Since those “precious” days when the habitués of the Hôtel Rambouillet
first raised social intercourse to the level of a fine art, the morals
and manners, the amusements and intrigues of great French ladies have
interested the world and influenced the ways of civilized nations.
Thanks to Memoirs and Maxims, we are able to reconstruct the life of a
seventeenth or eighteenth century noblewoman as completely as German
archeologists have rebuilt the temple of the Wingless Victory on the
Acropolis from surrounding débris.
Interest in French society has, however, diminished during this century,
ceasing almost entirely with the Second Empire, when foreign women gave
the tone to a parvenu court from which the older aristocracy held aloof
in disgust behind the closed gates of their “hôtels” and historic
châteaux.
With the exception of Balzac, few writers have drawn authentic pictures
of nineteenth-century noblewomen in France; and his vivid portrayals are
more the creations of genius than correct descriptions of a caste.
During the last fifty years French aristocrats have ceased to be factors
even in matters social, the sceptre they once held having passed into
alien hands, the daughters of Albion to a great extent replacing their
French rivals in influencing the ways of the “world,”—a change, be it
remarked in passing, that has not improved the tone of society or
contributed to the spread of good manners.
People like the French nobles, engaged in sulking and attempting to
overthrow or boycott each succeeding régime, must naturally lose their
influence. They have held aloof so long—fearing to compromise themselves
by any advances to the powers that be, and restrained by countless
traditions from taking an active part in either the social or political
strife—that little by little they have been passed by and ignored; which
is a pity, for amid the ruin of many hopes and ambitions they have
remained true to their caste and handed down from generation to
generation the secret of that gracious urbanity and tact which
distinguished the Gallic noblewoman in the last century from the rest of
her kind and made her so deft in the difficult art of pleasing—and being
pleased.
Within the last few years there have, however, been signs of a change.
Young members of historic houses show an amusing inclination to escape
from their austere surroundings and resume the place their grandparents
abdicated. If it is impossible to rule as formerly, they at any rate
intend to get some fun out of existence.
This joyous movement to the front is being made by the young matrons
enlisted under the “Seven little duchesses’” banner. Oddly enough, a
baker’s half-dozen of ducal coronets are worn at this moment, in France,
by small and sprightly women, who have shaken the dust of centuries from
those ornaments and sport them with a decidedly modern air!
It is the members of this clique who, in Paris during the spring, at
their châteaux in the summer and autumn, and on the Riviera after
Christmas, lead the amusements and strike the key for the modern French
world.
No one of these light-hearted ladies takes any particular precedence over
the others. All are young, and some are wonderfully nice to look at.
The Duchesse d’Uzès is, perhaps, the handsomest, good looks being an
inheritance from her mother, the beautiful and wayward Duchesse de
Chaulme.
There is a vivid grace about the daughter, an intense vitality that
suggests some beautiful being of the forest. As she moves and speaks one
almost expects to hear the quick breath coming and going through her
quivering nostrils, and see foam on her full lips. Her mother’s tragic
death has thrown a glamor of romance around the daughter’s life that
heightens the witchery of her beauty.
Next in good looks comes an American, the Duchesse de la Rochefoucauld,
although marriage (which, as de Maupassant remarked, is rarely becoming)
has not been propitious to that gentle lady. By rights she should have
been mentioned first, as her husband outranks, not only all the men of
his age, but also his cousin, the old Duc de la
Rochefoucauld-Doudeauville, to whom, however, a sort of brevet rank is
accorded on account of his years, his wealth, and the high rank of his
two wives. It might almost be asserted that our fair compatriot wears
the oldest coronet in France. She certainly is mistress of three of the
finest châteaux in that country, among which is Miromail, where the
family live, and Liancourt, a superb Renaissance structure, a delight to
the artist’s soul.
The young Duchesse de Brissac runs her two comrades close as regards
looks. Brissac is the son of Mme. de Trédern, whom Newporters will
remember two years ago, when she enjoyed some weeks of our summer season.
