← After Dark: Myths, Misdeeds & the Paranormal
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- [00:00]
Anthony Delaney
Hi, we're your hosts Anthony Delaney and.
- [00:03]
Maddy Pelling
Maddy Pelling and if you would like.
- [00:05]
Anthony Delaney
After Dark Myths, Misdeeds and the Paranormal ad free and get early access.
- [00:10]
Maddy Pelling
Sign up to History Hit with a History Hit subscription. You can also watch hundreds of hours of original documentaries with top history presenters and enjoy a new release every week.
- [00:21]
Anthony Delaney
Sign up now by visiting historyhit.com subscribe.
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Anthony Delaney
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- [02:28]
Anthony Delaney
What do you see when you walk into Madame Tussauds today? Celebrities frozen in time, glossy and smiling, a strange theater of fame but behind the red carpets and selfies lies a story far darker, because Madame Tussaud's empire was born not in glamour, but but in blood. In revolutionary Paris, waxworks were more than curiosities. They were weapons. A likeness in wax could rally a mob, inflame loyalty, or stoke rage. The boundary between art and reality blurred, and faces cast in wax became politically dangerous. At that time, standing in the shadows was a young woman shaping her waxen creations while all around her France burned. But who was she? How did she survive the Terror? By molding the features of the freshly guillotined. And how did those grisly relics become the foundation of one of the world's most famous attractions? From the bloodied guillotines of the French Revolution. This is after dark.
- [03:39]
Maddy Pelling
The 12th of July, 1789, and Paris is trembling on the brink of revolution. Through the narrow streets, an angry crowd surges, their cries echoing against the stone. At the heart of the mob, two heads are carried aloft on pikes. The faces look sickeningly real. Pallid skin stretched tight over bone, glass eyes catching the last of the evening light. In the frenzy, it's easy to believe that the. They are the severed heads of living men. But these are not butchered remains of villains. They are wax. The likenesses of Jacques Necker, the king's finance minister, and the Duke d', Orleans, cousin to the crown. To the people, they are symbols, heroes of the new age, born through the streets like saints. Their maker is Philippe Curtius, Paris master of wax and anatomy. Yet his is not the story we follow. Instead, it belongs to the girl in his shadow, his apprentice, Marie Groscholtz. One day, the world will know her name as Madame Tussaud.
- [05:21]
Anthony Delaney
Hello, I'm Anthony.
- [05:22]
Maddy Pelling
And I'm Maddie.
- [05:23]
Anthony Delaney
And we have been talking about this episode for probably about two years, actually, because we were both introduced to the topic or. Or the topic in this much detail, I suppose, by Edward Carey's little. So it's a. It's a fiction book about the origin story of Madame Tussaud, and it is probably one of my favorite books. And I know, Maddie, you love.
- [05:44]
Maddy Pelling
Oh, it's so good.
- [05:45]
Anthony Delaney
So it's amazing that we're finally coming to it because we've been holding onto this for quite a long time. But I wanted to start with the idea of waxworks, because I know you are really fascinated by this as an art form, as a way of rendering people. This is something that you have expressed to me at least, that is really, really fascinating for you. But I Want to know why were they so important, particularly in the 18th century?
- [06:11]
Maddy Pelling
Okay, so wax has a really long history. And I will say on a personal level that until I was about, I don't know, late into my teens, I had a genuinely horrendous phobia of wax figures. Like, oh, really, really? If we went to a museum and there was a waxwork and growing up in the 90s and early 2000s, museums were full of wax figures dressed up in sort of semi historic clothes, you know, doing like the things of the local area. You knew it was like mining or in the fish and chip shop, whatever it was. And if I encountered one of those, I would turn around and climb up one of my parents to be carried out.
- [06:46]
Anthony Delaney
Oh my God. Okay, I didn't know this. I mean, I hate them. I don't think they're very good. I hate seeing figures in any kind of heritage site. I don't like it just as a personal preference, but the wax ones are often really badly done, so they're, they're even worse.
- [06:59]
Maddy Pelling
There's something really, really, really sinister about them when they are badly done. I think that's more unsettling to me. So, I mean, I'm not that bad now. I will not climb up a parent this age at the grand old age of 2025.
- [07:12]
Anthony Delaney
Yeah, good, yeah. I like, we both know what age to go to perfect my fictional age.
- [07:17]
Maddy Pelling
Yeah, sure, brilliant, well trained. But I still, if I go into a museum and there is one, I will have to walk past it very quickly and not look at it. It really, really bothers me. So that's my personal history. But wax more generally has a really, really long history. So the Romans were using wax to make death masks of their ancestors back in the ancient world and in early modern Europe. So before the time period we're talking about in the 18th century, in the centuries just before, wax was used for all kinds of things. So votive offerings in churches often also anatomical models and portraiture. So this is something that's kind of spanning the religious and the secular worlds, the scientific and the artistic. It's this incredibly malleable, diverse, interesting material that can literally shapeshift. It can take on the form of different people, different ideas. It's incredibly useful to people. Also, as we will see, it's often used by women who weren't given access to other artistic forms, for example, sculpture in marble or whatever it was. So it's of fascination to me, even though I'm sort of repulsed by it. We get some. Oh God, right I'm obsessed with these. Have you ever been to Westminster Abbey and seen the royal funerary wax that works?
- [08:32]
Anthony Delaney
I'm so glad that you brought these up because this is probably my only area of this that makes me go, whoa. Oh. And there's another. There's a wax woman in some cathedral or some little church somewhere. I can't remember her name. And she's starting to rot as well, so you can visibly see the rot.
- [08:47]
Maddy Pelling
Yes.
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Anthony Delaney
But the royal wax effigies and her. They're my kind of favorite wax renderings.
- [08:53]
Maddy Pelling
I think they're incredible. They can stay. Yeah. Charles II in Westminster Abbey in particular is amazing. I had to do some research on him recently for a TV thing where I was just a talking head chatting about it, and it just brought back how interesting this topic is for me. Also, Jeremy Bentham. Have you seen him?
