Madame Tussaud (with Gavin Whitehead)

Vulgar History Podcast

Madame Tussaud (with Gavin Whitehead) 

October 30, 2024

Hello and welcome to Vulgar History, a feminist women’s history comedy podcast and have a [spooky voice] haunted Halloween. It’s our annual Halloween special, which is a thing that I borrowed from, honestly, Dawson’s Creek. If you used to watch Dawson’s Creek back in the day, I don’t think they had a Christmas episode, but they always had a Halloween episode and I just happened to have started doing Halloween-themed episodes for this and now it’s always really exciting and a bit challenging sometimes to find what’s going to be the topic each year, to find something that is appropriately scary and gruesome. This actually worked out so perfectly because a friend of the podcast, Gavin Whitehead, is joining us today. 

Gavin is the host of the Art of Crime, which is a history podcast about the unlikely collisions between true crime and the arts. Ooh! And if you’re listening, do you hear that scary sound of a… of a cat? [laughs] Hepburn, my cat, is here as well, adding to the Halloween vibes, she’s my [spooky voice] familiar. Anyway, so Gavin is a friend of the podcast. I was on his podcast a bit ago and he’s returning the favour. So, he just did a whole season about Madame Tussaud, who maybe you didn’t know was a person, not just a name of an international franchise of wax museums. Madame Tussaud lived literally through the French Revolution, it’s exactly the time period we’re talking about on the show, so it’s still saying in context for this with Season Seven, the whole Marie Antoinette series, but also the French Revolution. Inherently, there’s a lot of heads being chopped off and there’s a lot of scary, creepy things going on, a lot of gruesome things. Anyway, it’s the perfect guest, perfect topic for this episode. So, we’re going to be talking about Madame Tussaud, so I mean, like, enjoy, [spooky voice] if you daaaare! 

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Ann: So, Gavin Whitehead, welcome to Vulgar History. 

Gavin: Thank you so much for having me on. I’m so happy to be here! 

Ann: I’m really happy you’re here and it’s just such a lovely coincidence that you just finished your season on Madame Tussaud just as I’m doing a whole, as I’m beginning to talk about the French Revolution. Her story is perfect. 

Gavin: Yes. 

Ann: Yeah, to segue into that. 

Gavin: Happy coincidence. Absolutely. 

Ann: Well, and also just, like, returning the favour. I was on your show and now you’re on my show. 

Gavin: Exactly. 

Ann: So, we were just talking before we were recording. So, we’re talking about Madame Tussaud, who I just want to let people know— Like, sometimes there’s a name that has become so iconic, you kind of don’t think that it’s a person and Madame Tussaud, I think, is one of those names just because the museums are so famous. Can you explain what we’re going to call her? 

Gavin: So, we decided before we hit the record button that we would just refer to her as Madame Tussaud or perhaps Madame T for the entirety of the episode, just for the sake of simplicity, but also because that’s how we know her. That’s how we’ve come to know her and it just feels right to refer to her by that name. 

Ann: Yeah, like, she was not born Madame Tussaud, that is very much her married name. I was just trying to bring up, like, a little document in front of myself to follow along, and it’s like Madame Tussaud, like, everything that comes up when you google this is just the museums. It’s like, “No, the person! It’s a person.” 

Gavin: That’s right. There was a person. 

Ann: So, you did a whole season about Madame Tussaud. 

Gavin: Yes, correct. So, I am the host and creator of a podcast called the Art of Crime; it’s a history podcast about the unlikely collisions between true crime and the arts. Each season is structured around a different theme. So, I just wrapped up my third season, which is called Queen of Crime: Madame Tussaud and the Chamber of Horrors. 

So, the way it works is that each episode kind of tells two stories. Over the course of the entire season, we cover the biography of Madame Tussaud, kicking off in pre-revolutionary France and wrapping up in Victorian London, which is where she finished her life. Each episode covers a chapter of that story. So, at the same time, I chronicle the evolution of this exhibit inside the wax museum called the Chamber of Horrors, and this is sort of where the true crime component comes in. So, the Chamber of Horrors exhibited likenesses of notorious murderers, as well as various macabre relics associated with the French Revolution, which we’ll get to in due course. So, just as each episode of this season advances the story of Madame Tussaud’s life, each episode is also structured around a noteworthy crime or criminal that was depicted in the Chamber of Horrors. 

Ann: I just want to let everybody know about the Chamber of Horrors. It was briefly removed from Madame Tussaud’s in London, but you broke the news to me that it’s back. It’s back, baby. 

Gavin: It is back and I don’t know if it’s better than ever, but it’s back. Yeah, it went away for a few years, I want to say in 2016, it was a recent development, they closed down the Chamber of Horrors and replaced it with the Sherlock Holmes Experience. So, there was still a kind of murder mystery vibe with what replaced it. But I remember feeling so sad when I heard about this because the Chamber of Horrors had been around for well over 100 years and in fact, its earliest antecedent goes back to, like, the end of the 18th century. So, it just felt like they were wiping away so much history by making that change and I was so glad to see that they had brought it back. 

Ann: I was so happy they brought it back. So, when I was a young child, my family, we went on a trip to London, I was probably, like, 9 or 10 years old. I don’t remember much, but I remember going to Madame Tussaud’s and I remember going to the Chamber of Horrors and it, like, imprinted on me. I remember seeing the Chamber of Horrors and I remember seeing, like, the torture chambers at the Tower of London and I was this little kid who was just like, “True crime is now my passion!” [Gavin laughs] So, when I went to London a bit ago, I was like, “Oh, I want to see Madame Tussaud’s!” And I had thought the Chamber of Horrors was gone so I didn’t even go there, but it’s back! So, next time I go, I need to see it. 

Gavin: Next time. I’ve never been to the Chamber of Horrors— I’ve never been to the Tussaud’s in London and so I’ve never been to the Chamber of Horrors, but it’s definitely on the bucket list. 

Ann: I’m going to assume because this was, like, when it went away, it was a recent-ish development and I could see they were like… <aybe they thought it was a bad taste or maybe they thought it was… They wanted to, I think Madame Tussaud’s, the ads you see right now are very much like, “Come and see all the celebrities.” So, I think they’re leaning into that versus the history. 

Gavin: Yeah. Yeah, that’s for sure. 

Ann: So, Madame Tussaud’s— This is also, I should mention, we’re recording this a bit earlier, but this is our Halloween special. So, it’s going to get gruesome! Even just when I was researching this, like, every picture in the Madame Tussaud biography I was reading was a picture of a waxwork but some of them are so gruesome. They’re so realistic-looking. 

Gavin: Yeah, yeah. 

Ann: So, it’s kind of like… Well, like, Halloween, you know, people put decorations on their lawn. It looks gruesome, but really it’s just fun. 

Gavin: It was gruesome. But one thing, and we’ll get to this in a minute. You mentioned, like, you know, the museum has kind of moved away from presenting itself as a historical institution, an institution dedicated to historical instruction. In Tussaud’s lifetime, these grisly relics of the French Revolution were seen as instructive, they were seen as tools that were teaching Victorians about what it was like to live through the French Revolution. 

Ann: Yeah, and for them, it was recent history. It was people who they— We’ll talk about this, we’ll talk about this as we go. I found it all so fascinating. This story really… She lived for a long time, spoiler, and she lived through so many major historical things and she captured them all in wax. When she really settled in England later in her life, it was sort of the, you know, there wasn’t Instagram, there wasn’t TMZ, but it was a way that people, like, everyone was talking about a famous celebrity or a royal or something, but she made it so you could go to Madame Tussaud’s and see what that person looked like. Like, it was really like of the moment. It was a way— 

I’ll just say one thing because I’m working on writing this book about Caroline of Brunswick. So, like, when Caroline of Brunswick, when she was on her adultery trial, Madame Tussaud had a Caroline of Brunswick figure, she had a figure of Caroline’s husband, Prinny, and she made a waxwork of Caroline’s alleged lover, this Italian man because people just wanted to see what they looked like. Like, she just knew this is what the audiences were interested in. And yeah, she really, whatever was going on, she made a waxwork of it. It was very impressive. 

Gavin: Yes, a little erotic intrigue there as well. 

Ann: Mm-hm! Exactly. 

So, you’re going to sort of guide us through this story and I’ll just pop in [laughs] with questions and fun facts. So, can you start us off, Gavin, with, like, Madame T as a girl? Where was she born? What was her situation? What was her childhood like? 

Gavin: So, Madame T is born Marie Grosholtz in 1761 in Strasbourg. The birth certificate names Joseph Grosholtz and Anna Maria Grosholtz as her mother and father. Her father ends up dying roughly two months before she’s born, so she never meets him and not long after her birth, she and her mother moved to Bern, Switzerland, which is where Anna Maria, so Madame T’s mom, gets a job as a housekeeper in the household of a guy named Philippe Curtius. And if you want to know about Madame T’s rise to fame, you have to know a little bit about Philippe Curtius and who he was. 

