The Duc de Luynes and his wife, who was Mlle. de Crussol (daughter of the brilliant Duchesse d'Uzes of Boulanger fame), live at Dampierre, another interesting pile filled with rare pictures, bric-a-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, NEE 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' chateau of Maintenon is an inheritance from Louis XIV.'s prudish favorite, who founded and enriched the de Noailles family.
The Duc and Duchesse d'Uzes 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, NEE 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 chateaux 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'AGREMENT.
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'Uzes is a sculptor of mark, and when during the autumn Mme. de Tredern 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 HABITUES of the Hotel 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.
