The Queen's Dollmaker

by Christine Trent

  “I loved him, Claudette, truly. But it was no use. He never loved me, and I know it now.

  “I met Jean-Philippe during one of my visits to see my aunt, before she died. I first saw him making a speech at Luxembourg Gardens. He was a man beyond all others: passionate about his beliefs, passionate in love, strikingly handsome. But you know this. I swear, at first I did not know that he was your betrothed from childhood. But when we realized we had you in common, it was too late. He possessed my soul. I, of course, possessed my aunt’s fortune to help in his cause, and he convinced me that the cause of the revolutionaries was true and just, that the time for monarchs was finished, and that he needed my help. Help him? I would have slit the queen’s throat personally for him.

  “We lived together in his apartment. His landlord frowned upon us as an unmarried couple, but what did I care? I loved him so much, and I knew he was going to be a great man in the new government. I would have done anything—anything—to make sure he achieved his goals.

  “Jean-Philippe became a close confidant of Robespierre. He believed everything Robespierre had to say about his concept of Virtue, and that elimination of the monarchy had to be accomplished through blood and fire. I got swept away with the idea, too. When Jean-Philippe told me you were trying to help Louis and Marie Antoinette get out of the country, I was more than willing to believe it was true.”

  Lizbit paused, wiping her grimy face with her grimier sleeve. Claudette offered a handkerchief, but it only resulted in moving dirt around on her face. Lizbit resumed her story, twisting the handkerchief in her fingers.

  “Oh, Claudette, what kind of friend was I? How could I think for a moment that you would do such a thing? Even if you had, how demented had I become that I would permit—no, aid—your arrest and imprisonment?

  “But that is what I did. I delivered Jean-Philippe’s forged letter from the queen to you. At the time, I was quite ecstatic that you were being punished. Much to my shame, Claudette, please believe me. I cannot dwell on it for long periods—my guilt and anguish are such that I get blinding headaches when I think much about what I have done to you.”

  Lizbit brought the knotted handkerchief to her nose and blew, which sparked a coughing fit. The coughing opened the wound beneath her lip, and it seeped a trail of vile liquid while she talked.

  “I met Jean-Philippe at our apartment right after you were dragged off to La Force. He was fiery that night. I had never seen him so zealously self-righteous. I thought our relationship was becoming even more passionate. I never equated it to his concealed obsession for you.” Drops of blood followed behind pus, lightly falling onto Lizbit’s lap.

  “Jean-Philippe grew in Robespierre’s esteem. Soon, Robespierre had him doing private investigations into suspected enemies of the nation. Jean-Philippe had his own staff of soldiers to do his bidding. His position as a former attendant on the queen’s staff gave him much knowledge of who was doing what, and which people were royalist sympathizers. At night, he would show me his secret lists of names, and I could always count on seeing them on the newspapers’ condemned lists within a few short days. Robespierre forever praised Jean-Philippe’s thorough work at identifying traitors, and I knew that Jean-Philippe would be at Robespierre’s side when that man took total control of the government. Jean-Philippe would always whisper to me deep in the night of the exalted place I would hold as his partner. He never did make reference to me as his wife, but I overlooked it, so in love with him that I couldn’t imagine that he didn’t intend to marry me. I didn’t understand that he was just exacting his revenge on you with me.

  “But things went wrong. Robespierre became obsessed with his idea of Virtue, and began eliminating anyone in his way. His enemies began plotting against him, eventually denouncing him and his followers at the Assembly. Some unknown deputy even demanded Robespierre’s arrest.

