Uzès, Anne, Duchesse d' (1847–1933)

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Uzès, Anne, Duchesse d' (1847–1933)

Immensely wealthy French aristocrat who, after failing to restore the monarchy by financing General Boulanger's political schemes, emerged as one of the most original women of her time—a sculptor, renowned hunter, generous supporter of charitable works, and an advocate and exemplar of the liberation of women. Name variations: Anne, duchess of Uzes; (pseudonym) Manuela. Pronunciation: AHN dew-SHESS dew-ZEH. Born (Marie-Adrienne) Anne-Victurnienne-Clémentine de Rochechouart-Mortemart on February 10, 1847, in Paris; died of pneumonia on February 3, 1933, at the Château de Dampierre (Seineet-Oise) and was interred in the chapel of the Carmelites at Uzès (Gard); daughter and sole heir of (Anne-Victurnien-) Louis-Samuel de Rochechouart, Comte de Mortemart (1809–1873) and Marie-Clémen-tine Le Riche de Chevigné (1818–1877); educated by tutors; married (Amable-Antoine-Jacques-) Emmanuel de Crussol, 12th Duc d'Uzès (1840–1878), on May 11, 1867; children: Jacques, 13th Duc d'Uzès (b. 1868); Simone, Duchesse de Luynes (b. 1870); Louis-Emmanuel, 14th Duc d'Uzès (b. 1871); and Mathilde-Renée, Duchesse de Brissac (b. 1875).

Married to the Duc d'Uzès (1867–78); maintained the leading hunt in France, the Rallye Bonnelles (1880s–1933); received an honorable mention for sculpture at the Paris Salon (1887); involved in financing the political campaigns of General Georges Boulanger in hopes of restoring the monarchy (1888–89); was at the peak of her literary and sculpting activities (1890–1914); joined "L'Avant-Courrière" and began feminist activities (1894); became the first Frenchwoman to obtain an automobile driver's license (1898); helped launch La Française and the Union Française pour le Suffrage des Femmes (1907–09); ran a hospital and nursed during World War I (1914–18); was the first woman made Wolf Lieutenant (1923); founded the Automobile-Club Féminin de France (1926); made vice-president of the Groupe Féminin de l'Aéro-Club (1932).

Writings:

Le Coeur et le sang (three-act play, 1890); Pauvre Petite (novel, 1890); Julien Masly (novel, 1891); Paillettes mauves (poems, 1892); L'Arrondissement de Rambouillet (history, 1893); Voyage de mon fils au Congo (history, 1894); Histoires de chasse (stories, 1907); Paillettes grises (poems, 1909); Une Saint-Hubert sous Louis XV (one-act verse play, 1909); Poèmes de la duchesse Anne (selections from the Paillettes, 1911); La Chasse à courre (history, 1912); Le Suffrage féminin du point de vue historique (brochure, 1913); Souvenirs de la duchesse d'Uzès née Mortemart (1934).

Sculpture—principal works of "Manuela": Diane couchée; Diane debout; Diane surprise; Émile Augier (Valence); Galatée; Jeanne d'Arc (Mehun-sur-Yèvre); Jeanne d'Arc (Pont-à-Mousson); Nicolas Gilbert (Fontenoy-le-Château); Juliette Dodu (Brièves);Madame de Sévigné (Livry); Notre-Dame-de-France (Sainte-Clotilde church, Reims); Notre-Dame-de Poissy (Poissy); Notre-Dame-des-Arts (Pont-de-l'Arche); Notre-Dame-du-Salve-Regina (Pierrelongue); Monument aux Morts (Bonnelles); Ophélie; Saint-Hubert (Montmartre basilica); Salomé (Buenos Aires Museum); Tombeau d'Henri de Pène.

In January 1933, a month before she died at 86, the Dowager Duchesse d'Uzès, vice-president of the Women's Group of the Aero Club of France, made her first airplane flight, piloted by her grandson—and accompanied by her confessor. Only 17 days before her death, she returned from her last stag hunt with yet another trophy to catalog and mount—No. 2056. Such behavior was in no way out of character, for this formidable lady had been devoting her tireless energy to an astonishing range of activities through 55 years of widowhood. What gave her activities a special distinction, however, was that her social position and wealth had put her under no personal obligation whatever (and in truth under no expectation from the world of her time) to do anything but give birth to an heir or two while spinning out a languid existence devoted to a high-society socializing whose frivolity might be redeemed by well-publicized patronizing now and then of some fashionable charities.

