Kate Berridge (42 page)

If we have scant evidence to corroborate Marie's tales of her life in France, her life in England was played out in public and presents us with a story every bit as compelling if less often told. Her success is all the more impressive for having been achieved in a time of female semi-serfdom exemplified by these lines of Tennyson:

As far as we can tell, head not heart governed her life. Hers is a story not about love, but about money–and more money than most Victorian men dreamed of making. It is the story of a woman who was not a pale, domestic creature swooning with delicate sensibilities,
but rather a hard-nosed, hard-working artist who in another life might have earned a different type of recognition in the world of fine art but who, as it was, made an unparalleled career for herself in business. It is a story where the woman is not a performer, a beauty or a dutiful wife, but rather an astute career woman who ultimately triumphed over all competition. It is, as we know today, the story of a woman who founded an entertainment empire that continues to expand. (Madame Tussaud's, Shanghai, is scheduled to open in 2006; branches already exist in Amsterdam, New York, Las Vegas and Hong Kong.) It is ultimately a grand-scale success story–of how with nothing more than entrepreneurial flair, commitment and sheer graft a woman born in 1761 to an eighteen-year-old cook built the first and most enduring worldwide brand to be identified simply by reference to its founder's name: Madame Tussaud's. It is a story that, through her exhibition, continues. The longest queue in history is a fitting monument to her achievement.

For the privilege of being able to pursue my interest in Madame Tussaud I extend warm thanks to Roland Philipps. For extending the reach of my enthusiasm I thank Claire Wachtel and Iris Tupholme. For negotiation and navigation, cajoling and consoling as appropriate I am greatly indebted to Natasha Fairweather. For efficient steering of production I thank Rowan Yapp. For all her efforts on my behalf including many helpful leads I am immensely grateful to Undine Concannon. For generosity of spirit in response to enquiries, Patrick Crabbe, Michael Herbert, Graham Jackson and Michael and Curzon Tussaud must all take credit for the contribution they made–as must William Doyle, who in the dark, daunting days before the first words were written whetted my appetite for eighteenth-century French history and suggested a reading list which set me on a good course for understanding the context of my subject's early life. For creative midwifery and incisive criticism Bunny Smedley has no equal. For helping me to mine the rich seams of the John Johnson Collection of Printed Ephemera at the Bodleian Library I am especially grateful to Julie Ann Lambert. I also tip my hat to Guy Penman and John Huggett at the London Library and to Rosie Broadley for specialist digging on my behalf, to Susanna Lamb at Madame Tussauds, London, for generous help in sourcing pictures, and likewise to Jeremy Smith and Geremy Butler at the Guildhall Library, Georgina French at the Bridgeman Art Library, Helen Trompeteler at the National Portrait Gallery, Stephanie Fawcett at the Victoria & Albert Museum, and Ian Kerslake at the British Museum. Finally, for patience and perspective that were bright beams throughout, to Sebastian my heartfelt gratitude.

FRANCE 1761–1802

On Marie's early life in France

Madame Tussaud's Memoirs and Reminiscences of France, Forming an Abridged History of the French Revolution
, ed. Francis Hervé (Saunders & Otley, 1838)

 

On the sights, smells, fads, fashions and feel of the Paris Marie knew

 

Louis-Sébastien Mercier,
Tableau de Paris
(12 vols., Amsterdam, 1782–8)–an invaluable resource: vivid and vibrant, it was described by a contemporary as having been ‘composed on the street and written on a doorstep'; selections have been published in English as

——
The Panorama of Paris
, trans. Helen Simpson, with a new preface and translation of additional articles by Jeremy Popkin (Pennsylvania State University Press, 1999)——
The Picture of Paris before and after the Revolution
, trans. Wilfrid and Emilie Jackson (Routledge, 1929)

——
The Waiting City: Paris 1782–1788
, trans. Helen Simpson (Harrap, 1933)

