In Vanity Fair: A Tale of Frocks and Femininity

by Eleanor Hoyt Brainerd

What has Rambouillet to do with presidents and republics? It has always been the forest of kings, and its memories reach back through the dim years so far that modern history can but cling to its fingers, while old story and romance haunt every bosky depth and sunlit glade.

It was the heart of the ancient forest of Yveline, this forest of Rambouillet, the country of the Druids, a place of mystery and of fable. Cæsar tells how the Gauls hunted the wild bull in those forest fastnesses. Charlemagne went a-hunting under the great oaks and beeches, and by his side rode his empress, Luitgard the beautiful, while in their train came many a mighty warrior and prince; came, too, fair princesses whose names alone are keys to old romance,—Hiltrud and Rhodaid, Gisela and Theodrada and Bertha, each in robe of green velvet and with silken locks floating free from beneath a golden diadem. For the lover of pictures they still go riding down the forest aisles, those princesses of the far away, "swaying the reins with dainty finger-tips" and smiling on the gallants who rode beside them.

Many a fair lady has ridden in the shades of Rambouillet, with a courtier at her bridle rein, since Charlemagne's day. Each king of France in turn has followed the stag there. Some kings have loved there, some have died there; some, like Louis XIV, have merely been bored there; but it was when Louis XIII ruled in France that venery flourished in its greatest pomp and glory. Many hundreds of officials belonged to the royal hunting equipage in the time of this prodigal Louis, and all the court followed the king when, with sounding horns and baying hounds, he coursed through the woods of Rambouillet.

The princes of the blood had their equipages, too, and there is a story of a long-ago day when three stags broke cover simultaneously on the sides of St. Hubert's pond, and behind each streamed a brilliant hunting cortège sporting the gay colours of a princely house. One can see them there on the banks of the woodland pool—the stags at bay, the swarming hounds, the liveried huntsmen, the princes and courtiers in gorgeous array, the background of forest green and the water mirroring the whole. Extravagant folly, of course, those royal hunts, but a brave show. Your good republican loves better to see the president go forth in his tweeds and his slouch hat, with his guides and beaters and his tweed-clad guests, to shoot the timid little wood creatures that are driven into the range of the guns and killed by thousands in the name of sport. It costs less than Louis' hunting, this democratic battue, and, to-day, the peasants of France have bread,—but for the lover of romance, Rambouillet is filled with ghosts that make a finer show than the estimable republican president and his equally estimable but far from picturesque guests.

Pompous venery went down with all things regal in the Revolutionary flood, but Napoleon, ever theatrical at heart, appreciated the dramatic opportunities of the chase, and once more Rambouillet echoed to the bay of hounds and the call of horns, while the little great man rode in Charlemagne's paths.

Since then, the career of hunting in France has been a chequered one. After the revolution of 1848, the forests were leased to the great nobles, but Napoleon III had the vast domains confiscated after his coup d'état, and it was then that the Ducs d'Uzes and de Luynes held a great final hunt before abandoning the forests to the usurper, and made a kill that is mentioned with awe by latter-day hunters.

But Napoleon cared little for the chase, and in 1868 the dukes were hunting again in their old haunts. The Duc de Luynes died and the Duc d'Uzes took over his pack. When he, too, went the way of all flesh, his widow refused to give up the famous hounds and the traditional equipage. She re-leased the forest, held tenaciously traditions of the chase as they had been upheld by a long line of Ducs d'Uzes. While she lives, at least, the hounds of St. Hubert will occupy their kennels at La Celle les Bordes, and the red and blue and gold of the equipage d'Uzes will flash through the leafy lanes of the forest of Rambouillet.

The Bonnelles season begins on the first of September, but only intimate friends and zealous sportsmen are gathered together in the château at the opening of the season. Later there will be guests of ceremony, royal visitors, and all of the gay Parisian crowd whom the family d'Uzes deigns to entertain.

The dowager Duchess, grande dame of the old school, is mistress of the château, but she has able assistants in her daughter-in-law, the young Duchesse d'Uzes, and in her daughters, the great ladies of de Luynes and de Brissac. They fit in oddly with the venerable customs of Bonnelles, these typical products of a society essentially modern, but the combination of new and old is a piquant one, and the excessively up-to-date young Duchesse d'Uzes never appears to better advantage than when she kneels in the little church of Bonnelles on St. Hubert's Day, or, in bravery of blue and scarlet and gold, follows the hounds of Bonnelles through the forest of Rambouillet.