One of 19th-century France's very richest heiresses, Anne de Rochechouart-Mortemart surpassed them all in the distinction of her ancestry. The Rochechouarts and Mortemarts traced their lineages back well before the Crusades and also claimed descent from St. Louis IX (r. 1226–1270) through the female line and relations among the Bourbons. Moreover, marriages allied them with the great Montmorency clan, from whose tradition Anne derived her given name. On her mother's side she was a Chevigné and Chaffault, her maternal grandfather being Comte Louis de Chevigné (1793–1876), a minor poet. Ironically, it was her ancestry's least blue-blooded component that brought her the most money, for she was the sole direct heir of her great-grandmother Barbe-Nicole Clicquot-Ponsardin (1777–1866), the famed Mme Clicquot of the Champagne fortune. The climax of this relentless piling up of wealth and titles would come on May 11, 1867, when Anne arrived in a splendid carriage attended by bewigged footmen to marry the heir to the senior title (no less) in the French peerage: Emmanuel de Crussol, future 12th Duc d'Uzès. Despite appearances, it would be a love match.

As a child, Anne had led a somewhat lonely existence with few playmates. Her older and only siblings, Pauline and Paul, died at 10 and 16, the first of a long train of deaths in her immediate family that gave her spirit a lifelong note of melancholy. Fortunately, she was not stifled in Paris society but instead spent many months of the year at the family's country retreats, especially at the magnificent Château de Boursault (the Widow Clicquot's residence) and a small chateau at Villers-en-Prayères (Aisne). There she roamed freely and in her words, "studied the open book of Nature." She was educated by tutors, showing talent in drawing, painting, music, and modeling in wax. Both her father and her maternal grandfather encouraged her to venture beyond the usual limits for females of her time; at 16, she took up Latin on her own initiative.

Anne's mother was a childlike woman who exerted little influence on her. Anne recalled her father as "goodness itself," tender, reserved, religious, and affable, though touched by melancholy. Appreciative of his surviving child's spirit, he once taught her how to handle a four-horse hitch; many years later, she set society agog in London when she took the reins of a carriage-and-four returning from the races and drove all the way to Rotten Row, a feat unheard of for any woman (much less a lady) to attempt.

Naturally, Anne's marriage was a major concern. Though no beauty, she was fairly attractive: petite, slender, with brown hair, a high forehead, very blue almond-shaped eyes, a straight, large nose, and firm mouth. She was naturally graceful but indifferent to fashion and not haughty or proud. Having grown up largely outside Paris society, she felt awkward at first and then chagrined, perceiving that interest after her debut centered solely on her name and fortune. Hence, it was her future husband's initial indifference to her that she noticed. Six months after they met, he was wounded in a hunting accident which scarred his face badly and cost him an eye. Anne went to his bedside to console him, love blossomed, and six months later they married.

Clicquot, Mme (1777–1866)

French entrepreneur. Name variations: Barbe-Nicole Clicquot-Ponsardin; the Widow Clicquot. Born Barbe-Nicole Ponsardin in 1777; died in 1866; daughter of Baron Ponsardin; married François Clicquot (died); great-grandmother of Anne, Duchesse d'Uzes .

Barbe-Nicole Clicquot was the famed Widow Clicquot (Veuve Clicquot) of the Champagne fortune. This daughter of a mayor of Reims, whom Napoleon I had ennobled as Baron Ponsardin, married one François Clicquot but was widowed early. Blessed with brains and an uncommon business sense, she turned an inherited winery into the producer of the world's leading brand of Champagne, "Veuve Clicquot." She resided at Château de Boursault.

Emmanuel de Crussol, seven years her senior with wealth and ancestry to match her own, had graduated without distinction from the Saint-Cyr military academy and left the army upon their marriage. He was a fine man—gracious, sincere, affectionate, and upright. He was elected to the National Assembly in 1871 following France's defeat in the Franco-Prussian War and sat (to 1876) as a Legitimist, favoring the return of the Bourbon monarchy. On his father's death in 1872, he succeeded to the dukedom of Uzès and to properties all around France. The marriage meanwhile proved exceptionally happy. Anne had four children in eight years. But on November 28, 1878, Emmanuel died unexpectedly from effects of the lead shot he still carried in his head from the hunting accident. Anne mourned him for the rest of her life, never remarried or took a lover, and would be interred beside him "whose death shattered my life."