So, Curtius was a practicing physician in Bern. Now, back in the 18th century, medical students needed to know the human anatomy inside and out, right? But the problem was that there were limited ways of actually studying the human anatomy because the ideal way to gain that kind of knowledge would have been to look at fresh cadavers, right? Actually open up human beings and see what it looks like in there. But they had limited access to refrigeration, so there were obvious problems. So, what they did as an alternative is that medical students and medical professionals would create wax anatomical models of the human body and that was part of how they learned where everything was inside the human body. 

So, Philippe Curtius not only studies anatomical waxes, but he gets really good at making them. And once he realizes that he has this talent as a wax modeller, he starts to branch out and he starts to make wax portraits of wealthy people in Bern, he also starts to make kind of more erotic wax models, some that were outright pornographic, and he kind of makes a name for himself. Eventually, he comes to the attention of a member of the French royal family, the Prince de Conti. He allegedly visits Curtius at his home in Bern, Switzerland, lays his eyes on all of his waxworks and is so impressed that he just pledges his patronage right then and there. He’s like, “Listen, you, I want to support what you do. This stuff is amazing, but there’s a condition: You have to move to Paris.” So, Curtius accepts this deal while Madame T and her mother are still living in his household and he moves from Bern, leaving them behind temporarily. He moves from Bern to Paris and sets up shop there. 

Now, a few years later, he actually invites Anna Maria Grosholtz and Madame T to join him in Paris, this is in the late 1760s. 

Ann: And so, the mom, Madame T’s mom, she’s, like, a servant in the household. 

Gavin: Exactly. So, she would have cooked meals, would have kept the house tidy. By all accounts, she could whip up a mean casserole, you know? But Curtius’s decision to invite them to live with him in Paris has fueled speculation about the exact nature of his relationship with Madame T’s mother. Some people have wondered if there may have been some kind of romantic relationship because, you know, he could have hired a new housekeeper just fine in Paris, right? Why would he invite her to join him there? So, the exact nature of that relationship is a mystery for the ages, we’ll never have the answer. But it’s very clear that Madame T had a close, almost familial kind of relationship with Philippe Curtius; she referred to him as “Uncle” for the rest of her life. And Philippe Curtius teaches Tussaud everything that she knows about wax modelling. 

Ann: I just want to say, just pause for a second, the incredible coincidence that this happens to be the household her mother got a job in and that Madame T happens to have this talent in this specific thing. It’s just like, great, but what are the chances? 

Gavin: I know, yeah. And it’s not just that she can learn and is willing to learn, but that she’s, like, one of the best people in the world at it. It’s staggering. Yeah, the coincidence, as you point out. 

So, she learns how to model in wax at a very early age and I thought it might be fun to talk through this process a little bit. 

Ann: Please! 

Gavin: Because it takes extraordinary skill and parts of the process are mind-blowing to me. She would have started by modelling fruits and flowers, things like that, before she graduated to representing human subjects in wax. But eventually, she shows a lot of skill and she moves on to sculpting human beings in wax figures. 

So, here’s how it works, basically. The most important part of any wax figure is also the most difficult and that is the head. It’s like, if you cannot get the head of the wax figure right, the whole thing is ruined. The way it works is that you would start by making a detailed sketch of the intended subject—so we’ll say Marie Antoinette or Madame du Barry or Napoleon Bonaparte, whoever—you make a detailed sketch of that person’s head. Then you make a clay model working from that sketch and again, you want this clay model to be as accurate and lifelike as possible. Once you have that clay model, you coat it in liquid plaster, and then once you’ve done that, you remove the liquid plaster— So again, the liquid plaster has basically formed this kind of outer shell around the clay model, if that makes sense. Once it has set, you remove it in pieces and then reassemble those pieces of liquid plaster using a sophisticated peg and socket system. So, basically, now what you have is a kind of hollow cranium that is made of liquid plaster and here is where the wax comes in. 

So, you heat up wax so that it is molten, and then you pour it very carefully into this plaster cast and you fill it up to the brim. Again, this part of the process requires extreme care because one wrong wobble could again compromise the finished product; could give you a wrinkle where you don’t want it to go, there are all kinds of problems that could crop up because of it. So, you fill this caster and set it aside to let it cool. Now, the way it works is that the wax that is actually closest to the plaster cast (it’s no longer liquid at this point), the wax that is closest to the outside will harden first. And then once that has hardened, you dump out all of the wax that’s in the middle of the head. So basically, what you’re left with is, again, another shell, another outer layer of wax that is basically the outside of the head, it’s maybe two inches thick and that is your head. 

So, once you have the head—this is where it gets really interesting—you have to set glass eyeballs in the sockets. So, what Madame T would do is she would reach up through the neck of the head and then insert the glass eyeballs from the inside. Again, this takes a lot of care because you don’t want a wax figure that looks cross-eyed, or squinty, or anything like that. And then, this is the really crazy part: she would insert human hair, one strand at a time. We’re talking hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of individual strands of hair. Would you care to hazard a guess as to how long this part of the process took to complete? 

Ann: I don’t even know… Like, three months. 

Gavin: Okay, it’s actually shorter than that, thank god, but it’s still shocking. It’s 10 to 14 days. [laughs]

Ann: Of just intensive, just hair… putting.

Gavin: Yeah, exactly. I mean, think of how mind-numbing that is. It would just drive me crazy to do that. And when necessary, they would insert real human teeth in the wax figures as well. 

So, once you had the head, you had the hardest part done. The rest of the figure was really actually not made of wax at this point in history, it was mostly wood and leather. And it was sort of just like a skeleton, it was just there so that you could hang pretty clothes on them because as we’ll talk about probably later, the costumes of the wax figures were a huge part of the appeal of the wax museum and Philippe Curtius and Madame Tussaud collaborated with some of the most august designers of the day. And so, you outfitted the wax figure and then you made the hands and then you were done. So, that’s the process of making wax figures. 

So, you asked about where Madame Tussaud grew up, a little bit, as a girl. So, at this point, she moved to Paris and around 1770, Philippe Curtius opens up his wax museum, already renowned within Paris, on a street called the Boulevard du Temple, which is kind of at the heart of Paris’s entertainment industry. It sounds really awesome, the wax museum is there and his house is also there. So, Madame T and her mother are there, they’re working in the wax museum all day long, making wax figures, taking money from customers, making sure the premises is neat and tidy, et cetera, et cetera. 

Ann: And who are the customers? Are they the wealthy elites or are they just, kind of like, the everyday people? 

Gavin: I think it’s a little bit of both. It’s definitely geared toward anyone who has time and money to pay to enter the wax museum but the Boulevard du Temple did combine people from all strata of Parisian society. So, you can see courtiers and courtesans, but you could also see lower-income people. The street was actually rife with crime, it was known as the Boulevard du Crime. So, there was a lot of money floating around in the area and there was also, you know, some more impoverished people there as well. So, I think it would have been a mixture of rich and not-so-rich patrons at the wax museum at the Boulevard du Temple. 

Now, they also opened another wax museum at the Palais Royale in 1784 or thereabouts, and that definitely catered to a classier, more upper-class clientele, it was called the Salon de Cire. So, it was presented as this kind of salon, it’s very exclusive and you had to pay more to get in if you really wanted to inspect all the sculptures. 

Ann: Well, right. Because I want to just mention… So, we’ve been slowly, similar to what you did with your Madame Tussaud season, we’ve been building slowly towards learning more about Marie Antoinette’s life, eventually. We’ve talked on the show about Versailles and the extreme etiquette and stuff that was going on there. So, I could see that the very wealthy, noble people were living in their own separate sphere. So now, they have their own wax museum that they can go to without having to go to this other boulevard to interact with, like, the everyday people. 

Gavin: Yes. And since you mentioned Versailles, I think it’s important to note that the royal family sort of had pride of place at the wax salon, so the more upper-crusty salon that was at the Palais Royale. In a previous episode, you talked about what’s called the grand couvert, it’s a weekly ritual where people could go to Versailles and watch the royal family eat dinner, that was something that you could do. It was called the grand couvert and I wanted to bring it up because there was actually a tableau of Marie Antoinette, Louis XVI, and assorted other individuals eating dinner as if at Versailles. That was a tableau that Curtius introduced at the wax salon in the Palais Royale.

I’m just fascinated by the very idea of the grand couvert; anyone could go to see it at Versailles so long as they adhered to the dress code. Men had to wear wigs and I believe they also had to carry swords with them. But in the event that you walked out of the house without your sword, which has happened to all of us, [Ann laughs] you know, you leave it at home with your umbrella and you’re like, “Shoot, I’m having a sword fight in the rain, what am I to do now?” But in the event that you walked out without your sword, you could get one at the front door, essentially. [laughs]

Ann: Okay, okay. Like those restaurants where they give you, like, a jacket if you don’t have your jacket, yeah.

Gavin: Exactly, exactly. So yeah, you’d go and watch Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette eat. By all accounts, Marie Antoinette was always kind of, like, uncomfortable in the public gaze, she hardly ever touched her food. Louis XVI, by contrast, just kind of chowed down with gusto, he was much more comfortable there. So anyway, if you didn’t have the time to make a trip out to Versailles, which could take a few hours, you could go to the wax salon and see, you know, the royal family eating in wax. 

