Kate Berridge (8 page)

On many counts, Marie's version of her informal encounters with the great and the good over steaming dishes of home cooking seems too highly flavoured. A notable example is her description of Emperor Joseph II of Germany, who after a guided tour of Curtius's exhibition was supposedly stopped in his tracks by the mouth-watering smells emanating from Anna Maria's cooking pot. ‘Oh mein Gott, there is sauerkraut!' he is said to have exclaimed, and the next thing, in a far from imperial way, he is entreating them, ‘“Oh, do let me partake!” when,
instanter
, a napkin, plate &c. was procured, and his Imperial Majesty seated himself at the table, not suffering an individual to rise from it, but joining the group en famille, and ate, drank, talked, laughed, and joked, with all possible affability and familiarity, making himself as much at home as if he had been in his palace of Schönbrusen.'

Marie's mother's cooking also apparently impressed not only the crowned heads of Europe but also the new band of hotheads and angry young men who were rising to public notice, notably Marat. He was very fond of good eating, according to Marie, and ‘generally showed some anxiety as to what was for dinner'. In what is surely one of the more mundane utterances on record from l'ami du peuple, we see him in a different light with his instruction to young Marie, ‘You young kind creature, let us have a dish of knoutels (a German dish something like macaroni) and a matelote (a sort of freshwater fish).'

More plausible, however, is a link between Franklin and Curtius. Marie's great-grandson John Theodore Tussaud wrote in 1919 that ‘It is well known that Franklin had in his rooms in Paris many works that had emanated from Curtius's studio.' Indeed Reverend Cutler, a botanist and scholar, recorded details of a visit he'd made to Franklin's home in Market Street, Philadelphia, in 1787. Over the mantel he noted ‘a prodigious number of casts in wax which are the effigies of the most noted characters in Europe'. As Curtius's signature items, it seems reasonable to attribute these to him, and to assume that Franklin acquired them from him in Paris. A further plausible Curtius–Franklin connection is mutual acquaintance with the great portrait sculptor Jean-Antoine Houdon. Franklin was so impressed by Houdon that he enlisted him to make a statue of Washington, and one can see the possibility of a triangle of connections in Paris founded on artistic admiration and interlocking commissions.

Houdon found fame and fortune with his expressive busts of the personalities of the day, and John Theodore Tussaud describes the eminent sculptor as ‘a friend and companion of Curtius' who ‘had been engaged by him to render him assistance in his work'. Certainly what many regard as Curtius's finest bust, of Voltaire, possesses an uncanny resemblance to the Houdon portrait. It seems reasonable to conjecture that work by the prolific sculptor may have been the source of some of Curtius's waxes.

While the degree to which the family home was a hospitality suite for the great and the good is debatable, what is not in doubt is that it was also a studio-cum-workshop. Human teeth, clay, sacks of straw, glass eyes, wigs, chisels, haberdashery, oil and of course vast quantities of vegetable wax were the strange components of Marie's domestic environment. Beeswax was stored at room temperature to ensure it remained pliable; slight hardening could be corrected by kneading. Moulds of heads and bits of torso fashioned from leather were part of the creative clutter that was not confined to the studio but spilled over into many parts of the house. Like being backstage at a theatre and privy to the secrets of illusion, this exposure to the mechanics of spectacle gave her the fullest understanding of the judicious use of props and presentation and how to create a lifelike deception with mirrors, costumes and lighting. But at the core of things were the artistry of
wax imitating flesh and the figures on whom their increasingly affluent lifestyle depended.

While still a child, Curtius instructed Marie in the art of modelling wax fruit and flowers, and how to observe and then reproduce petals and fronds and the texture and flesh of different fruits. From peel and leaf she then graduated to the mimicry of flesh and the more complex contours and colouring of the human form. The art of drawing was an integral part of the process. Preliminary sketches helped train the eye for the sculptural challenge of building up a clay portrait, the measurements of which were carefully calibrated to the life-size features of the subject. From the clay head a plaster-of-Paris mould was made. Once a layer of liquid plaster about one and a half inches thick had set sufficiently hard to preserve the imprint of the clay features that it was encasing, it was carefully removed in section. These sections, which might range from eight to eighteen different pieces depending on the individual head, were then carefully fitted together with a peg and socket system to make a perfectly aligned mould. This would be cleaned, reassembled and firmly bound with cord before molten wax was poured in. This was not like pouring milk from a jug, but required a steady hand to prevent air bubbles. A wobble of the hand could cause lines on the finished cast. Brimful, the moulds were set aside to cool.