Although the tragedy inflicted a terrible private wound, it allowed her spirit's independence and daring to blossom. Her abundant energy enabled her to raise her children with care, oversee her vast properties, cultivate her artistic talents, support a host of charities, work to free women from legal and social discrimination, and indulge a passion for mounted hunting first awakened by her husband.

Janet Flanner">
She gave time to her friends, money to the poor, and sat her horse like a field marshal riding sidesaddle. She will be unduplicated.
—Janet Flanner

She was well launched in these activities (save the feminist cause) when, in March 1888, she embarked on a political venture which was to cost her much embarrassment and a huge amount of money. Impulsiveness was one of her traits; also, as she freely admitted, a certain naïveté—in this instance about politics. By family tradition she was a Legitimist. Upon the death of the childless Bourbon claimant, the Comte de Chambord, in 1883, she loyally obeyed his request to support the Comte de Paris, the Orleanist, not the Bourbon-Parma, heir. Her political ideas were fairly simple. She endorsed the basic liberties won in 1789 and an elected parliament of sorts but believed France needed strong leadership by a hereditary executive. Instead, the Third Republic (1870–1940), she held, was corrupt, leaderless, and (worst of all) bent upon a bigoted harassment of the Catholic Church. She was confident that the people, if given a chance, would support her views.

General Georges Boulanger (1837–1891), handsome and exuding a rough, soldierly charm, had risen rapidly in the army and in 1886 became minister of war. His talent for self-promotion soon made him wildly popular among the masses, who were feeling the pain of hard times, were fed up with the drab politicians, and wanted France's prestige restored to its pre-1870 luster. He was eased out of office after a year but, responding to noisy acclaim, began to intrigue with anyone and everyone to return. The government retired him from the army in the spring of 1888 when he let his name to be put up in by-elections for the Chamber of Deputies. He was being promoted by some Republican politicians who saw in him a way to get into power and cleanse the republic of its ills. The Royalists also latched onto his star, however. Their tactic was to use his vote-getting power to win enough seats in the Chamber to force a constitutional change which would bring the Comte de Paris to the throne. Boulanger, a gifted liar, repeatedly assured them of his monarchist sentiments while continuing to pose in public as a Republican.

Anne d'Uzès believed his assurances. She had first met him in 1886 and had found him, as had so many others, a fascinating specimen. When she was approached, in March 1888, by Royalist promoters during his first official by-election campaign, she gave 25,000 francs on the spot. A second solicitation transformed matters: after some thought, she replied on June 12 with an astonishing offer of 3 million francs. She had been told it might be within her means to restore the monarchy, an appeal she found irresistible. She acted out of pride and conviction, and (to her great credit) she expected nothing in return: "I have done my duty as the first peer of France; may the king do his." The Comte de Paris, amazed, but still uneasy about Boulanger, promised to repay her if he became king in fact. By accepting her gift, however, the Royalist chiefs found themselves fully committed to the risky tactic of using Boulanger as a stalking horse for the return of the monarchy.

Anne's money was the main financial source of Boulanger's string of successes from the triple-election triumph on August 19, 1888, in the Somme, Nord, and Charente-Inférieure through the spectacular Paris victory on January 27, 1889. She also opened doors to the general in Paris society. But on April 1, 1889, fearing arrest for conspiracy, he fled to Belgium. Disgusted, Anne threatened to withdraw support but was persuaded to use the 1.1 million left from her gift to try for victory in the fall general elections. For that effort, however, not she but a socially ambitious Jewish-Austrian financier, Baron Hirsch, gave the lion's share, some 5 million francs. She (in person) and others tried in vain to get Boulanger to return to France to campaign. The election sank Boulanger and ended any hope of a monarchial restoration.

Through the whole affair Anne, besides doling out allotments from the 3 million when requested by a steering committee, gave occasional, unwelcomed, advice, repeatedly holding Boulanger's and the politicians' feet to the fire whenever they hesitated. Her grit and selflessness lifted her above all other participants in the affair. When she became a principal source for the revelations by Mermeix (Gabriel Terrail) published in 1890 as Les Coulisses du Boulangisme (which first unveiled the true role of the Royalists and her money in the affair, to the private fury of the Comte de Paris), she did so naïvely, enjoying the notoriety but probably also the satisfaction of paying back the gutless politicians and (as she now called him) that "spineless weakling" Boulanger. Still, noblesse oblige, she twice visited him in exile after his defeat.

