A Royal Likeness Page 11

  “Yes, Maman,” Joseph answered, without lifting his eye from his latest pencil drawing of their new salon.

  So the two women worked from dawn to dusk each day, repairing gouged spots, freshening skin coloring, rearranging hair, and mending torn clothing.

  Many of the aristocrats of the old French regime had emigrated to Scotland. Marie was determined to promote more of her French figures that had been popular back in Paris, so they worked doubly hard to get all of those figures ready for opening day.

  In any available spare time, Marie taught Marguerite how to write advertisements for the exhibition and together they developed the handbill to be printed for their opening.

  Freshly arrived from London Dr. Curtius’s Grand European Cabinet of Figures An Unrivaled Collection as Large as Life Modeled from Life and Death More than 50 Public Characters Including

  Exact Replicas of the late Royal Family of France The Revolting Jean-Paul Marat in his Bath England’s New Enemy, First Consul Napoleon Bonaparte and his wife, Josephine The American Diplomat Benjamin Franklin Open every day from ELEVEN in the morning till TEN at night Admittance: two shillings Children under ten years, half price

  Their new salon consisted of a small vestibule leading into two spacious rooms connected by an octagonal antechamber between them. Each room was approximately forty feet square with far lower ceilings than the exhibition in London. Marguerite estimated the windows at the end of each room to be about twelve feet tall. The walls and floors were decorated in muted golds and creams. The marble flooring had many chips and cracks throughout its surface, but they soon put that to rights by covering blemishes with scattered carpets and figures. Lighting was provided by randomly placed floor candelabra and wall sconces.

  Marie much preferred this new arrangement over the one long gallery setup at the Lyceum, particularly since there was not a hint of gas lighting throughout the building. The biggest disadvantage was that they had no separate workroom, and would instead have to either work on new figures late at night, or leave unfinished compositions on the floor where customers parading through could see them. Their agreement with Mrs. Laurie provided for a cache of replacement beeswax candles per month, no small thing for an exhibit that needed to glow with varying levels of light nearly every moment of the day and night.

  Marguerite and Joseph set up the admissions cabinet at the front entrance, located at one end of the first room. Marie had shipped this dark oak cabinet over from France with her. Its unique design enabled it to be collapsed for travel and quickly set back up for use. When fully assembled, it served as a three-sided booth behind which someone could stand and collect money from entering customers. Inside the booth was a small ledge where they stacked leaflets containing biographical sketches on the month’s arrangement. This was a new addition to the exhibition experience. Because they now had to perform most of their sculpting work either in full view or late at night, they would no longer rearrange the exhibit on nearly a daily basis, but instead do so monthly. These exhibition catalogues gave customers information about the figures on display, and served as a souvenir of their visit. Marie’s strict orders were that each customer could have one catalogue only, to ensure the exhibit did not waste any money.

  A locking box was affixed beneath the ledge on wooden rails. When the box was rolled forward, money could be surreptitiously placed in it without customers noticing it. If the booth had to be unattended for any length of time, the box would be locked with a key that Marie kept around her neck, then rolled out of sight under the ledge.

  From the exhausting sea voyage, to the hectic week of figure repair and set up prior to opening the exhibit, Marguerite had little time for much thought beyond the next task that lay in front of her. She rarely even stepped outside, since their rooms were located upstairs from the exhibit, and had little idea of the weather, much less of events in Edinburgh and the world beyond.

  Marie was unfaltering, staying up into the wee hours after Marguerite escorted Joseph to his room, then collapsed into her own bed. After being in Edinburgh for a week, the apprentice had hardly had time to hang her dresses, much less send a note to Claudette letting her know of her arrival.

  The exhibit opened as planned, a mere seven days after their arrival, on a windy day of brilliant sunshine. Joseph stood outside on the street to hawk the exhibit to passersby, while Marguerite and Marie worked inside the salon. Thanks to their well-placed advertisements, outside signage, and Joseph’s winsome ways on the street, a steady stream of visitors attended the exhibition for most of the day. Those visitors who could read walked about with their pocket-sized catalogues up to their faces, devouring Marie’s opinion-clouded “biographies” of famous people. Men and women alike stood before the figures of such luminaries as Robespierre, learning that he “affected to be called a sansculotte, but his clothes were always chosen with taste and his hair was constantly dressed and powdered with a precision that bordered on foppery.”

  Most of Marie’s biographies of her figures were more commentary on fashion and style, versus any serious examination of the individuals’ motives or activities in life. Marguerite attempted to persuade Marie to write more extensively about a given figure’s life events, but was firmly rebuffed by her mentor.

  “It’s best not to comment on what they have done. It could be misinterpreted. Leads to great troubles for us.”

  “But do people really care just for what someone wears or how he walked down the street?”

  “My dear, that is nearly all they care about.”

  Marie was right. Their opening day saw many French émigrés huddled around the figures of people they had known, commenting on the exactness of their costume.

  An elderly, hunched woman pointed up, motioning to her equally aged friend. “Non, the du Barry never wore such brown colors. And she always had diamonds in her ears. Where are the diamonds?”

  “Maybe they are still in France.”