Once the wax had cooled sufficiently to create a crust about two inches thick, the still runny excess in the centre was poured off and the mould was again set to cool down until it was quite cold. Then the sections of plaster of Paris would be removed and Marie and Curtius would be able to judge their success as they came face to face, but not yet eye to eye, with the wax facsimile of their subject. Each mould was cleaned, reassembled and securely tied before being carefully stored, forming an invaluable resource as new life could be created from old moulds ad infinitum.

It quickly became clear that Marie had a precocious talent. Curtius showed her the techniques required for every part of the process, and told her the secret formula for the tints–disconcertingly close to the patina of human skin tones–that were his signature skill. The colouring required skilful judgement to give precisely the right hue of health to complexions that, badly executed, would mean the living
would look more like the death masks for which Marie became so justly famous when she was older. By watching and helping she learned to blend the different waxes, to insert teeth and eyes and hair, and to refine the rough surfaces of casts into realistic, recognizable heads. For a novice and a child this was exacting work. Moulds left seams in the wax, which had to be carefully removed without destroying the fragile whole, and flaws had to be smoothed out. Surgical glass eyes were inserted from inside the hollow neck and, just as in any portrait, positioning the eyes was critical to the overall effect of verisimilitude. It took a lot of practice and precision to get the right depth and angle to give the effect of realistic expression, rather than comic cross-eyes and squints. Then there was the painstaking strand-by-strand insertion of hair, which required the wax head to be gently warmed until each hair could be pressed into it to a depth of a quarter of an inch. For a whole head of hair this process could take ten to fourteen days to complete. By comparison, dressing of wigs in keeping with the latest hairstyles–powdered and piled high on the women, and with side rolls for the men–was far less labour-intensive. Real human teeth were added where appropriate (perhaps sourced from the itinerant tooth-pullers), and particular care was taken with the hands, which were also modelled in wax. The bodies were little more than primitive dummies, of wood or leather stuffed with straw or horsehair, as they were really just padding for the clothes that were an integral part of the overall effect. Authenticity was sought down to the last button, buckle and lace ruffle. In a society that was becoming preoccupied with appearances this was not incidental, but vital information.

By the time Marie was sixteen, an exceptional artistic talent was matched with competence in other aspects of the business. This balance of the artistic and the administrative–creativity was always allied to commercial interest–was the cornerstone of her future success.

Contrary to popular belief, Curtius and Marie's famous subjects were rarely modelled with their consent at a formal sitting. ‘From life', the phrase to which such weight is attached, could often mean that a representation was made using a sculptor's bust. The sculptor may have worked from the living subject, but the wax
version would have been a copy. The possibility that some of the busts were second-hand could explain why none of their famous subjects seem to have left recollections of their sittings with Curtius and his beady-eyed charge; the sole source of memories of such encounters is Marie herself. In the same vein as her picture of easy informality at the dinner table with the great philosophers of the day are her anecdotes about how she had to reassure some of her famous sitters not to be alarmed by a procedure which involved coating their oiled faces with liquid plaster, having inserted straws in their nostrils through which they could breathe. Modelling from existing busts does not in any way detract from Curtius and Marie's skills, however, because adapting casts was not a short cut or an easy alternative. On the contrary, the removal of sculpted hair and eyebrows necessitated an extra stage in the process.

