by Edward Carey
But do you have love in there?
Yes. Oh yes.
Away we went, Little F. and I. France was there behind us, getting smaller and smaller, until there was no more France at all. Never any more André Valentin to wreck my heart. I turned my back upon it, and directed Little F. to look forward. Over there is Great Britain, I said. What shall it do for us? What shall we do for it? They speak English there—do we know any English? George le third. Doover. Lyceum Theatre, Lon-don.
“Will we be coming back home, Mama? Will we ever be coming back?”
“We’ll make a new home, F., a whole new one. And we’ll never want to leave it.”
AFTERWARD
1850
AT HOME
I am eighty-nine.
CHAPTER SEVENTY-TWO
Seventh heads.
Here I am. Upstairs. With all my things. There on the wall is the portrait of me that Jacques-Louis David painted. There in its glass case is the death mask of my uncle Curtius; there is Edmond’s wooden doll of me still, and beside her a mannequin in the likeness of a man I once knew; there is a wax heart and beside that a wax spleen, and there my head in wax, age seven, modeled by Curtius; and there is Father’s jawplate, not forgotten these long years, and last and first of all, my faceless doll, Marta, gift of my mother. There they all are and here am I. And where are we all?
We are in London. Are we in the poorhouse? No. No one has things in the poorhouse. We are in our own home, we own it, we’ve done very well. We’ve climbed to the top of London, which is the greatest of all dung heaps ever laid by man, an excrescence of appalling dimensions. I must confess, however, that I am not all here. I come now in three pieces. My teeth have all gone, replaced by other teeth: I put them in, upper and lower rows, snap my jaw like Father. When I take them out, my face collapses, and my nose comes so close to my chin they almost touch. I wear ever-thicker spectacles, round wire-framed ones. I can see no one, observe nothing, without their assistance.
My home is in Baker Street, which is only fitting, for in our way we also cook people. It is a large building we live in, a massive elephant, a great monster. This building is where history is kept. We show our people, our dolls, on the first and second floors and in the cellar. We have a gallery for royalty and other worthies, all the greatest, latest people. On the third floor is our workshop factory; there every day people are melted down or poured out, people grow, people go. I watch them all, the circus of life. All those people so desperate to do well. I’m safe at last. I remember the Widow Picot thought that behind her gates. No building is ever safe, but all long to fall apart.
Down below, out of the sunlight, in the cellar, in the dark, we keep other people, the disgraceful ones, the ones who didn’t behave well. There are always such people. Today’s villains, mixing with yesterday’s. A chamber of horrors. Only yesterday, when I went down to the cellar, a boy there, a cockney lout, was standing before Jean-Paul Marat bleeding in his bath, the wound still appearing so fresh, his sad body built by Edmond, and this boy was munching away upon a pork pie.
I do my rounds, visiting them all, moving about the old people. Looking sometimes at the new, but I belong to the old. I outlive everyone. I brush down Napoleon, smooth the brocaded jacket of Louis XVI. In his pocket I have put a map of the island of Robinson Crusoe. I can see his sister in his face.
People come to touch me too. The History Lady some call me, others Mother Time. Many call me Madame Two-Swords. I am rather a public building. I used to tell my visitors the story of my life. Is it all true? they wondered. Wax, I told them, does not know how to lie.
I cannot sit at the desk anymore taking admission fees. I’m too fragile, I might break. Others collect the money in my stead. François and Joseph have made me in wax, keeping my post. Sometimes I go and join her of an afternoon; how the public enjoy that, the two of us together. It has inspired Mr. Cruikshank to make a cartoon labeled Madame Tussaud Beside Herself. In truth, it is not an especially brilliant likeness. But I do recognize myself in the wax model, in that shriveled crumb of human existence, that corrugated, leathery old creature, something like a spider, something like a beetle, a wingless moth, a hunched form made of dust and dirt, all in black from boots to bonnet. Widow Picot, a man comes once a quarter to pluck my chin. Frightened children shriek when they see me. They dream of me and wake up screaming. Those same children are told fairy tales now—those tales are not for the adults anymore, these days those stories are kept in the nursery. Those same children sing “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star,” a tune first written down in the year of my birth. I am as old as that noise.
One by one, some in a hurry, some taking their time, everyone has died. Louis-Sébastien Mercier in his sleep, his shoes still stuck upon his feet. Jacques-Louis David, in disgrace, in exile. Josephine, Weeping Rose, ejected from the empress’s throne. Even Napoleon, on his rock in the Pacific. François Tussaud Sr., husband, amidst debt. And André Valentin at last, having risen to high service, sliced into two pieces, one falling this way, one falling that, for crimes of embezzlement against the emperor.