  “Jean-Philippe’s end came with Robespierre’s. They were seized together last July when Robespierre was at the mayor’s house after having delivered one of his speeches to the Convention. There were others grabbed, as well, including that angel of death Saint-Just, and they were imprisoned in the Tuileries. By the time I realized what had happened and could make my way there the following morning, they had both been hauled away to the guillotine. I ran as fast as I could, and got there as they were dragging my beloved up to the platform. He tried to move forward to make a speech to the gathered spectators, but he was quickly drowned out by the shouting and roaring of the crowd. They didn’t care about him; they wanted to see Robespierre. Jean-Philippe was yanked back before he could say his last words, and they put him under that damned, infernal blade. I cannot forget the sound of the blade traveling in the channel as it made its way to its target. It is like a carriage rumbling behind horses, the wheels squeaking and protesting, until it stops with a great ‘whump.’ And then you find that your beloved’s head is detached and his body is spewing blood everywhere, and the crowd enjoys it—no, relishes it. They cheered, Claudette, to see his head cut off.” Lizbit was now sobbing. Claudette thought grimly back to her own near execution, and shuddered.

  “Jean-Philippe’s body was thrown to the side, and they dragged Robespierre up. Did you know that they don’t clean anything before executing the next prisoner? His head is simply placed on the same stinking, bloodied neckhole that the previous victim was on just moments before. Robespierre’s jaw was bound up and he was screaming. Someone told me later that he had been shot in the face, but I don’t know if he had been shot by guards or had done it to himself. The blade was used as mercilessly on him as it was on my Jean-Philippe just moments before. His body was also tossed aside, as there were more executions to be completed. Spectators ran forward to dip their handkerchiefs in Robespierre’s blood dripping from the platform. I asked for Jean-Philippe’s body later and arranged for a burial. Some ruffians had dragged his head behind a cart, for blocks. I could not bear to look, and paid a gravedigger to retrieve it and bury it with his body.

  “I did not think things could get any worse, but my sins run deep, Claudette, and I realize they must be paid with great misery on my part. I returned to our apartment to grieve. For days I just sat there, curtains pulled tight to prevent any light or life from entering. Eventually I decided that it was time to leave Paris and that existence behind, and went through my things—our things—in preparation to come back to England.

  “Imagine my surprise,” Lizbit said, her old eyes bunched up in pain, “to find among his possessions a large doll whose head had been broken off. Inside the doll I found a locket with your picture in it, several old letters from you, and a small box containing a ring set with a large emerald surrounded by pearls.” She laughed hollowly. “An emerald—green, the people’s color. A symbol of all he intended for the future. And this ring was for you, Claudette, not me. Never me. All of his talk about having me at his side when the citizens would rule was just his consideration for my feelings. Always he had memories of you tucked away nearby. How often do you imagine he thought of you, Claudette? His true love who had forsaken him? He put you in jail, all the while telling me he hated you for your role in serving the queen and not the people. I wonder how he even slept at night while you were rotting away in La Force. And I! Well, what a fine friend I was. A liar, a betrayer, and a fraud.”

  Claudette interrupted. “Lizbit, please, it is over and done with. It doesn’t matter to me. Don’t—”

  Lizbit pretended not to hear her protestations. “I left Paris and came back to London, where I began my repentance in earnest. Since I had given all my money to Jean-Philippe, I was nearly penniless. I found myself engaged in service with Simon Briggs. You remember him, don’t you? Now I was also a whore. He placed me first in one of the city’s finer brothels, but the customers didn’t like me. I was pretty enough, but I talked back too much and wouldn’t do anything too perverse. Soon the madam threw me out, and Simon had to move me to a lower-class section of town, where the customers didn’t hesitate to clop me a
cross the head if I talked much beyond ‘Aren’t you a handsome one?’ and ‘That’ll be three quid.’ I lost my looks. My hair seemed to go gray overnight, my teeth soon followed, and I’m pretty sure I contracted the French pox somewhere along the way. I took to drink, the only refuge from my slatternly existence. Simon refused to keep up my wardrobe since I did not earn as much as the other sluts, and I was eventually left with just this dress.” She held up the hem. “This was once a fine gown, even if it was just a dress that a customer gave me because his wife didn’t want it anymore.