On domestic life, lighting, food, water supply

Annik Pardaihlé-Galabrun,
The Birth of Intimacy: Privacy and Domestic Life in Early Modern Paris
(Polity Press, 1991)

On shopping, fashion and trends

Christopher Todd, ‘French Advertising in the Eighteenth Century',
Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century
266 (1989), 513–47

Robert Darnton,
The Great Cat Massacre and Other Episodes in French Cultural History
(Basic Books, 1984)–excellent on responses to Rousseau

Carolyn Sargentson,
Merchants and Luxury Markets: The Marchands Merciers of Eighteenth-Century Paris
(Victoria & Albert Museum, 1996)

Anny Latour,
Kings of Fashion
, trans. Mervyn Savill (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1958)

Leo Braudy,
The Frenzy of Renown
(Oxford University Press, 1986)–this classic text on the history of fame was an important resource for the changing marketplace of fame

Rebecca Sprang,
The Invention of the Restaurant
(Harvard University Press, 2000)

 

On celebrity hairdresser Léonard, and celebrity milliner/stylist Rose Bertin

 

Emile Langlade,
Rose Bertin the Creator of Fashion at the Court of Marie-Antoinette
, trans. Angelo S. Rappoport (Long, 1913)

Madge Garland, ‘Rose Bertin Minister of Fashion',
Apollo
87, January 1968, 40-44

Jean Léonard Autié,
Recollections of Léonard, Hairdresser to Queen Marie-Antoinette
, trans. E. Jules Meras (Greening & Co., 1912)

On having fun–fairs and popular entertainment

R. Laffont (ed.),
Paris and its People: An Illustrated History
(Methuen, 1958)

Robert Isherwood, ‘Entertainment in Eighteenth Century Paris Fairs',
Journal of Modern History
53 (March 1981), 24-48

——
Farce and Fantasy: Popular Entertainment in Eighteenth-Century Paris
Oxford University Press, 1991)–this and the following title are scholarly and accessible classics, invaluable for putting Curtius in context

Michèle Root-Bernstein,
Boulevard Theater and Revolution in Eighteenth Century Paris
(UMI Research Press, 1984)

John Lough,
Paris Theatre Audiences in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries
Oxford University Press, 1957)

On life at the palace of Versailles

Cecilia Hill,
Versailles Life and History
(Methuen, 1925)

Jacques Levron,
Daily Life at Versailles in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries
, trans. Claire Elaine Engel (Allen & Unwin, 1968)

Norbert Elias,
The Court Society
, trans. Edmund Jephcott (Blackwell, 1983)

–a classic study of court protocol and the private being performed in public

Antonia Fraser,
Marie Antoinette: The Journey
(Phoenix, 2000)

Margaret Trouncer,
Madame Elisabeth: Days at Versailles and in Prison with Marie Antoinette and her Family
(Hutchinson, 1955)

Memoirs, eyewitnesses, first-hand flavour

Madame Campan,
Memoirs of the Private Life of Marie Antoinette Queen of France and Navarre
(2 vols., 3rd edn, Colburn, 1823)

Madame de La Tour du Pin,
Escape From the Terror: The Journal of Madame de La Tour du Pin
(Folio Society, 1979)

John Lough (ed.),
France on the Eve of the Revolution: British Travellers' Observations 1763–1788
(Croom Helm, 1987)

Arthur Young,
Travels in France and Italy During the Years 1787, 1788, 1789
(Bell, 1900)

Hester Lynch Thrale,
The French Journals of Mrs Thrale and Dr Johnson
, ed. Moses Tyson and Henry Guppy (Manchester University Press, 1932)

Letters of Jefferson 1787
(Hale & Co., New York, n.d.)