- [09:09]
Anthony Delaney
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. In his little. He's got curtains and it's like he's in a sedan chair almost.
- [09:13]
Maddy Pelling
He's an 18th century. What is he, a philosopher, a writer? One of the sort of, you know, great 18th century polymaths. And he left his body to. Is it KCL or ucl? It's one of the London universities now. I think maybe it's ucl. Anyway, write in and tell me. No, it's going to be KCL now, isn't it? Someone will know. And I think he's still in his actual clothes, which again, like, blows my mind. But he does have a wax face because originally he wanted to be sort of embalmed and his body completely preserved. But his face did roll away, unfortunately.
- [09:43]
Anthony Delaney
You know, as faces will.
- [09:45]
Maddy Pelling
As they tend to do.
- [09:46]
Anthony Delaney
But that's so funny, actually, because you're. Well, it's very much not living, but, like, there is this idea that wax, because of the malleability, the changeability, that it has a living quality. And that's what's kind of fascinating and kind of uncanny as well for people when they're faced with these wax renderings. Right?
- [10:05]
Maddy Pelling
Yeah. And it can give us a sense of proxim to people who we will never otherwise come into contact with. You thinking about the modern Madame Tussauds today? That's hard to say. The modern Madame Tussaudsaurs, you know, you stand next to Beyonce or whoever it is, and you're never gonna meet her in real life, babe. So that's the closest you're gonna get. Well, you might. I don't know. I feel like that's a very Anthony thing that you would absolutely just Randomly meet Beyonce.
- [10:26]
Anthony Delaney
But I've never met Beyonce. No, there are some people who. It's a bit random that I might. But no, Beyonce is not one of those people.
- [10:33]
Maddy Pelling
So yeah, that's the uncanniness, the lifelikeness, that's a technical term, is something that I think Dr. People, it repulses them. It's a point of fascination certainly. As for me and as we're going to see, that is why it becomes such a powerful tool in pre and as we're going to see post revolutionary France in this moment of the 18th century.
- [10:52]
Anthony Delaney
Now when we talk about the 18th century, we've already spoken this name already. But when we talk about the 18th century and wax, one name comes to mind very, very quickly, which of course is Madame Tussaud, but she's not really Madame Tussaud. It's a different history. And this is what little totally informed me about because I didn't this side of it at all. We're actually dealing with a girl called Marie Groscholz. Tell us about her.
- [11:16]
Maddy Pelling
We are. And you know she has that name for most of her career. Well, certainly until the French Revolution has happened. So all of her training and all of her early artistry is done under this name. She is born in 1761 in Strasbourg, France. Have you ever been to Strasbourg? It's a very, very, very pretty city.
- [11:32]
Anthony Delaney
I haven't been to Strasbourg, no.
- [11:33]
Maddy Pelling
Thoroughly recommend. Everyone must go there on the list. Her father dies relatively early on in her life. In fact, I think just before she is actually born. He dies in the Seven Years War and she has some brothers that sort of go off and do their own thing. And her and her mother have very little prospects because the father of the family is disappeared. He's dead. And so her mother takes a job as a housekeeper in a house in Bern in Switzerland. And this just happens to be the house of Dr. Philippe Curtius, who is at that time, he's already working with wax. He's a wax modeler and anatomist. So he's not making necessarily waxworks of celebrities, he's doing waxworks of body parts. And this is what Edward Carey's novel Little does so well that he covers this early portion of her life. And as well as being a novelist, he's an incredible illustrator. And whenever I come to this history, I now think of his illustrations of all these little bits and bobs of people in wax and in flesh and the uncanny similarities between them in the crossover. And sometimes in the illustrations in that novel and sometimes the characters as well, can't tell the difference between them. And I just find that so again, fascinating and repulsive as well. So we have little Marie growing up in this household. Her mother is the housekeeper. She's just sort of a hanger on who's allowed to live in this house. And she gets to observe some of the work that is being done by Curtius. And relatively early on they move to Paris as a sort of household unit in the mid-1760s and she is allowed to start assisting him, which seems to me remarkable. I can understand maybe if she was a boy, that she might be apprenticed more formally or that she would be otherwise set to work somewhere else in the house, like the kitchen, but to be set to work in Curtius's studio dealing with fleshy parts of dead people and being allowed to at least, maybe not to begin with, make her own waxworks, but to assist with his as a young girl, I just think that's the most remarkable thing. And I think it speaks so much to who Curtius was actually. I mean, he probably just needed the help and he was just drowning in wax. But I do think there's a sort of an interesting open mindedness there.
- [13:41]
Anthony Delaney
Yeah, I think at the very least it's an apprenticeship of convenience or proximity. Right. But even within that, he could have found another apprentice easily if he really wanted to. So the opportunity for Marie to kind of go into this world is so interesting, literally life changing and goes on to shape culture and society for, you know, a few hundred years afterwards. So it really is what probably started as an apprenticeship of convenience almost really does go on to shape so much in the 200 years that follow. I just want to check in here before we go on because I kind of know what's coming in terms of what Marie ends up producing during the Terror. But during this part of their making, what is Curtius making? What is Marie helping him to make? Is it politicians? What are the wax figures that are being made?
