Morning journal and courier., 1884-08-12
Madame Tnssaud.


 When the Widow Tussaud landed on our shores with her two boys, who, with their sons, were for so many years to continue the tradition of her enterprise, she ias better situated than many of the hapless emigr6s who accompanied her. She had profession; most of them only knew how to bow, walk backward, take snuff and play the fine g. T. tleman Accordingly, while the proudest nobles of the ancient regime were, with a courage which has half redeemed their social errors, teaching fencing dancing and deport ment, or, like a certain marquess, who was a friend of Brillat-Savarin, earning a precari- ous livelihood by instructing the beef-eating Britons in the mystery of mixing a salad, madame began to open an exhibition of her wax works. These were ill some respects a novelty in those days, and as she possessed models of many of the personages whose names were in everybodys mouth she had little difficulty in at once interesting London in her show. First at what is now the Lyce- um, and then at the Hanover Square rooms, she displayed her counterfeits of celebrities, gradually increasing their number, so that, in the course of twelve years, she amassed Q fine collection and what was to tine frugal Frenchwoman a considerable fortune. But in the course of voyage to Ireland her treas ures were lost at sea, and when she ana her boys landed in Cork, after narrowly escaping with their lives, the courageous modeller was as penniless as when she first escaped from Monsieur Robespierre.' The industrious little woman was, however, not cast dewn, and again began the world with such success that by 1883 she was able to settle 1n London in the premises where she and her descend ants have ever since been permanently pros perinp Madame Tussaud's' is in many re- Oft tha world It has it's fixed stars, such as Wellington, Ma poleon, Henry VIII and his six wives, the Queen and the royal family, and it's passing meteors like Arabi Pasha and MT. Michael Davitt Madame has no political proclivi- ties All tastes are appealed to-Imperial- ists and Republicans; people who love to look on the coronation robes of George ", which cost eighteen thousand pounds, and which passed into her hands with the "hom- age chair' used on the occasion, and those who find comfort in gazing on relics of his rival, the First Napoleon. In brief the col lection is an attractive representation of the living crowd who play their brief part on the stage of time.
 People who are now middle-aged, or per haps Q trif1e more, must have a vivid recol- lection of Madame Tussaud, when nearly ninety years of age, seated in her chair near the door, and difficult to be distinguished from the waxen presentments around her. Several portraits of her have been engraved, but none of them do complete justice to the fne-cut profile, lofty forehead and neat ap- pearance of the little old lady in high-peaked cap and gold spectacles, with a snowy ker- chief folded modestly across her bosom after the fashion of that ancient regime to which she of right belonged And, in truth, of all the famous people whom her hands moulded into the semblance of life, Madame" was herself one of the most remarkable. na- tive of Berne, in Switzerland, she was early taught the ancient art of wax sculpture by an uncle, and when quite young woman came to Paris as teacher of drawing and modelling to the Princess Elizabeth, daugh- ter of Louis XVI, and of Marie Antoinette From this connection she soon obtained an entree to the best society of the old French capital, and numbered among her acquaint-