Kate Berridge (23 page)

She relates how at the personal request of Joséphine she was commissioned to take a life mask of Napoleon. At six o'clock in the morning–the only time he would be free, she was told–she made her way to the Tuileries, where she received a warm reception from Joséphine. Bearing in mind her assertion that the last time they were together was as cellmates, this was presumably an emotionally charged reunion. Apparently ‘Joséphine greeted her with kindness, conversed much and with extreme affability.' Napoleon, by contrast, was gruff, and evidently reprimanded Marie when, reassuring him about the procedure of coating his face with liquid plaster with straws for him to breathe through, she said he shouldn't be alarmed. ‘Alarmed?' he exclaimed, ‘I should not be alarmed if you were to surround my head with loaded pistols!' Even making allowances for Marie's assertion that the portrait was a present for Joséphine, her account of this sitting seems improbable. Napoleon is renowned for his vigilance about his image. He was ultra-controlling about how he was presented to the outside world, in whatever medium. It therefore seems unlikely he would grant access for a sitting with a show-woman and a proprietor of a commercial exhibition–especially as he habitually turned down David's requests for formal sittings. And to permit a process whereby, once she had taken a mould from his face, Marie could manufacture unlimited numbers of models of him would seem to show him in breach of his own meticulously observed protocol for his propaganda machine. Napoleon constructed his identity with what was
not
shown and measured and seen; his image was based on what people believed him to be like–hence all the controversy about how tall he was.

But most persuasive in undermining Marie's claims to have slapped plaster on his features are Napoleon's own words on the subject of likenesses: ‘It is not the exactness of traits, a wart on the nose, that makes a likeness. It is the character of the countenance, what animates
a person, that it is necessary to portray. Certainly Alexander never posed for Apelles. No one knows if portraits of great men are likenesses. It is enough that their genius lives.' In her early catalogues, when she states that Napoleon was taken ‘from life', it is more likely that she means either from observation or from existing portraits in other media.

An anecdote from this time relating to Marie and the exhibition that does seem to be true concerns David. The painter evidently possessed a Curtius-like capacity to transfer loyalty, slipping seamlessly from being the propagandist of the Revolution to being the official painter of what in effect was the embryonic court of Napoleon, which would in time come to rival the spectacle and pomp of the
Ancien Régime
. Whether he still used the figures as source material for his own work is unclear, but clearly David retained his interest in the exhibition that was now under Marie's management. A vignette recorded by his pupil Etiénne Delecluze describes a visit in 1801, during which they were invited to inspect the contents of a chest that were not on general display. When the lid was opened, they recoiled at the sight of a row of chillingly lifelike decapitated heads, of which those of Hébert and Robespierre were instantly recognizable. David, trying to conceal how disconcerted he was, appraised them with a professional eye and pronounced that they were very convincing and extremely well done. He and his pupil then left, apparently stunned into silence by the contents of the trunk, and did not speak a word to one another as they walked the length of the boulevard.

With some of the prize pieces that had once been the big earners now out of sight, like the hidden heads that David saw, it had become more obvious what Marie should hold back from public view than what she should put on display. Also, there were now many more racy distractions for the public, from busy brothels to the glitz of the gaming tables. Still buffeted by the loss of her first child, with two small boys to care for, and a husband who needed supervision more than he could provide support, she was under considerable pressure. François's unreliability created a sense of instability rather than security, which was exacerbated by her creditors' constant revisions of the terms of their loan. Adversity was the theme of her life when, in August 1802, Philipstal, the showman whom Curtius had spoken up
for and saved from the guillotine back in 1793, returned to Paris. He had come to source some attractions to beef up his own bill of entertainment, which, having been the talk of Georgian London, was starting to suffer from widespread imitation. A victim of his own success, he had announced on his departure from England that he was closing ‘for a short time, to make way for an entire new set of amusements', and had Marie's wax figures in his sights. For Marie, his reappearance at this time must have seemed as if real life was mimicking the
deus ex machina
devices that were the grand finale of Philipstal's own magic shows.