"I tried to do something through Boulanger," she remarked much later, "but he was a buffoon." She never entered electoral politics again. The 1890s saw Anne occupied instead in family affairs, literature, sculpture, and feminism. She suffered a cruel blow on June 20, 1893, when her oldest son, Jacques, died of fever at Cabinda after leading a failed expedition to reach the upper Nile from the Congo. He had been a playboy, with numerous liaisons, including one with the notorious Emilienne d'Alençon , and in 1890 Anne had taken legal steps to prevent his squandering the family's resources. Some said she had forced him to atone by undertaking this risky expedition; her version was that he had repented his ways and conceived a heroic project worthy of his ancestors which she felt she should encourage and finance despite her fears. In 1894, she memorialized him in a book, Voyage de mon fils au Congo. Since 1890, she also had published a play, two melodramatic novels, a respectable set of poems (Paillettes mauves), and a fine history of the district of Rambouillet, where she usually resided and hunted. She wrote not because of literary ambitions but because she felt the need. Her writings earned her membership in the Société des Gens de lettres and the Société des Auteurs dramatiques.

She was an excellent organist, but her true talent was for sculpting. Using the pseudonym "Manuela" (recalling her husband), she began to work seriously after his death: "The arts have sustained me greatly in my hours of bitterness. In my studio, thumbs in the clay and chisel in hand, I think of nothing else." Several eminent sculptors tutored her—especially Alexandre Falguière (1831–1900), but also Antonin Mercié (1845–1916), Auguste Cain (1822–1894), and Léon Gérome (1824–1904)—which they probably would not have done despite her wealth and prominence if they had not been convinced she had a gift. After an honorable mention at the 1887 Salon, she won a state contract in 1890 for a Virgin for the church at Poissy; other contracts followed, and she exhibited at the World's Columbian Exhibition in Chicago in 1893. She won the competition for a monument to the dramatist Émile Augier, but the 1895 Salon des Champs-Élysées rejected her model, apparently because the judges suspected that not all the five large figures were her work alone, an imputation she vigorously refuted. She defiantly displayed the model outside the Salon instead, and the finished monument was dedicated in 1897 at Valence with President Félix Faure attending. Her work on the whole has been described as that of a distinguished, talented amateur, by no means a "Sunday sculptor." It is well wrought but altogether conformist and academic, typical in every way of its era. For some reason, her daring did not carry over into either her writing or her art.

Anne's participation in the feminist movement surprised the public, for she not only was very conservative in her political loyalties but also a most devout Catholic and a leading light in High Society. She particularly associated with Jeanne Schmahl, Juliette Adam, Sarah Monod, Marguerite Durand, Jane Misme, Jeanne Chauvin (France's first female lawyer), Maria Deraismes (despite her anticlericalism), and Cécile Brunschvicg —personages distinctly superior to those she had dealt with in the Boulanger affair. Certainly her activities brought her far more applause from other feminists, because of the visibility she gave their cause, than from her social peers. But a part of her enjoyed stirring things up and savoring the resultant notoriety. She was a favorite of the press for her colorfulness and witty repartees.

Alençon, Emilienne d' (fl. late 1800s)

French cicotte and liaison of Leopold of Belgium. Name variations: Emilienne d'Alencon. Flourished in the late 1800s.

Emilienne d'Alençon ran away from home at age 15 with a Gypsy (Roma) violinist. After managing to maneuver her way into the French Conservatoire, she quit and appeared at the Cirque d'Eté in an act with trained rabbits. One of her early "Protectors," along with Leopold II, king of the Belgians, was Jacques, Duc d'Uzès, until his mortified family shipped him off to a regiment in Africa where he died of dysentery at the age of 25.

She made her debut on January 18, 1894, when she, with Adam, became a principal sponsor of Schmahl's L'Avant-Courrière (The Advance Messenger), an organization advocating the equality of women with men in testifying in legal matters (gained in 1897) and in keeping and disposing of their own income (won in 1907 by the "Schmahl Law"). Anne had first met Schmahl in 1885 but had put off invitations to become involved in feminism. Schmahl's tactic of giving up left-wing political aims and provocative actions and instead seeking concrete legislative gains began to typify much of the second (post-1889) generation of French feminists, and it appealed to Anne. She was a doer and patron, not a theorizer. Her feminist "philosophy" was pretty well summed up in her impatient remark that "in these stupid discussions about whether men are superior to women or women superior to men we always forget that they are two halves of a whole called the human race!" She asked again the question put by the 18th-century philosophe Condorcet: "Can someone show me a difference between men and women which can legitimately establish a difference in their rights?" To her mind, the question answered itself.

