The Halls of History
Although born in Boston, artist Sinclair Hyatt lived in London after the Great War came to an end. It was there the former soldier got a job sculpting wax figures for Madame Tussaud's museum. Sinclair enjoyed living in Great Britain; however, after his father died in 1928, he returned to the United States to take care of his ailing mother. In less than a year after her husband's passing, Mrs. Hyatt followed him to the grave, and her son began making plans to return to Europe.
Sadly, the Stock Market Crash and resulting economic depression forced him to change his plans. For six years Sinclair took work where he could find it, hoping to stay one step ahead of the bread line and soup kitchen. Then in 1935 he joined the Federal Art Project, a branch of President Franklin D. Roosevelt's Works Progress Administration. It was through the WPA that he got the job of painting a mural in the town hall of Puritan Falls.
The local residents did not know what to make of Sinclair Hyatt. It was not that the people were rude or unfriendly; they were just a little intimidated by him. Most were fisherman, farmers and shopkeepers who had never been inside a wax museum. Except for returning veterans, few had ever journeyed far from the boundaries of their quaint New England village. What should they discuss with an artist who had lived in Europe? What did they have in common with him? When people met their neighbors in town, they asked about each other's families, they discussed business and they gossiped about other neighbors. With Sinclair Hyatt, the villagers invariably stuck to a single topic: the weather.
Only one person took the time to actually get to know the artist: Joel Trainer, a fourteen-year-old boy who had difficulty making friends with children his own age because he was what people euphemistically referred to as "slow." Even in the early grades, the boy had difficulty keeping up with his classmates, and after falling further and further behind, he eventually dropped out of school.
"Did you have to go to college to become a painter?" the boy asked Sinclair one afternoon as he watched the man work.
Sinclair turned around and smiled at him, thankful that Joel was not asking him about the chance of rain that afternoon.
"No, I didn't," he replied. "I learned it from my aunt."
"It must be nice to be able to paint like that."
"Do you like art?"
"Sure. Who doesn't?"
"Did you ever try to paint?"
"No, but I whittle now and then. I made a mermaid out of a piece of driftwood once. Would you like to see it?"
"I'd love to. Do you have it with you?"
"No, but I only live down the road. I can run home and get it."
Sinclair looked at his wristwatch. It was nearly noon.
"Tell you what, why don't you go get your mermaid and then meet me at the luncheonette. I'll treat you to a sandwich and a Coca-Cola."
Fifteen minutes later the two men met for lunch, and Joel proudly showed the artist his wooden figure.
"You made this with a whittling knife?" Sinclair asked, greatly impressed by the boy's artistic ability. "Have you ever tried sculpting with clay?"
"No, sir."
Over their tuna salad sandwiches, the artist told Joel about his experience at Tussauds.
"I'll bet you could learn how to sculpt."
"I don't think so. I'm not good at learning things," the young man admitted, putting his head down with embarrassment.
"What do you mean? You learned how to whittle, didn't you? If this mermaid is any indication, you've got real talent."
Joel's head picked up, and his smile stretched from ear to ear.
The following Sunday after attending church, Joel went to Sinclair's rented room above Fletcher's Drug Store on Essex Street. The artist had covered the kitchen table with a paint-stained cloth, and his tools were placed beside a lump of clay.
"I thought we'd start with something small," Sinclair announced. "Why don't we try making your mermaid in clay?"
Joel nodded his head enthusiastically.
"The first step is to rough out your form. Take the clay in your hands and mold it into the general size and shape you want."
Step by step, Joel followed Sinclair's instructions. The artist taught the boy to use the proper tools: carvers, loops and cleaners. He showed him how to paint, glaze and fire pieces in a kiln. The boy proved to be an apt pupil and learned quickly. During the course of the summer, Joel graduated from making a small clay mermaid to sculpting a full-size bust of his instructor.
"I do believe you're a better sculptor than I am," Sinclair declared after examining his own likeness.
* * *
Not long after the last of autumn's brightly colored leaves fell from the trees, Hyatt completed the mural in the town hall.
"I guess this means you'll be leaving Puritan Falls," Joel said, fighting back his tears.
"I'm afraid so. Friday morning I'm going to take a train to New York, but I'm sure I'll be returning to the Boston area from time to time. When I do, I'll come up here and visit you."
It was a promise neither one of them believed the artist would actually keep.
Another world war would be fought before Sinclair Hyatt and Joel Trainer would cross paths again. The boy was twenty-six years old by the time the artist returned to Puritan Falls. Appropriately enough, the two met in the lobby of the town hall where Sinclair's mural still paid tribute to the maritime heritage of the area.
"Have you come back to admire your work?"
