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!”