Philipstal proposed a professional partnership whereby Marie would display a series of wax figures relating to the turbulent events in the recent history of France as a supplementary attraction to his main entertainment. But his terms were tough. She was to pay her own transport costs and expenses, and he would take half of her gross earnings. It seems likely that he used the showman's knack of persuasion and talked up how profitable his run at the Lyceum Theatre had been. One can imagine a compelling description of packed houses and glowing newspaper testimonials, and the energy of a showman who was making a success must have forced her to draw a very unfavourable comparison with François's ineptitude. How much acceptance of Philipstal's proposition was motivated by the chance to restore the fortunes of the ailing exhibition in the Boulevard du Temple and how much by the prospect of a legitimate escape route from her husband we can never know. What is clear is that it cannot have been a decision taken lightly. Marie must have been fairly desperate to contemplate leaving all that she had known for an uncertain period of time in a country that until recently had been the enemy of France, especially as she spoke not a word of English. It would entail abandoning the core of her inheritance, but most poignantly her two-year-old son and her elderly mother–Joseph was to go with her to London–without presumably much confidence in committing them to François's care. It was a far cry from the circumstances in which her mentor, Curtius, had been persuaded by a kindly rich patron to leave all that was familiar to him behind in Berne to embark on a new life in Paris. The world had changed dramatically from the days of aristocratic patronage, cosseting and
private commissions. Now every man was out for himself, and, as Marie would discover to her cost in leaving her husband, a personal predicament with a weak man was about to turn into a professional predicament with an unscrupulous one. Philipstal cast a dark shadow on her new life in England, and it would be a very long time before she could see herself reflected clearly for the talented woman she was in her own right, and not merely a reflection of Curtius's genius.

O
NE OF PHILIPSTAL'S
programmes of entertainment in London was entitled ‘A Magical Deception'. But unfortunately it was not just on stage that he deceived. Given that there seems to have been not a trace of the ingénue about Marie, and that guile rather than gullibility was her nature, it is surprising that she failed to detect the all-too-real flaws in Philipstal's business proposal. But an ailing exhibition in Paris and a lacklustre relationship with François must have made her susceptible to what had appeared to be a persuasive option to improve her lot both personally and professionally.

She knew that in London she could capitalize on the intense interest there was in France. This was not confined to the horrors of the Revolution. Three successive attempts at invasion by the forces of Revolutionary France–in 1793, 1797 and 1798–had instilled a hyper-vigilance in the British people about their vulnerability to the ambition of Napoleon. Since his appointment as First Consul, respect for his military brio had turned into fear of him as a ruthless tyrant, which fuelled fascination. As she carefully packed crates of moulds–some thirty figures and busts–Marie must have felt confident that the two figures of Napoleon and Joséphine would serve her well in the months ahead.

Bonaparte's fame was legendary yet his physical appearance was only a subject of speculation for all but a tiny minority of Englishmen. Joséphine, as the woman who had turned the head of the most powerful man in the world, was similarly of great interest. As a high-maintenance, style-setting adulteress, she had usurped the late Queen as the focus of gossip, and the public of both sexes were hungry to know more of her. Marie's confidence in the earning potential of such crowd-pulling material that she was bringing to London tempered
what must have been the painful emotions of leaving her two-year-old son, her elderly mother, her aunt and the ancillary assistants involved with the exhibition.

Although the Treaty of Amiens, ratified in March 1802, had officially ended hostilities between England and France, many regarded it as a comma in the conflict rather than a full stop. The statesman Lord Cornwallis voiced a commonly held cynicism when he referred to the peace as ‘experimental', and celebration was tinged with caution. The continuing sensitivity of Anglo-French relations was evident on the streets of London when a misunderstanding over the celebratory illuminations outside the French ambassador's residence nearly caused a riot. The crowd reacted violently when they misread the coloured lights as spelling out ‘Conquered' rather than ‘Concord'. This slur on John Bull almost made the war resume again, until a diplomatic solution was reached. The poet Robert Southey watched the fracas from the top of a garden wall nearby. He describes how a large number of soldiers in the crowd were incensed by the perceived insult and ‘insisted upon it that they were not conquered and no Frenchman should say so; and so the word “Amity” which can hardly be regarded as English was substituted'.

