Diary of Marie Bashkirtseff
CZENUKFR

Saturday, 15 March 1879

If Robert-Fleury — called Tony in his absence — scolds me today, I give up painting! You know what my progress has earned me in the way of envy, and above all of disparagement. Every time something goes wrong one seems to cry: there, I told you so, it could not last. My first canvases earned me compliments — and then I entered a difficult phase, and I felt too much satisfaction around me not to suffer from it quite acutely. This morning I awaited this critique like something dreadful, and as that beast Tony corrected the others and drew ever closer to my easel, I recited prayers with a fervor that heaven rewarded — for he was pleased with me. Good God, what a weight fell from my heart! Perhaps you have no idea of those emotions? Picture that silence in which I felt the joy everyone would have taken in seeing me crushed again — definitively this time — for friends and enemies are alike in such matters.
Well — it has passed; next week I can endure any savaging they like.
There is something that begins to worry me and I think I shall go see Doctor Blanche, the alienist. I do not fear madness, but I would like to rid myself of an obsession that is becoming unbearable. It dates from the famous note in Le Figaro — the Nice races. You have no idea what a torment it is.
It seems to me that everywhere I am taken for a kept woman. And my aunt — an aunt — so indifferent, so passive, looking so much as though she is merely accompanying me! And I, who am resolute and lively. In shops this idea makes me utterly wretched.
This evening we dine at the Karageorgevitches'. The prince served in the Guard after renouncing the Serbian throne for himself and his family; he is a sickly and ordinary man. The princess is plain too — she will never understand how one can be bored at evenings like tonight's. Two very plain Americans, the two sons of the house and two French friends, the Counts de Deuil (?). It all smelled of the baccalaureate or Law School, and so we discussed philosophy and a heap of scholastic things.
In the course of the evening there arrived a Madame Mavrocordato with her two daughters of fifteen to seventeen — and naturally I thought they would draw back from me, but fortunately nothing of the kind happened. I shall address prayers to God instead of going to Doctor Blanche.
Lancaster writes that Berthe has "safely been delivered of a pretty little boy." So much the better — men are happier when they are unhappy than women are.
I am bored! This cannot go on! And this good princess who was saying: "Was I not right to urge you to come? One must shake oneself up a little, even for one's art. One becomes sullen in solitude."
To whom was she saying it, good God!
I have only to close my eyes, clench my fists, and hold my breath for a minute — that stops the tears.
I wrote to Bashkirtseff father, all the same:
I congratulate you warmly on having made of your son, in three years, the most coarse individual in the world. Your efforts are crowned with success, and from Poltava to Gavronzi there will never flourish a more accomplished boor and lout.
Marie Bashkirtseff....