Sinclair turned and was surprised to see his former art student, now grown into a fine man.
"I was at a funeral in Gloucester and decided to stop here on the way home. You still live in town?"
"Where would I go?" Joel replied and then added, "I thought you were going back to London."
"I changed my mind. I just opened a wax museum in Boston; it's called the Halls of History. Nothing big, only about a dozen figures right now, but I hope to expand."
"I would like to see it someday," Joel said wistfully.
Sinclair suddenly had an idea.
"Why don't you come down to Boston with me? I can use your help. I've got a touch of arthritis in my fingers, and I can't work like I used to. I can't afford to pay you much right now, not until business picks up, but I can give you room and board for free."
Joel didn't care if he was paid or not. He would be living in Boston, doing something he enjoyed and working beside a man he practically idolized.
* * *
At first Joel served as Sinclair's assistant, but when he became used to working with wax, he created most of the figures himself, until finally the older artist, in near constant pain from his arthritis, gave up sculpting altogether.
In the ten years since Joel had arrived in Boston, the Halls of History had grown considerably. Not only had the wax figures increased in number, but they were also much more detailed and lifelike than those Hyatt created.
"You're a hell of an artist," Sinclair commented as he watched his protégé finishing up a wax figure of Thomas Jefferson. "It would have been a crime for you to have spent your life selling hardware in Puritan Falls."
"I had a good teacher," Joel said, acknowledging all his friend had done for him.
"Why don't you take a break and go get something to eat? You've been working nonstop since early this morning."
"I think I will. I'm kinda hungry. Can I bring you something back?"
"Sure. How about a ham sandwich and a cup of coffee?"
Joel walked three blocks to the sandwich shop he and Sinclair frequented. He took a seat at the counter, and a young woman, one whom he had never seen before, asked to take his order. When he looked up into the girl's face, he felt a quiver in his stomach. She was beautiful, but not like the movie stars who graced the silver screen or the models who posed for pinup calendars. Her face was angelic, for want of a better word. Her soft, soulful eyes melted the sculptor's heart and inspired him to capture her beauty in wax.
"Did you want mayo on that sandwich?" she asked, her pencil hovering over her order pad.
"Yes, please. And tomato."
It was hard for Joel to speak of mundane things like condiments and sandwiches when he felt as though the earth beneath his feet had shifted. For the past three years, he had wanted to create a figure of Lady Jane Grey, the Tudor queen who ruled for nine days before she was beheaded at the tender age of sixteen. He wanted to portray her as a lovely young girl in the first bloom of womanhood, so the museum's patrons would fully realize what a tragedy her execution had been. Until he saw the young waitress at the sandwich shop, however, he had no clear image of Lady Jane's face in his head.
Thankfully, the waitress agreed to sit for the artist (for a reasonable fee), and Joel was able to create what he felt was his greatest work.
"Are you going to make Dudley to go along with her?" Sinclair asked when he saw the finished product several months later.
Lord Guilford Dudley was Jane's ill-fated husband for a period of less than one year. Pawns of ambitious parents, Guilford and Jane had been married only six months when they were tried and convicted of high treason by supporters of Mary Tudor. They were both beheaded three months later.
"No," Joel replied. "Historically speaking, he wasn't very important."
Sinclair smiled. He suspected the young artist did not want anyone, real or wax, eclipsing the attention that was due his masterpiece.
* * *
The creation of Lady Jane Grey triggered a period of great artistry for Joel Trainer. It was during this time that he created his most lifelike figures including those of William Penn, Pocahontas, Paul Revere, Harriet Tubman, William Shakespeare and Louis XIV. His imagination and creativity seemed to know no bounds.
Sinclair Hyatt, on the other hand, was declining steadily. His health became so bad that he rarely left his apartment to visit the museum. Finally, with his doctors' bills mounting, the former sculptor was forced to sell the Halls of History. Ideally, the museum should have gone to Joel, but the young man lacked the business sense of his mentor. In fact, he did not have the basic math skills to manage his personal finances, let alone run the museum.
Sinclair was not about to abandon his former assistant, though. He made it a condition of the sale that the new owner retain Joel as sculptor and creative director, and he even gave the young man thirty percent of the profit he made on the sale of the museum. But neither the money nor the promise of job security could assuage Joel's sadness at his friend's retirement.
To make matters worse, Harvey Kaplan, the new owner, was a man with no artistic appreciation or ability, a man whose sole purpose in purchasing the wax museum was financial gain. When business began to decline during the early Sixties, Harvey instructed his sculptor to create more lurid, sensational moments in history.
"I'm talking about sculpting Marie Antoinette getting her head cut off, Nathan Hale being strung up by the neck and the Salem witches being burned at the stake."