  “I still think she should be wearing diamonds.”

  “Well, she doesn’t need them now where she is.” The friend drew a meaningful line across her own neck. They both tittered at the macabre joke.

  Infamous figures of revolutionary France—Marat, Mirabeau, Robespierre, Charlotte Corday—mingled with European royalty, American statesmen, and infamous criminals. The effect was a bit random, as there had not been time in a week to set up sophisticated tableaux in which to set the figures. But the exhibition’s guests loved the unique entertainment it provided.

  Some visitors snapped their fingers in front of the figures’ faces, trying to get a reaction, while others stood still for quick sketches drawn out by Joseph after he had tired of hawking the exhibition on the street. Marie heartily approved of Joseph’s enterprise, which was bringing in an additional shilling per drawing.

  Marie played pranks on some of the visiting children, standing utterly still in a corner, then reaching her arms out and growling at them, to their utter terror and delight.

  Marguerite spent most of the day taking admissions and answering questions from patrons who had never seen such a spectacle as a cabinet of wax figures. Many of the visitors wanted to meet Dr. Curtius. Both men and women alike refused to believe that the figures were mostly made by Dr. Curtius’s niece. One man even suggested that perhaps the niece had stolen them from her uncle and then set up an illegal exhibition in Edinburgh.

  Overall, though, visitors left the salon bubbling with excitement and pleasure. Although to Marguerite the first day’s opening was a great success, with staggered throngs throughout the day, Marie was fretting about the day’s receipts when they closed the door at ten o’clock at the end of the first week.

  “Not enough,” she declared as her hand brushed the last of the coins she was counting back into the locking box.

  “How much did we realize, madame?” Marguerite asked.

  “Only ten guineas. We must have more, much more. We will have to create something more thrilling so that we can charge more.”

/>   “In London you created a curtained-off area for the more grotesque pieces. Perhaps we should do that here. We could use the back room for it, and set up separate admission in the antechamber.”

  Marie’s eyes glowed. “Ah, my apprentice is shrewd. My dear Mrs. Ashby, you will one day be a sharp and clever businesswoman. Tomorrow we will start setting up a separate room for the more unseemly figures, only this time much better than what we had in London.”

  So Britain had declared war on France three months ago, the little Corsican Bonaparte now threatened invasion, and the citizenry of Britain was tense with expectation and fear. An exhibition hall of gruesome visages might be exactly what the public needed as an ironic antidote to its pent-up fear and worry.

  The Separate Room was an immediate success. The two women and young boy worked long hours into the night, sleeping in small snatches, to thoroughly rearrange the exhibit to provide a chilling yet electrifying element to the show. Carpenters were hired to set up another, smaller admissions booth in the antechamber between the two salon rooms and to create props and settings for the new room. All of the revolutionary figures, as well as those of infamous criminals and their victims, were moved into the second salon and set up in several relevant settings. The heads of Marie Antoinette, Louis XVI, the Princesse de Lamballe, and Robespierre were placed on tall columns in a semicircle around the figure of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, whose writings were instrumental in his country’s slide into revolutionary fervor. Shrouds of black draped the wall behind these figures.

  Another tableau had Colonel Despard on a scaffold, arms tied behind his back as he stared at a hanging noose. Marguerite worked very reluctantly on that display, grateful that most of the work was done by the carpenters in the construction of the scaffold.

  Initially exhausted and confused by the continual movement and rearrangement of figures in London, Marguerite now understood Marie’s genius in doing so, as the exhibition stayed perpetually new and fresh. A customer could visit one week, return the following week and be able to tell his friends, “It’s an entirely new show.” Therefore, many customers came more than once for novelty, and some even made it a regular entertainment.

  As her confusion lessened, so did her weariness. Days on end of moving figures by lifting them onto small wheeled carts and moving them to their new settings had developed her arm strength in a way that doll carving never could. This work, combined with the packing and unpacking of the precious characters, helped develop a fortitude Marguerite had no idea she could possess. Her skin regained its cheerful bloom and she found herself sleeping dreamlessly at night.

  The only thing that still confused Marguerite was the state of Marie’s finances. Her mentor groused continuously about the show’s lack of capital. But how could this be? The crowds were plentiful, and Marguerite ended up with a full box of coins at the end of each day since admission was now double what it had been in London. Many of the supplies used were similar to dollmaking—paints, brushes, glues, carving tools—and she therefore knew that those costs could not be exceeding more than a pound or two per week. She received very little money as an apprentice—only pocket money, really—and workmen were hired on an as-needed basis. So how could the show possibly not be turning a profit?

  Marguerite attempted to ask about it one evening as they applied touch-up paint to some of the figures. The constant movement to and fro in the rooms, combined with the customers fingering and brushing up against them, meant that they were in constant need of repair. Marguerite approached the subject as casually as possible while darkening the eyebrows of King John.

  “Madame, how is the show faring this week? Have we made a good profit?” She kept her eyes trained on what she was doing, not daring to look Marie in the face with such an audacious question.

  But Marie was not offended. “The take has been good this week. Twenty guineas. Still not enough for a profit.”

