Kate Berridge by Madame Tussaud: A Life in Wax Page A

other exposed from an early age to the sink-or-swim extremes of life on a busy boulevard. Yet Marie relates how this did not prevent a strong bond developing between them. Such was this unlikely rapport that an appeal was made to Curtius to allow his niece to take up residence at Versailles, ‘Madame Elizabeth desiring to have the constant enjoyment of Madame Tussaud’s society’. (Of course she was still Mademoiselle Grosholtz, but out of respect for her ageand the fame of the name the memoirs refer to her throughout as Madame Tussaud.)
    This elevation of her status–in this case from art tutor to mentor–is a consistent trend in the memoirs. Time and again she plays up connections, and is prone to enhancing her position. This aggrandisement even extends to the King and Queen. For example, she emphasizes her credentials as a royal commentator, having ‘formed her opinion from a thorough knowledge of the character of Marie Antoinette’, which she ‘had the best opportunity of acquiring from having so long lived under the same roof as her royal mistress’. Marie defends the much maligned Queen, interpreting her behaviour with charity: ‘That she was fond of pleasure, dress and admiration, there can be little doubt; and that to the latter she might lend too willing an ear, is possible; but that she was ever induced to be guilty of any dereliction from morality, Madame Tussaud regards as the foulest calumny.’ But even more striking is Marie’s account of her easy familiarity with the King. She relates how she often had ‘opportunities of conversing with Louis XVI and found him very easy and unreserved in his manner’ and ‘perfectly free from that appearance of condescension, or air of protection, which persons of his rank so often adopt towards their inferiors’.
    Reading rather like thespian anecdotes by a star-struck actor who in reality got more auditions than roles, her account of her life at Versailles has her centre stage with a stellar cast. A significant chunk of her memoir concerns her eight years at court, living among the people whose fate she so famously recorded for posterity. Her assertion to have been virtually the Princess’s shadow, with a bedroom next door and a domestic routine that included intimate suppers together and being present when Elizabeth conversed with her brother the King, all reinforce the impression of Marie’s role as a valued member of the royal household, like a noble lady-in-waiting. It is a picture of sentimental and inseparable female friendship of a sort that Rousseau had popularized, and that emulated the love-in between Marie Antoinette and the Duchesse de Polignac. More importantly, it is reminiscent of much that appears in Madame Campan’s 1823 Memoirs of the Private Life of Marie Antoinette .
    The contrast between Marie’s background and that of Madame Campan was vast. The latter was a woman of noble birth whose connections qualified her for the position of reader ( lectrice ) to the royal household. After her marriage to Marie Antoinette’s private secretary, she was honoured with the role of First Woman of the Bedchamber, a position that she loyally fulfilled for twenty years, being on constant call for the Queen until the downfall of the monarchy in August 1792. As she herself wrote, ‘I have spent half my life either with the daughters of Louis XV or with Marie Antoinette. I became privy to some extraordinary facts, the publication of which may be interesting, and the truth of the details will form the merit of my work.’ Marie’s time at court would have coincided with Campan’s tenure there, but whereas Madame Campan makes no mention of Marie in her detailed commentary of domestic life at Versailles, Marie in her own memoir refers to Madame Campan as ‘her most intimate friend’ and relates how they had conspiratorial conversations about the court ban on discussing the