The Duchesse d'Uzès (jeune) was not only one of the reigning beauties of Paris before the war but one of its best-dressed women; nor had she ever been avoided for too serious tendencies. She went to work the day war began and she has never ceased to work since. She has started something like seventeen hospitals both at the French front and in Saloniki, and her tireless brain has to its credit several notable inventions for moving field hospitals.
Near Amiens is the most beautiful of the duc's castles, Lucheux, built in the eleventh century. This she turned into a hospital during the first battle of the Somme in 1915, and as it could only accommodate a limited number she had hospital tents erected in the park. Seven hundred were cared for there. Lucheux is now a hospital for officers.
She herself is an infirmière major and not only goes back and forth constantly to the hospitals in which she is interested, particularly Lucheux, but sometimes nurses day and night.
I was very anxious to see Lucheux, as well as Arras, which is not far from Amiens, and, a vast ruin, is said to be by moonlight the most beautiful sight on earth. We both besieged the War Office. But in vain. The great Battle of the Somme had just begun. They are so polite at the Ministère de la Guerre! If I had only thought of it a month earlier. Or if I could remain in France a month or two longer? But hélas! They could not take the responsibility of letting an American woman go so close to the big guns. And so forth. It was sad enough that the duchess risked her life, took it in her hand, in fact, every time she visited the château, but as a Frenchwoman, whose work was of such value to France, it was their duty to assist her in the fulfillment of her own duty to her country. Naturally her suggestion to take me on her passport as an infirmière was received with a smile. So I must see Arras with a million other tourists after the war.
The duchess prefers for reasons of her own to work, not with the noblesse division of the Red Cross, but with the Union des Femmes de France. As she is extremely independent, impatient, and enterprising, with a haughty disdain of red tape, the reasons for this uncommon secession may be left to the reader.
And if she is to-day one of the most valued of the Ministère de la Guerre's coöperators, she has on the other hand reason to be grateful for the incessant demands upon her mind, for her anxieties have been great—no doubt are still. Not only is the duc at the front, but one of two young nephews who lived with her was killed last summer, and the other, a young aviator, who was just recovering from typhoid when I was there, was ill-concealing his impatience to return to the Front. Her son, a boy of seventeen—a volunteer of course—in the sudden and secret transfers the army authorities are always making, sometimes could not communicate with her for a fortnight at a time, and meanwhile she did not know whether he was alive or "missing." Since then he has suffered one of those cruel misfortunes which, in this war, seem to be reserved for the young and gallant. She writes of it in that manner both poignant and matter-of-fact that is so characteristic of the French mother these days:
"I have just gone through a great deal of anguish on account of my oldest son, who, as I told you, left the cavalry to enter the chasseurs à pied at his request.
"The poor boy was fighting in the splendid (illegible) affair, and he was buried twice, then caught by the stifling gases, his mask having been torn off. He insisted upon remaining at his post, in spite of the fact that he was spitting blood. Fortunately a lieutenant passed by and saw him. He gave orders to have him carried away. As soon as he reached the ambulance he fainted and could only be brought to himself with the greatest difficulty. His lungs are better, thank God, but his heart is very weak, and even his limbs are affected by the poison. Many weeks will be required to cure him. I don't know yet where he will be sent to be attended to, but of course I shall accompany him.... The duc is always in the Somme, where the bombardment is something dreadful. He sleeps in a hut infested with rats. Really it is a beautiful thing to see so much courage and patience among men of all ages in this country."
In the same letter she writes: "I am just about to finish my new Front hospital according to the desiderata expressed by our President of the Hygiène Commission. I hope it will be accepted as a type of the surgical movable ambulances."
Before it was generally known that Roumania was "coming in" she had doctors and nurses for several months in France in the summer of 1916 studying all the latest devices developed by the French throughout this most demanding of all wars. The officials sent with them adopted several of the Duchesse d'Uzès' inventions for the movable field hospital.