A distinction between Marie and her mentor's creative output was that she never undertook the miniature portraits and small-scale pieces that he executed as private commissions. Nor did she seek recognition as an artist by displaying her work in the formal setting of the public art exhibitions–unlike Curtius, who displayed work at the Salon and in 1778 was admitted to the Académie de-Saint-Luc. Making money was more important to her than critical acclaim from cultural institutions. She only ever showed her work in the family-run exhibitions, and she never diversified from the format of life-size models and heads. Her talent for executing these was such that, even while a young girl, her work rivalled the quality of Curtius's, and in her words, ‘it was impossible to distinguish as to the degrees of excellence between their performances.' Her skill in conferring character on cool wax was such, she tells us, that ‘whilst still very young to her was confided the task of taking casts from the heads of Voltaire, Rousseau, Franklin, Mirabeau, and the principal characters of that period, who most patiently submitted themselves to the hands of the fair artist.' The trio of Voltaire, Rousseau and Franklin are some of her finest work, and these original pieces can still be seen in the London exhibition. They have been remade from the original moulds over the years, as wax darkens in time and, such is the deep tan conferred, then gives the impression that the subject had fallen asleep in the sun.

Benjamin Franklin: dinner guest, dancing partner, and one of Marie's earliest works

Marie was seventeen when Rousseau died in the summer of 1778, just a few weeks after his rival Voltaire. On the brink of adulthood, she was living in a society poised between two eras, for, as Goethe famously observed, if Voltaire had represented the end of the seventeenth century, then Rousseau heralded the beginning of a new age. He was a bridge from reason to romanticism, and the emphasis he placed on the individual reoriented society in ways that would have a profound influence in the nineteenth century. Rousseau epitomized the revolutionary spirit, yet, as Marie would discover, the idealistic theories of human freedoms that dominated intellectual debate in her girlhood would be horribly distorted in practice in the increasingly combative political arena of her adult life.

A
N ANONYMOUS ENGRAVING
used as a frontispiece to her memoirs shows Marie as she was in 1778. This rare portrait looks nothing like the Madame Tussaud who is indelibly fixed in our minds as a crone-like vision in cap, bonnet, dowdy dress and spectacles. Here, a fresh-faced, slim, seventeen-year-old is a picture of feminine grace. The face that we are familiar with as severe and inscrutable is seen here as serene and unknowing. The aquiline nose is immediately recognizable, but the cascading hair elegantly styled with lace and fabric flowers, the feminine fichu similarly trimmed and the billowing lace sleeves of an attractive, tight-waisted dress hint at fashion-consciousness. Presumably Marie had a certain visibility within the exhibitions with front-of-house duties, and so it was important she be well turned out–and Curtius's wealth meant she was able to keep up to date with what she wore. Yet the gap this illustration underscores between the young Marie Grosholtz and Madame Tussaud is not just the usual one produced by the passage of time. It prompts one to think of the personalities of her young and older self, and to consider what feels like the bigger gap between her actual experiences in Paris and the version of them that has become so famous.

Propelled by her uncle's success into regular contact with people in public life, was this bright-eyed and handsome young woman someone brimming with confidence? Was she outgoing or shy? If she had habitually sat in the same room as the most influential thinkers of the day as they fraternized with her enterprising uncle, was she socially accomplished, a good conversationalist? Did she speak German or French? Endearments from Voltaire and dancing with Franklin must have boosted both a young girl's ego and her
reputation. Yet her late and lacklustre marriage did not live up to the early promise of such advantageous social encounters. And her subsequent struggles when she first came to England bespeak lonely isolation rather than a string of introductions and the network that
would have been more fitting for someone with the connections she claimed. Does the lack of information about intimate friendships and relationships, especially with men, stem from reticence, or was her work the love of her life? Looked at closely, Madame Tussaud's version of Marie Grosholtz's girlhood starts to feel flimsy. In terms of any public profile preceding the one that she established by her own efforts, she is a missing person.

Marie Grosholtz aged seventeen

Waxworks are reality tricks, and perhaps, Coppelia-like, young Marie Grosholtz sometimes vivified the wax replicas of the famous and imagined the silent gallery coming to life, for wax mannequins elicit such fanciful ideas. This would have been innocent child's play. But Madame Tussaud's stream of anecdotes about the illustrious company she kept fulfil a different purpose. These cannot be dismissed as girlish fantasy, but are motivated by more worldly interest. They are also audacious in their claims, for according to the memoirs the bud of promise the pretty portrait conveys was about to bloom in the honeyed, moneyed splendour of Versailles.