"But they didn't burn the witches in Salem; they hanged them."
Joel may not have had a head for numbers, but one thing he did know—thanks to Sinclair Hyatt and his lifelong love of the subject—was history.
"I don't care if they lined them up in front of a firing squad and shot them," Harvey said sarcastically. "I just want figures that will bring people into this place. No one is interested in seeing Lincoln give his Gettysburg address. They'd rather see him being assassinated by John Wilkes Booth."
Although Joel balked at the idea, he followed Harvey's orders nonetheless. Rather than sculpting P.T. Barnum as he'd originally intended, he created a two-figure tableau depicting William Wallace being drawn and quartered and another one showing Charlotte Corday stabbing radical journalist Jean-Paul Marat in his bathtub.
When word of the new exhibits spread, people flocked to the museum. Visitors young and old quickly walked past the Founding Fathers, heroes of the Civil War, presidents, inventors and revolutionaries to stand and stare at the more gruesome displays. Ticket sales went up, which pleased Harvey Kaplan to no end. It occurred to the mercenary owner that with more such figures, the museum would pull in even more people. This prompted him to call Joel into his office one evening.
"I'm going to make some changes around here," the owner announced.
"What changes?" Joel asked warily.
"I'm going to begin with the name. Halls of History is to be rechristened the Halls of Horror. This museum is going to cater to people's interest in the morbid and the macabre. It'll feature representations of murder, execution and assassination."
"It will take years for me to create all the new figures we'll need."
"We won't need any new figures—not yet, anyway. I want you to reuse the ones we have. There'll be no more tableaus of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, Washington crossing the Delaware, Lee surrendering to Grant at Appomattox or the Pilgrims landing on Plymouth Rock. Redress those figures as more interesting characters."
After his meeting with Harvey Kaplan, Joel went home, taking with him a catalog from a theatrical costume company and a list of all the figures currently on display in the museum. He would need to decide which costumes could be reused and what new ones he would have to order. Within minutes after opening to the first page, he closed the catalog. It was a job for which he had no heart. All that he and Sinclair Hyatt had so lovingly created would be altered, perverted for the sake of increased profits.
* * *
By the end of the following week, the first shipment of costumes arrived at the museum. As much as he hated to lose the revenue, Harvey Kaplan closed the place for two weeks in order to give Joel Trainer time to restage the exhibits. He also plastered signs on the exterior of the building, announcing the grand opening of the Halls of Horror at the end of the two-week period.
"You better hurry up with the changes," the owner warned his sculptor. "If this place isn't ready for the grand opening, I'm going to dock your pay."
Joel reluctantly began the unpleasant task of redressing the figures in the Hall of British History. Off came Henry VIII's hose, doublet and faux ermine-trimmed coat and on went the Victorian gentleman's suit and cloak that transformed the Tudor king into Jack the Ripper. Henry's royal daughter, Elizabeth I, was recast as one of the Ripper's victims, Annie Chapman. After placing a rubber knife in Henry/Jack's hand, Joel sprinkled fake blood on Elizabeth/Annie's slashed garments. The sight of his once-magnificent wax figures made the sculptor feel ill.
He turned away from the redressed Tudors, and his eyes fell on the beautiful Lady Jane Grey, her starched ruff framing her delicate face. A warm feeling enveloped him, the same warmth he always felt when he beheld his greatest achievement.
"You needn't worry, Lady Jane," he whispered, gazing up at the likeness of the sandwich shop waitress. "I won't allow you to be so degraded."
Only after all the Halls of History was converted into the Halls of Horror—when Martha Washington became Rebecca Nurse hanging as a condemned witch; her husband, George, became Andrew Borden who was being axed to death by his daughter, Lizzie (formerly Red Cross founder Clara Barton); Dolley Madison was burning at the stake as Joan of Arc; and Cleopatra became Countess Elizabeth Báthory who bathed in the blood of peasant girls after she tortured them—did Joel return to the former Hall of British History to finish his job.
It was almost midnight, and the Halls of Horror was to have its grand opening the following day. The sculptor looked at his Lady Jane Grey apologetically.
"I wish I could leave you just the way you are. No, I wish I could take you from this horrible place and put you in a palace on a throne where you belong. But I can't. Although I made you with my own two hands, Harvey Kaplan would no doubt have me arrested and thrown into jail for theft if I tried to remove you from the museum."
Finally, he could put it off no longer. He carefully removed the stiff lace ruff, the jeweled bodice, the farthingale and the skirt and replaced them with a simple, unadorned white dress. Joel then tilted Jane's chin up as though she were looking to heaven, perhaps hoping to see her young husband, Guilford Dudley, who had been executed earlier that same day she met her fate. The wax figure of former president Franklin Delano Roosevelt, whose well-known features were concealed by a black executioner's hood, stood nearby holding a movie prop ax. With the placement of a chopping block at Lady Jane's feet, the sculptor's work was completed.
