Authors: Christine Trent
Charles Fox had died at the age of fifty-seven, on September 13, 1806, not eight months after the much younger William Pitt. Although he, too, was interred at Westminster Abbey, he was given a private funeral. Yet the crowds who turned out to pay their respects were just as large as those who came to see Pitt.
A postscript noted that Charles Grey, Viscount Howick, would be succeeding Fox as foreign secretary and leader of the House of Commons.
And so the political intrigues will continue uninterrupted.
Marguerite put down the newspaper and ticked the numbers off on one hand. “Nicholas, murdered. Philipsthal, also dead. Brax, a tragic and foolish death. Pitt and Fox, departed less than a year from one another. All men in close association with me, all expired before their times.” She looked up at Darden. “Do you realize what this probably means for you?”
He gently pulled her up from her chair and put an arm around her, brushing the back of his scarred hand across her cheek. “Well, thus far it has meant a naval promotion, an opportunity to serve the Crown gloriously, and marriage to the most willful woman God did ever create. So it probably means”—he laid the same hand across her stomach—”that we’ll be having a stubborn, mulish child who will have a natural desire for adventures on the high seas, no matter whether a boy or girl.”
“That’s not what I meant,” Marguerite protested, laughing.
“But it’s what
I
mean, Mrs. Hastings. The past is done, and has no bearing on our future. I’m sure Lord Nelson would agree.”
He covered her lips with his own, to silence any further objections. But Marguerite had already forgotten her theory of unlucky fate inside the warm circle containing Darden, their quickening child, and herself.
Marie Grosholtz Tussaud is one of the most interesting figures of the French Revolution. She likely knew more famous people than anyone else of her time. According to her own autobiography—which admittedly was a bit self-serving—she was personally acquainted with Marie Antoinette, King Louis XVI, the king’s sister Madame Elisabeth, Robespierre, Napoleon, Josephine, and the painter Jacques-Louis David.
After fleeing France to try her fortunes in England, she traveled about Great Britain with her exhibition for nearly thirty years, her only help being in the form of her son Joseph (with Francis joining them in 1822).
There is a vast amount of conflicting information regarding Tussaud’s life. Her autobiography of her life during the Revolution details a woman who witnessed more up-close carnage while narrowly avoiding the blade herself than anyone else of the time. Some modern biographers doubt many of her claims, finding them unsubstantiated. As a novelist, I chose to concentrate on her life in England, where the historical record is sketchier and I could more liberally fill in details.
I have also rearranged certain events in Tussaud’s life to better fit the pacing of this story. For example, the terrifying sea voyage I describe that she takes in 1804 from Glasgow to Dublin, during which she lost much of her collection, was actually a trip from Liverpool to Dublin in 1820 to arrive in time for George IV’s coronation visit.
There are also minute details that the astute reader will pick up on as having been changed. For example, the Duchess of York did indeed have Madame Tussaud do a model, and extended her patronage to her, but the model was of a young child (the duchess was childless), and Tussaud never went to Oatlands Park to visit the duchess.
The oldest surviving figure in Tussaud’s collection is called The
Sleeping Beauty, believed to be that of Louis XV’s last mistress, Madame du Barry. A breathing mechanism was first introduced into it in 1837, and would not have been present when Marguerite first arrived on Tussaud’s doorstep in 1803.
Madame Tussaud was not the first waxworker of fame. Waxworks have been around in various use since the ancients. The most famous of her predecessors was a Mrs. Salmon, who modeled and exhibited in the early eighteenth century. However, it was Tussaud who took the genre to a completely new level of entertainment. Going to Madame Tussaud’s exhibition was much like opening up a gossip magazine today. It provided a personal look at both the popular and infamous people of the day.
Charles Dickens appears to have been referring to Madame Tussaud’s exhibition in his references to Mrs. Jarley in
The Old Curiosity Shop,
an indicator of Tussaud’s vast popularity at the time.