The Monkey House, long vacated, gave one final baboon shriek, coughed a cloud of dust, then fell to rubble and was towed away. New buildings are there now.
No one left living understands me. Only my dolls.
The novelist Mr. Dickens comes to me. A thief, of course. I tell him everything. He takes notes. I have Burke and Hare downstairs, near Marat, Scottish body snatchers, one taken from life, the other from death. The Duke of Wellington used to come to visit my wax Napoleon. Now I have Wellington in wax.
There is a state between life and death: it’s called the waxworks.
I live at the top of the house, in our rooms, with my family. Past the door marked PRIVATE—STRICTLY NO ADMITTANCE—KEEP OUT—STAFF ONLY. This is my bedroom. In here are my own things, never to be displayed, always kept private. My personal collection, my personal history.
And here he comes every day, my seventh and final doctor, Doctor Marcus Healy. A balding man, corpulence setting in though he tries to hide it, to busy himself about me. He moves me as if I can’t move myself, fusses over me like a child with a toy.
This world has turned mechanical. The new world is made of iron. Life now is heavy, propelled by steam and pistons. In place of candles, people illuminate themselves by gas, which gives off a light without mystery. Here’s a sign of my great age: people don’t look the same as they used to. Men grow whiskers until they look more like spaniels than men, and use what wax they have to shape their enormous facial hair. And there is something else new. François is worried that it may hurt our business. This newest thing is called a daguerreotype. It traps an image of a life, captures people on polished silver. It’s much quicker than wax. It can be guaranteed not to make mistakes. They want to take my image with their machine. I intend to die before they do it.
Here I am, breathless in bed. I can see the end, clearly enough, in this room. I’m eighty-nine years old. I shall not see ninety. I am Anne Marie Tussaud, née Grosholtz. Little.
Who shall never go away.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This book has taken me fifteen years to finish, which is rather a long time. Though based on real events and real individuals, sometimes these people (Marie Grosholtz, Philip Curtius, for example) have left us rather vague, sometimes untrustworthy, histories, and so I have felt free to fill in some blanks. Through long stretches of research, the greatest pleasure and usefulness came to me in the form of the writings of Louis Sebastien Mercier. An equivalent to London’s Henry Mayhew and New York’s Joseph Mitchell, Mercier proved the best of all guides to eighteenth-century Paris; I have made him a character in these pages and have tried to retain his voice.
I could not have written this book without the help of the following people and institutions: Madame Tussauds in London, for giving me a job so many years ago that started this off; Christopher Merrill and the International Writers Program; Patrick Deville and the Maison des Éc
rivains Étrangers and des Traducteurs; Søren Lind and the Brecht Hus; Claudia Woolgar and the Kilkenny Arts Festival; Bradford Morrow and Conjunctions; Paul Lisicky and Story Quarterly; Yiyun Li and A Public Space; Arno Nauwels, for his advice in making a four-foot wooden woman (fully articulated), and Elizabeth McCracken, for giving it hair; Dana Burton, for her patience and precision; Charles Lambert, for his generosity; Elisabetta Sgarbi, for always being there; Michael Taeckens, for making all the difference; everyone at the glorious, inspired Gallic Books, especially Jane Aitken, Maddy Allen, and Emily Boyce, who first took this creature on; everyone at the wonderful, brilliant Riverhead Books, for having faith in this book, including the very exceptional Jynne Martin, Jennifer Huang, and Glory Plata, and most especially to the astonishing genius that is Calvert Morgan, whose wit and wisdom and elegance and astounding eye brought this book into harbor at last, and whom I can never thank enough; everyone at Blake Friedmann, including the late and very great Carole Blake, as well as Tom Witcomb, James Pusey, Emanuela Anechoum, and especially my beloved agent, Isobel Dixon, who has read this book in so many different shapes and sizes and who has stood by it longer than any human should have; and last and most, Elizabeth and Gus and Matilda, who are short and mighty.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Edward Carey is a novelist, visual artist, and playwright. His acclaimed YA series, the Iremonger Trilogy, was a fan favorite, with citations for Best Books of the Year by The New York Times, NPR, and Kirkus Reviews. He is also the author of two adult novels, Observatory Mansions and Alva & Irva. Born in England, he now teaches at the University of Texas in Austin, where he lives with his wife, the author Elizabeth McCracken., and their family.
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