* * *
As Harvey Kaplan had hoped, opening day of the Halls of Horror was a great success. People lined up for two blocks to see the new exhibits. The owner, as could be expected, was in high spirits. After the museum closed at nine o'clock, he called Joel into his office again.
"Have some champagne," he offered. "Some sort of celebration is called for after our success."
"No, thank you," the sculptor replied. "I don't drink."
"Not even a little toast in memory of your old friend and employer?"
When Kaplan saw the puzzled look on Joel's face, he asked, "Didn't you read today's paper? Sinclair Hyatt died yesterday."
Not wanting Kaplan to see his tears, the sculptor left the room and walked back to his studio. Even though they had seen little of each other since the museum was sold, the two men corresponded regularly, so it came as quite a shock for Joel to learn of the older man's death.
"I have no one now," he sobbed. "My mother, father and now Sinclair—all gone. I don't even have my work to satisfy me anymore."
Then he was reminded of his crowning achievement: Lady Jane Grey. Joel dried his tears and headed toward the former Hall of British History. He didn't know how long he stood staring at Lady Jane, but being near her helped calm him.
Suddenly, the sound of approaching footsteps broke the peaceful silence.
"Ah, there you are," Harvey Kaplan exclaimed. "I see you're looking at Jane Grey. That's one of the things I wanted to discuss with you."
Joel tensed, anticipating his employer's demands.
"I'm not happy with the way this scene is staged. I want you to have the queen's decapitated body leaning over the blood-stained block. I also want you to pose the executioner holding up her head for the crowd to see."
"No!" Joel groaned in a barely audible voice.
"What did you say?"
"I said, 'no,'" he repeated loudly, daring for the first time in his life to answer back. "My Lady Jane Grey is a work of art. I would never humiliate her like that."
"You'll do as you're told or you'll be out on your ass."
"I won't murder her! I can't; I love her."
Harvey Kaplan looked at the sculptor whose face was a mask of grief and pain.
"You're insane!" he spat. "I want you out of here, you simpleton!"
A scuffle ensued and Joel pushed Kaplan, who landed on his back, at the foot of Lady Jane Grey.
"I'll have you arrested for assault!" the owner screamed.
But as he attempted to get up from the floor, he looked up at the wax figure of Lady Jane. She was standing above him, looking down, her beautiful face alive with rage.
"What the ...?"
Harvey Kaplan's words died when the wax figure of the tragic young queen raised the executioner's ax and cleanly took off his head.
When Joel recovered from his shock, his first thought was to protect his sculpture. He removed the ax from her wax hands and returned it to President Roosevelt.
"I must get you out of here," he said, as he lifted the rigid figure off the ground and carried her out the back door of the museum.
* * *
The highly publicized murder of Harvey Kaplan was quickly solved. The Suffolk County prosecutor believed he had an open-and-shut case. The killer's fingerprints had been on the weapon, witnesses outside the museum had overheard the defendant arguing with the victim on the night of the crime, people from Puritan Falls attested to his subnormal intelligence and one look at the sculptor's work was proof enough that he wasn't "right."
What was the motive for killing his employer? The prosecutor suggested the death of Sinclair Hyatt, his friend and mentor, had sent Joel Trainer, already in a fragile state of mind, over the edge. The jury agreed. The gifted sculptor was convicted of murder and subsequently electrocuted.
After Harvey Kaplan's death, his nephew Chet inherited the Halls of Horror. Hoping to capitalize on his uncle's grizzly murder, Chet immediately hired a sculptor to create a new exhibit that showed Joel Trainer killing his uncle with an ax. The two new figures were placed in the same spot where the missing figure of Lady Jane Grey once stood, and Franklin Delano Roosevelt's body was given a new head that bore the likeness of Harvey Kaplan.
The day the new exhibit was to be unveiled, however, Chet Kaplan and the sculptor were surprised to discover that the newly created wax figure of the murderer had disappeared.
* * *
In the abandoned Palace Furniture warehouse on the outskirts of Boston, the beautifully sculpted Lady Jane Grey, once again wearing her royal gown and jewels, sat on a handcrafted wooden throne beside a figure of her husband, Lord Guilford Dudley. When the sun rose and the first light of morning peeked in through the grimy skylights, Lady Jane turned and faced her beloved. She smiled, and Dudley/Joel Trainer tenderly took her delicate wax hand in his own.
When Tussauds told Salem he was to be cast in wax, I think he had something a little grander in mind.