- [14:33]
Maddy Pelling
Sure. So to begin with, like I say, it's basically anatomy. So it's just part of people, or sometimes death masks. So he's dealing with people who've died, he's dealing with the medical profession. This is his role. However, when they do move to France, he creates a waxwork exhibition. Now, I'm not sure if this is the very first of its kind, but certainly it absolutely explodes in terms of popularity in the city. And in that instance, yes, he has his anatomical models, some of the more grislier items, but he is also now making waxworks of Famous people. So aristocrats, the royal family, famous politicians, as you say, people in the public eye in this moment. But also, and this is very after dark coded, he's also making waxworks of infamous criminals. So we have that sort of delicious, complex juxtaposition between the very, very high and the very, very low in society who are put next to each other in these of exhibition and brought to life through this medium of wax. And that's something that we see today, right? Even at Madame Tussauds. We see Beyonce and she'll be, you know, I don't know if she's still there. I went to Madame Tussauds about 15 years ago, but you know, she might be like next to the entrance to the hall of Horrors, which is incidentally something that Curtius is already kind of cultivating, Right. He calls part of his exhibition the Cavern de Grande Velour. So the Chamber of Horrors, essentially. You are welcome for my pronunciation there. But yeah, so there's a kind of that sort of elevation. And also tastelessness is really coming into play here and people lap it up.
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Anthony Delaney
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- [19:00]
Anthony Delaney
People I love the idea almost immediately, once it's open to the public in this type of way, in the Paris type of way, there's celebrity right beside criminality straight away. And you know, we always talk about this, oh, why do people love that darker side of true crime or dark history? And to a certain extent it's an interesting question to ask. Of course it is. But also I think the answer will forever be nebulous and escapist to a certain extent, because it is as old as people, this interest in that dark side of things. I think it's so deeply ingrained in us. And this is one of those examples that as soon as there is an exploration of humanity to be made, as soon as you want to get up close and personal to the nice, bright, shiny things, the celebrities, you also want to get up close to the grimy or dirty dingy things. And that's, I think, interesting. But talking about kind of the shiny parts of things. We talked about how it was so unlikely that Marie would end up being in an apprenticeship for, you know, waxworks. But further unlikely still is that she ends up at Versailles. But that is exactly what happens.
- [20:21]
Maddy Pelling
It is, yes. So this little girl from Strasbourg, you know, lose her father and therefore her standing in the world they live in, so early on in life, before she's even drawn breath, essentially does find her way to the most glittery centre of an empire on the planet at this moment, which is the palace of Versailles. It's an extraordinary journey and it's one that is going to elevate her station and her art form, and that is potentially slightly further down the line, going to be her downfall. So it's a really important turning point in her story. Herut emphasized this. So Curtius is becoming increasingly popular in Paris. Obviously, he's creating these shows, people are flocking to them, ordinary people. But he's also gaining the attention of the court at Versailles, the wealthiest in the land, who, of course, vanity of vanities, want to be recreated in wax, because why wouldn't you want that? Why wouldn't you want to be met with a version of yourself that is nothing but flattery and you can dress it up in your own jewels and have that kind of replication, that doubling of yourself. It's sort of so delicious, I think, to these people at this kind of bejeweled, ridiculous place. And because of Curtius's introduction into this world, of course, Marie follows him in and we know that she becomes pretty embedded, actually, in this society. And I will say that a lot of what we know does come from her memoirs later on, and a lot of her claims are now unprovable. So this is someone who lived through this golden age of Versailles and its downfall and then makes these claims. So potentially, just bear that in mind in terms of the story. But the details that we have are this, that from 1780 she was serving as an art tutor to the youngest sister of King Louis xvi, which is pretty intimate and remarkable.
- [22:11]
Anthony Delaney
That would be utterly unbelievable. But this is Versailles and things can happen. I just.
- [22:21]
Maddy Pelling
I don't not buy it.
- [22:22]
Anthony Delaney
Right.
- [22:22]
Maddy Pelling
Like it's. And, you know, she's clearly. She is highly trained, she is highly talented, which is the other extraordinary thing about this, right, that Curtius invites in this housekeeper and her little daughter. He's basically buying in the services of a servant and he happens to include then in his household someone who has a natural talent for this. Yes, he trains her, but I think if we were all given a block of wax and asked to make, you know, our own faces out of it, we wouldn't Be able to.
- [22:53]
Anthony Delaney
Nobody wants to see that.
- [22:55]
Maddy Pelling
I can see a world in which her talent, her extraordinariness, is recognised in this court. And she starts to be invited more regularly to make wax portraits of people at the court, people who are admired by the court, people who are sort of celebrated in French history and culture. So she's making waxworks of people like Voltaire, the King himself. She also, I think, just before this period, has already made a waxwork of Jean Jacques Rousseau. So, you know, she's absolutely running the gamut of 18th century society here. And this pays off as well, not only in terms of Maria's standing, but also in terms of her family's standing. Right. So considering that her mother is, you know, a lowly housekeeper, or at least she has been. Now, Marie's brothers are part of King Louis Swiss Guard and they are serving in his palaces. So there is a sense that it is her talent, it's her opportunities in life that are advancing, not just her, but the people around her. And Curtius must be thrilled, right? He's taken in this poor child who happens to be quite good at this, and now, yes, he's got himself into this position, but it also helps that he has this young, attractive, talented sidekick who is able to do his profession with him. I think that's. She must have been a very valuable asset, both to the court and to him in particular.
- [24:14]
Anthony Delaney
But again, it's this thing, isn't it, of it being almost unbelievable. And that's again, like you said, that's not me saying I don't believe it. It's just so unlikely that this series of events unfolds. But like, also think of the context of Versailles and collecting people and. And how a curiosity, like a young. And she was quite small and diminutive physically, so she was quite a striking figure, even in her smallness. And so for this small, still young woman to be able to command that attention, it's not impossible in Versailles, As a matter of fact, Versailles would be the place, the exact place where something like that could unfold. I think it's interesting what you're saying as well, about this kind of the replication of. Of the rich and the powerful in wax. Of course, they want that. It's reminding me of the ways in which we have, you know, AI renderings now or, you know, you see people making images of themselves and just having that kind of. It's almost like a stamp of I was here, Ness. Right. There's something about that going on and.
