Diary of Marie Bashkirtseff
CZENUKFR

Sunday, 23 January 1876

I am making myself a large white garment for the house — for the spring in Nice — and I am sad; I am bored in Rome; it seems to me it is already time to return. An absence from Nice cannot last more than three weeks. Nice — miserable city — why can I not live there as I love to! I was at church — I know no one!
In Nice I know everyone. But to live in Nice otherwise than as a queen is not worth the trouble. Nice is too small to live in simply. What am I saying! In Nice I know everyone! But I know no one in Nice, and no one wants us!
I should like to stop speaking of it — it is known, very well known, and is implied on every page. So — let us say no more of it.
(Annotation of the B.N.: folio 9 is mutilated — 17 September 1938. P.M.B.)
I am sad — I am abroad — I want to go home, for one day only, for if I stay longer I would have to leave again. I have not a single soul to occupy me, and I cannot stay in one place.
Why are we so badly off in Nice?
Ah! How bored I am! If only we were all together. What a mad idea to separate like this! One must always be together — the tedium seems less, one feels better. Never, never shall we divide again into two. We should be a hundred times better off together: grandfather, my aunt, Walitsky, everyone.
Does one know what Walitsky is? I have been content until now to designate him by a W. Walitsky is the son of Monsieur Walitsky of Kharkov, who married the Baroness Rosen. Formerly they were wealthy — but the father, through too much trust and goodness, ruined himself; he and his wife died. Our Walitsky has two sisters and two brothers; as for him, he is our friend as his father was our friend. Walitsky is the most devoted, the most disinterested, the most honest, the best creature in the world. He is more than a friend, more than a relation — he is for each of us a second self. He is grumpy, tedious sometimes — but that is nothing. Now that you know him, I shall continue to designate him by a W.
There are so many people at the Villa Borghese that I am dizzy.
We have seen the tall Doria twice — once at the entrance and once inside the villa. He recognised me. The Princess was walking there with her red livery. I am looked at a great deal on account of my white dress and feel embarrassed. At the Pincio and the Corso, an enormous crowd.
In the evening we go to the Teatro Apollo — they are performing La Vestale and a ballet.
I am in white with a Greek coiffure. There is a large audience and above all many men — between our box and the stage there was not a single woman.
The Marquis de Villamarina Montereno looked at me a great deal through his opera glass — he remembers...
[Written upside down, at the foot of the page] A white oratory, a studio, a bronze machine to beat upon. (Caracalla)

Notes

"B.N." — the Bibliothèque Nationale (now Bibliothèque nationale de France), where the original manuscript of Marie's diary is held. "P.M.B." is the archival notation of the curator; the annotation dates the discovery of damage to the manuscript. ↩
"Un second soi-même" — a second self: the classical philosophical formulation of true friendship (from Aristotle via Cicero); applied by Marie to Walitsky with unusual warmth and gravity. ↩
"The tall Doria" (le grand Doria): a member of the Doria family distinguished by his height; apparently a recurring presence on the Roman promenade. ↩
The Teatro Apollo: the principal opera house in Rome, built in 1795 on the site of the Castel Sant'Angelo's ramparts; it was demolished in 1889 to make way for the embankment of the Tiber. ↩
La Vestale: opera by Gaspare Spontini (1807); a tragedy set in ancient Rome featuring a Vestal Virgin who breaks her vow of chastity for love; one of the great works of early 19th-century opera. ↩
A Greek coiffure (coiffure grecque): the classical hairstyle Marie has been practising throughout the carnet — hair arranged in bands and coils following ancient sculptures. ↩
The ellipsis is Marie's own — a characteristic teasing gesture, leaving unspecified what the Marquis "remembers" of a previous encounter. ↩
Marie's jotted wish-list for her ideal home — the bronze machine refers back to her January 12 entry, where she admired Caracalla's bronze doors and resolved to have one to recall their sound. An oratory (private chapel) and a studio complete the dream. ↩