Ever since Madame
Tussaud began exhibiting wax figures in the eighteenth century, the display of
waxworks has had a theatrical flair. Charles Dickens picked up on this in his
novel The Old Curiosity Shop, which
depicts its heroine, Nell, getting a job with a traveling waxworks exhibit.
The proprietress
of the waxworks, Mrs. Jarley, first spied Nell when she was traveling in the company
of two Punch and Judy men, Codlin and Short. To Mrs. Jarley, however, her
refined waxworks show is infinitely superior to the pair's puppets. "Never
go into the company of a filthy Punch any more," she instructs Nell.
While Punch and
Judy shows emphasized their comedy, waxworks stressed their refined and
educational value. Mrs. Jarley puts it this way:
It's calm
and--what's that word again--critical?--no--classical, that's it--it's calm and
classical. No low beatings and knockings about, no jokings and squeakings like
your precious Punches, but always the same, with a constantly unchanging air of
coldness and gentility; and so like life, that if wax-work only spoke and
walked about, you'd hardly know the difference. I won't go so far as to say,
that, as it is, I've seen wax-work quite like life, but I've certainly seen
some life that was exactly like wax-work.
In spite of Mrs.
Jarley's pride in the refinement of her craft, she is embarrassed by the
fact that she cannot read. When she uncovers that Nell can read and write, she seizes
upon this fact as evidence that the girl will be a valuable addition to her
team. Mrs. Jarley then goes about teaching Nell the stories of all the people
depicted in wax, including "an unfortunate Maid of Honour in the Time of
Queen Elizabeth, who died from pricking her finger in consequence of working upon
a Sunday" and "Jasper Packlemerton of atrocious memory, who courted
and married fourteen wives, and destroyed them all by tickling the soles of
their feet."
What's
interesting about the waxworks segment of the novel is that Nell herself as
exhibitor becomes of greater interest to the crowds than any of the waxworks
themselves. Mrs. Jarley at first sends Nell out through the streets in a light
cart with a wax figure of a notorious brigand. This attempt to drum up interest
in the show works so well that the proprietress later keeps Nell in the
exhibition room and sends the brigand out alone, not wanting to cheapen the
value of her live exhibit.
Comically, the
waxworks figures turn out to be interchangeable. A wax figure of the famed
clown Joseph Grimaldi is altered to resemble the grammarian Lindley Murray, and
a figure of a murderess is transformed into the imminently respectable
dramatist Hannah More, author of the moralistic tragedy Percy. A nightcap and gown are added to a waxwork of William Pitt
to turn it into the likeness of the poet William Cowper, and Mary Queen of Scots
is dressed in male attire to become Lord Byron!
Not everyone was
a fan of the waxworks, however. Miss Monflathers, who runs a school for young
ladies, tells Nell that working for a waxworks is "very naughty and
unfeminine, and a perversion of the properties wisely and benignantly transmitted
to us." As hard as Mrs. Jarley works trying to induce visitors to patronize
her establishment, the public increasingly just comes to the entryway to peek
inside at the figures there rather than pay their sixpence admission to see the
whole show.
Dickens acknowledges
the difficulty of art forms that position themselves as middle-brow culture. Punch
and Judy, which has no pretensions to being great art, remains popular with the
working class, and the temples of culture at Drury Lane and Covent Garden
continue in operation. Mrs. Jarley's exhibition, while it has pretensions of
appealing to the gentry, earns the scorn of uppity people like Miss Monflathers
and fails to draw in the sixpences of working class folks who find the cost of
admission to be prohibitive.
