It all depends upon the point of view. One sacrifices one's game or one's curves. Either way, the choice has its compensations.
L'Hermitage is not so chic as la Boulié, but there are true golfers, even among the social elect, who enjoy playing on the Hermitage links and like the democratic geniality of the less exclusive club; so the membership list has its sprinkling of notable names.
The course lies out near St. Germain, on the old farm of M. Jean Boussod, and neither the links nor the house will compare with la Boulié in point of art and costliness; but there is a charm in the cluster of old-fashioned cottages over which the vines and roses clamber, in the raftered dining-room, in the old fruit trees under which tea is served, in the stately poplars which stand sentinel over the place, and in the informality which makes even the tourist stranger feel less far from Ardsley and Baltusrol.
There are good links at Compiègne, too, but Compiègne is too far from Paris for the ordinary golfer, unless he is going away for a week-end of the sport, and only in hot weather do the Parisians stray so far from the boulevards in pursuit of the royal game.
For tennis, the Parisienne has more love than for golf. The game is an older friend, and then, though it does not furnish, as does golf, ample pretext for prolonged solitude à deux, it does have a dramatic quality, a certain swift dash and spirit which appeal to Madame's temperament and are lacking in the more protracted and leisurely game. There are good tennis courts at the golf clubs and in various parts of the Bois, but it is at the Cercle de l'Ile de Puteaux that one finds tennis at its best and most picturesque. It is one of the most fashionable and most exclusive clubs of Paris, this club on the little island of Puteaux, in the Seine. One sees there no one who is not of the elect, and the little ferry that carries the chosen spirits to these Elysian fields is thronged with the beauty and fashion of Paris, day after day, during the season. Such a gay freight the little ferry carries when Puteaux is especially en fête, such charming women, such ravishing gowns, such bewitching hats, such coquettish parasols, such admiring cavaliers! A veritable "embarquement pour Cythère!" The ferry should be guided by flutterings loves, à la Fragonard, instead of by the most prosaic Charon who fills the position and regards, unmoved, the carnival of the vanities.
They play tennis at Puteaux, but they play at the making of love and of epigrams and of fashion more earnestly still. One may see all the fashion leaders of the beau monde drinking tea there on a bright spring afternoon,—the lovable young Duchesse d'Uzes, with her excessive modernity grafted upon her ancient lineage and traditions; the beautiful Madame Letellier, who is one of the best dressed women of Paris; the blonde and chic Vicomtesse Foy, the popular Mrs. Ridgway, the wealthy Baronne Henri de Rothschild, Baronne Seillière. These are some of the women who set the fashions, but the complete list is a long one, and Puteaux brings together all these orchids of Paris.
There have been memorable evening fêtes at Puteaux when the island was converted into a fairyland of gleaming lights and mysterious shadows of flowers and music, and all that modern luxury which is pagan in its prodigality; and cotillions are given there regularly during a part of the season. But the island is at its best when the sun is shining on it and touching to vividness the pretty frocks of the tennis players in the courts, when vivacious women in wonderful gowns and hats are gossiping over their tea in the shade or flirting under their parasols of chiffon and lace. It belongs to the open-air phase of French society, does Puteaux, for, oddly enough, the Parisienne of the scented boudoir and the hot-house associations has a passion for plein air.
Fashion's Ferry