Madame Tussaud married relatively late in life, at age thirty-four, to François Tussaud, an engineer eight years her junior. After bearing him two children, Joseph and Francis, she elected to travel to England with Joseph under Philipsthal’s “protection” to make her fortune. It was her intent to return to France “with a well-filled purse,” but François’s terrible management of their financial affairs—including the sale of her waxwork salon in Paris in 1808—created a rift in their marriage that would never be healed. Marie refused to forgive her husband and instead had Francis sent to her. Although she remained married to François until he died in 1848, she never communicated with him again after he betrayed her by abandoning the Paris salon.
Marie lived to the grand old age of eighty-nine. She remained active with the exhibition until just a couple of years before her death. From her deathbed she admonished her sons never to argue over the exhibition, and they never did.
Philippe Curtius was a medical doctor with an aversion to blood and gore, a most inconvenient phobia for his profession. He began making anatomical figures as part of his practice, then discovered that people enjoyed looking at them and were even willing to pay to do so. He came under the patronage of the Prince de Conti, and did indeed invite Marie and her mother to come and
live with him in Paris. Curtius had an uncanny sense of the rapidly changing powers in France, and always managed to stay on the right side of the shifting political winds during the Revolution. Marie always referred to him as her “uncle,” but rumors have abounded that Curtius was actually her father. It does seem strange that Curtius would send to Salzburg from Paris for a mere housekeeper, and even more strange that he would mentor the housekeeper’s daughter. Marie certainly inherited a love of wax sculpting from him, and eventually surpassed her mentor in talent.
Paul de Philipsthal was a French showman well acquainted with Marie Tussaud when she lived in Paris. In fact, Dr. Curtius intervened on his behalf with Robespierre when the showman was jailed during the revolutionary frenzy under one of the typical trumped-up charges used by those with axes to grind. Philipsthal viewed her show as a way to add notoriety to his own Phantasmagoria show, and invited her to join him in England under the most dreadful contract conditions, which were ludicrously favorable to him. Marie detested the man and complained bitterly of him in her letters. John Philpot Curran was a famous Irish judge who visited Madame Tussaud’s Wax Exhibition in Dublin, although I placed their meeting in Glasgow. Upon hearing about her troubles with Philipsthal, he offered to represent her for free. When Philipsthal heard that Curran was conducting her affairs, he quickly came to terms and departed her life forever. It appears that Philipsthal later married, had children, and then died around 1830.
It’s rather difficult to study the events leading up to the five furious hours at Trafalgar and not fall just a little bit in love with Lord Horatio Nelson. He was a complex man, as most heroes prove to be. He was clearly a naval genius, and inspired deep loyalty in his men not only because of his fairness and kindness, but because of his infirmities. Many sailors had amputated limbs or missing eyes, so Nelson’s own gave him a connection to the average man. To have so great an admiral as Nelson continue on doggedly, despite his great injuries, further served as inspiration to them. Yet the hero was flawed. Although he was zealous, patriotic, and dutiful, he could at times be vain, insecure, and overly anxious for recognition. Even though Nelson plays a fictitious role in this
story, I did try to use much of his own dialogue at Trafalgar from the time he was sequestered in the orlop after his injury until the moment he died.
Lord Nelson is still well-deservedly revered in England today for his efforts in assuring English naval supremacy for the remainder of the war with the French, and there is a glorious tribute to him at Madame Tussaud’s in London.
Although both were married to other people at the time, Nelson and Emma Hamilton fell violently in love with each other. Emma’s husband at the time, Sir William Hamilton, was the ambassador to the Kingdom of Naples and the two of them became involved in helping Nelson, who arrived after the Battle of the Nile to prevent a French invasion of Egypt. So respectful was Sir William of Nelson that he turned a blind eye to what he surely realized was a torrid affair between his wife and the naval hero. They formed an interesting threesome, practically living together at Merton Place until Sir William’s death in 1803. Both Emma and Nelson were at his side when he died. Nelson’s wife, Fanny, was not quite so tolerant, although she had the better of it upon Nelson’s death. She had half his income, whereas nothing was settled on Emma and her daughter with Nelson, Horatia. Emma went deeply into debt and died from amoebic dysentery at the age of fifty-four in 1815.