- [25:17]
Maddy Pelling
I think it's interesting. So I think that the waxwork operates differently at Versailles than it does elsewhere. Right. So in the Paris shows where anyone can go, there's I think, the appeal of both the criminality element, the sort of gruesome, grisly exhibitions of murderers, whatever, and then the celebrity element. I think the uniting thing there is the thrill of proximity, that you can stand next to the King or someone who's murdered four people in the street and both are equally thrilling to be near. And you're never going, hopefully, I mean, you're more likely to meet the murderer than you are the King, if you're an ordinary person in Paris at this moment, but, you know, hopefully you're never going to come into contact with either. And so there's a kind of an excitement about just momentarily, with a little bit of thrill, a little bit of danger, but not really coming into contact with them. But I think of Versailles, what's happening is this idea of replication, that it's the, you know, these works being commissioned not for entertainment of the masses, but by the people who are being replicated themselves. And there's a different function going on there. You know, there's a sort of. It becomes, I suppose, the fashionable thing to do. I think it's sort of akin to having your portrait painted later or something like that. It's, you know, it's a kind of. You mean you haven't been made in wax by Marie Groschalt's like embarrassing for you, she's done four of me. You know, it's that kind of thing of. It becomes a status symbol, it becomes this in a world, obviously, you know, we know that the court at Versailles is built on these economies of gift giving favor doing the exchange of things like jewels of money, of clothing. Everyone's trying to one up each other, but all of these things have a value, there's a currency to them. And I think we can see the waxworks within that context actually, that they become maybe not swappable, but they're certainly an object that expresses your power, expresses your position. If you can afford to have one of these done and you can afford to engage Marie Groscholtz's services or Curtius's services and the time that it would take to do that, they are willing to work on you as a waxwork, then you've made it.
- [27:22]
Anthony Delaney
And you say this about the culture and society of Versailles and it's absolutely true. But then the other thing we know about Versailles is that just around the corner, the revolution is pressing up against.
- [27:33]
Maddy Pelling
That door all that wax is gonna melt.
- [27:36]
Anthony Delaney
All that wax is gonna melt, and the world as we know it is going to be turned on its head. And this feels like a moment of crisis for the nation. Yes. But for Marie, specifically, because here is. Because the way in which she changed her life has been taken away from her. And I think what she does next and what she does during this says something about the industriousness of this artist and how she chooses to survive in a climate that people were very much falling through the cracks in.
- [28:09]
Maddy Pelling
Oh, absolutely. I mean, her survival is. Yes, down to her talent and her industriousness, as you say, but. But also chance. We have the revolution sparking in 1789, and then we have the period known as the Terror, in which aristocrats and people associated with aristocrats in the royal court are being guillotined or just brutally murdered in their houses or in the street. This is a really, really dangerous time. And what's so interesting, I think, here, is that wax, once again, shape shifts to mean something else. So as the revolution kicks off, we see figures of people like Jacques Necker, who's the finance minister to the king at the time, and the Duke of Orleans, both of whom have been made in wax, and they are both paraded through the street. These are items, these are figures that are made in Curtius's workshop, and now they are being used by the revolutionaries. They're both chosen, by the way, because they're reformists. They want to change things in France in that moment. And so they're kind of taken up as heroes and paraded through the streets, shown off in this way. And so waxwork starts to stand in for the real people themselves in those scenarios, but also starts to take on this kind of politically powerful thing in and of its own right. But because waxwork has this incredible power, it therefore is dangerous, and the people who can wield it are dangerous. And Marie is arrested. She's arrested as a suspected royal sympathiser, of course, because of her connections with the court and the fact that she spent so much time with these aristocrats, so much time celebrating them and kind of elevating them in art. And she is imprisoned in La Force prison, which is a notorious prison in this moment. Now, interestingly, this is such a cool side note, and again, it just seems unbelievable. Did this really happen? She's reported to share a cell with Josephine de Beauharnais. Now, you may have heard of her, she was married. Now, what was the name of the man she goes on to marry that's right, Napoleon. How unlikely do we buy this?
- [30:09]
Anthony Delaney
I don't know. Look, I do know for a fact that a lot of 18th into 19th century memoirs are very fictitious.
- [30:16]
Maddy Pelling
Yeah. And they like to write themselves into history, right?
- [30:18]
Anthony Delaney
Yeah. It's almost part of the genre to elevate oneself and to aggrandize oneself as a way of entertainment. Not necessarily to mislead or misdirect, but just as a. I don't know, just as a flourish. And there's just so many things that. That is coming in here. And bear in mind she's writing this so much later that it's going to be impossible to check all of these things anyway. And I think you alluded to that earlier. It's clever too, because, you know, when she said she was an art tutor to Louis XVI's sister, she went for the youngest sister, which is probably the person at Versailles. You know, Versailles records are pretty decent, but it's probably the person at Versailles amongst the royal family who's going to be least documented. So it's a very good person to pick. Was she in a cell with Josephine? I don't know. There's too many hits going on here. Maddie. I could almost believe one or two of these things.
- [31:08]
Maddy Pelling
I would kill to be in that cell and talk to those two women together like, oh, my God.
- [31:13]
Anthony Delaney
But I have a feeling. So would Marie have killed to be in that cell? I'm not sure that. But look, I mean, she's a creator. She literally creates replicas of reality. And I think we might be seeing some of that happening in her memoir.
