A Royal Likeness (21 page)

October 1803.
The exhibition settled in the New Assembly Rooms in Ingram Street. Glasgow was larger, dirtier, and more decayed than Edinburgh, although nothing to compare with London. It was noted for its shipbuilding, which fascinated the sea-loving Joseph, so at every opportunity the three of them strolled down to the ship works to watch ships under construction.

Marie had taken a different approach to lodgings this time. Rather than focus merely on proximity to the show, she was now concerned with respectability and public approval. She rented rooms for the trio in nearby Wilson Street from a Mr. Colin, who was not only a highly respected pastry cook, but well on his way to being made a guild brother and burgess of Glasgow.

Mr. Colin encouraged them to participate in the Glasgow Fair the following July.

“Your keek show will attract plenty of folk, won’t it?” he suggested.

Marie turned one eye on him in her curious, birdlike way. “Keek show, Mr. Colin?”

“Yes, you know, where people can get a look at oddities. Sometimes there are giantesses, or strange beasts from the Indies. Once I saw a learned pig there. I never saw but heard about a man who would skin rats with his teeth. Gruesome, isn’t it? It’s every July on
the Glasgow Green. Your waxes will be much favored there, won’t they?”

The Assembly Rooms themselves were their largest location yet. They were bright and cheerful and prominently located at the city center.

Marguerite engaged another young man to tutor Joseph three days each week, but this time the tutoring would be conducted at the Assembly Rooms so that the boy would be available to help with the exhibit both before and after his learning sessions.

Although disagreeing with Marie’s decision to essentially run away from Edinburgh and Philipsthal, Marguerite had to admit to the woman’s ruthless efficiency in ensuring that they wasted little time getting the show operating. The three of them worked tirelessly in their new salon setting up the figures, which by now were old friends to Marguerite.

Columns provided the only room partitioning, and they took advantage of them to set up their tableaux in and around the columns to break up the large expanse into the appearance of smaller rooms. At Marie’s behest, Marguerite and young Joseph worked together to place a single character figure facing the street in each of the room’s eight tall, narrow-paned windows. They closed the cream brocaded curtains behind the figures, both to entice passersby to enter the salon and to prevent heat from the sun from concentrating on the remaining delicate figures inside the exhibition. At night the figures were edged backward and the curtain dropped between them and the windows to discourage any night prowlers who might think it interesting to steal a human replica.

The resulting excited whispers and shuffling could be heard outside the Assembly Rooms all throughout the day, and handbills announcing the show were literally snatched from the doors by the curious public. Marguerite spent so much time replacing the posted handbills that she made a trip to a local printer to have several hundred pieces printed, and stationed Joseph outside to hand them out. Thank heavens the boy had become so agreeable and willing, his only demand that he be left with his sketching papers and pencils. Via periodic peeks through the draperies, Marguerite
made note that the wax figures were attracting both the lower classes and high society. Best to recommend to Marie that they set tiered admission prices.

The two women spoke at length one day about which tableaux sets to uncrate and have erected, and what kind of workmen they would need to hire to help. Once that was done, the show would be ready to open. They decided to create a more permanent exhibit that would not be rearranged regularly but would instead provide a more lifelike experience for visitors. Also, instead of arranging their figures in topical tableaux, they decided upon a historical composition, where a visitor would enter at one end of the Assembly Rooms and step through various points of the last two hundred years of European history in chronological order, with an emphasis on Scottish events. From their characters they pulled such figures as John Knox, Robert Burns, and Sir Walter Scott, while also making plans to create new figures of legendary Scotsmen like Sir William Wallace and Robert the Bruce. Many of their figures were developed from old paintings and even their imaginations when they had no real person to work from. Marie decided upon a discreet American tableau as well, to give a prominent place to their Benjamin Franklin figure.