Ann: So, is this a good time to bring up Madame… So, Madame Tussaud, a lot of what we know about her is she wrote her memoirs. How truthful are those memoirs, who knows? But one of the claims that she makes is that she herself went to Versailles and hung out there for a while, which… Did she or did she not? I don’t know. But can you explain, like, what she claimed she was doing there? 

Gavin: Sure, yeah. So, Madame Tussaud claims to have developed a really intense friendship with a member of the royal family named Madame Élisabeth, who was Louis XVI’s younger sister. We do know for a fact that Madame Élisabeth modelled in wax, she made all kinds of religious figures like crucifixes, things like that. And supposedly, they developed this close bond and Madame Élisabeth invited Tussaud to live at Versailles with her sort of as a surrogate sister, but also as a teacher, someone who would help her learn how to model in wax. And Tussaud claims to have slept in an adjacent bedchamber and they were just inseparable, you know, they would rise early in the morning, go horseback riding, do everything together. And she claims to have lived there for eight years until about, I think, 1788, so really on the eve of the French Revolution, she claims to have left. 

There have been a couple of biographies about Tussaud and the biographers are sort of divided on this question as to whether Tussaud really spent any time at Versailles. One biographer, Pauline Chapman, takes her at her word, is like, “Yep, she went to Versailles,” but the other two biographers are extremely skeptical about this and I would say with good reason. Because, you know, if you were paid to, like, empty a chamber pot at Versailles for any extended period of time, there is a record of it somewhere. Like, they really recorded this stuff meticulously and there is no record of Madame Tussaud anywhere it should be, where we’d expect to find it and she claims to have lived there for eight years. So, that definitely casts doubt on this story. 

However, one thing that I would add is that a lot of members of the royal family did pay, like, grade-A artists to teach them how to do whatever it was they did and Marie Antoinette was actually one of them. She sought instruction from some of the best actors of the day because, you know, she performed in these, kind of, private theatricals at Versailles, playing characters like shepherdesses and so forth. And then one of my favourite examples is the Comte d’Artois, who is Louis XVI’s brother. He actually paid a tightrope walker named Le Petit Diable, or the Little Devil, who became famous for doing a dance on a tightrope with eggs tied around his feet without breaking them. He became, like, an overnight sensation doing this. [Ann laughs] This is the kind of stuff that people loved to see! I mean, they’re just like, “Oh my! It’s amazing!” So, the Comte d’Artois pays the Little Devil, the tightrope walker, to come give him private instructions at Versailles and supposedly set a vogue for tightrope walking at Versailles. I mean, can you imagine that? Just, like, French royal family members trying to walk tightrope? [laughs]

Ann: Just tightrope walking with eggs on their feet. Versailles was just its own thing. 

Gavin: It was a bizarre universe. 

Ann: Yeah. So, as much as I want to believe Madame T was up there, and maybe, I don’t know, what you said about the records and stuff, it’s like, and what I’ve learned about how strict Versailles was, about who could go there, and it’s just like… It seems unlikely that she was there for eight years and no one ever mentioned it in any written record. 

Gavin: Exactly.

Ann: But we’ll talk about this in a bit, one of the reasons why she might have wanted to make people think she was there is to make— Because she eventually went to England and she wanted her life story to sound exciting. And so, saying she was in Versailles makes it sound more exciting when she, like, what our next topic is going to be, I think, gets involved in the French Revolution. 

Gavin: Exactly. I mean, she won the patronage of the royal family, right? I mean, what greater honour could you hope for? And then just to close the loop, because I forgot to mention this. So, we do know that members of the French royal family were paying for instruction from artists and we do know that Madame Élisabeth modeled in wax. So, to my mind, it’s possible maybe that Madame Tussaud gave a lesson or two, maybe at Versailles or maybe elsewhere, but yeah, as you say, the claim that she lived there for eight years just… is not to be believed. 

Ann: Yeah. No, but I could totally see that she might have given her a lesson or… yeah, and then just sort of exaggerated that later on when she wants to make herself too. She’s a salesman, saleswoman, like, she wants to make her life story sound exciting. I would understand why she would take one half hour she spent with Madame Élisabeth and turn it into like, “Oh, I lived in Versailles for eight years.” 

Gavin: “It was like eight years. Somewhere between a half hour and eight years.” 

Ann: Yeah, somewhere between those two. 

Gavin: That is a radical example of rounding up, I have to say. 

Ann: [laughs] Round up to the closest eight years. Eight years! [both laugh] 

Well, because the next thing, like… So, she’s just, like, she’s thriving, basically. She and her mentor, like, the waxworks, it’s going great, it’s going great. They’ve got this patronage, they’re doing great and then the French Revolution happens. 

Gavin: Oops! Yeah, yeah. Things get really tricky here because as the situation heats up and as public sentiment really turns against the monarchy and begins to favour a republic, Curtius and Tussaud find themselves in trouble, right? Especially, think back to, like, the wax salon, right? Where you could go see Marie Antoinette and Louis XVI in the grand couvert at dinner. I mean, they could be seen to have glorified the monarchy by representing them in that way. And so, they’re like, “That’s not us! We’re not monarchists, we’re not about the royal family.” So, they quietly retired the grand couvert as the situation got more intense and they took other measures to kind of align themselves and the wax museum as an institution with revolutionary politics and you can actually trace this evolution in a way that I think is pretty cool. 

So, they had barkers who walked around in the street and, sort of, called out to passersby and were like, “Hey! Come check out the wax museum. It’s awesome,” and those barkers had uniforms or costumes that they wore as part of the job. Now, before the French Revolution, so up until, like, 1789, they dressed in vaguely aristocratic outfits. So, they wore frock coats and things like that. Suddenly, once we get into 1789, 1790, those costumes evaporate, no longer on display. Instead, they’re at first dressed as members of the National Guard, which was led by the Marquis de Lafayette famously, and a lot of the members of this guard were more middle class, so not aristocratic, not, like, the poorest members of society necessarily, but they’re kind of more middle class. And then as the situation intensifies even more, they re-jig the costumes again and start dressing the barkers as members of the group known as the sans-culottes.

Ann: Mm! We’ve talked about them. They would wear the big flowing palazzo pants and the, like, smurf hats. 

Gavin: Exactly, exactly. So, they were dressed as sans-culottes. And of course, they were kind of like the ordinary Parisians, workaday guys, like, rank and file members of the Revolution. So, by dressing their barkers, which is the first element of the wax museum you could really see from the street if you think about it, you’re sending messages about where your political allegiances lie to potential customers. 

Ann: It’s so interesting to me to read about people like this who, as the French Revolution broke out, this is the first person we’ve talked about on the show, who were working-class people, basically. They couldn’t leave, they couldn’t flee. They had to just pivot their business and keep trying to get people to visit their wax museum in the midst of the French Revolution because that’s their income stream. So, I like that they were like, “Okay, we’re going to just…” It’s like when COVID started and people were like, “You can pick up at the door now.” Businesses were just like, “We need to keep being a business in the face of this unprecedented times.” So, good for them, good for them for making that pivot. 

Gavin: I mean, good for them. Yeah, as you say, part of it was about staying afloat as a business, and then part of it was also just like staying alive…

Ann: [laughs] True. 

Gavin: … because there are other artists who made statements that were considered politically dangerous and they were either imprisoned or sent to the guillotine. And in fact, Madame T claims to have been imprisoned; we can talk about that in a minute if you want. 

Ann: Madame T claims a lot. Madame T…

Gavin: Madame T, she said a lot of things. And in fact, like, a claim is rendered dubious by the very fact that Madame T made it. [laughs]

Ann: Very much so. I do want to say, I don’t know if you know the details of this. I just remembered, because I read one of the Madame T biographies as well, but I thought this was interesting. Just when the French Revolution was first starting, there were some guys who the mob wanted to, like, get their heads on pikes because they hated them so much, but they couldn’t get those guys. So, they went to the wax museum and got the wax heads and then put the wax heads on pikes. And I was like, oh man, that’s… 

Gavin: Yeah. It’s really intense, but things happened a little bit differently but what you’ve pointed to is this amazing fun fact. So, the wax museum where Madame T worked actually played a crucial role in the outbreak of the French Revolution. And what you’re talking about is in 1789, it’s two days before the fall of the Bastille, which was July 14th, I believe. So, this all happens on July 12th and I’ll summarize just for the sake of time right now. 

People are really riled up because Louis XVI has just sacked the finance minister Jacques Necker, and he was seen as a friend of the people, you know, he was going to do everything in his power, really, to keep bread prices low, that kind of thing. So, Louis XVI sacks him, and people just lose it. They gather, actually, at the Palais Royal, not far from where one of Curtius’s wax museums used to be, a demonstration grows. They start leaving the Palais Royal, and they go to the Boulevard du Temple, partly because they want to shut down theatres because, you know, this is something to be mourned in their eyes. The sacking of Jacques Necker is almost like the death of a really prominent and really beloved official. So, “We should not be watching plays and enjoying live performances today, we need to be mourning this.” So, they go to shut down the theatres, but they also pop by the wax museum. The reason they go is because they want busts of Jacques Necker, who was one of their heroes, right? And then the other bust they want is the Duke of Orléans, who owned the Palais Royal, that was kind of his house that he had opened to the public, and he also styled himself as a friend of the people, even though he was a cousin of Louis XVI. So, they get their busts because they’re heroes to them and they kind of— 

Ann: Oh! Okay.