Their château was built by the Brissac of Henri IV.’s time and is one of
the few that escaped uninjured through the Revolution, its vast stone
corridors and massive oak ceilings, its moat and battlements, standing
to-day unimpaired amid a group of châteaux including Chaumont,
Rochecotte, Azay-le-Rideau, Ussé, Chenonceau, within “dining” distance of
each other, that form a centre of gayety next in importance to Paris and
Cannes. In the autumn these spacious castles are filled with joyous
bands and their ample stables with horses. A couple of years ago, when
the king of Portugal and his suite were entertained at Chaumont for a
week of stag-hunting, over three hundred people, servants, and guests,
slept under its roof, and two hundred horses were housed in its stables.
The Duc de Luynes and his wife, who was Mlle. de Crussol (daughter of the
brilliant Duchesse d’Uzès of Boulanger fame), live at Dampierre, another
interesting pile filled with rare pictures, bric-à-brac, and statuary,
first among which is Jean Goujon’s life-sized statue (in silver) of Louis
XIII., presented by that monarch to his favorite, the founder of the
house. This gem of the Renaissance stands in an octagonal chamber hung
in dark velvet, unique among statues. It has been shown but once in
public, at the Loan Exhibition in 1872, when the patriotic nobility lent
their treasures to collect a fund for the Alsace-Lorraine exiles.
The Duchesse de Noailles, _née_ Mlle. de Luynes, is another of this
coterie and one of the few French noblewomen who has travelled. Many
Americans will remember the visit she made here with her mother some
years ago, and the effect her girlish grace produced at that time. The
de Noailles’ château of Maintenon is an inheritance from Louis XIV.’s
prudish favorite, who founded and enriched the de Noailles family. The
Duc and Duchesse d’Uzès live near by at Bonnelle with the old Duc de
Doudeauville, her grandfather, who is also the grandfather of Mme. de
Noailles, these two ladies being descended each from a wife of the old
duke, the former from the Princesse de Polignac and the latter from the
Princesse de Ligne.
The Duchesse de Bisaccia, _née_ Princesse Radziwill, and the Duchesse
d’Harcourt, who complete the circle of seven, also live in this vicinity,
where another group of historic residences, including Eclimont and
Rambouillet, the summer home of the president, rivals in gayety and
hospitality the châteaux of the Loire.
No coterie in England or in this country corresponds at all to this
French community. Much as they love to amuse themselves, the idea of
meeting any but their own set has never passed through their well-dressed
heads. They differ from their parents in that they have broken away from
many antiquated habits. Their houses are no longer lay hermitages, and
their opera boxes are regularly filled, but no foreigner is ever
received, no ambitious parvenu accepted among them. Ostracism here means
not a ten years’ exile, but lifelong banishment.
The contrast is strong between this rigor and the enthusiasm with which
wealthy new-comers are welcomed into London society or by our own upper
crust, so full of unpalatable pieces of dough. This exclusiveness of the
titled French reminds me—incongruously enough—of a certain arrangement of
graves in a Lenox cemetery, where the members of an old New England
family lie buried in a circle with their feet toward its centre. When I
asked, many years ago, the reason for this arrangement, a wit of that
day—a daughter, by the bye, of Mrs. Stowe—replied, “So that when they
rise at the Last Day only members of their own family may face them!”
One is struck by another peculiarity of these French men and women—their
astonishing proficiency in _les arts d’agrément_. Every Frenchwoman of
any pretensions to fashion backs her beauty and grace with some art in
which she is sure to be proficient. The dowager Duchesse d’Uzés is a
sculptor of mark, and when during the autumn Mme. de Trédern gives opera
at Brissac, she finds little difficulty in recruiting her troupe from
among the youths and maidens under her roof whose musical education has
been thorough enough to enable them to sing difficult music in public.
