Death and funeral of Marie Bashkirtseff (1884)

Overview

Marie Bashkirtseff died at her family's house, 30 rue Ampère in Paris, on 31 October 1884, eleven days after the last entry of the diary, aged twenty-five, three weeks before what would have been her twenty-sixth birthday (Kernberger 2013, Chronology; fr.wikipedia.org, "Marie Bashkirtseff", citing Bard and Chaperon, Dictionnaire des féministes, 2017). She had had tuberculosis since about 1874 (Hélard-Cosnier 1993; fr.wikipedia.org). The funeral was held on Thursday 6 November 1884 at the Russian Orthodox church in the rue Daru. The coffin was afterwards laid in a vault until the chapel that Émile Bastien-Lepage designed for her at Passy was ready (see Tomb of Marie Bashkirtseff).

Her last weeks

In the last weeks both she and Jules Bastien-Lepage were gravely ill. Mathilde Blind's introduction (1890) says that on 16 October Bastien-Lepage, too weak to walk, was carried to her room on the shoulders of his brother Émile and that the two sat near each other, he wishing that he could paint her. Marie's last entry is that of 20 October 1884: her bed has been put in the salon, screened by folding screens, poufs and the piano, because "il m'est trop difficile de monter les escaliers" (106.0194). She died eleven days later "surrounded by her family and her faithful maid Rosalie" (Kernberger 2013, Chronology; see Rosalie). Her friend Prince Bojidar Karageorgevitch was present at the deathbed, according to English Wikipedia, which gives no source for it. The painter Gustave Courtois (1853–1923) drew her on her deathbed; his small sketch is reproduced here.

What she had asked for

Marie wrote about her own funeral rites only once, and as a wish for a monument, not for a service: a chapel in Paris, "entourée de fleurs, dans un endroit apparent", with masses by Verdi and Pergolesi sung on every anniversary "à perpétuité" (101.0226, 21 August 1883; see the tomb). In an entry of September 1884 she mentions that when she spoke of her burial ("mon enterrement") Émile Bastien-Lepage told her that he would be "chargé d'exécuter mes dernières volontés" (105.0751). She had written a will on 21 September 1883 (101.0422–0423), whose content the diary does not give. On 1 October 1884 she wrote "On m'enterrera en 1885" (106.0148). The funeral took place in 1884, but the interment in the chapel did not take place, according to Kernberger's Chronology, until April 1885.

She had always watched funerals as spectacle. The funeral car of Léon Gambetta on 6 January 1883, which she says Jules and Émile Bastien-Lepage had built, she followed from a window and called, after the shock of its disappointing design, "une marche triomphale" (097.0364, 097.0368; see Death and funerals). For her own funeral Kernberger's Chronology (2013) says in its main text that the day was "planned by Emile Bastien-Lepage", and in a note that "Émile and Jules Bastien-Lepage have planned the procession and decorations".

The funeral of 6 November 1884

Date. The best witness is a letter written by an American visitor, Mrs Henry D. Paine, on the day itself, "Paris, November 6, 1884 … This morning we went to the Russian Church to the funeral of a young Russian girl of noble family", published in The Critic (New York) in 1890 and reproduced in Kernberger 2013, Appendix V. Hélard-Cosnier (1993) and Kernberger's Chronology also give 6 November. Madeleine Zillhardt, a friend of Marie's fellow student Louise Breslau, who wrote long afterwards, gives 7 November (Louise-Catherine Breslau et ses amis, extracts at femmespeintres.be). The 6th is preferred here because Mrs Paine's letter is dated that day and describes the service as having just been held.

Place and route. The service was held in the Russian church of Saint Alexander Nevsky, 12 rue Daru (8th arrondissement). The cortège set out from 30 rue Ampère at half past ten and reached the church for the service at eleven (Kernberger's note to Mrs Paine's letter); Hélard-Cosnier says it went by the avenue Wagram. Mrs Paine herself thought she saw it on the boulevard des Batignolles, which Kernberger notes cannot be right.

The procession. Everything was white and silver. Mrs Paine saw first a mourning coach in black and silver, then "a platform on which stood the funeral casket, resting beneath a dome supported by four pillars", drawn by six white horses with their manes braided with black cords, platform and dome hung in white silk and cloth of silver, with a tall black plume at each pillar and a white pall embroidered with silver over the coffin. Behind it walked four people abreast, "a tall majestic woman" between a distinguished man of middle age and a young man in evening dress, both bareheaded, and another woman; she does not name them. After them came about two hundred friends and relations on foot and, last, fifteen empty white coaches with white-liveried coachmen, the first filled with flowers. Hélard-Cosnier, from the press, adds a white velvet coffin with a green palm and the house hung in white, and quotes the sporting columnist Saint-Amant in Le Sport: « Jamais nous n'avons assisté à des funérailles aussi poétiques et aussi touchantes ». Zillhardt, quoting the Figaro report, calls it "un véritable triomphe", and says the mourning was led by "le prince de K." and "le marquis de C." while Marie's mother clung to the coffin to the church. The initials may mean Bojidar Karageorgevitch, but that is only a guess.

The service. The church was lit by "innumerable wax candles" in broad daylight. Under the dome stood a catafalque about fifteen feet high, pyramidal, covered with plants, cut flowers, lights and white and silver draperies, with a large brazier burning with a green flame at each corner. The coffin was slid into it through a small door at the base. A priest with a remarkable bass voice and two assistants conducted the service; the choir, as in Russian churches, was all men. There were no seats and the heat was almost unbearable (Mrs Paine, in Kernberger 2013). According to Zillhardt's summary of the Figaro, the congregation included a marshal of France, princes and princesses, counts and countesses, the fashionable painters Cabanel and Carolus-Duran, writers and journalists, and a crowd of young women students from the studios, "poor and admiring".

Who was not there, who was. No source seen says whether Jules Bastien-Lepage attended. He was dying (he died on 10 December 1884) and Mrs Paine names no one. No source seen records Émile Bastien-Lepage's presence either, though Kernberger says he planned the day. Marie's mother, Maman, followed the coffin, clinging to it to the church according to Zillhardt's summary of the Figaro; the "tall majestic woman" whom Mrs Paine saw walking directly behind the bier is probably she, but Mrs Paine does not say so. Marie's aunt, Ma tante, is not mentioned in any account seen.

After the service

Where the coffin lay between the service and the building of the chapel is told differently. Kernberger's Chronology (2013) says that her body, in a white coffin, was placed in the crypt of the church "until her tomb at Passy Cemetery is built" and that she was interred at Passy in April 1885. Zillhardt, from the Figaro, speaks of the coffin being lowered "dans un caveau" richly decorated, and of a chapel planned for later. The two accounts can be reconciled if the "caveau" was the church's crypt, but the sources do not say so. The chapel, with its vault, is described on the tomb page; it carries the false birth year 1860.

Her mother then spent the rest of her life, until 1920, on her daughter's memory. The memorial exhibition of her work, organised by the Union des femmes peintres et sculpteurs, opened on 9 February 1885 and its catalogue has a preface by François Coppée (see Marie Bashkirtseff's works); the State bought Un meeting within the year; and the diary appeared, cut and with her birth date falsified, in 1887 under the direction of André Theuriet, who also wrote the verses on the tomb. A visitor to the grave, writing by 1892, was told by the sacristan that "when Mme Bashkirtseff is in Paris" she spent much of her time there (Pall Mall Gazette, reprinted in Kernberger 2013, Appendix V). Her mother's ashes were placed in the same chapel, according to the Commons description of the monument.

Related entries

Sources