- [31:26]
Maddy Pelling
That's such a good way of putting it. And, you know, not only replicas of reality, but she is used to conjuring up out of nothing, famous people. And so why are we surprised that these kind of manifest in her memoirs? What we do know, though, is that she is spared the guillotine because of. Well, it's hard to tell. Some accounts say because of her connections to Curtius. So Curtius, in this moment, seems to get away with not being punished as a royal sympathiser, even though his apprentice is. Some people say it's her own talents. I would like to think that's true. I think what it actually comes down to is, is the people of the revolution realize that wax is important. It is a useful tool in terms of propaganda. It's worked for the other side for many decades now. It can work for them. And so she is taken out of jail and the arrangement is that she is now to make wax models and we're talking here death masks, but also full on figures, as you know, you'd see today in Madame Tussaud, of the dead aristocracy and the royal family. So she's making waxworks of Louis XVI himself, Marie Antoinette and then Robespierre, which I think is such an interesting one, because when you look at paintings of him, he has such an interesting face. But also Marat, the guy who is assassinated in the bath, I think by a female assassin, which is a nice little detail. And, you know, there's a very famous painting of that scene that I can picture. And Mary herself is taken to, and we're going to look at. There's a photograph of this waxwork that she makes because it survived at least a century after this happened and was photographed I think, in the Victorian period. But she's taken to the scene of his death, she is there and he is still in the bath when she is asked to do the waxwork. So this is, you know, this is survival at this point. It might be thrilling to us to sort of hear this history and see, you know, the way that she is right at the front line of this revolution. She's been taken to the steps of the guillotine and she's being asked, as these bodies are being dragged away from the crowd, she's taking those wax impressions, she is making these models. I think this is a remarkable moment in her life. It's a really violent one, it's a dark one. And I think it must have felt so strange for someone who potentially spent a lot of time at Versailles being part of that world. And that the prettiness of it, the order of it, the choreography of it, to suddenly be plunged into chaos and being forced to do her art under these circumstances and to come into contact not only with the people who were the highest, most important people in the land, but now their gnarly, damaged remains is extraordinary. I can't really imagine what that would have been like.
- [34:07]
Anthony Delaney
Yeah, And I think that the stakes that you're painting there are really crucial to know that you go from the relative comfortability of Versailles to literally being dragged around murder scenes by people who at one point wanted to kill you too. And then having to be in such close proximity to not just death, but ghastly death, where, you know, heads are literally cut from bodies and the impact that that has then on the remains and you're having to replicate that, I mean, that's going to shape somebody that's going to have an impact beyond the art that she's producing.
- [34:47]
Maddy Pelling
Yeah, I Mean, it doesn't put her off working in wax. She continues the rest of her life, and it's a long life. So it's the thing that makes her, it's the thing that saves her, it's the thing that keeps her afloat through all of this turmoil, all of these changes. We do know by 1794 that Curtius dies and he does leave his entire collection, all of his equipment, everything, to Marie, and she continues his work exhibiting in Paris. Because, of course, if there was an appetite pre revolution to see criminals and grisly things, there certainly is now, with everything that's going out on the street. I mean, I sort of find that fascinating, actually. This is something that I find quite abhorrent, actually. And shocking about human nature is that often the appetite, the hunger for grisly details and its replication, whether that's through wax or whether it's through print media in the 19th century, whether it's through TV and podcasts now, whatever it is that. That often comes alongside the crimes themselves. I'm thinking about when Jack the Ripper in 1880s London is doing his killings and there's a wax exhibit that's set up in a shop window that shows one of the crime scenes and the bodies of one of the women. And that's happening whilst the killings are still going on. No crime has been solved. And I think we see this here in revolutionary Paris, right, that there's literally blood flowing in the streets and people see that and they want more of it, they want to see it replicated. Maybe it's to make sense of it, maybe it's to augment that experience. Maybe it's a way of distancing yourself from it. I don't know. I find that really hard to understand, that if you were in the thick of that, why would you want more of it? But people do.
- [36:31]
Anthony Delaney
Yeah. Time and time again. This is also a very much a period. You mentioned Curtius's death. That's obviously life changing for Marie, because everything she has become has been so closely tied to him.
- [36:41]
Maddy Pelling
But.
- [36:42]
Anthony Delaney
But speaking of things tying and making a person, this is when. Yes, this is when she becomes Madame Tussaud too.
- [36:50]
Maddy Pelling
It is. So a year later, in 1795, she marries Francois Tussaud. He is an engineer, which is sort of love, right. They're kind of creative makers together. They're interested in the sort of processes of making and the structuralness of that. They have two sons in the years that follow, Joseph and Francois, and they also have a daughter, but she dies in infancy, unfortunately. So there's this new family unit that Marie's now part of. She has survived the initial years of the revolution. She has started something new for herself. Her business is still going strong. She's going to teach that business to her sons. This is, you know, her craft is well protected now and has a place in the marketplace of Paris. But she's not content with staying there. And of course, war is still going on. She finds herself by 1802 in London. Now I'm fascinated by this. I don't know whether she goes there as part of an exhibit or whether she is fleeing what's happening in France, but either way, she ends up there and she cannot get back to France. So she's now a Londoner. She's an immigrant to the city. She's brought her sons with her and her craft and she is now going to ply her trade in London itself. And this is the beginning of the Madame Tussaud that we know and love.
- [38:20]
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- [39:45]
Anthony Delaney
I know she's exhibiting at the Lyceum Theater, so she's right in the heart of the West End as we would now understand it. But what's the nature of the shows that she's putting on in London because we've come from Paris, we've come from a lot of violence on the streets, literally, as you're saying, you know, blood in the streets. She's having to replicate that. She has moved from the grandeur of Versailles. So which version of her making does she take with her to London?
- [40:11]
Maddy Pelling
Oh, she's leaning into the dark side.
- [40:13]
Anthony Delaney
She'd be the perfect guest co host on After Dark.
- [40:16]
Maddy Pelling
She absolutely would. She? Yeah, she fully leans into it because, you know, especially in London at this time, people are fascinated and scared by what's happened in France. You know, there's enormous panic about a revolution in Britain. The King and Queen at this time are pretty jumpy seeing what's happened to the French royal family. And there is this appetite, there's this kind of macabre fascination with what's gone on, interestingly. And I am obsessed with what I'm about to say. And we need to do a separate episode on this. She teams up with another showman. So she's not doing this alone. She's come to a new city, she needs to make connections. She teams up with a man called Paul Philidor. He's the pioneer who comes up with the Phantasmagoria shows. Now, when I say I'm obsessed with these, I'm so desperate to replicate one. If anyone is listening, who is like a theatre director who wants to make one of these, like, please let me do this, I need this in my life. So basically, this was like a darkened room. Sometimes it was at a theatre, sometimes it was in other spaces, private spaces. And it was essentially a show of spectacles using light and smoke and projection. And there would be sort of puppetry, shadow puppets created, but also actual objects, things like ghosts would kind of fly across people's heads. There were skeletons, there were all kinds of apparitions. The devil might appear and there'd be like some smoke machine going on. And this is so early for this kind of technology. And I just.
