of herself.