To enhance the patron’s visit, each tableau was augmented with realistic, mood-evoking accessories, such as straw on the floor for Charles I’s execution scene, and a pebbled pathway to crunch underfoot for those visitors visiting a replica of Sir Francis Drake sailing away in the
Golden Hind.

Because their expenditures ran high in putting together such a sophisticated exhibition in a drastically short amount of time, despite all of the materials already on hand, Marie was forced to seek credit with various local merchants for supplies. Typically one to hold on to every shilling until forced to part with it, Marie was too excited about the new exhibit format to let the want of a few pounds stand in the way of success.

“We’ll pay it all back quickly. Show will be grandest of all. Very profitable. Very good.”

Marguerite had simply never seen her employer so relaxed and in such high spirits.

Marie let out a satisfied sigh as they returned to their new quarters, happy that the setup of most of the figures had been completed in almost no time at all. “We establish show on our own now. Without Philipsthal.”

Marguerite began to envision Marie sitting in her room each night rubbing her hands together like Midas.

“Madame,” she said, “if the show is to be completely independent of your partner, perhaps it would be prudent to change the name of it.”

“Change the name?”

“Yes. Instead of Dr. Curtius’s Cabinet of Wonders, why not call it Madame Tussaud’s Wax Exhibition? After all, few people remember Dr. Curtius anymore, and the show is
yours.”

Marie pursed her lips in thought. “My name on the show? Hmm. But will the show lose respect with a woman’s name on it?”

“Hardly. Everyone knows you are the real owner. Besides, what about Patience Wright? Didn’t she have a wax show in London not long ago? I believe she had some success.”

Marie nodded her head slowly. “Perhaps, perhaps. I guess we try here and then go back to Dr. Curtius’s name in our next city if it doesn’t work.”

“Next city? Have you already planned another location?”

“No no.” Marie waved a hand in denial. “But if it doesn’t work here, we go elsewhere. Maybe Liverpool? Big trading center.”

Dread spiraled slowly in Marguerite’s stomach. Not another sea voyage.

“Or maybe another city in Scotland? Perth?” Marguerite tried to suggest helpfully.

“Decide later. But you have good ideas, Mrs. Ashby. You will help me with this,
non?”

And so Marguerite engaged a sign painter for their new salon, who painted “Madame Tussaud’s” and “Wax Exhibition” across two gaily decorated boards that could either be hung in the salon’s windows or be propped up outside.

She also had a new exhibition catalogue made, this time with an engraving of Marie on the cover to go along with the show’s new name emblazoned across the front.

For a final touch, Marguerite took out an advertisement in the
Glasgow Courier,
changing Dr. Curtius’s name to Marie’s, and adding a nod of deference to the citizens of Glasgow:

To enhance the show’s respectability, they scheduled a special showing just for the city’s most esteemed members of society, a list of people given to them by Mr. Colin.

As in Edinburgh, the audience was agog at the uniqueness of the exhibition. Perfectly mannered ladies stared at the fierce, bearded visage of William Wallace without bothering to bring a gloved hand or fan to cover their open mouths. Five orders for individual figures came in that very night, with two men nearly committing to a duel over whose would be made first. Marie made a great show of disapproval of their behavior, but Marguerite could see the smile hidden behind the frown, suggesting that such fanciful antics were pleasing to her.

They held another restricted showing for Mr. Colin and the
leaders of Glasgow’s guilds, in thanks for his provision of entrée into Glaswegian society.

Their new location’s success, combined with the absence of Mr. Philipsthal, had a rejuvenating effect on Marie. Each evening after the salon’s closing she bubbled over with new plans and ideas for improving the show, from securing a shirt claimed to have been worn by Henry IV of France,
le bon roi Henri,
when he was assassinated, to her most audacious acquisition, that of the actual guillotine blade that had severed Marie Antoinette’s head. Marie had known the executioner’s family back in France, and discovered through letters that he still possessed the blade. She quietly conducted the transaction to obtain it, and when the blade arrived, she revealed it to Marguerite in her room late one evening while Mr. Colin was out at a guild meeting.