Love of the fine arts is felt in their conversation, in the arrangement
and decoration of their homes, and in the interest that an exhibition of
pictures or old furniture will excite. Few of these people but are
_habitués_ of the Hôtel Drouot and conversant with the value and
authenticity of the works of art daily sold there. Such elements combine
to form an atmosphere that does not exist in any other country, and lends
an interest to society in France which it is far from possessing
elsewhere.
There is but one way that an outsider can enter this Gallic paradise. By
marrying into it! Two of the seven ladies in question lack the
quarterings of the rest. Miss Mitchell was only a charming American
girl, and the mother of the Princesse Radziwill was Mlle. Blanc of Monte
Carlo. However, as in most religions there are ceremonies that purify,
so in this case the sacrament of marriage is supposed to have
reconstructed these wives and made them genealogically whole.
There is something incongruous to most people in the idea of a young girl
hardly out of the schoolroom bearing a ponderous title. The pomp and
circumstance that surround historic names connect them (through our
reading) with stately matrons playing the “heavy female” roles in life’s
drama, much as Lady Macbeth’s name evokes the idea of a raw-boned
mother-in-law sort of person, the reverse of attractive, and quite the
last woman in the world to egg her husband on to a crime—unless it were
wife murder!
Names like de Chevreuse, or de la Rochefoucauld, seem appropriate only to
the warlike amazons of the Fronde, or corpulent kill-joys in powder and
court trains of the Mme. Etiquette school; it comes as a shock, on being
presented to a group of girlish figures in the latest cut of golfing
skirts, who are chattering odds on the Grand Prix in faultless English,
to realize that these light-hearted _gamines_ are the present owners of
sonorous titles. One shudders to think what would have been the effect
on poor Marie Antoinette’s priggish mentor could she have foreseen her
granddaughter, clad in knickerbockers, running a petroleum tricycle in
the streets of Paris, or pedalling “tandem” across country behind some
young cavalry officer of her connection.
Let no simple-minded American imagine, however, that these up-to-date
women are waiting to welcome him and his family to their intimacy. The
world outside of France does not exist for a properly brought up French
aristocrat. Few have travelled; from their point of view, any man with
money, born outside of France, is a “Rasta,” unless he come with
diplomatic rank, in which case his position at home is carefully ferreted
out before he is entertained. Wealthy foreigners may live for years in
Paris, without meeting a single member of this coterie, who will,
however, join any new club that promises to be amusing; but as soon as
the “Rastas” get a footing, “the seven” and their following withdraw.
Puteaux had its day, then the “Polo Club” in the Bois became their
rendezvous. But as every wealthy American and “smart” Englishwoman
passing the spring in Paris rushed for that too open circle, like tacks
toward a magnet, it was finally cut by the “Duchesses,” who, together
with such attractive aides-de-camp as the Princesse de Poix, Mmes. de
Murat, de Morny, and de Broglie, inaugurated last spring “The Ladies’
Club of the Acacias,” on a tiny island belonging to the “Tir aux
Pigeons,” which, for the moment, is the fad of its founders.
It must be a surprise to those who do not know French family pride to
learn that exclusive as these women are there are cliques in France
to-day whose members consider the ladies we have been speaking of as
lacking in reserve. Men like Guy de Durfort, Duc de Lorges, or the Duc
de Massa, and their womenkind, hold themselves aloof on an infinitely
higher plane, associating with very few and scorning the vulgar herd of
“smart” people!
It would seem as if such a vigorous weeding out of the unworthy would
result in a rather restricted comradeship. Who the “elect” are must
become each year more difficult to discern.
Their point of view in this case cannot differ materially from that of
the old Methodist lady, who, while she was quite sure no one outside of
her own sect could possibly be saved, had grave fears concerning the
future of most of the congregation. She felt hopeful only of the
clergyman and herself, adding: “There are days when I have me doubts
about the minister!”