- [41:42]
Anthony Delaney
That's what I'm thinking. Yes, I'm listening to. It's very early.
- [41:44]
Maddy Pelling
The effect on the audiences was really intense because people hadn't seen anything like this before. And, you know, you're promised a show in which you're gonna see a ghost appear or the devil himself. People were crying on the floor, like, cowering in corners, running out of the room. This was wild. Now, it sounds quite sort of provincial and quaint to us. Like, it would be charming to do, but people are literally shitting themselves at this kind of thing. And Madame Tussaud, as she is now, is working alongside Philidor in doing this, but she ain't keen to share what's going on. It's not very financially successful for her. And so. So she finally gets to the stage where she's setting up her own show and she takes it on the road. She does a tour of Britain with the Waxworks, and people flock to it. People love it. People are completely obsessed.
- [42:34]
Anthony Delaney
And it's this business acumen that we can never overlook when we talk about Madame Tussaud that is really the thing that wins it for her. Yes, her skill, of course, without a shadow of a doubt. Well, this business acumen is a skill, too, but it's not just her artistic prowess. It's this idea that I'm not afraid to fail, actually, because essentially she does kind of fail in the West End. She takes it on the road, she makes an opportunity out of a problem, and she really, really makes it work. I mean, you know, you're talking about setting up this phantasmagoria idea and what that would be like, but what's this show like? What if you're going to see one of her touring shows, where are you going? What are you experiencing? And again, I'm really fascinated to know who she's bringing with her. I know I've asked that question a couple of times through, but it is interesting to know who she keeps with her, I. E. Which wax figures she brings.
- [43:29]
Maddy Pelling
I feel like I'm plugging her tour at the end of a podcast episode. And where can we find your work? Where can people book their tickets? Okay, so she takes this exhibition, as it's known, this is closer to the kind of show that Curtius was doing back in Paris, back in the day. Right. So it's almost entirely waxworks sort of set up, some in, like, sort of little vignettes and scenes. Others are just like, here's the of kind King. She's setting them up in assembly rooms around the country, town halls, in theatres, so people are flocking to quite diverse spaces. So again, she's kind of adapting as she goes. Right. Because setting up your wax show in a town hall is a little bit different from maybe a small provincial theatre or a large assembly room where people are used to kind of partying in that space. So there's a lot of adapting and creativity going on here, which I really like. She has different elements of the show, so different, different spaces. First of all, she has the grand salon, which has royals, as you might expect, politicians and Celebrities. So we've got kings and queens, not just the French king and Queen, but she's replicating people from history. I do know that she does make a waxwork of George iii, which is in the Royal Collection and probably was never on public display, but she's kind of still in that world. She has access to these people because, don't forget, you need to create a lot of these waxworks from life. It's not simply a case of. Of sketching someone from a distance or from a print or a cartoon at the time and then making them. I'm sure she did that in some circumstances, especially with figures who were dead. But often she is taking moulds of people's faces, both alive and dead, and then pouring wax into them. So, you know, this requires proximity to these people. Interestingly, in the grand salon, you could also see Napoleon and various military leaders. Don't forget Britain is at war with France in this moment. It's an all encompassing, overshadowing horror that is going on across the Empire and that hundreds of thousands of people are involved in, both overseas and in Britain in terms of the effect that they're feeling of this. So the war is very, very present. And you can kind of imagine, you know, like, when people take selfies with celebrity waxworks today. You can kind of imagine what it would be like as an ordinary British person to come face to face with Napoleon. I sort of imagine people kind of, you know, shaking their fist at him or kind of blowing a raspberry or maybe kicking his shin or something. And I kind of wonder, like. Like that waxwork in particular, how much damage was done to it over the course of that. How often was she having to repair him? Because I imagine that was quite often.
- [45:52]
Anthony Delaney
Yeah, it starts to become almost like an effigy that people are using at this time in marches or in demonstrations where they burn them even. Obviously that's not happening in this case, but, you know, the same vitriol can be then centered on that particular wax figure. I mean, one of the main, probably most famous centerpieces at this point was harking back to that French Revolution and you spoke about. But this is who we're seeing at the centre of this exhibition.
- [46:20]
Maddy Pelling
Yeah, so there's a room called the Separate Room, which later becomes the Chamber of Horrors that, you know, is still in place at Madame Tussaud today. And she had all kinds of things. She had death masks and figures of, as I say, the Royal Family and Robespierre. But yes, she had this centrepiece which was a Life size full scene of Jean Paul Marat lying in the bathtub with the knife, the blade still sticking in him. There was bloodied water. You can see the wound on his chest. And I have, from her memoir, memoirs, an account that she gives of the moment when she had to actually go to his body, to that murder scene all those years before, and take her wax moulds. And there's a photograph of this work, which I'm going to make you describe in a minute. But these are her words, this is what she says about the moment she comes into contact with his freshly dead body. He was still warm, and his bleeding body and the cadaverous aspect of his almost diabolical features presented a picture replete with horror. And I performed my task under the most painful sensations. I mean, I love her. She's a true show woman. Like, the hamming up of, like, he's diabolical and like he's all, you know, kind of twisted in agony.
- [47:30]
Anthony Delaney
She's a spooky bitch.
- [47:31]
Maddy Pelling
She's a spooky bitch. And she's like, oh, it was so terrible to see. But I did just complete my art while I was there.
