The Romance of Madame Tussaud's

by John Theodore Tussaud

One of the greatest of all temperance reformers was Father Mathew, “the Noble Priest of Cork,” who persuaded sixty thousand people in London alone to become teetotallers and to take a pledge to that effect. The apostle of temperance was induced to come to London in the early forties to give a series of lectures.

Some were delivered at Hall’s Riding School (now a motor garage) in Albany Street, opposite Holy Trinity Church and close to Great Portland Street Station, and Mr. Francis Tussaud (grandfather of the writer) modelled him in one of the rooms of that place. He was constantly interrupted during the sittings by people of all classes and creeds coming into take the pledge. Most of them insisted upon kneeling to receive Father Mathew’s blessing. They were probably actuated by respect for him, and also by the hope that the recollection of his blessing might strengthen their teetotal vows.

At the close of the sittings Father Mathew detached from his breast his temperance medal, which was attached to a ribbon round his neck, and handed it to the artist that it might be placed upon his model.

Father Mathew bore so striking a resemblance in face and figure to Napoleon I that the two were once oddly mistaken for each other by our own servants.

We had occasion to renovate the portraits of the soldier and the preacher. To do so it was necessary that the heads of both should be detached. The assistant who was responsible for taking the figures to pieces in this way mistook the one head for the other. The error was fortunately soon detected by Mr. Francis Tussaud, who had modelled both the heads, and he soon had the mistake rectified.

There are persons still living who remember Father Mathew. An old and respected neighbour, Francis Draper by name, is one of the youngest men of eighty-seven one could possibly meet. Although born in 1832, he still possesses a wonderfully clear memory.

In 1842, when Father Mathew paid his visit to London, Mr. Draper—then a boy of ten years—was introduced to him at the Riding School. In an anteroom upstairs, to which Father Mathew retired between the times when he administered the pledge, he saw an artist modelling his face in clay, which he was told was for Madame Tussaud’s Exhibition. He had an impression at the time that the artist was Francis, a son of Madame Tussaud, and his surmise was accurate, for it was Mr. Francis Tussaud who was executing the model.

For many years afterwards he saw “The Noble Priest of Cork” standing in a group in Madame Tussaud’s, with his medal suspended round his neck, and, he says, it was the best likeness of anyone in the rooms.

The assassination of Alexander II of Russia in March, 1881, recalls a quaint story of Voltaire’s chair, which stands in a corner of one of the Napoleon Rooms, not far removed from a collection of heads of leaders of the French Revolution.