Gavin: Exactly. So, they’re not people they want their heads on pikes, but they’re like—

Ann: They want to celebrate them. 

Gavin: Exactly, exactly. So, they start marching them through the streets in this really interesting, almost ritualized procession, and things actually turn bloody. So, this group comes into contact with a battalion of dragoons in Place Louis XV, and the situation escalates, escalates, escalates, stones are thrown, and then the guards open fire on them. And so, this actually becomes the first bloody skirmish in Paris of the French Revolution and these wax busts were a part of it. 

Ann: Well, thank you. Thank you for clarifying that. I just remembered that wax busts were involved with the mob in some way. 

Gavin: No, it’s one of my favourite stories so I was really hoping to tell it. 

Ann: Good. I’m glad I brought it up. So, the French Revolution is happening. So, in order to stay alive, she and her mentor, Curtius, they’re representing themselves as being on the side of the Revolution, basically. They’re like, “We are with you. Also, please pay to come to our wax museum because we are on your side,” et cetera. 

So, you said that she claims that she was arrested and put in a jail cell with Joséphine de Beauharnais, [Gavin laughs] which is like, “Okay. Okay, sure.” But what she did in fact do is make death masks of people during this time. 

Gavin: Yes. So, as people started going to the guillotine, what Tussaud would do would be to make, essentially, like, wax models of their severed heads. This was true of prominent revolutionaries like Maximilien Robespierre. She made a model of his severed head and displayed it at the wax museum. 

Ann: And she was somehow, like, hired to do this, she wasn’t just…?

Gavin: [sighs] Yeah, it’s tricky. This is one of those tricky areas. It’s sort of, like, some people think that she might’ve been hired to do it. There are these kind of mythical stories about how Madame Tussaud would almost be, like, at the foot of the scaffold ready to collect the severed head and make the wax model. Those might be kind of exaggerated like so many other claims that she made. But there is another story that says that Curtius paid the executioner for access to the severed heads so that they could, like, make these models. 

Ann: So would this be, in terms of like… It’s our gruesome Halloween special so instead of making a clay head and then, like, casting from that, like, perhaps they were casting from the actual severed head? That’s what it sounds like.

Gavin: Yes, exactly. That’s one of the, yeah, that’s a possibility. 

Ann: And this is where… So also, like, the narrative of Madame T and the life story that she would later present, like, it’s much more effective if she says like, “And I was friends with Madame Élisabeth, I knew everyone at Versailles, and then, oh my god, I had to make death masks of all my former friends.” 

Gavin: Exactly. 

Ann: That’s where that exaggeration might come into play. So, that makes seeing the wax heads even more appealing to people to pay to come to her museum and see them. 

Gavin: Yeah, and also, it allows her to present herself as kind of a victim, right? These are people that she knew and kind of developed friendships with at Versailles. And, you know, think about it, if she had just been making these wax heads to appeal to morbid curiosity, she could be seen as, like, profiteering basically in this exploitative, immoral way, but it wasn’t that. She was friends with these people. She also claims to have been forced to make these, which yeah, she claimed to have been forced to make these against her will by the National Assembly so she had no choice and it broke her heart but, you know, that’s what she kind of claimed. 

Ann: I want to just have one more— I just remembered something else that I found interesting. So, Madame T, like, she was a great… Curtius really started this kind of industry, but Madame T had such good instincts for, like, business and stuff, and part of that was making herself a celebrity in a way, which I presume, because there’s part of her story… During this story, during part of what we’ve been sort of, like, skipping over is she did get married, she became Madame T. 

Gavin: She becomes Madame T. 

Ann: Yeah, and she had children and one of her children died at a young age and then she made a wax figure of the child and put that in a museum. So, it’s just like, that’s how she’s grieving. Like, she’s just making wax figures of everything. 

Gavin: I know. I know. It’s one of the more touching moments in her entire biography. Yeah, yeah. I think it was her first child. 

Ann: Yeah, so just sort of, like, the line for her between, like… And I’m not at all here to cast, like, ethical or moral aspersions against her, but she was just, like, a person making a business. So, it’s like, if she was profiteering from the French Revolution, then like, yeah, cause she had to, because this is, she needs to stay in business. So, for whatever reason, she created these death masks of French Revolution people, which you can still see at Madame Tussaud’s in London in the Chamber of Horrors, and I saw them when I was 9 years old. 

Gavin: [laughs] And you still bear the scars. 

Ann: I don’t know, it affected me somehow. 

Gavin: Yeah, just quickly. So, there were other relics, like, there was a model guillotine that would eventually go on display; you had the severed heads on the walls; and then you had a tableau of the assassination of Jean-Paul Marat. 

Ann: Yes! So, we’re going to talk about that. And I want to say that that is one of the things I remember from when I was 9 years old and I went to the Chamber of Horrors. Like, I went in there, I was just like, “Oh my god, this is great, and also spooky.” And like, I’d heard of Marie Antoinette, but most of it, I was just like, “I don’t know what any of this is.” But I remember the bathtub scene. I didn’t know who it was or what it was and when I started doing this season, talking about the French Revolution, I was like, “I need to look up that bathtub. What was that bathtub scene?” Like, it was so impactful. 

Gavin: That’s amazing. 

Ann: And you’re here to tell this story! So, please. 

Gavin: Yes, here we go. So, Jean-Paul Marat rose to notoriety as a journalist, really. He was the editor of a publication called The People’s Friend. So, he was very much revolutionary in his politics and he was extremely violent in the rhetoric that he used and he was infamous for this; he called for decapitations, he accused some of his opponents of practicing what he called a false humanity. And it’s like, “Listen, if we want change to happen in France, some heads are going to have to roll.” You know, that was kind of his philosophy. 

He eventually becomes a politician and is elected to serve as a deputy at the National Convention and, at this point, there are two factions that we have to keep track of; the Jacobins, who are the most radical revolutionaries, and then the Girondins, who are more moderate revolutionaries. So, Marat has no party affiliation, but he allies himself with the Jacobins so he’s, like, the hardest of the hardcore. And even while he’s serving in government, he starts to write, like, he basically incites rebellion against that government because he claims that they are enemies within and they’re actively trying to undermine the Revolution. And I should say too, that his base consists largely of the sans-culottes, so like, these workaday, ordinary Parisian folks and he’s extremely popular among them. 

So, eventually, he leaves the National Convention and the reason he is in a bathtub at the time of his death is because he had a debilitating skin condition that has never definitively been diagnosed but whatever it was, it caused him to break out in boils and they were quite unsightly. One way that he had of, kind of, alleviating some of the pain that came with this was to wrap his head in a vinegar-soaked towel. 

Ann: Yeah! I’m just remembering that the bathtub guy had, like, a turban on, yes. 

Gavin: Exactly, that’s what he would do, and he would also do a lot of his work in the bathtub because it kind of soothed some of the pain. 

So, Marat is not exactly a beloved figure because of his incendiary rhetoric and calls to violence and all that. He’s particularly hated by the Girondins who are these moderate revolutionaries, right? 

So, his killer is named Charlotte Corday, she’s 24 years old at the time of the assassination, and she comes from a minor aristocratic household but is actually friendly to the Revolution, and she’s a Girondin. That’s part of why she takes issue with Marat. She decides that he poses such a grave threat to French society that she needs to take it upon herself to kill him. So, she leaves her home, goes to Paris, hits up the Palais Royal—I do love this part of the story—because she goes to the Palais Royal and buys a six-inch kitchen knife as well as a really fetching hat with, like, some kind of green streamers or something on it, basically so that she can look like really good while she commits murder. People kind of remember her as this Green Lantern-style figure, like, speeding through the streets of Paris while hunting Marat and there’s, like, this streak of green coming from her hat. 

So, eventually, she devises a scheme to get into Marat’s bathroom where he is. She claims that she has knowledge of this Girondin conspiracy and she is ready to name some names and then he can send them off to the guillotine or do whatever he wants to do. So, that’s how she’s able to get in. He believes her and he essentially invites his own killer into his home. So, she stands there in front of his bathtub, she starts naming some names, and then she pounces on him and stabs him. The blow is fatal. Soon, Marat’s wife has come into the room and discovered the murder, notifies the police. Crowds gather outside his house, already mourning, because even though Marat was seen as so dangerous, he had this devout following. 

So, he was seen as a martyr because he had died kind of for the Revolution but on the other hand, Charlotte Corday was also seen as a martyr because she of course was tried and executed, went to the guillotine, had her portrait done in prison because she’s like, “I want to preserve my image for the public.” There were some people who celebrated her and she apparently went to the guillotine with such self-possession that she awed many onlookers. They were just like, “Oh my god, she does not regret having committed this crime at all.” And actually, one man scribbled in his diary, it’s like “For seven or eight days, I was in love with Charlotte Corday.” [Ann laughs] Right, isn’t it great? So, she became something of a celebrity and was also seen as someone who died for a real cause. So, it was one murder and two martyrs. 