The memoirs have it that Rousseau was not the most impressive luminary in Curtius and Marie's social circle. They kept company not only with revolutionary thinkers but also with royalty. Their span of connections that included ‘the most conspicuous characters of France' extended from the broad base of the new wave of cultural activists to the very summit of the social pyramid and the royal family. It is not clear whether it was Curtius's personal reputation, founded on the quality of his private commissions for de Conti's circle, or the renown of his exhibitions as outstanding attractions in the competitive world of popular entertainment that attracted the attention of the royal family. However they came to hear of them, the memoirs state that they habitually visited the family home, where Curtius gave them conducted tours of his latest pieces. ‘Amongst the different members of the royal family, who were often accustomed to call in at M. Curtius's apartments and admire his works, and those of his niece, was Madame Elizabeth.'

Although specific dates are hard to ascertain, it is widely held that in around 1780 Marie, by now nineteen, was recruited to teach the sixteen-year-old princess, sister of Louis XVI, who was ‘desirous herself of learning the art of modelling in wax'. Given Curtius's
stature as a wax modeller, the emerging talent of his prodigy niece and the fame of the waxworks, it is not implausible that such an approach was made. Elizabeth had never really recovered from her separation from her elder sister, Clothilde. A big sister in every sense, Clothilde was nicknamed Grosse Madame. At the age of fourteen she had been dispatched for marriage to the Prince of Piedmont, giving rise to cruel jibes that he'd got two wives for one, but her eleven-year-old sister Elizabeth, who had been extraordinarily close to her, was bereft without her. A curriculum of embroidery, harpsichord and botany filled her days, and a pack of pampered greyhounds were objects of great affection, but not even a close bond with her lady-in-waiting, Angélique de Bombelles, could fill the great gap left by Clothilde. As time went on, faith emerged as Elizabeth's solace and her preoccupation. Whereas many young women measured out their pre-married lives by making endless wax fruit bowls and flower baskets, devotional not decorative models were Elizabeth's incentive for taking up wax modelling. Three years after her traumatic wrench from Clothilde, she is said to have enlisted Marie's help.

Marie's elevation from the colourful world of show business in the entertainment quarter of Paris to the inner sanctum of court circles at Versailles has seeped into the bigger legend her life story has become. The story of her time at court is a primer for the impact of the traumatic experiences that she claims to have suffered subsequently, for the knowledge that she was making death masks from former friends and colleagues adds great interest, and elicits sympathy for her as a victim of the Revolution, rather than as a profiteer. Her memoir did much to crystallize the credibility of her court connections that her display of figures of the French royal family had already planted in people's minds. It opens with an impressive display of her credentials as a reliable authority on the French royal family, being presented as ‘the recollections of an individual who was for many years the companion of the unfortunate Elizabeth'. The press lapped this up, as is evidenced by an 1839 article in the
London Saturday Journal
, which reported:

Marie's account of Versailles is filtered through the teacher–pupil relationship. Madame Elizabeth is described as blue-eyed and handsome, with a fair complexion and light hair. Hinting at the corpulence that ran in her family is the information that ‘Latterly, she became very stout, but ever remained elegant in her deportment.' different sources all corroborate the picture of Elizabeth as a devout and conscientious child, who had more ambitions to enter a convent than to get married. Marie describes her as a paragon of affability and amiability, underpinned with self-discipline above her age. ‘She was very regular in her manner of living; dined at four, retired early and seldom gave parties.' Another aspect of her maturity was her commitment to confession and communion: ‘She was remarkably strict in her observance of religious duties.'

Marie's responsibility was to teach her pious pupil how to model religious votive pieces, specifically anatomically correct wax replicas of deformed or diseased body parts. In what is in effect a Christian version of the pagan belief in the power of doubles used maliciously in voodoo ritual, these wax replicas were then suspended in the churches of Saint-Geneviève and Saint-Sulpice in the belief that the relevant patron saint would intercede and heal those so afflicted.

Their closeness of age was at odds with the vast social chasm between protégée and tutor, the one cloistered in a rigid routine of court protocol, with around sixty staff to cater for her personal needs, the other exposed from an early age to the sink-or-swim extremes of life on a busy boulevard. Yet Marie relates how this did not prevent a strong bond developing between them. Such was this unlikely rapport that an appeal was made to Curtius to allow his niece to take up residence at Versailles, ‘Madame Elizabeth desiring to have the constant enjoyment of Madame Tussaud's society'. (Of course she was still Mademoiselle Grosholtz, but out of respect for her age
and the fame of the name the memoirs refer to her throughout as Madame Tussaud.)