- [47:38]
Anthony Delaney
The still warm thing, you know, you do have to question again, like, by the time that this has happened, they go and get her, they find her, they bring her back. I mean, you know, unless she's outside in the corridor. This is, again, probably not necessarily.
- [47:51]
Maddy Pelling
Yeah, he's probably not warm, right?
- [47:53]
Anthony Delaney
Yeah, but she's saying he is. It's a showmanship. That's what it is. It's creating a world in which you are disturbed and you're getting really close to famous death, basically.
- [48:03]
Maddy Pelling
And also, she has an eye for a vignette, for a little scene, doesn't she? She has the Murat bath scene. It's incredibly famous. Like I say, there are so many kind of famous paintings of it. You know, there's the one where his arms kind of hanging out of the bathtub and. Well, I'll get you to describe this one, but it's such a recognisable scene. But I think she has a particular instinct for recreating these and therefore allowing people to step into that moment of intimate moment of death or horror or trauma or whatever it is. She's allowing people, ordinary members of the public, to occupy, make sense of, be within those moments that belong, those private moments that belong to very, very famous people. People.
- [48:45]
Anthony Delaney
Well, I'm looking at this image. It is black and white, and at the center of it is what we know to be a Waxwork of Marat. And he is. It's interesting because he's, you know, you described that red blood in the bath. We're not faced with that. I kind of wish we were, just to get a full sense of the thing, but this looks like it's almost in storage in a museum. I mean, this is kind of what I'm seeing. It's surrounded in this.
- [49:10]
Maddy Pelling
This photo looks like it's photographed with, like, Hollywood lighting from the sort of early 20th century, doesn't it?
- [49:15]
Anthony Delaney
Yeah, yeah, I think it is probably early 20th century. Yeah. And it does. It looks like a still from a movie, a black and white movie, actually. And we have Murat, who is either deceased or deceasing. Eyes are definitely open. There is a knife in his upper right chest, towards his shoulder, I suppose. And there's some blood stains around the knife, as you might kind of expect. But it is ghoulish. I will say that. It is ghoulish. I will also say. And this is the 1793 model that Madame Tussault herself made. I will also say. But you have to bear in mind the context of when this is made. I would know that to be a waxwork. I would know that to not be a real thing, but in 1793, this is revolutionary. This is a totally different experience for people viewing it.
- [50:03]
Maddy Pelling
I think that's what we have to remember, right? A little bit like the phantasmagoria, the wax specimens. For most people, especially when she's touring in Britain, this is the first time they've ever seen a wax effigy of any kind. And, you know, even today, we're sort of haunted by the lifelike quality of the wax. And that can be just, you know, a really bad kind of 1970s waxwork in a local museum. These are made by the most skilled wax artist who was alive and working at this time, possibly ever, of people who really existed, who are famous, who are known about in this moment. And when I'm looking at this photograph of this wax work, okay, we know it's a wax figure, but that is a real person, like his face. You know, she's taken the moulds. That was a real person dying or dead in that moment. I can see that in there. I really can. Even though, you know, I think to us we're bringing this kind of other visual language, these layers of visual language to it, because it looks like an early film, because it's shot in a certain way, because it's a photograph. So there are these other meanings. It looks very Hollywood. It looks almost. I mean, the way he's kind of leaning back and his head is tilted back and his jaw is up. He looks a little bit like a Hollywood heroine. But, you know, like just the moment before a kiss when a woman sort of collapses in a man's arms and her head goes right back, which always really disturbs me. It's like, has your neck broken? What's happening? This isn't sexy or romantic, but he sort of looks like that. So I think, you know, if we are able, and it's very hard to kind of strip away those visual cues that we understand from the centuries that are in between us and Madame Tussaud, I just think this would have been the most arresting, terrifying, shocking thing to be confronted with.
- [51:44]
Anthony Delaney
No, absolutely. I think you're. Without a doubt, you're right. And it was because it was successful. She's touring Britain and Ireland for three decades with this. You know, that's a long time to be taking this round, if it wasn't going down. An absolute storm, which it is. And it's natural now. Very, very famous. Her legacy is hugely famous, but at the time, this is a sensation as well. Like, she is famous in her own lifetime.
- [52:07]
Maddy Pelling
Yeah. And the fact that she, you know, she tours, like, you say, for three decades, which I always find fascinating, because would you go when she's been through your town, like, three or four times, you know, would you keep going back? And how often does she have to update the waxworks? Presumably all the time. I guess, as well, if you're moving around waxworks so much in that moment, you're going to turn up and, like, Louis XVI's nose is wandering off, or Marie Antoinette's left breast is melted or something. I'm sure there's just so much stuff like that, so lots of repairs going on. Lots of. And also, I just always fascinated by this idea of the wax getting melted down and then reused for someone else. Like, oh, that used to be Robespierre and now it's Queen Victoria later on. I just think that's so tantalising. So something in the sort of recycling and reworking of these things all the time, that is interesting. But, yeah, absolutely. She continues to be a cultural phenomenon. So the Chamber of Horrors, as we call it today, is actually named in the 1840s and 1846 by Punch magazine, you know, and this is the part of the show where she shows the kind of relics of the revolution alongside as we go further into the 19th century, you know, these, again, the kind of criminal element starts to slip in the infamy of various crimes, murderers. All of that stuff starts to be replicated in wax as well. So she really doesn't let up. And she teaches the trade to her sons. They help run the business side of things. And from 1835 she is established in London at a place called the Baker Street Bazaar, which I just love. And again, I think it's sort of. She's so canny. She's always moving with the times. She's always looking for the next thing, the next way to entertain, the next thing that's going to draw people in. Is it that she's been through so much trauma herself that she's immune to it now? And so that kind of tastelessness that we associate with, with a Chamber of Horrors waxwork exhibit, does that just not register with her? Or is she someone who absolutely wallows in it and loves it? I don't know. I think probably the former rather than the latter. I don't necessarily know that she loves the grisliness, but I think she has an appreciation for what it can bring her.