Ann: And Madame T is… I’m picturing, Charlotte Corday running through with the green ribbon and I’m picturing Madame T is like, “There’s been a murder, I need to make a waxwork!” Like, she’s running to the crime scene. That’s basically it, right? 

Gavin: [laughs] Yes, the story is that she is summoned again by the National Assembly so if she refuses, she could be put to death or something. She goes to Marat’s bathtub, makes sketches there and then works from them and that’s how she creates this tableau. Listeners might be familiar with a painting by Jacques-Louis David. It’s a really iconic image; it also depicts Murat dead in his bathtub and it was made in the same year. Madame Tussaud claims to have inspired the composition of that painting with her tableau, which is a claim that it’s, like, really hard to confirm or refute, but it’s something that she claimed. But yeah, so she unveils a tableau of the slain Marat in the wax museum and people kind of go there almost on a kind of pilgrimage to view the fallen champion of the people and all that. 

Ann: And it’s, I mean, again, I’ve not been to the Chamber of Horrors since I was a child, but it’s back there and that was a memorable part of the Chamber of Horrors was this bathtub tableau. So, the French Revolution is like, it’s happening, it’s there. Eventually, she leaves France to go to England. Why did she leave? 

Gavin: Okay, so this is another perfect part of the story because this is the Halloween episode. So, in 1802, she goes into business with this guy who has various names, Paul Philidor, Paul de Philipsthal, I’m just going call him Philipsthal. But he was a phantasmagoria performer. And so, what the phantasmagoria was, briefly, was an art form that revolved around an instrument called the magic lantern, which is basically a precursor to the modern-day slide projector. So, the phantasmagoria was a bunch of images projected on a projection surface, like a wall, of skeletons and ghosts and other spooks. And indeed, in Paris, toward the end of the 1790s, when things had cooled down just a little bit, they would project images of, like, Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette and they were supposed to be, like, ghosts because obviously they had died earlier that decade. But these performances were held in complete darkness, and they freaked people out, people literally fainted in the performance venues. Sometimes they would project these images on columns of smoke. So, you have to imagine, like, seeing the projected image of a ghost on billowing smoke would kind of give it this illusion of insubstantiality. 

Ann: And it’s, like, the late 1700s; there’s not TV, there’s not… Like people… This is crazy! 

Gavin: It’s crazy. It’s just such a jolt, right? I mean, one thing that I actually love is that, you know, today when we go to see a movie or a play, we watch them in darkness, right? We’re used to that, the lights go down. That was not how things were done in the 18th century. So, if you went to see a play, you were going to watch it by candlelight, and hundreds of candles had to be lit by someone at that theatre. And as I mentioned, these phantasmagoria shows were held in complete darkness and that in itself just freaked people out, you know? And then, of course, you add ghosts on that and it’s basically, you know, precursors to modern horror films, right? 

So, this is who Tussaud partners with in 1802 and he offers to go with her to London. It’s a really tough decision for Madame Tussaud because she’s lived in Paris for pretty much her entire life. She has two young children, will they both be able to go with her? Her mother at this point is still around and is quite aged, what will happen to her? Eventually, she decides to leave and she takes her older son, Joseph, with her and leaves her younger son, Francis, who’s 2, behind. And when she leaves, she never sees her husband or her mother again, nor does she ever return to Paris. So, she doesn’t know it when she’s leaving, but she is never going back so it’s just a huge moment in her life and you have to imagine a decision that she would not have taken lightly. 

So, she moves to London and quickly learns that Philipsthal is a total snake and a jerk. So, he has made a pretty tough bargain with her; she has to cover all the cost of her own transportation and then on top of that, he is entitled to 50% of all of her earnings plus whatever he makes, right? Because he has kind of a bankable name in London at this point. Beyond that, Tussaud does not really know a word of English when she moves to the British capital so she’s relying on him to help promote her waxworks, right? He does not do that. There’s, like, not a word to spare about her wax museum in the press. Instead, he’s touting his own phantasmagoria and the automata that he was exhibiting. And then, on top of that, they open up shop in a venue called the Lyceum Theatre; he takes the ground floor and then he makes Tussaud exhibit her wares in the basement, which I think is just, like, you know, it’s just not cool. It’s not cool. So, life is really hard for Madame T in the British capital. She’s living in extreme isolation, can barely say anything in English apart from ‘please’ and ‘thank you,’ she’s homesick, her youngest son is still with François Tussaud, her husband, business is not doing well. 

Then finally, she gets a big break. And again, as you mentioned, she is nothing if not a massively astute businesswoman. She knows, she has her thumb on the pulse of public opinion. A big cause celeb captivates London, it’s the execution of a guy named Colonel Marcus Edward Despard, who is a traitor; he was basically found guilty of participating in a conspiracy to assassinate the king. I go into detail about his life story, which is absolutely fascinating on the podcast but for now, we’ll just say he was a really interesting figure and his execution was kind of a hot topic. So, she makes a figure of him and then suddenly business booms; everyone wants to come see what he looked like in real life because he is just the talk of the town. 

Ann: Right! No, it’s like what I was saying before. It’s the whole sort of, like, there’s not Instagram, there’s not tabloids. People want to know, like, this famous person, what did they look like? 

Gavin: What did they look like? Exactly. Yeah, and even beyond that, I would say too that part of it is wanting to know what they look like but also, one of the things that I think is so interesting and creepy and slightly off-putting, but also cool about wax figures is that they almost seem alive, right? Like, wax figures offer an illusion of proximity to power or fame or wealth or, in the case of people in the Chamber of Horrors, infamy, right? It feels like you’re almost in the presence of them because these wax figures have this creepy, uncanny life to them. So yeah, that’s a big part of it too. 

Ann: Well, and also, I think I read that her mentor, but then also Madame T herself, like, people had been doing waxworks before, but what they were really good at was the skin tone, like, they were able to make them look real to an extent that they hadn’t really before. 

Gavin: Yeah, I think I read that Curtius had, like, secret recipes for all these different skin tones and of course he transmitted that knowledge to his star pupil. 

Ann: Yeah, so exactly. So, it’s like you would go in… Like now, wax museums, what they’re doing mostly in Madame Tussaud’s in London right now, there’s an ad I saw there and it was, like, Amy Winehouse and Freddie Mercury and, like, Harry Styles. And I’m just like, what is this an ad for? And they’re all standing on the tube. And I’m like, “Oh, it’s an ad for Madame Tussaud’s! Oh, those are the waxworks!” Like, they look so real. 

Gavin: [laughs] Yes, that is it. I mean, that’s how you know they’ve pulled it off, right? When you mistake the wax figure for the real live person, that’s the ultimate. There are great anecdotes about that in Tussaud’s biography. 

Ann: Well, and then also… Everyone should listen to your podcast to get into, like, the full depth and the breadth of Madame T’s life. So, she hits it big, she’s doing well in England. She’s got, like, a touring exhibition, eventually, she sets up shop in London herself. Part of what I’ve been reading about is, like, when Napoleon died, she acquired some of his things so that people could come by and see the waxwork of Napoleon but also, I forget what it was, you know, like, his sword or whatever. So, she was getting— She had the waxwork so people could see this famous person but also see their stuff. Like, she was getting into kind of, like, acquiring things, including the clothing of the actual people. 

One thing I encountered in my research for my book is that after George IV— At his coronation, he had this incredible long cape, this robe that, like, trailed down behind him when he was going down Westminster Abbey and she bought the cloak to put on her George IV figure. Like, she was showing people so you could see what they looked like in real life, but also what their things look like, like, these fabulous wealthy things. 

Gavin: Yeah, I mean, to your point about Napoleon, by the time she settled down in London toward the end of her career, she actually, her museum held the premier collection of Napoleonic relics in the world, which is one of these interesting facts about her museum that just knocked me over. The most famous artifact in there was, like, the carriage that he had ridden in to escape at the Battle of Waterloo, and you could sit in it if you were a visitor. 

Ann: No. So, this is like, she was staying on top of the pulse of what people were interested in, what people— Like, she knew Napoleon was such a big deal, those wars went on forever, but whatever she paid to get that carriage, she knew that she would earn so much more of people coming to sit in the carriage. So, as an example of her sort of like… Like, she’s still, she’s thriving. She’s becoming, sort of like, the old little woman that I kind of picture because that’s what her waxwork of herself looks like in these later years. But you wanted to also talk, I think it’s a good example of these later years and her continuing to find what people were interested in, in very gruesome ways. So, the Maria Manning murder trial. 

Gavin: Yeah. So, eventually, as you mentioned, she ends up in London, she tours the provinces for, like, 30 years, both her sons come to join her, so she’s running a family business. And then she settles down in London finally in 1836 and this is when the Chamber of Horrors becomes, like, one of the hottest attractions at Madame Tussaud’s and she starts updating it on a regular basis. She hadn’t done that until this point during her time in the UK, I think partly because it was seen as kind of controversial to unveil figures of notorious criminals, you know, she could be seen to glorify them. So, in 1849, she causes a real controversy with the unveiling of effigies of George and Maria Manning. 

