Nasby in Exile: or, Six Months of Travel in England, Ireland, Scotland, France, Germany, Switzerland and Belgium, with many things not of travel — John Locke — John Shaqi
Nasby in Exile: or, Six Months of Travel in England, Ireland, Scotland, France, Germany, Switzerland and Belgium, with many things not of travel
John Locke · en
One of the stock sights in London which every foreigner as well as every
man, woman and child from the country who goes to London, does with
great regularity, is Madame Tussaud's Museum. It is known the world over
and is as regular a thing to see as the Tower.
A great many years ago, some time since the flood, a Swiss woman named
Tussaud, who had studied art in Paris, took the brilliant notion into
her wise head that money was better than fame, and instead of spoiling
marble she commenced doing some very good things in wax. She brought her
figures to London and opened a museum, which she added to and enlarged
as men and women became of sufficient interest to attract attention,
until she got pretty much everybody of whom the world ever heard.
She died many years ago, but the collection was continued by her family,
three generations of which have waxed rich and gone to join those whom
they put so well in wax in life.
This wonderful museum, which actually deserves all the attention it
gets, is filled with really excellent figures of the entire line of
English Kings, dressed in the costumes of the period in which they
lived, including arms, although court dresses generally adorn them. As
the Tussaud family were, and are, artists, these figures are not the
limp, misshapen, grinning effigies usually exhibited, but are in size,
stature, color and general grouping, perfect.
I cannot say that the effigies of King Edward and Richard, and those
other ancient marauders, are correct, for I never saw them in life.
They died many years ago. But all you have to do is what Dicken's
Marchioness did with the orange peel wine: "Make believe very hard," and
they will do. The faces were modeled from portraits, and their dresses
were made from actual costumes preserved in the curious repositories of
which London is full. The visitor gets some notion of what the subjects
were like, and that ought to be and is satisfactory.
[Illustration: MADAME TUSSAUD.]
[Sidenote: AMERICAN WORTHIES.]
You see, standing or sitting, marvelous likenesses of all the great
soldiers and statesmen of England, but heavens! how our poor Americans
have been abused! Washington is about as like our Washington as he is
like an Ohio River coal-boat captain. Ex-President Grant has good cause
for action for libel, for such a face as they have put upon him could
not have been on a third corporal of the poorest company in the very
worst North Carolina regiment, and President Hayes and Garfield have
been similarly treated. That of Franklin is a tolerable likeness of the
maker of infernal maxims, but there was a malicious design evident on
the part of the artists to dwarf the Americans, as I fancy there was to
enlarge and exaggerate the Englishmen.