  “When I finally wasn’t even able to attract more than a few customers each week, down on the docks where they aren’t too picky, Simon hauled me to his rooms one day, enjoyed me, then beat me within an inch of my life and pushed me through his bedroom window to the ground below. I still have glass embedded in my arms and legs, and my lip has never healed from the infection I received from the ground glass that got in my mouth. I prayed that God would let me die there, but He must have had other plans for me, because I continued to live. That was when I knew I had to come to you, Claudette, and seek your forgiveness.

  “I wandered about for several days, hungry and crazed from lack of wine. I could not remember where you were in the city. I found a convent. The nuns there took me in, and I tried to get better. It was no use; I’m too ill. I left there, and found my way to you here today.”

  Lizbit reached out and gripped Claudette’s hand in her own feverish one. “Claudette, Claudette, please forgive me. Forgive me for being so selfish and faithless.” Her eyes, though almost sightless, were becoming bright.

  Claudette patted Lizbit’s clutching hand with her free one. “Lizbit, all is well. I forgive you. Please don’t let it trouble you further. What we need to do now is make you better.” She led Lizbit through the workshop to a small room set up for workers who periodically needed to stay overnight. Tucking Lizbit under the quilt, she told her friend, “We don’t need to talk of this again. Promise me you will try to get better. Tomorrow I will send for a doctor.”

  Lizbit looked at her again with sightless eyes and pawed at Claudette’s dress. Grabbing hold, she whispered, “It is too late. Too late. What I have done is unforgivable. I have to pay my penance with my life. Here—” Lizbit reached into the folds of her dress and pulled out a small wrapped parcel which she pushed into Claudette’s hand. “This is for you. My sin offering.”

  Claudette put the parcel on the nightstand and bent down to wipe Lizbit’s face with a damp cloth. “Lizbit, just sleep now. In the morning things will seem much better. When you’re well, we will go shopping and buy you ten new dresses and satin slippers to match.” She sat and held Lizbit’s hand until her breathing settled into that of the sleeping. From the bed Claudette reached over and unwrapped the parcel.

  Inside were the locket and emerald ring.

  Early the next morning, Claudette checked in on her once sharp and witty friend. Lizbit was dead.

  EPILOGUE

  Hevington became home to a thriving family. Edward was born in 1797, followed by Rebecca in 1798, and finally Elizabeth, nicknamed Little Bitty, at the turn of the new century. William and Claudette had one of their rare disagreements when naming Little Bitty. Claudette insisted that Lizbit be honored by it, and William was just as insistent that she not be. Little Bitty, though, quickly became her father’s darling, demonstrating none of the tragic flaws of her namesake.

  Marguerite and Nicholas married, and rented the Greycliffes’ London residence until they saved enough money to purchase their own home. Marguerite happily accepted Nicholas’s faithful and constant nature, and she returned it in kind. Even strangers on the street were struck by how devoted the young Ashby couple was, walking arm in arm everywhere they went. Maude Ashby, crushed in her game of social ascension, had finally yielded to the fact of their marriage and had even taken some interest in helping them decorate their new home.

  Marguerite gradually took over much of the day-to-day operations of the doll shop. Frequently, she and Claudette could be seen together in the Hevington drawing room or in the Greycliffes’ London home, heads bent over a new doll design, or sorting through a trunk of the latest wildly tinted fabrics from Paris. As much as Claudette Greycliffe loved being a mother and wife, she still felt a thrill when Marguerite arrived at the door with a bundle of rolled drawings in her arms.

  Upon Claudette’s advice, Marguerite expanded the business to include the sale of baby houses and their accessories. To fund this expansion, Claudette sold the town house she had purchased from Mrs. Jenkins, whose health had forced her to move in with relatives on the balmy, developing shores of Brighton.

  Sales of the baby houses also led to the creation of families of dolls to fill them, all of them made from wood and jointed just like the larger fashion dolls. The wealthy women who ordered these dolls’ houses would ask for a set of dolls made to resemble their own families. A purchase of a single dollhouse could represent many sales for the C. Laurent Fashion Doll Shop, in terms of miniature furniture, carpets, silver pieces, linens, and now doll families.