But patriotic sensibility was not sufficiently piqued to stop streams of the well-to-do from indulging their curiosity about recent history by crossing the Channel for a spot of Terror tourism. They longed to see for themselves the blood-stained block of the guillotine and the still scarlet stones of massacre sites, and to take an envious look at the loot in the Louvre. But the most coveted sight was a glimpse of Napoleon in person. To this end, regular receptions at the consular court at the Tuileries and numerous military parades became objects of pilgrimage for the thousands of Napoleon-worshippers who crossed to France at this time.

For those who could not afford to travel to Paris, there was no shortage of French-themed entertainments in London. The capital was cluttered with improvised models of the guillotine, sometimes billed as ‘The French Beheading Machine'. For only 6
d
. one exhibition in the Strand was more explicit, with a ‘Grand Exhibition of La Guillotine' that included a demonstration of a decapitation: ‘The execution is performed on a figure as large as life; the head is severed
from the body by the tremendous fall of the axe and the illusion is complete.' At Mrs Salmon's waxworks in Fleet Street, the public could see ‘the horrible cells of the Bastille with the man in the iron mask, the Queen of France and the Dauphin in distress'. It was a competitive market that Marie was about to enter, but the first-hand credentials she would claim and the sensational details of the coercion behind the making of many of her gruesome relics would confer an extra dimension of interest on her own figures, and give her the edge on her rivals.

While packet ships plied the Channel taking well-heeled English tourists to the shores of France, Marie and her fragile cargo were among the busy return traffic that brought an influx of foreign show-people to Dover, all keen to conquer the peacetime market with novelties as yet unseen in England. Monsieur Moritz was one of the early arrivals. His version of a phantasmagoria featured a terrifying image of the late King of France as a skeleton. Philipstal's optical illusion of the King, shown in the wrong place at the wrong time, had got him imprisoned, but English audiences loved this royal phantom.

A rapturous reception was also given to the Frenchman who launched his cabaret of performing poodles on the London circuit. They were a smash hit for several seasons, and were fondly recalled by all who witnessed their anthropomorphic antics. In a glowing tribute,
Chambers's Edinburgh Journal
described their talents:

A military siege, complete with cannonfire, and smoke, saw dogs storming ramparts on ladders and charging about in military uniforms in the heat of a live-action battle. In the second part of their performance the dogs enacted an elegant pastiche of court society. In ludicrous contrast to their canine characteristics, poodles depicting
grandes dames wore the powdered wigs of the
Ancien Régime
; others wore the ruffs and dress swords of noblemen. The sight of the wet-nosed gentlemen bowing to the wet-nosed ladies brought the house down. As the review said, ‘The frequent bow and return of curtsy produced great mirth in the audience, but when the noses of the animals neared each other, it produced a shriek of delight from the youthful spectators.'

A fellow showman whose presence in England was going to prove a great source of solace to Marie was Monsieur Henri-Louis Charles. Less famous than his brother the eminent physicist Professor Jacques Charles, who had acted as technical adviser to the pioneering aeronauts, Monsieur Charles was a ventriloquist. He came from the same close-knit show-business community as Marie in the Boulevard du Temple. Circumstantial evidence suggests that he knew both Marie and François (in one of her letters to her husband she says that Monsieur Charles sends his regards). It is known that Curtius employed a ventriloquist at the Palais-Royal salon to inject some variety and action into the sedate surroundings, and it is entirely plausible that this was Monsieur Charles.