- [54:06]
Anthony Delaney
I think personally, I think above all, she's tenacious and a survivor, to use awful Destiny's Child lyrics or something. But she is determined to succeed. And succeeding doesn't mean taking the throne at Versailles. For her it means, don't quash me, I will survive.
- [54:25]
Maddy Pelling
Well, look, she's the one still standing, not the people from who were sat on the throne.
- [54:29]
Anthony Delaney
Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. And I like this idea of 1835. She makes her way to Baker street where essentially she still remains, you know what I mean, in legacy. But it's interesting, you know, as you set out at the top of the episode, this is an immigrant to Britain. She's touring for 33 years again. She's a woman who is single handedly running this business and traveling with it and making sure that people are coming to it. So what I suppose I want to know in sum up, and as I'm thinking about my answer, I'll let you talk about yours. But like, how do you think we should view Madame Tussauds? What is history to Madame Tussaud? And what is Madame Tussauds to history?
- [55:07]
Maddy Pelling
It's a very difficult relationship, isn't it? Because on the one hand you could argue that especially her earlier work, that she is a witness to history. You know, she lives through all these moments and she is a chronicler of them. She creates wax records of them. Are those records accurate? They are, in the sense that they are replicas of those living People, they are the closest. You know, a lot of her original waxworks, including a self portrait figure that she made of herself, do survive. And so we are able to get close to some of those figures that she was with in their dying moments or in the moments after they'd passed away. So in that sense, she's a remarkable witness to what happened in France, to the revolution and to that sort of golden age of Versailles just before it. But all of that is already in that moment. Also has a foot in the entertainment industry, in the idea of spectacle. And that essentially takes over later on. It takes over her work. It shapes the decisions she makes in terms of, of where she is, where she goes, who she's with, what kind of work she does, what kind of audience she's seeking out. I think, like you say, she's a very canny businesswoman, she's very calculating, she's a survivor. I think one of the most telling things is the fact that she publishes her memoirs, which we gestured to earlier on in this episode. She publishes them in London in 1838, which is, you know, the height of her. She's just kind of settling into Baker Streets, the height of her popularity in that industry. Industry, in that entertainment space. And I think she's a self fashioner. She's someone who, as you said, Anthony earlier, she creates people out of whack. She's no stranger to conjuring famous moments, famous people, famous anecdotes and inserting them into her own show, into her own life, into her own story. And I think that's what she does in her memoirs. And so can we trust her? No. But she is someone who lived through and responded to an incredible moment in history. So I love her for that. I'm so interested and I think she's the star of the show. But the wax itself as a medium is just endlessly horrifying. Interesting. So much potential and so much kind of limitation as well. Right. In terms of what it can do to tell history, to document things. I'm sort of sat on the fence with her, really. She's amazing and hideous, talented and tasteless all at the same time.
- [57:40]
Anthony Delaney
Oh, that's good. I will say now that we've been through this, I love this history. I've enjoyed it for quite a while, as I say, since I was introduced to it through fiction, but it's been fascinating ever since then. That said, I have absolutely zero interest in wax works, wax figures. The only interest that I. Okay, so not zero. I have 10% interest because I do enjoy the funeral effigies. Of course I do. Do I, you know, co present After Dark. So of course I enjoy the funeral effigies. I've never been to Madame Tussauds. I would have no interest of going, I don't care to see Beyonce. That doesn't look like Beyonce. I'm so sorry. Madame Tussauds Institution that you are. However, to see the whatever pieces of original, actually Marie Groeschel's Madame Tussaud wax that still exists somewhere in a collection that's probably not necessarily on show because I'm imagining they'd be too fragile. If you're in charge of those pieces. Pieces, invite us in because I would see those in a heartbeat. I'd be so interested to get up close and personal with those pieces. But I'm not going to be going to modern day Madame Tussaud. It would interest me very, very little.
- [58:48]
Maddy Pelling
I really agree with that. I don't have an interest in the modern day. I went as a child or a teenager, I think, like I say about 15, probably more than 15 years ago now. And that didn't really engage me. It was just a lot of people shuffling around, looking at very uncanny, weird, weird, slightly horrifying and very sort of realistic, but not realistic waxworks. I think there's a lot of, you know, when you encounter a waxwork and Beyonce in modern lighting and in our age of sort of visual culture and media, when we're consuming things all the time, I think they do lose some of their power. I think what I would like to do would be to travel back in time and go to one of Madame Tussauds shows, maybe in the 1820s and the 1830s in London when she's touring or when she's in Baker's street, and to see what that would feel like without all these cues and this digital world and this kind of visual literacy that we have now, and to believe that you are stood in the presence of the King of France or whoever it is, I think that would be so powerful.
- [59:48]
Podcast Host Closing
Yeah.
- [59:48]
Anthony Delaney
Magic. Right, let's leave it with a little bit of magic then. Thank you for joining us on this exploration of Marie Groeschol's Madame Tussaud today. It has been, I think, think equally unsettling and fascinating. And that's what keeps her alive for us. I think that we keep coming back to her. If you've enjoyed today's episode, you can leave us a five star review. Wherever you get your podcasts, it helps other people to discover us. And if you want to go back through our back catalogue. You'll find other French histories there. I'm sure I can't remember any of them specifically now, but I'm sure we've done French episodes before and until next time, happy listening.
- [60:31]
Podcast Host Closing
Trimble is the technology company that connects your physical and digital world so industries like transportation and geospatial can get hard work done faster than ever. Every day brings new challenges, decisions, adjustments, real time moments that matter. With Trimble on your team, you're in command of purpose built tech ecosystems and connected solutions that keep work flowing end to end. Turn data points into decision points, deadlines into finish lines, and possibilities into profits. Check out what Trimble can do for you@trimble.com because with Trimble, you can act smarter, move faster and lead with confidence. Trimble confidence at every turn this is.
- [61:09]
Paige Desorbo
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