Victorian Tales

• Whether this story is true or not is entirely open for debate. But painter John Ruskin apparently needed some inspiration for his painting Snow Storm - a Steamboat off of the Harbour's Mouth which was exhibited in 1842. So much inspiration, in fact, that he claimed to friends that he had literally been tied to the mast of a ship so that he could experience the full drama of being caught up in the middle of a fierce snowstorm. Ruskin said that he didn't expect to survive, but he was certainly able to concentrate hard enough during the storm to conjure up the perfect evocation of what it felt like being tied up at sea after the supposed incident occurred.

• While Madam Marie Tussaud was in Paris, she became involved in the French Revolution. She met many important people during this time such as Napoleon and Robespierre. Despite these friendships, she was still on good terms with the French royalty. For 9 years and up until the French Revolution, Madam Tussaud taught art to the sister of King Louis XVI. The French royalty liked Madam Tussaud so much that she even lived at Versailles for awhile.   Madam Tussaud was arrested on the grounds of having royalist sympathies. She was sent to prison and awaited execution by guillotine along with Josephine de Beauharnais. Tussaud's head was shaven as was normally the case before executions. She was however saved for her talents in wax works and was spared so that she could make death masks of victims of the guillotine, many of whom were her friends. She made death masks of Marie Antoinette and Robespierre, amongst others.  

• Victorian eccentric, Dr William Buckland, gained notoriety for his love of eating strange things. The dishes he digested included: elephants' trunks, bat's urine and the mummified heart of King Louis XIV! 

• The second Baron Rothschild also shared Buckland's taste for the eccentric and had a carriage drawn by four zebras, snakes twined round the banisters and had a dinner party with 12 dressed monkeys.    

• World famous Victorian stuntman Bobby Leach survived Niagara Falls, but died after slipping on an orange peel.