Impression of his head taken immediately after he had been guillotined, 28th July, 1794. One of the impressions done by Madame Tussaud, then a young girl, by order of the authorities.
An hour after the head of Robespierre rolled from the lunette Madame Tussaud, reluctantly obeying a demand that an impression should be taken of the severed head, set about the shuddering task. The cast therefrom is now shown in one of our Exhibition rooms containing relics of the Revolution. Her feelings may be imagined as she sat with the head of the callous Terrorist confronting her.
Although Madame Tussaud took an impression of the features of Robespierre directly after his execution, she had taken a portrait of him long before his fall. He expressed a wish that his figure should be introduced standing near that of Marat, as also those of Collot d’Herbois and Rosignol. He proposed that they should send their own clothes in which the figures might be dressed, to afford additional accuracy. The likenesses were taken and apparelled as desired.
In those days Madame Tussaud often sat next Robespierre at dinner. She describes him as always extremely polite and attentive, never omitting those little acts of courtesy which are expected from a gentleman when sitting at table with a lady, anticipating her wishes, and taking care that she should never have to ask for anything. In this particular, says Madame Tussaud, he differed from Marat, who was so selfishly eager to supply his own wants that he never troubled himself with the needs of others.
Robespierre’s conversation was generally animated, sensible, and agreeable, but his enunciation was not good. There was nothing particularly remarkable in his conduct, manners, or appearance when in society. If noticed at all, it could only be as a pleasant, gentlemanly man of moderate abilities. This was a strong admission for a lady who was always a Royalist at heart and had been long detained in Paris against her will.
Her association with the Court of Louis inevitably brought Madame Tussaud under suspicion of the so-called Committee of Public Safety, and for a time she was imprisoned with Madame de Beauharnais, who was later to become the Empress Josephine, whom Napoleon divorced to marry Marie Louise. The scene is changed, and we see Marie Grosholtz—Curtius having died about that time—wedded in 1795 to François Tussaud, by whose name she was henceforth to be known to posterity.
Madame Tussaud, it would appear, made the acquaintance and gained the favour of Napoleon himself.
A Parisian publication, La Belle Assemblée, gives a circumstantial account of Madame Tussaud being sent for to take the likeness of Napoleon—when he was First Consul—at the Tuileries as early as six o’clock in the morning. It would appear that Madame went at the invitation of Napoleon’s first wife, Josephine, who was desirous of having a permanent record of her husband’s features. The young modeller was ushered into a room at the palace where the great soldier waited for her. La Belle Assemblée states that Josephine greeted Madame Tussaud with kindness, and conversed much and most affably. Napoleon said little, spoke in sharp sentences, and rather abruptly.
He would have shown her special consideration had she chosen to remain in France; but it is not to be wondered at that Madame Tussaud cared no longer to remain amid the sorrowful recollections of the Revolution, and that she seized the opportunity, on the signing of the Peace of Amiens, to leave France for ever. It was to England she turned for refuge and the prosecution of her life’s work. Madame boldly transported across the Channel to England her uncle’s two Paris Exhibitions, which, as already related, had been made into one. Here she decided to settle, and here her descendants have lived ever since.