  “But, madame, the rental for the salon and our lodgings is only two pounds per month. Surely it does not cost much more for maintenance and creation of the figures?”

  Marie put down the tools she was working with and turned to face her apprentice. Marguerite did likewise, a knot forming in her stomach. Had she completely overstepped her bounds? Would she be sent back to Claudette in disgrace?

  “I can see that I teach you some things, but I do not teach you enough. Yet, the financial problems are my own doing and not for you to worry over. The exhibition has other … debts … that are not resolved, and I don’t know that I can ever get them settled. I may never be successful, and may have to return to Paris a failure. Then I will have been separated from the rest of my family for nothing. Nothing. And I will have also failed my delightful apprentice.”

  It was the most complete, unguarded speech Marie had ever made in Marguerite’s presence.

  “Oh, madame, whatever is wrong, I can help you. I had much experience with running the financial aspects of the Laurent Fashion Doll Shop, and I could assist—”

  “No, Mrs. Ashby. The exhibition’s problems have nothing to do with the daily management of the show. I make other mistakes, and I must live with them. Not for your worry.”

  But Marguerite did worry. What had happened to put the show, and Marie, near ruin?

  6

  London, Ash House, August 1803. “Mother, I’m a bit bored.” Nathaniel Ashby tipped back the glass of sweet ruby liquid and drank the contents in two long swallows.

  “My son, you’ll develop gout if you continue drinking so much port. Just like Mr. Pitt.”

  “The prime minister likes port as well?” Nathaniel straightened up in his dining room chair. “Perhaps I should send him a bottle of the 1775 port I picked up from Croft’s. Maybe that would ensure a summons to see him. Wouldn’t it be grand to do some service on behalf of the Crown?”

  Nathaniel’s life had taken a decidedly tedious turn since his affair with Lydia Brown, the housemaid, had ended. The girl had wanted him to declare himself for her. Patent nonsense. So he had given her a bottle of perfume, a swat on the rear, and told her to find a footman to marry. Lydia cried tempestuously for several days, out of his mother’s earshot but always in his full view. Sensing his weariness with it all, she had secured another posting elsewhere before Maude got wind of their affair and dismissed her without a reference.

  He patted his sated belly contentedly. Mother really did make things easy for him, didn’t she? But with no mistress at present, and his hope of an easy marriage with his former sister-in-law having come to nothing, he felt cagey and restless. He needed something to excite him. Some kind of invigorating exploit. An invitation to meet with England’s prime minister would be very stimulating. Was Pitt a Tory or a Whig? Well, no matter. Fine liquor could be appreciated by a man of either party.

  “Son, Mr. Pitt isn’t in office anymore since his bickering with the king, remember? It’s Mr. Addington now, although with his foolishness over the Treaty of Amiens—we wouldn’t be at war had he not negotiated so badly—no doubt Pitt will build a coalition and throw him out. What sort of service do you mean, anyway?”

  “Hmm?” Nathaniel had quit listening to his mother. Politics tired him. Who cared about affairs of state? Divisions in Parliament, social unrest, the devaluation of currency—how tiresome it all was. No adventure or glory in it. What would be stimulating would be a secret assignment. Ferret out French spies or something. As long as it wasn’t too dangerous. Maybe he could sample a French doxy along the way. Didn’t the king hand out titles for that kind of service?

  “Pitt’s out? Pity. Do you know if Mr. Addington enjoys port?”

  An excited rapping on the door startled Marguerite as she was writing a letter to Claudette. Marie darted in, waving a letter.

  “I have a nice invitation to the castle. You come with me.”

  “To the castle? Do you mean Edinburgh Castle? Have we done something wrong?” Marguerite had caught glimpses of the castle’s commanding presence atop the hill of volcanic rock behin
d the Assembly Rooms. Local visitors had told her that the twelfth-century fortress was still used as a prison, having last been used to house Americans in their war of rebellion, and was now seeing reuse as the war with France was gaining a footing. Other buildings inside the castle’s walls included a powder magazine, a barracks, and a residence for the castle’s governor.

  “No, nothing’s wrong. Something’s right. The governor of the castle visited here recently and liked the exhibition. He has invited me for a supper at the castle, and I would like to take you. You are a good girl and you work so hard.”

  “Madame, I would be honored to attend supper with you and the governor.”

  And so it was settled. Marguerite wore the same frock she had chosen for her supper with Mr. Philipsthal back in London. Having been sequestered inside the salon almost constantly since her arrival, she wasn’t sure if it was fashionable in Edinburgh or not. But there was no time to shop for fripperies. Marie dressed in a dark green gown with a matching long-sleeved jacket. She wore no jewelry and a very simple comb with trailing ribbons. Yet her hair was in its usual perfect arrangement.

  The governor, Sir Alexander Hope, had arranged for a carriage to pick them up and bring them the short distance to the castle. Marguerite realized the wisdom of this plan as the horses began straining up the steep grade from the end of the esplanade into the forbidding castle. A walk in her brocaded mules would have surely resulted in a broken heel, if not an injury to her legs, and the nippy wet weather that had been present since their arrival would have made the walk that much more unpleasant.