For the rest of her life, she played a very visible part as a patron of feminist publications and organizations and occasionally as a public speaker (though she did not enjoy that role), but especially as an example of a woman who had no fear of doing things hitherto reserved to men. She was the first woman in France to earn an automobile driver's license (April 23, 1898)—and probably the first to get a speeding ticket (June 8, for exceeding Paris' 12 kph-8 mph limit); was president of the Union of Women Painters and Sculptors (from 1902); joined with Misme to found (1906) La Française, the official journal of the women's movement; and helped found (1907) and preside over (from 1908) the Lyceum Club of Paris, a female equivalent of a men's club, for women interested in art, science, and social works. In 1909, with Misme and Schmahl, she helped organize the French Union for Women's Suffrage (UFSF) and was the only aristocratic woman in the leadership of a cause which in pre-1914 France was regarded as extremely radical. After Schmahl died in 1913, Anne became inactive in the UFSF for a time but returned for good at the urging of Brunschvicg; her presence helped to defend Brunschvicg from attacks from Catholic quarters, attacks which Anne particularly resented. In 1926, she founded the Feminine Automobile Club of France, and led auto rallies around France and to Belgium, the Netherlands, and Italy; and in 1932 she was named vice-president of the Women's Group of the Aero Club. Along the way, she also saw to the admission of women to the École des Beaux-Arts and was a promoter of women's sports and president of the Gymnastic Society for Young Women.

Anne's numberless charitable activities swallowed oceans of time and money. She corresponded, cajoled, and wheedled, gave charity parties, and sat on an array of boards. Among her causes (a seemingly endless list) were Le Calvaire (for women cancer patients), Villepinte Sanatorium (for young women with tuberculosis), the League Against Cancer, the Blood Donors' Association, Day Nurseries of France, the Society for Protection of the Widows and Orphans of the Great War, several charities devoted to abandoned and orphaned children, a retirement home for women artists, and the building of a cathedral at Dakar to honor explorers of Africa.

It was because of her charities that she formed a surprising friendship with Louise Michel , probably the most famous female anarchist of the time. Anne was not "playing revolutionary" and certainly disapproved of Michel's politics. Rather, the two shared a deep sympathy for suffering humanity. "If this woman had had religious faith," Anne wrote of Michel, "she would have donned a nun's habit and become a saint." They met in 1888 when Michel solicited her for widows of seamen, and they remained in touch until Michel's death in 1905. Michel repeatedly called upon Anne when she was faced with hard cases or was broke herself.

Likewise, Anne was not playacting when during the First World War she converted her Château de Bonnelles into an annex of the military hospital at Rambouillet and became—after duly passing the examination—a 67-year-old licensed nurse. Many society women found nursing a fashionable way to contribute to the cause. Most tired of the work and drifted away, but not Anne. She was also an inspector of nurses in hospitals at the front and organized workshops for Belgian refugees. On March 19, 1919, the Republic she had once tried to overthrow awarded her the Legion of Honor (although technically for her artistic work); she was decorated also by Belgium, Serbia, and the Holy See. In 1931, she was named an officer in the Legion.

Despite all these activities, Anne may have been best known to the masses as Europe's leading woman hunter, the autocratic chief of the Rallye Bonnelles, for whose Easter Monday hunt several thousand spectators, many coming by special train from Paris, would turn out to view the proceedings while newsreel cameras whirred. She began hunting in 1872 with her husband and later lived much of the year at Bonnelles (Seine-et-Oise), which boasted a magnificent 3,000-hectare (7,400-acre) park bordering on the vast state forest of Rambouillet, and a hunting lodge, "La Celle-les-Bordes," where she mounted her trophies. For decades, she hunted deer and sometimes boar on Tuesdays and Saturdays from October to April, rain, snow, or shine. (Spring and summer were given to riding, racing, and harness driving, sometimes at her Berder Island estate in Brittany, where she liked to take the wheel of her steam yacht, Manuela.) The cream of Europe's aristocracy, including royalty, prized invitations to these hunts. Anne—garbed always in silver-trimmed tricorne hat, black tunic (for mourning), blue skirt, sash, and boots, with whip at the ready—ruled like her ancestors of old and was fiercely determined always to be in at the kill, knife in hand. She wrote on hunting and lectured, bringing along buglers to sound the traditional calls. In 1923, she dared the government to appoint her as district Wolf Lieutenant (lieutenant de louveterie)—an ancient, largely ceremonial position carrying rights of a game warden and charged with enforcement of measures against wolves and varmints. The ministry complied, making her the first woman ever so honored—but only after she took the prescribed oath of loyalty to the Republic. She soon became honorary president of the Wolf Lieutenants' Association. She also participated in the Society of St. Hubert for patrons of hunting.