This elevation of her status–in this case from art tutor to mentor–is a consistent trend in the memoirs. Time and again she plays up connections, and is prone to enhancing her position. This aggrandisement even extends to the King and Queen. For example, she emphasizes her credentials as a royal commentator, having ‘formed her opinion from a thorough knowledge of the character of Marie Antoinette', which she ‘had the best opportunity of acquiring from having so long lived under the same roof as her royal mistress'. Marie defends the much maligned Queen, interpreting her behaviour with charity: ‘That she was fond of pleasure, dress and admiration, there can be little doubt; and that to the latter she might lend too willing an ear, is possible; but that she was ever induced to be guilty of any dereliction from morality, Madame Tussaud regards as the foulest calumny.' But even more striking is Marie's account of her easy familiarity with the King. She relates how she often had ‘opportunities of conversing with Louis XVI and found him very easy and unreserved in his manner' and ‘perfectly free from that appearance of condescension, or air of protection, which persons of his rank so often adopt towards their inferiors'.

Reading rather like thespian anecdotes by a star-struck actor who in reality got more auditions than roles, her account of her life at Versailles has her centre stage with a stellar cast. A significant chunk of her memoir concerns her eight years at court, living among the people whose fate she so famously recorded for posterity. Her assertion to have been virtually the Princess's shadow, with a bedroom next door and a domestic routine that included intimate suppers together and being present when Elizabeth conversed with her brother the King, all reinforce the impression of Marie's role as a valued member of the royal household, like a noble lady-in-waiting. It is a picture of sentimental and inseparable female friendship of a sort that Rousseau had popularized, and that emulated the love-in between Marie Antoinette and the Duchesse de Polignac. More importantly, it is reminiscent of much that appears in Madame Campan's 1823
Memoirs of the Private Life of Marie Antoinette
.

The contrast between Marie's background and that of Madame Campan was vast. The latter was a woman of noble birth whose con
nections qualified her for the position of reader (
lectrice
) to the royal household. After her marriage to Marie Antoinette's private secretary, she was honoured with the role of First Woman of the Bedchamber, a position that she loyally fulfilled for twenty years, being on constant call for the Queen until the downfall of the monarchy in August 1792. As she herself wrote, ‘I have spent half my life either with the daughters of Louis XV or with Marie Antoinette. I became privy to some extraordinary facts, the publication of which may be interesting, and the truth of the details will form the merit of my work.' Marie's time at court would have coincided with Campan's tenure there, but whereas Madame Campan makes no mention of Marie in her detailed commentary of domestic life at Versailles, Marie in her own memoir refers to Madame Campan as ‘her most intimate friend' and relates how they had conspiratorial conversations about the court ban on discussing the politics of the day.

Less fly on the wall than flunky in the corner, Marie's vantage point allows us intimate glimpses of the private life of the royal family. The King's closeness to his sister was such that he often sought her out to discuss confidential matters. Marie relates how on one such occasion when he was consulting Elizabeth on a private matter, and she diplomatically rose to leave them alone, the King would not allow her saying, ‘Restez, restez, mademoiselle.' Marie interpreted the ensuing sotto voce dialogue as a request to borrow money. The request denied, she relates how the King suddenly arose from his chair, and turning round upon his heel, said, ‘Alors je suis tracassé de tous côtes' (‘Then I am disappointed on all sides').

That the Crown was strapped for cash at this time is well known, but official records do not suggest that cash flow was so poor that the King was reduced to appealing to his young sister for handouts. Even Marie, as the handicraft teacher, was not immune from being asked financial favours, for apparently Elizabeth's charitable nature was such that ‘she generally anticipated her allowance, and frequently borrowed from Madame Tussaud rather than reject the appeal of an individual who she thought merited relief.' One such supplicant was Rousseau's long-suffering mistress, who regularly approached Elizabeth, in floods of very genuine tears, with appeals to help the debt-oppressed writer, and one of the extra-curricular activities that
Marie says fell to her was to courier the requisite cash by carriage to Rousseau's lodgings in Paris.