Sir Thomas Hardy was Nelson’s flag captain and one of the few people tolerant of Nelson’s relationship with Emma Hamilton. Nelson trusted Hardy implicitly, and relied on the man’s quiet, unemotional, and dependable reserve. Hardy personally delivered Nelson’s last letter to Emma Hamilton. After Trafalgar, Captain Hardy received the equivalent of $100,000 of today’s currency in prize money, and nearly $250,000 in compensation from the government. He was also created a baronet. Hardy went on to more crowning achievements, becoming first naval lord at the Admiralty and reaching the rank of vice admiral of the blue. He died in 1839, at age seventy.
Vice Admiral Cuthbert Collingwood also profited well from Trafalgar. He was made a baron, and granted a pension of £2000 a year, equivalent to approximately $200,000 in today’s money.
However, he was not able to enjoy his reward. He was continuously on board ship for nearly five years as he commanded a fleet involved in a continuing blockade of French and Spanish ships sheltering in various ports. The hardship of being constantly at sea gradually wore down his spirits and his health, and he died at sea in March 1810 at the age of sixty-two, having not seen his wife and children since before Trafalgar. He did give Lieutenant John Richards Lapenotière the privilege of rushing back to England aboard HMS
Pickle
to deliver the news about Trafalgar as a debt of honor. Lapenotière was rewarded by the Admiralty Board with £500 and promotion to commander.
Mr. William Beatty was the ship’s surgeon aboard
Victory,
and Messrs. Smith and Westemburg were his assistants. Medicine and surgery aboard sailing ships during the era of Trafalgar were much as I have described them, except worse. Knowledge of antiseptics, the spread of infection, and other medical concepts we take for granted today were in their infancy then. A sailor probably had equal chances of dying in battle, of disease, or at the hands of a surgeon.
The lashing of ten men for drunkenness did take place on
Victory,
but it was a mere two days prior to the battle, and I placed it a few days earlier. Discipline aboard naval vessels varied from ship to ship, as there were no specific standards for it and punishment was entirely up to individual captains. Officers like Nelson and Collingwood were very popular because of their fairness, kindness, and relative humanity in terms of discipline. However, it is well to remember that many seamen were obtained through pressgangs, and although some of them settled well into life at sea, many naturally had no desire to be there. So by necessity it was imperative to maintain strict discipline on ships to avoid laziness, or worse, mutiny. Some captains were able to inspire their men to loyalty; others were heavy-handed with the lash.
William Pitt, also known as Pitt the Younger, became England’s youngest prime minister in 1783 at the age of twenty-four. He left office in 1801, but returned again in 1804 and served until his death in 1806. He was known as Pitt the Younger to distinguish him from his father, William Pitt the Elder, who was a previous
prime minister. Pitt the Younger’s second tenure was plagued by both unrelenting opposition to his plans for a broad coalition government as well as pressure from the machinations of Napoleon. His health nose-dived as a result. Pitt died of liver disease and left significant debt. Nevertheless, he was honored with a public funeral and buried in Westminster Abbey. Despite—and because of—the hostility he faced in office, he is known as one of Britain’s greatest prime ministers.
Pitt’s greatest political rival was Charles James Fox. Fox was the son of Henry Fox, himself a rival of Pitt the Elder. And so the rivalry continued into the next generation. Fox was known as a forceful and eloquent speaker in the House of Commons, as well as having a rather notorious private life. To his detriment, Fox was in constant conflict with King George III. From his intemperate influence on the Prince of Wales (the king made it publicly known that he held Fox principally responsible for the prince’s many failings, including his propensity to vomit in public), to his decidedly antiroyal position on the American rebellion, the French Revolution, and the matter of the regency, Fox assured himself a greatly hostile relationship with his sovereign.
Charles Grey, Viscount Howick and first lord of the Admiralty, took over as foreign secretary upon Charles Fox’s death and went on to serve the nation as prime minister from 1830 to 1834. Grey had a relatively happy marriage, producing sixteen children, although Grey did have a series of affairs with other women throughout his lifetime. His most notorious affair, which predated his engagement to his wife, was with Georgiana Cavendish, Duchess of Devonshire. She bore an illegitimate child with Grey, who was raised by Grey’s parents. He became Earl Grey upon the death of his father in 1807, and, yes, the aromatic Earl Grey tea is named for him.