Of the great historical figures Voltaire (which is the first of them) is least specially illuminated by what I may call “the Tussaud tradition.” And that is because we already know pretty well all that there is to know about Voltaire. His story was a simple one, his genius obvious, not complex, and the time of life in which Madame Tussaud’s uncle came to sculp him (to model his face in wax) was just at the very end, when public fame and his own great pride in himself had combined to put him into full evidence, even to the details of his daily life. It was just at the end of that life, in 1778, that Voltaire sat to Curtius, Madame Tussaud’s uncle, the original founder of the whole gallery, and the tutor of his niece in her art. It is interesting to compare the little miniature (one of several) which Curtius made--it is far more lifelike than the larger figure--with the famous Houdon. Houdon’s is much the greater thing, of course, and the more living, but though Houdon was the greatest of portraitists by far, the greatest renderer of the human face that ever lived, there is something intimate in the little wax miniature of Curtius which no great sculptor could have given. For instance, you have here admitted, as it were, almost photographed, the domestic insufficient quality of Voltaire’s famous smile. Houdon could not help making that smile--or grin--have something heroic about it; or at any rate great. But the Tussaud work undoubtedly shows you the thing as it actually was; as his servants and his intimates saw it. I learn, by the way, from this book (I had not known it before) that Houdon had himself worked for Curtius--a considerably older man--and the connection is as curious as it is interesting. It is striking to find a record of the connection in this book, but not astonishing that it should be absent from others, for there has been no good comprehensive work on Houdon written that I can recollect. I am told that there is some German encyclopædic work or other but no proper study of the man and his life.