Anne Carey (ed.),
Diary and Letters of Gouverneur Morris
(Morris, 1889)

Nikolai Karamzin,
Letters of a Russian Traveler 1789–90
, trans. Florence Jonas Columbia University Press, 1957)

On the Palais-Royal

Mark Girouard, ‘Rout to Revolution',
Country Life
179i, 30 January 1986

J. Adhémar, ‘Les musées de cire en France, Curtius, le banquet royal, les têtes coupées',
Gazette des Beaux-Arts
92 (1978), 203–214

Evelyn Farr,
Before the Deluge: Parisian Society in the Reign of Louis XVI
(Peter Owen, 1994)

Darrin McMahon, ‘The Birthplace of the Revolution: Public Space and
Political Community in the Palais-Royal of Louis-Philippe-Joseph d'Orléans',
French History
10 (1996)

On the broader social background and changing social climate

Daniel Roche,
The People of Paris: An Essay in Popular Culture in the Eighteenth Century
(University of California Press, 1987)

David Garrioch,
The Making of Revolutionary Paris
(University of California Press, 2002)

Tim Blanning,
The Culture of Power and the Power of Culture: Old Regime Europe 1660–1789
(Oxford University Press, 2002)

George Rudé,
The Crowd in the French Revolution
(Oxford University Press, 1959)

Simon Schama,
Citizens: A Chronicle of the French Revolution
(Viking, 1989) Colin Jones,
The Great Nation: France from Louis XV to Napoleon, 1715–1799
Allen Lane, 2002)

William Doyle,
Origins of the French Revolution
(Oxford University Press, 1963)

——
The Oxford History of the French Revolution
(Oxford University Press, 1989)

On the outbreak of the Revolution

David McCallum, ‘Waxing Revolutionary: Reflections on a Raid on a Waxworks at the Outbreak of the French Revolution',
French History
16 (2002)

Thomas Carlyle,
The French Revolution: A History
, ed. J. Holland Rose (Bell, 1913)

Jacques Godechot,
The Taking of the Bastille
, trans. Jean Stewart (Faber, 1970)

On the progress of the Revolution, 1789–1794

Mona Ozouf,
Festivals and the French Revolution
, trans. Alan Sheridan (Harvard University Press, 1988)

David Lloyd Dowd,
Pageant-Master of the Republic: Jacques-Louis David and the French Revolution
(University of Nebraska Press, 1948)

Anita Brookner,
Jacques-Louis David
(Chatto & Windus, 1980)

Thomas E. Crow,
Painters and Public Life in Eighteenth Century Paris
(Yale University Press, 1985)

Helen Hinman, ‘Jacques Louis David et Madame Tussaud',
Gazette des Beaux-Arts
66 (1965), 331-338

Tessa Murdoch, ‘Madame Tussaud and the French Revolution',
Apollo
130i, July–September 1989

Simon Lee, ‘Artists and the Guillotine',
Apollo
130i, July–September 1989

David Bindman,
The Shadow of the Guillotine: Britain and the French Revolution
British Museum Publications, 1989)

Aileen Ribeiro,
Fashion in the French Revolution
(Batsford, 1988)

Gwyn Williams,
Artisans and Sans-Culottes: Popular movements in France and Britain during the French Revolution
(Libris, 1989)

Albert Soboul,
The Parisian Sans-Culotte and the French Revolution, 1793–4
, trans. Gwynne Lewis (Clarendon Press, 1964)

George Pernoud and Sabine Flaissier,
The French Revolution
, trans. Richard Graves (Secker & Warburg, 1960)

Jean Robiquet,
Daily Life in the French Revolution
(1938), trans. James Kirkup (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1964)

Linda Kelly,
Women of the French Revolution
(Hamish Hamilton, 1987)

Frédéric Loliée,
Prince Talleyrand and his Times
, trans. Bryan O'Donnell (John Long, 1911)

On the Terror

Daniel Arasse,
The Guillotine and the Terror
, trans. Christopher Miller (Lane, 1989)

Philip Gwyer and Peter McPhee (eds.),
The French Revolution and Napoleon: A Sourcebook
(Routledge, 2002)

David Jordan,
The King's Trial: The French Revolution vs Louis XVI
(University of California Press, 2004)