So, in 1849, George and Maria Manning invite a friend of theirs, Patrick O’Connor, over to dinner at their house in Bermondsey, and Bermondsey was a working-class neighbourhood in London. O’Connor goes missing, a family member starts to investigate… 

Ann: The house starts to smell bad. 

Gavin: Yeah. Police start to close in on the Mannings, they get the hell out of Dodge, they both flee and part ways. So, the police go in and basically discover O’Connor’s body buried beneath the floor of the Manning’s back kitchen. So, this causes, this is, like, a horrible crime, right? They had defiled the kind of sacred sphere of the home. The Victorians worshiped domesticity, right? So, you can just imagine that this was, like, an unthinkable crime. So, what follows is some really ace police work, it has to be said. Maria Manning flees to Edinburgh and then George Manning flees to the Isle of Jersey in the English Channel. The police capture both of them, even though the Mannings have a head start of several days and have covered a lot of miles. They’re brought on trial and Maria Manning really causes a sensation in the press. She’s strongly associated with Lady Macbeth, Shakespeare’s famous character, because she’s just so ferocious and she’s also seen as, kind of, masculine and domineering in ways that recall the character of Lady Macbeth. 

Ann: And she also, maybe you’re going to talk about this, but she wore a shiny black dress. 

Gavin: Exactly. 

Ann: And that became, sort of like Charlotte Corday’s green hat, you know, this black shiny dress became, like, a real thing. 

Gavin: Yes. So, she was famous for, she looked good. She dressed really sharply and she appeared in court wearing black satin. So, part of why this is important is, and as I mentioned, they lived in Bermondsey, which was a working-class district. But black satin was in many ways associated with, like, the middle class and a sense of respectability. So, some of the classist journalists who reported on this trial saw this as evidence of Maria Manning trying to rise above her station, right? And if people know the play Macbeth, they know that it’s all about ambition, right? Macbeth wants to ascend the throne as king and Lady Macbeth wants to help him get there. So, there’s this ambition, this desire to rise there. And then in the case of Maria Manning, she was trying to climb the social ladder by masquerading as, like, a middle-class woman. So, that was part of why Victorians associated her with the character of Lady Macbeth. 

So, she’s really ferocious, she looks devastating in black, and in the courtroom, there’s this amazing sequence— She does not get a fair trial because the only evidence really against her comes from George Manning. But anyway, when the guilty verdict comes down, she loses her mind and stands up and just launches into a diatribe against everyone present; the judge, the jury, everyone. It’s extremely fluid and she’s just… in a rage, you know? And in front of her, in the dock, are sprigs of rue, which was this herb that was thought to, like, it was basically like a public health measure. She picks up sprigs of rue and casts them into the courtroom, just this display of pure unalloyed contempt, very theatrical in a way, right? Everyone is just shocked by it, but they’re also kind of obsessed with her because she is larger than life, they can’t stop talking about her. So, they’re executed. 

Shortly after they’re executed, Tussaud’s does what Tussaud always did and they actually procured the clothes that George and Maria Manning had worn in court and then they used those clothes to dress wax figures of them at the Chamber of Horrors. 

Ann: So, she gets the black satin dress, basically. 

Gavin: Yes, yes. It’s supposedly the black satin gown that Maria Manning actually wore. And I did find a newspaper article about Tussaud’s plans to buy these garments. So, it seems very possible that it actually is the real garment, it’s not something that Tussaud has made up this time. 

This causes just an absolute scandal in the press, partly because the effigy of Maria Manning was really, like, beautiful, and she was wearing this black satin gown. And because she was associated with a character like Lady Macbeth, which is, like, the ultimate star vehicle for Shakespearean actresses, there’s also this sense of glamour and this sense of theatrical celebrity almost that went along with the sculpture. So, there’s one journalist named Douglas Jerrold who just lays into Madame Tussaud in the press for kind of glamourizing a murderer by representing her in the Chamber of Horrors. 

Ann: Yeah, and it’s interesting because, like, Madame Tussaud, this is what she’s always done. Like, she’s found what people are interested in, what people would pay money to come and see in the museum. At first, it was like… Well, I guess this was more her mentor, but it was, like, the French royal family, and then it was kind of like, “Oh no, now people kind of want to see murderers.” Like, this is nothing new for her, but just the fact that it was so recent maybe, or it was… yeah. Well, and it’s the same as people now, like, there’s discussion about, true crime documentaries and stuff, and it’s like, is this exploiting people? It’s a similar conversation, I guess. But for Madame Tussaud, it’s like, well, this is what she’s always done. This is nothing new. 

Gavin: She’s just giving the people what they want, and she has her mind on her money and her money on her mind. It’s going to sell tickets. People will— What’s funny is you had to pay an extra sixpence to go into the Chamber of Horrors. So, of course, she wants to keep that updated, right? Because she wants those sixpence. 

Ann: [laughs] Well, and also I think, like at this point, I’m not sure what year we’re in, but this is like, we’re in the Victorian era. Like, you know, there’s still an interest, I’m sure in seeing Marie Antoinette’s death mask and, like, the bathtub scene and stuff, but that’s old news. Like, people want to know… People are visiting the wax museum who weren’t born when that all happened. Like, they want things that are relevant to them. 

Gavin: Yeah. Well, there’s a combination. So, the tableau is still around in the Chamber of Horrors and the Chamber of Horrors itself is actually kind of modelled on a courtroom at the Old Bailey. So, all of the criminal likenesses are in what is called the dock, so it’s meant to look like a courtroom dock except it’s, like, oversized. So, there’s a bit there. So, there are these relics of the French Revolution, which is part of why Tussaud could be like, “This isn’t exploitative trash. This is historical instruction and look at Maria Manning!” So yeah, there’s a mingling of history as well as current events. And basically, what we would think of as true crime culture today, like you said, with documentaries. 

Ann: Yeah, so it’s just people have always been interested in learning about this. Well, and also just in a pre-photography era, all that you have in the newspapers are kind of sketches and drawings, but people really want to know, “But what did they look like?” And that’s what she’s providing for the people. 

Gavin: Exactly. Oh, one thing I had to mention too because I think it’s so funny. At this point, this is 1849 with Maria Manning and Madame Tussaud is, like, 89 years old at this point and Douglas Jerrold is just, like, railing against her as like the height of moral depravity. She’s just this granny. I always find that funny. [laughs]

Ann: Well, and that’s kind of… Like, the waxwork of Madame Tussaud, I think was it made after she died or, I don’t know, but she’s this little old lady is what you see when you see the waxwork of Madame Tussaud herself. 

Gavin: Yeah, so she had various waxworks of herself throughout her career. Part of that was just as a way of showing how good she was at wax modelling, right? Because she was always there to greet customers when they entered, but they could also compare her to the wax model of her and it was stunningly lifelike, stunningly accurate. 

Ann: For sure. Oh, that’s perfect. Yeah, so it’s like, “I look like this, and that means that this looks like that person and this looks like that person.” 

Gavin: Exactly. And there are all these wonderful anecdotes about people mistaking the wax figure of Tussaud for the real woman and yeah, so… 

Ann: Well, even today, sometimes you see a picture, like, “Madame Tussaud’s unveils a new figure of…” whatever, like, Zendaya, and there’s a picture of Zendaya and there’s a picture of the wax figure, and you can usually tell which is the wax figure, but not always. 

Gavin: Not always. Yeah, sometimes they’re really good. 

Ann: Yeah, just the angle, the photography. Yes, they are really good. Sometimes they’re bad, but they’re usually— [laughs] The Tussaud’s ones are usually good. There are other wax museums. 

So, she died shortly after this. So, 1850 is what I’m seeing is when she died. 

Gavin: Yes, that’s right. In fact, Douglas Jerrold is pretty much railing against her in the press until, like, her dying day. I think he finally pipes down as soon as she dies and he’s like, “Okay, maybe this is in bad taste.” [chuckles]

Ann: Yeah “Maybe.” But she, like, in terms just of name recognition, like again, I remember when I was a child, not Madame Tussaud story, but the day that I realized that Walt Disney was a person, I was like, “What?!” 

Gavin: Right, right!

Ann: Like, that’s just a name you see before movies. 

Gavin: It’s so funny. You think that, like, the brand exists in isolation of someone who started the brand. But yeah, that’s such a great example. It’s so similar to Madame Tussaud because definitely there was a point in my life where, like, I knew that Madame Tussaud’s was the wax museum. Then I was like, “Oh, wait, really? Like, there was a real historical figure named Madame Tussaud?” [both laugh] Yeah, yeah. 

Ann: No, exactly. So, you’re going to join me now as we wrap this up with scoring her on the Scandaliciousness Scale. 

Gavin: All right, scandal. 

Ann: So, there are four categories, we’ll go through them. So, it’s all a scale of 0 to 10 per category. So, the first category is Scandaliciousness. How scandalous was she? 

Gavin: How scandalous was Madame Tussaud? I feel like she has to come in, like, the low to middle range in this one primarily because of the Chamber of Horrors because there were actually a lot of detractors who considered it immoral to represent notorious murderers in public and then ask people to pay to see them. So, I don’t know, I would say, like, 3 or 4?

