Diary of Marie Bashkirtseff
CZENUKFR

Tuesday, 3 July 1877

I have written to my mother a furious letter with a curse at the end of it. May God forgive me for it — I wrote it not to insult her but to protect myself, if possible, from fresh horrors.
We visited M. Worth's château at Suresnes; Mme de Mertens had arranged this through a close friend of Mme Worth. I was exhausted and irritated to hear this lady speak of the dressmaker as though of a royal highness, and then of the great ones of the world. And to think that it was to me that all this about aristocrats and celebrities was addressed — meaning that, whether I liked it or not, I played a part in this bourgeois and repellent little pageant.
The château — or rather the villa — is a marvel, from the porter's lodge to the dovecote. Every refinement, every care, every fantasy that one could devise is there in abundance. There are several pavilions and a main house, greenhouses, gardens. But no dwelling in the world resembles this one. The very exterior of the buildings is so ornamented, so enamelled, so embellished with everything one can barely imagine, that the house itself — the walls, finally — disappears from view. It is a madness of detail, of rococo, of bric-à-brac; porcelain pieces set even on the lawn, wonderfully arranged among the plants and flowers. Everything that the most refined, the most finished, the most extraordinary ingenuity can bring to a bodice or a mantle is scattered everywhere. The embroideries, gildings, paintings, enamels, mosaics, laces, tapestries — the very materials from which one scarcely dares make gowns — are there in profusion. And yet arranged with a surprising taste and delicacy. It seems impossible that a man could have, without going mad, conceived of this million of trinkets, each one of which, taken separately, is a work of art or a fantasy or some sort of drollery. Every staircase, every bell-pull… in a word: it is inconceivable! One could shatter all these rooms into ten thousand pieces and each fragment would certainly be remarkable enough to be placed on a shelf. One may not admire this astonishing style — but one must do it justice: in its own manner, it is sublime.
Everything I have read in the most fabulous descriptions is but a trifle beside Suresnes. The greenhouses — those prosaic panes of glass — are arranged in such a way that one finds them divine.
And one sees that this man loves all of it as an artist — a thousand small things betray elevated tastes and even a veneration for great men and noble deeds. One also discerns a certain pretension to being himself a great man — forgivable and indeed quite natural. Each one in his own sphere. And indeed, to rise in this way through an art that one readily dismisses as a trade may be more meritorious, more difficult, than rising through things that are in themselves elevated and serious.
Besides, if one were to go further and seriously analyse all that women's dress — and therefore half of woman herself — has to do with the gravest interests and events… one would be quite astonished. But that is going too far for me — and in any case, for a fine study to be received without laughter, it must come from an established authority.
These devil-French — one has barely been among them before one cannot help but almost despise all other nobilities, all other merits, all other fortunes. It seems that outside this furnace there is nothing alive, nothing thinking, nothing celebrated! It seems that… in truth, this is so: Paris is the bell that announces to the entire world everything that has been strong enough to set it ringing.
Mme de Mouzay, despotic and demanding, does not scruple to make indelicate reproaches:
— Why was she not invited to the Review?
That is what I do not understand — how to impose oneself, how to… in short, here is a predicament: for it suffices merely to fall out with her to be vilified in every backwater, among every rabble of her acquaintance.
On the 20th of July I leave Paris; on the 25th of August I leave Aix; on the 25th of September I leave Como.