  Jack Smythe, as clever as always, had invested most of the money he had made through his association with Claudette’s dollmaking business. When he had saved enough money, he left the Ashby household in the middle of the night, and opened his own tavern. He met and married a girl from Northumberland, and they ran the tavern and its attached inn together quite successfully. Together they raised six boisterous young boys.

  Marie Grosholtz remained a good friend, visiting mostly through correspondence. She married François Tussaud in 1795 after her own stint in a prison as a guest of the French revolutionaries. Together they had two boys, Joseph and Francis. By the tone of her letters, it was obvious that the marriage was not a happy one. However, Marie continued her work with wax sculpting, and had in fact developed a traveling show in 1802, which saw her wax figures being shown all over England, Ireland, and Scotland. Marie’s letters were always peppered with amusing stories of People of Quality who would visit her showcase, gawping open-mouthed in astonishment.

  William and Claudette took a trip to London once to visit Madame Tussaud at her waxworks exhibition, which had made a stop in England’s capital. They were intrigued by the realistic work she was doing with the life-sized figures. Most fascinating was a figure of a woman that lay on a reclining couch, her arm across her forehead in repose. Upon closer examination, they could see that the woman appeared to be breathing. Claudette uttered a spontaneous “Oh my!” and Marie laughed in her sharp, bird-like way.

  “Do you like it? This is Madame du Barry, favorite of King Louis XV. She may have met her end at the blade like so many others—oh, sorry, my dear—but she lives on here in wax.”

  Marie offered to do a wax model of Claudette, promising to add it to her special exhibit on the Revolution, which already contained the death masks of Louis XVI, Marie Antoinette, Jean-Paul Marat, and Robespierre. Claudette politely declined. She had enough unspeakable memories of that interlude without a permanent reminder of her horror set up as a public spectacle.

  They had no communication from anyone else surrounding the Revolutionary period except for Roger Wickham, the La Force guard that had helped William save Claudette. As a gesture of respect toward his patron, Roger and his wife Simone settled in Kent near the town of Sittingbourne, and each Christmastide he would send the Greycliffes containers of high-grade cream.

  Claudette kept the de Lamballe doll in the room at Hevington where William had proposed to her. She had a special locking case made for it to keep light and dust off it. She rarely went into the room.

  For Claudette, life became an endless series of joyful and contented moments. Only when she was seated alone in Hevington’s gazebo with a book or a piece of embroidery in hand would she allow the memories of Jean-Philippe, La Force, and poor Queen Marie Antoinette to seep into her consciousness. How quickly her body became rigid, reliving that period of death and destruction. She would just as quickly forge
t the past when one of her children came to show Mama what interesting trick the pet spaniel had just learned, or when her beloved William came looking for her, always seeking a kiss and a gentle caress of her cheek. Life for the orphaned little French dollmaker had turned out gratifyingly well.

  AFTERWORD

  Although most of the characters in this novel are of my own creation, quite a few are also historical personages. I have attempted to place them in my story in ways that are believable, and within the context of true historical events, but to my knowledge there was never an actual plot to get Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette out of France by means of a doll conspiracy!

  Marie Grosholtz, later Madame Tussaud, was a protégé of Dr. Philippe Curtius, a doctor skilled at modeling wax to create anatomical figures. These subjects led to portraiture, which soon became more lucrative than his medical career. Dr. Curtius taught Marie the techniques of wax sculpting from an early age, and she became so proficient in wax portraiture that she was soon making figures of many of the prominent people of the era, such as the writer Voltaire and the U.S. statesman Benjamin Franklin. In those days, wax portrait figures were rather like the movies and TV of today—people knew the names of the famous and infamous people of the time, but didn’t know how they looked, so were intrigued enough to pay to see their wax portrait figures. Soon Dr. Curtius had a traveling exhibition.

  It wasn’t long before Marie’s skills came to the attention of Louis XVI’s sister, Madame Elisabeth, and Marie was invited to live at Versailles to help in Madame Elisabeth’s artistic education. Marie spent nine years at court and while there she created figures of Louis XVI and his family.