Ann: Yeah, that’s kind of where… Like, it’s tricky because there were people who were scandalized by what she did, but there were even more people who paid their sixpence and went to see it. 

Gavin: Right, right. 

Ann: The stuff she was doing culturally, society was, like, on board for it in general. Yeah, but there were those detractors. So, I think a 3 is definitely fair. But otherwise, like, as a person, she was married, she had children. Like, there was never any scandal about her personal life, I don’t think. 

Gavin: Yeah, I mean, well, one thing that’s interesting… Yeah, I don’t think it was, it wasn’t really scandalous. I don’t know of anything too scandalous about her. Maybe you could talk about, like, the degree to which she just lied about her biography, [Ann laughs] just like, all the things she made up. But I don’t know if anyone was scandalized by that. 

Ann: No, I think everyone just kind of thought that was funny. 

The next category is her Schemieness. And this is like, not just literal schemes, like “Ha-ha!” making a scheme, but just, like, having a plan, having a strategy, always thinking ten steps ahead. I think this is where she’s going to get a good score because she, like, created this industry. 

Gavin: Yeah, I mean, I think she has to be… I mean, one thing that we didn’t get into, but today, like, Madame Tussaud is an international tourist destination in London, right? It already had that reputation in her lifetime. I mean, she was, like, an institution by the time she died. So, she was just this amazing businesswoman, she knew exactly what people wanted and she kept giving it to them. Whenever she made a profit at the wax museum, she turned around and invested that money right back into the wax museum so that she could make it bigger, better, newer, et cetera, to keep the people coming back. So, I think, I don’t know… I don’t know what a 10 is, but I feel like she’s got to be, like, pretty close to a 10. She was also a woman who owned her own business at this point in history, which was very rare. 

Ann: Well, I’m happy with a 10. I think especially, everything you just said, and also the part where you were talking about, she came to London, she was screwed over by this phantasmagoria guy, she didn’t speak English, she was stuck in the basement and she schemed her way out of that to become the person. Like she… Everything was, like, not everything was against her, but a lot was against her; not speaking the language, being a woman, like, what are waxworks? Like, how do you…? 

Gavin: They’re weird. It’s a niche, it’s always been a bit of a niche art form, but she makes waxworks that everybody wants to see. I mean, what? 

Ann: No, exactly. And that’s the thing, that’s where like, so Curtius, her mentor, he was like, “Oh, it’s the French royal family, it’s whatever,” and then she’s like, “You know who it’s going to be? Murderers. Dead people.” Like, she made that pivot that really made it so popular and it was one of the things I remember reading in that biography was that she made it, it was one of the first museums that was really, like you were saying, it’s approachable to just everybody. Because there were museums in London that had been, sort of like, for more high-brow people. But this is, like, before the V&A, the Victoria and Albert Museum, like, before there were other museums intended to educate the lower classes. Like, she was creating this experience to— And also just, almost the invention of that sort of true crime celebrity thing. That’s getting into the next category, which is Significance but I do think Scheminess is 10. 

Gavin: Schemieness, 10. 

Ann: Definitely, but the Significance. So, where would you score her for that? 

Gavin: Again, I mean, has to be, like, 9 or 10 because Madame Tussaud was a wax modeller in the 19th century and now, like, she has given birth essentially to an international, entertainment empire. Like, everybody knows her name. She’s a wax modeller and yeah, I mean, the business is global in scale. And I don’t know, I think you’d be hard-pressed to find many artists from the 19th century who have that kind of name recognition today where everybody knows who they are. Even if they don’t realize that there was a real historical Madame Tussaud, they know there’s a wax museum and so, they’re not surprised to learn that, hey, there was a wax modeller named Madame Tussaud. So, I would have to go with, like, 9 or 10. 

Ann: I think I’m going to go with a 10 for this as well. I think just, yeah, the name recognition just among, like, the average, everyday people who don’t know the names of maybe any artists, but Madame Tussaud’s is just like, you just kind of know that brand like Walt Disney. But then also, just what she did to popularize this sort of, like, celebrity culture but also to sort of democratize it. So, if you can walk up and see a wax effigy of the king then, like, that takes away a bit of the grandeur of it, it takes away a bit of sort of the mystery of it. And so, it’s sort of, like, flattening out class structure in some ways, like, just to… It’s a radical thing to do in that way.

Gavin: Yeah, I think she definitely deserves some credit for that. I think, you know, what she was doing too was, like, instructive and artistic. You know, like, there’s a National Portrait Gallery in London, we have a National Portrait Gallery in Washington DC as well and these are considered important cultural institutions because they show you what people used to look like, and that’s something similar to what Madame Tussaud was doing because she had Napoleon and criminals and all that. But she also had, like, Henry VIII and Mary Queen of Scots and Elizabeth, you know? So, I think there was a historical… I do think there’s an argument to be made that she was imparting historical instruction to people as well and she had found a really effective and interesting way to do that. 

Ann: And it was really effective. Like, I remember the Chamber of Horrors from when I was a child and I also remember at that time, it’s not there anymore, but there was the Henry VIII and his six wives wax figures and I remember those so strong, and seeing them, because I was a kid who was into, like, Henry VIII and his six wives. But seeing the wax figures, it’s a different thing to see like, “Oh, that’s what they would have looked like.” Like, it’s interesting! 

Gavin: Yeah, it does, it helps you imagine the past, you know, in a small yet meaningful way. 

Ann: Yeah, as a real place. Like, people aren’t just a head and shoulders in a painting. It’s like, “Oh, that’s a person. That’s how tall (maybe) they were,” yeah. 

The final category is the, I call it the Sexism Bonus and this is where we give bonus points. So, like, a 10 on the Sexism Bonus would be like somebody who was, you know, trapped by their husband in a tower for 25 years because she sneezed too loudly once. 

Gavin: [chuckles] Okay, right. 

Ann: How much did sexism hold her back? And I think… I don’t know if it did much. I’m sure it did to some extent, but I think not much. 

Gavin: I think, she’s almost the polar opposite of the damsel trapped in the tower for sneezing too loud. I think one thing that I did want to highlight is that when she married François Tussaud, she actually negotiated a prenuptial agreement that allowed her to retain control of her business, which was extremely uncommon for women at this time. They were often expected to, like, seed all of their assets to their husband. And then once she leaves Paris, there’s actually this pretty devastating letter where she’s just, like, “François, I’m not coming home. Like, I don’t want to see you again,” basically. She’s like, “This is my jam. I’m going to keep doing my jam,” and like, “See you again, never. Smell you later,” that kind of thing. And, you know, it becomes her business and she enjoys… There are not many women like her at this point in history who were the sole proprietors of a business and not just a business, but one that became so massive. 

So yeah, I don’t know. I don’t think she was ever held, she might’ve had some sexism with Philipstahl, her business partner that brought her to London, she had a hell of a time buying her way out of that contract. But yeah, I think she achieved what so many women could not achieve in her day. So, I think in that regard, maybe, is it 1? Can you get a 0 or 1? What’s the lowest again? 

Ann: You could get a 0, but I’m going to give her a 1 because of the phantasmagoria guy. 

Gavin: Yeah, I mean, I think that’s fair. 

Ann: Yeah, so then this gives her a total score of 24 and I like to sort of see, you know, where does that put her…

Gavin: Where does she fall? 

Ann: … up against other people. I know you’ve heard my episode about Rachel, the actress. 

Gavin: Yes, yes. 

Ann: Rachel has a 26. 

Gavin: Oh, she has a 26? Wow! Okay. 

Ann: Madame T has a 24 so that’s her neighbourhood. 

Gavin: Good, if she’s hanging out with Rachel, I’m more than happy about that. 

Ann: And actually, when this comes out, the episode will have aired, but I did a rare episode about a man in history. We did a two-parter about the Marquis de Lafayette and Lafayette has a 23. 

Gavin: Oh, he has a 23! 

Ann: She’s between Lafayette and Rachel. So, just, like, as French people, French people who are kind of cool, that’s her neighbourhood. 

Gavin: That’s awesome. I’m super happy with that. I mean, if she’s kicking it, she’s like, you know, having a salon with Marquis de Lafayette and Rachel, I think she’d be living her best waxing life. 

Ann: Yeah, I don’t know if she ever made a wax figure of Rachel but I can’t imagine she didn’t, Rachel was so famous. 

Gavin: She probably was… I think she was a little— I don’t know her exact dates. 

Ann: Rachel was, like, 1820s. 

Gavin: Okay, then she might’ve been, yeah. I mean…

Ann: I do know there was a fire in like 1845 that destroyed some of the waxworks. This is again, my book research, because I was like, “Ooh, I wonder what the waxwork of, like, Caroline of Brunswick and her lover looked like,” but they were just right in that fire. 

Gavin: Oh no! 

Ann: And it was pre-photography, so I’ll never know what they looked like. 

Gavin: Alas. 

Ann: That was where I was like, if I could get a time machine, the one thing I would do is go to Madame Tussaud’s [both laugh] in like 1821, just to see what those look like. 