Marie said nothing, but merely unfolded the blade from its layers of burlap, a new and durable fabric being employed everywhere for shipping. Marguerite gasped, recognizing instantly what her employer was showing her. The blade was rusted along its sharp edge and had obviously not been cleaned since its last use. Or had it ever seen a scrubbing?

“Madame, this is remarkable. Imagine the crowds who will come just to see this.” Marguerite reached out and gently touched a heavily caked spot on the blade. Was it blood or rust? Whichever, it had seen its way through many a terrified head. And now it would live on in infamy at Madame Tussaud’s Wax Exhibition.

Together they developed a plan for their grandest tableau of all.

Despite creating a historical walk inside the exhibition, they still maintained a curtained-off Separate Room. The guillotine blade became the centerpiece of the isolated area. Together they sketched out the idea to erect a guillotine site in the middle of the Place de la Révolution, where Marie Antoinette was beheaded. They worked primarily from Madame Tussaud’s recollection of this location where hundreds of French citizens were executed. They hired workmen to build steps leading up to a platform four feet off the ground, less than the eight feet of the original, but allowing for accommodation of the room’s ceiling height. The workmen also built an inoperable guillotine model, to which the real
blade was affixed and placed on top of the platform. A basket was placed at the chopping end of the guillotine on top of a straw bale, leaving no doubt of its purpose. The walls inside the tableau surrounding the platform were eight feet tall to obscure all but the top of the model guillotine from the crowds in the rest of the exhibit. Joseph helped his mother paint the Tuileries Palace in the background and jeering people in the foreground of the scene.

The last bit of construction was a tumbrel, a small two-wheeled cart with a simple bench in it for a prisoner to sit on. They positioned their Marie Antoinette figure inside the tumbrel, looking up at the guillotine.

In her exuberance, Marie wanted to place authentic cobblestones on the floor of the tableau, but Marguerite advised against it, citing the likely damage to the existing floors. As Marguerite had become more and more a confidant in these plans rather than just an apprentice, Marie took this advice readily. So instead they scattered straw and dirt around the confines of the Separate Room.

The crowning touch was to hire a man to sit on a bench hidden underneath the platform and strike at a block of wood at periodic intervals to imitate the sound of the guillotine crashing against the neckpiece.

Marguerite could not help but share in Marie’s pride and delight over the public’s reaction to their newly redesigned Separate Room, for which an increased entry fee of sixpence deterred no one. Even battle-worn army soldiers emitted strangled gasps and yelps when the axman gave a resounding blow to his tree stump under the platform. After the initial fright, visitors tittered in relief and then sought to meet the owner of the exhibition.

Money was flowing in a sweet and steady stream to the show, and their creditors were repaid in just a few weeks.

Marguerite found a curious visitor—aging, balding, and bespectacled—secreted in a corner one day with Madame Tussaud. She did not interrupt their intense conversation, but instead waited until after the visitor left to see if Madame Tussaud would mention him to her. When no remark was forthcoming, Marguerite knew from her past experiences with Mr. Philipsthal not to ask about someone when Marie was in no mood to have a discussion.

I may be more than an apprentice, but I am less than a partner, and must remember my place.

They spent a surprisingly contented Christmas together with Mr. Colin. He invited several guild members who were without family to share in a feast of goose pie, plum pudding, and haggis. Mr. Colin also prepared a batch of rum-laced frumenty, and his long, planked dining room table bowed heavily under the weight of dishes, wine bottles, and elbows. All of the diners conversed congenially and even sang popular tunes together. Joseph conducted himself in a considerably adultlike way, and was praised effusively by the men there for his proper gentlemanly manners. By the end of the evening he was drowsing on the hearth next to a crackling fire lit to ward off the outside bracing wind, an unfinished sketch of the Christmas diners dangling from his lap and Mr. Colin’s terrier, Angus, curled up next to him.