title: Madame Tussaud: and the History of Waxworks
author: Pamela Pilbeam
description: <div>Pamela Pilbeam is the author of <em>French Socialists Before Marx</em> (2000). She is Professor of French History at Royal Holloway, University of London.</div>
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  Smethurstses  
    
  
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  # Smethurstses
  
  
  ### Frances Hodgson Burnett
  
  
  
  
  
  This page copyright © 2001 Blackmask Online.
  
  
  
  
  
  http://www.blackmask.com  
    
  
  
  
  
  
  SMETHURSTSES, mum -- yes, mum, on accounts of me bein' Smethurst an' the wax-
  works mine. Fifteen year I've been in the business, an' if I live fifteen year
  more I shall have been in it thirty; for wax-works is the kind of a business
  as a man gets used to and friendly with, after a manner. Lor' bless you!
  there's no tellin' how much company them there wax-works is. I've picked a
  companion or so out of the collection. Why, there's Lady Jane Grey, as is
  readin' her Greek Testyment; when her works is in order an' she's set a-goin',
  liftin' her eyes gentle-like from her book, I could fancy as she knew every
  trouble I'd had an' was glad as they was over. And there's the Royal Fam'ly on
  the dais an a settin' together as free and home-like and smilin' as if they
  wasn't nothin' more than flesh an' b