Gavin: Yeah, that and the Madame du Barry waxwork. 

Ann: Yeah, the recline— Yeah, the Madame du Barry waxwork where she’s, it’s the sleeping beauty, right? Where she’s, like, reclining?

Gavin: I think that’s right. It’s very, “Ooh,” it’s, you know, gets everyone hot and bothered. 

Ann: It’s a little erotic, yeah. 

Gavin: It’s a little erotic, but who are we dealing with here, you know? 

Ann: It’s Madame du Barry, come on. 

Gavin: It’s Madame du Barry, come on. 

Ann: So, please tell everybody about your podcast and where they can follow you and things like that so people can learn more about Madame Tussaud, but also the other things you talk about. 

Gavin: Yeah, so again, the podcast is called the Art of Crime, you can listen to it wherever you get your podcast, blah, blah, blah. You can follow me on Instagram. And I’m just getting ready to start a new season, which is called Crimes of Old New York so it’s all about crimes that took place in New York and they’re kind of more tangentially related to artists and stuff. I think there’s an episode coming out this season that listeners of this show would really like, it’s about Mae West. 

Ann: Oh! I love Mae West! 

Gavin: Yes. I mean, it doesn’t get much more tits out than Mae West, right? I mean, come on. She went to jail for writing this play called Sex, which was about a sex worker. The whole story is just so delicious, and Mae West is, like, such a personality. So anyway, yeah. 

Ann: So, Art of Crime, everybody should listen. Your whole Madame Tussaud season, people can fill in all the blanks we had to jump over. 

Gavin: That’s right. 

Ann: You and I, we were scheming. It’s like, how can we make this be an hour, hour and a half episode when you’ve done an entire season about her? But I think we figured out a way. 

Gavin: I think we made it work. 

Ann: Absolutely, yeah. So, thank you so much, Gavin, for joining me for this special Halloween episode. 

Gavin: [spooky voice] Ooooh! I hope everyone’s spines have tingled, yes. 

Ann: [laughs] Thank you so much for joining me. 

Gavin: Yeah, thanks for having me again. It was a blast.   

—————

So, a few things that I like to remind everybody of at the end of every episode. So firstly, if you want to see the whole Scandalicious Scale, I’ve done, I don’t even know, 100-something episodes. And every person who we score on the scale is, I have a document in front of me, but also you can see the whole Scandalicious Scale if you go to VulgarHistory.com, there’s a thing that says “Scores” so you can see where Madame T, who she’s next to on the scale and where your faves fit in. And maybe you could find an episode to listen to if you want to see who has the highest score or who has the lowest score or things like that. 

Also, you can follow me on Instagram, I’m @VulgarHistoryPod. I’m also increasingly present on Threads which is, like, taking off in an interesting way, at least for, like, history-adjacent stuff, also @VulgarHistoryPod on Threads. And then also, you can follow me on Substack, which I’m also having a really nice time. If you don’t know Substack, it’s I guess it’s kind of like a social media thing, but it’s also sort of like, it feels like blogs back in the day. It’s just people, like previous guest of this podcast, Leah Redmond Chang is on there writing; she actually just wrote a really amazing thing about women in history and how often it says like, “They died in childbirth,” and it kind of like, you stop thinking about what that means, but looking at like, what does that actually mean? And what does that mean for, like, people’s reproductive health in this day and age? It’s really good. I’ll actually put a link to that in the show notes as well because, you know, Halloween, what’s scarier than, like, reproductive rights being threatened by governments? Anyway, I’m on Substack. So, every other week, although this month I’ve been doing every week because of Halloween and I’m a fan of Halloween. So, you go to VulgarHistory.Substack.com and you will find my newsletter there and if you subscribe to it, then you will get just sent to your inbox in your email, my every other week essays about women in history. I don’t know, it’s a nice community there. Ever since the social media landscape kind of exploded, I’ve been sort of figuring out, like, where can I go to connect with the people about the things that are interesting to me? And Substack has been one of those places. 

Anyway, also just because of the way that social media is, I really want my people who follow me and want to know what I’m up to and want to discuss the episodes, I want you to be able to have a place to do that and where I’ve found the best place for that is on my Patreon, which you can join for free or for money. Either way, you can keep up to date with what’s going on there on the Patreon. So, to do that, you go to Patreon.com/AnnFosterWriter, and you just join. And then what happens there is whenever I post something, if you’re a free member, let’s say, then you’ll get a message whenever I post something new. There’s also a chat there that everybody can join to talk to other members of the Tits Out Brigade. Also for all the free members, I’ve been posting bonus podcasts of just updates from me. You may or may not know—if you’re a new listener, you may not know, other listeners, you very much know—that all this year I’ve been working on writing a book about Caroline of Brunswick, and I wanted to talk about it. So, I’ve been posting some book updates there on Patreon for free. It’s called Ann Is Writing A Book. Just, they’re all like 30-minute episodes. Friend of the podcast, Allison Epstein was on one of them because I was really mad about how much Napoleon is showing up in my book and so, Allison was there for me through that. Anyway, Patreon.com/AnnFosterWriter, you can join for free to get all those things. 

If you join for $1 or more a month, you get early, ad-free access to episodes of this podcast. And if you join for $5 or more a month, you get the early, ad-free access, you get all the stuff that free people get and you also get bonus episodes of Vulgarpiece Theatre, which we will be making new episodes of hopefully later this year, hopefully calendar year 2024. Stay tuned. The three of us, it’s me, friend of the podcast, Lana Wood Johnson, friend of the podcast, Allison Epstein; we’re all very busy at the moment, but hopefully, we’ll be able to get some more of those recorded. But if you haven’t listened to them, there’s a whole backlog of these movie discussion podcasts where we talk about costume dramas. Also, if you join at the $5 or more a month, you get access to our Discord, which is kind of a more in-depth chat with, like, different channels. Like, there’s a channel where we can talk about the season of Survivor, and there’s a channel where people share pictures of their beautiful pets. I also post spoilers there and just, like, it’s a place for the Tits Out Brigade to all chit-chat and get to know each other. So anyway, that’s all going on there. 

I also have a brand partner, Common Era Jewelry, which is a women-owned small business that makes beautiful jewelry heirloom pieces inspired by women from history. So, there’s so much overlap between what Torie, the owner, has chosen to put on her pieces and what we’ve talked about on the podcast. She has a whole series or a collection of pieces that are called “Difficult Women,” which are like women in history who have been described as “difficult.” I love that phrase, I love that concept that’s actually on my Substack. I’ve been calling my series there, “Difficult Women” as well. So, there’s people there we’ve talked about on the podcast; Anne Boleyn is there, Hatshepsut is there, Agrippina, Cleopatra, Boudica, and then also women from mythology, and then also sort of, like, talismans. She’s just put out one that’s about reproductive stuff from classical history. Anyway, they’re beautiful pieces. They are available in solid gold as well as in more affordable gold vermeil and Vulgar History listeners can always get 15% off your order from Common Era by going to CommonEra.com/Vulgar or using code ‘VULGAR’ at checkout. 

If you want to get some Vulgar History merchandise, we’ve got that too including the new, amazing design. So, most of you are hearing this, it’s the day before Halloween so there might not be time to, like, get something from the merch store to be your Halloween costume. But if you wanted your Halloween costume to be the scariest thing of all, someone who writes a bad review of this podcast, or someone about whom a person would write a bad review, I guess, friend of the podcast and one of the artists I’ve collaborated with a bunch, Siobhan Gallagher made a beautiful, new design that says “Poorly researched,” which is an insult that people like to say about me on Apple Podcast reviews sometimes. So, if you walk around wearing a shirt that says “Poorly researched” and there’s, like, a lip print on it, it’s kind of Sabrina Carpenter-coded, anyway, that’ll be scary to incels, basically. So, you know, that’s a thing you could get and also other beautiful things available at the merch store. So, there’s two merch stores, I know that’s a bit much, but that’s what’s going on. If you’re in the US, go to VulgarHistory.com/Store and that takes you to our TeePublic store. And if you’re outside the US, the shipping is a lot better if you go to VulgarHistory.Redbubble.com. 

And if you want to get in touch with me, of course you can, if you have thoughts, feedback, feelings, emotions, compliments, suggestions, you can get in touch with me by going to VulgarHistory.com where there’s a little link there that says “Contact me” and then you’ll contact me and let me know your thoughts and feelings. 

I hope everyone has a wonderful and haunted Halloween if that’s your vibe. Next week, we’re still in it. We’re still in this French Revolutionary era. We’re going to be talking about… I don’t want to be too spoilery, but I will say we’re going to be talking about another artist, someone who is less commercialized than Madame T. But anyway, until next time my friends, keep your pants on and your tits out. 

Vulgar History is hosted, written, and researched by Ann Foster, that’s me! The editor is Cristina Lumague. Theme music is by the Severn Duo. The Vulgar History show image is by Deborah Wong. Transcripts are written by Aveline Malek. Find transcripts of recent episodes at VulgarHistory.com.

References:

As mentioned in the extro, Leah Redmond Chang’s Substack about pregnancy death.

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