Olivier Blanc,
Last Letters: Prisons and Prisoners of the French Revolution
(André Deutsch, 1987)

Eyewitnesses

Gouverneur Morris,
A Diary of the French Revolution
, ed. Beatrix Carey Davenport (Harrap, 1939)

The Reign of Terror: A Collection of Authentic Narratives of the Horrors Committed
by the Revolutionary Government of France under Marat and Robespierre
(Leonard Smithers, 1899)

Grace Elliott,
Journal of My Life during the Revolution
(Rodale Press, 1859)

Peter Vansittart (ed.),
Voices of the French Revolution
(Collins, 1989)

Colin Jones (ed.),
Voices of the Revolution
(Salem House, 1988)

Aftermath

Jean Robiquet,
Daily Life in France under Napoleon
, trans. Violet Macdonald (Allen & Unwin, 1962)

Martin Lyons,
Napoleon Bonaparte and the Legacy of the French Revolution
(Macmillan, 1994)

ENGLAND 1802–1850

On waxworks

E. J. Pyke,
A Biographical Dictionary of Wax Modellers
(Oxford University Press, 1975)

On interest in Napoleon

Alexandra Franklin and Mark Philp,
Napoleon and the Invasion of Britain
Bodleian Library, 2003)

Stuart Semmel,
Napoleon and the British
(Yale University Press, 2004)

On fairs and popular entertainment

Thomas Frost,
The Old Showman and the Old London Fairs
(Chatto & Windus, 1881)

Cornelius Walford,
Fairs, Past and Present
(Elliot Stock, 1883)

David Kerr Cameron,
The English Fair
(Sutton, 1998)

Mervyn Heard, ‘Paul de Philipstal and the Phantasmagoria in England, Scotland and Ireland', part one,
New Magic Lantern Journal
8 (1996) October: part two 8 (1997) October–two outstanding articles by a magic lantern maestro

Duncan Dallas,
The Travelling People
(Macmillan, 1971)

M. Willson Disher,
The Greatest Show on Earth as Performed for over a Century at Astley's…Royal Amphitheatre of Arts
(Bell, 1937)

Hugh Honour, ‘The Colosseum',
Country Life
, 113i, 2 January 1953

——‘Egyptian Hall',
Country Life
, 115i, 7 January 1954

Aleck Abrahams, ‘Curiosities of the Egyptian Hall',
The Antiquary
, 1907

Richard D. Altick,
The Shows of London
(my desert-island book–a magisterial and magical history of exhibitions in the capital) Belknap Press, 1978

Ricky Jay,
Extraordinary Exhibitions…Broadsides from the Collection of Ricky Jay
(Quantuck Lane Press, 2005)–ephemera-based enchantment

——
Learned Pigs and Fire-Proof Women
(Robert Hale, 1987)–completely charming

Herman Furst von Pückler-Muskau,
A Regency Visitor: The English Tour 1826–1828
(Collins, 1957)

On London, 1835–1850

Charles Knight (ed.),
London
(Charles Knight & Co., 3 vols., 1841)–an excellent profile of the Victorian city emerging from Georgian London

The Shows of London
(as above)

John Timbs,
Curiosities of London: Exhibiting the Most Rare and Remarkable Objects of Interest in the Metropolis with nearly 60 Years of Recollections
(London, 1855)

Thomas Shepherd,
London Interiors: A Grand National Exhibition of the Religious, Regal and Civic Solemnities, Public Amusements, Scientific Meetings and Commercial Scenes of the British Capital 1841–1844
(Joseph Mead, 1841)

David Bartlett,
What I Saw in London, or Man and Things in the Great Metropolis
Derby & Miller, 1852)

P. T. Barnum,
The Life of P.T. Barnum Written by Himself
(Sampson Low, 1855)

Raymund Fitsimons,
Barnum in London
(Geoffrey Bles, 1969)

Charles Dickens

Charles Dickens,
The Pickwick Papers
(inc.
Pickwick Advertiser
), monthly, April 1836 to November 1837