While Philipstal was in Paris inveigling Marie to join him at the Lyceum, Monsieur Charles was already installed in the upper room there, baffling Georgian audiences with his splendidly named show ‘The Auricular Communications of the Invisible Girl'. This was no ordinary ventriloquist act of marionette and showman, rather a blend of science and showmanship whereby an elaborate metalwork pavilion with apparatus for hearing the communications of the ethereal star dominated the stage. Heard but not seen, his unusual leading lady was, as his publicity proclaimed, ‘invisible to the most penetrating eye', yet this was no bar to her engaging in lively dialogue with members of the audience and answering any questions put to her in English, French or German. Even more astounding was her deity-like skill of being all-seeing: nothing that happened in the auditorium escaped her notice. As the posters pronounced, ‘In short everything is as completely visible to her as she is invisible to the assembly, near whom she seems to sigh close to their ears, so that her breath may not only be heard but also felt; she follows all their motions and seems even to guess their thoughts.'

Whereas Monsieur Charles impressed audiences with a deception based on mechanical ingenuity, Marie was reliant on the quality of her artistic imitation of life. But this type of deception was not new to the city. She and Curtius had enjoyed a virtual monopoly with their wax exhibition in Paris, but she was going to have to work much harder to distinguish herself in England. Although many of the foreign entertainers could genuinely claim to be innovative in London, there was no novelty value to waxworks per se. Long before Madame Tussaud's arrival, wax figures had been a familiar part of the visual culture in different forms for different audiences across the class divide. Moreover, the waxworks exhibitions that were up and running in London in some cases comprised collections extending to hundreds of full-length figures. If Marie could not compete on quantity with her collection of around thirty figures, her artistry meant she could hold her own with quality.

The most familiar associations with her medium were the fairground-booth waxworks, where the lack of resemblance to the intended subject was almost part of the pleasure of viewing them. In early September 1802, a couple of months before Marie arrived in London, Bartholomew Fair, the biggest and longest running fair, on the site of the later Smithfield Market, was in full swing. Wordsworth went along, and was moved to record what he had seen in a poem:

Marie would spend her life trying to dissociate her own exhibition from the pejorative associations of the waxworks that had
traditionally been part of this tier of entertainment. To promote her preferred image of a refined version of this art, her early advertisements studiously avoided any reference to ‘waxwork'. She substituted a series of phrases such as ‘accurate models in composition'.

Mrs Salmon's waxworks, Fleet Street–advertised by symbol of fish–an eighteenth-century Madame Tussaud's

In a different league from the fair were Mrs Salmon's waxworks, with permanent premises in Fleet Street. Although the late Mrs Salmon had been justly renowned for her talent, she had also had a reputation for eccentricity, mixed with a dark sense of humour. She used to wear a bonnet accessorized by coffin trimmings, and is said to have slept on a winding sheet with a shroud for a nightdress and a pall for a coverlet. Her trademark practical joke was a spring-activated booby trap beside a figure depicting a character from English folklore called Mother Shipton, which was positioned near the exit of the exhibition. When punters stepped on the trap, the part-mechanized Mother Shipton kicked out at them, giving them a memorable send-off.

Mrs Salmon was to eighteenth-century popular culture what Marie would become in the nineteenth. After her death in 1760, aged ninety, the exhibition continued to flourish, with successors trading under her name. Early enthusiasts of her amusement-arcade brand of fun included both Hogarth and Boswell, and Dickens later made reference to her show in
David Copperfield.
Mrs Salmon's waxworks was thus an established London landmark that provided the chief point of reference for assessing the comparative achievement of Madame Tussaud.

The subject matter at Mrs Salmon's spanned history and horror–anticipating the market that Madame Tussaud would cultivate so successfully with her Chamber of Horrors. But whereas Madame Tussaud tended to focus on the trial-and-execution aspect of crime, the Salmon waxworks were more sensational and showed the crimes being perpetrated. A visitor at the end of the eighteenth century recalled tableaux depicting criminals in the act of their crimes, including a notorious bodice-ripper who scandalized society by ‘maliciously tearing, cutting and spoiling the garments' of a Miss Porter as she strolled in St James's.

Rather as Marie would attempt to attract a higher calibre of patron than the indiscriminate public, it seems that there were similar efforts
to market Mrs Salmon's enterprise as an upmarket concern, as is evident from the tip in a publicity poster that its location was ‘convenient for the quality's coaches to stand unmolested'.