Active to the end, Anne died suddenly of pneumonia on February 3, 1933, while wintering at her surviving daughter's residence, the Château de Dampierre. She had outlived two of her children, Jacques (d. 1893) and Mathilde-Renée (d. 1908), two grandsons, two granddaughters, a son-in-law, and two sisters-in-law, all of whom were very close to her. She had prepared for death when she built for the Carmelites at Uzès a convent and chapel with burial niches (finished in 1888). She was placed there beside her husband after hugely attended funeral masses in Paris and Uzès.

Anne d'Uzès was an imposing yet attractive personage: witty, direct, unpretentious, courteous, quick, impulsive, naïve at times, absentminded, curious, affable (except when hot in the hunt), and courageous. She also was deeply religious, attending mass every day and spending long hours in the night praying and reading devotional books. Yet, unlike so many pious aristocrats of her time, she was in no way bigoted, advocated separation of church and state, and counted friends among Protestants, Jews, and freethinkers alike. And she was generous, generous to a fault—so generous that by the 1920s her fortune was greatly depleted. Before and

after she died, vast amounts of goods and lands had to be sold, including Boursault, the Clicquot vineyards, and Bonnelles, which today is an international school. But she could face her Maker with a clear conscience, which was what she treasured above all else.

sources:

Bidelman, Patrick K. Pariahs Stand Up! The Founding of the Liberal Feminist Movement in France, 1858–1889. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1982.

Clement, Clara Erskine. Women in the Fine Arts from the Seventh Century B.C. to the Twentieth Century A.D. Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin, 1905.

Dansette, Adrien. Le Boulangisme. Paris: Librairie Arthème Fayard, 1946.

Elliott, Maud H. Art and Handicraft in the Woman's Building of the World's Columbian Exhibition. NY: Goupil, 1893.

Gmeline, Patrick de. La duchesse d'Uzès. Paris: Librairie Perrin, 1986.

Hause, Stephen C., and Anne R. Kinney. "The Limits of Suffragist Behavior: Legalism and Militancy in France, 1876–1922," in American Historical Review. Vol. 86, no. 4. October 1981, pp. 781–806.

Irvine, William D. The Boulanger Affair Reconsidered: Royalism, Boulangism, and the Origins of the Radical Right in France. NY: Oxford University Press, 1989.

Lheureux, Simone. Vies et passions d'Anne de Crussol, duchesse d'Uzès, 1847–1933. Nîmes: C. Lacour, 1989.

Mermeix [pseud. Gabriel Terrail]. Les Coulisses du Boulangisme. Paris: Léopold Cerf, 1890.

Puget, Jean. La duchesse d'Uzès née Mortemart. Uzès: Éditions Henri Peladan, 1972.

Seager, Frederic H. The Boulanger Affair: Political Crossroad of France, 1886–1889. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1969.

Uzès, Duchesse d' [Marie-Clèmentine de Rochechouart-Mortemart, duchesse d'Uzès]. Souvenirs de la duchesse d'Uzès née Mortemart. Paris: Librairie Plon, 1939.

collections:

The principal repositories pertaining to Anne d'Uzès are the family archives in Uzès (Gard); and in Paris, the Archives nationales, the libraries of the École national d'équitation and the Jockey Club, and especially the Bibliothèque Marguerite Durand. Also consult the Société archéologique et historique de Bonnelles (Seine-et-Oise).

David S. Newhall , Pottinger Distinguished Professor of History, Centre College, Danville, Kentucky, and author of Clemenceau: A Life at War (Edwin Mellen Press, 1991)

Women in World History: A Biographical Encyclopedia