Diary of Marie Bashkirtseff
CZENUKFR

Tuesday, 17 August 1880

I had asked my harp teacher for mandolin music. Here is his reply. I also told him that I had won a medal for a painting and exhibited another. I keep his letter because of its Italian turn, so charming even though it comes from a simple man. I admit that despite my Naturalist tendencies (a poorly understood word) and my republican sentiments, I am quite sensitive to these flowers of language. Why should all this not go together, after all? But one must leave this style to the Italians; in others it is ridiculous. This letter reminds me of Bruschetti placing my camellia in its case. He still disgusts me, that man.
My God, when shall I be able to go to Italy! How dull everything else is after Italy! Paul de Cassagnac himself has never transported me like the memory of that country.
Why should I not go there now? And painting? Am I strong enough not to go astray without direction? I do not know. And then to go with my family, with all the annoyances that follow... No. One must be free. But perhaps I would marry more easily there than here? No. I shall stay this winter in Paris, I shall go spend Carnival in Italy, and if there is nothing I shall spend the winter of 1881-1882 in Petersburg; I shall be twenty-three. If I do not find a rich marriage in Petersburg, I return to Paris or Italy for 1882-1883; I shall be twenty-four. And then I shall marry a titled gentleman who has 15 or 20,000 francs a year, and who will take me gladly with my own income.
Is it not absolutely wise to give myself three years to find before capitulating?
Meanwhile Mont-Dore follows its course.
I paint at the carpenter's; Potin, the Devicks (?), the Moreaus, my aunt come to fetch me almost by force, and then I walk a little. My outdoor painting is abandoned, given the bad weather we have had.
I have done another (size 15 canvas).
The scene takes place at the carpenter's; on the left, the wife is trying on the altar boy costume for the little one, who is ten years old; the little girl, seated on an old crate, watches her brother, dumbfounded; the grandmother is by the stove in the background, hands clasped, and smiles as she watches the child. The father, near the workbench, reads La Lanterne and looks askance at the red cassock and white surplice. The background is very complicated: stove, old bottles, tools, a heap of details rather hastily done, naturally.
I have not time to finish, but I made this painting to familiarize myself with these things. Full-length figures, the floor, the other details frightened me, and I would only risk it in desperation if I had to do an interior painting. Now I am acquainted with it, not that I do it well, but I am no longer afraid of it, there it is.
The heads in my foreground are about three fingers high.
And there were the dresses and everything to do; I have never done anything but nudes, except in my contemptible Salon painting. And hands! there are six and a half hands.
The brother of President Grevy has just been elected senator; another brother is governor of Algeria. The honest man, the rigid citizen Jules Grevy should have understood this. Albert and Paul are provided for thanks to Jules the president. That is not seemly.
Besides, current politics saddens me. One no longer knows where the good ones are. All those who seem so become bad once in power. Are there then no absolutely scrupulous people? And must one therefore invent laws so restrictive that one is forced to be honest and scrupulous? Alas, alas. Would Belgium and England still be the best there is? Constitutional monarchy then. But monarchy revolts me when it does not move me to tenderness. This afternoon I almost caught myself pleading for Napoleon III and knocking down the revolutionaries.
No, but excesses everywhere! The negligence of the nobles produces the extreme misery of the people, who, when it is no longer necessary, commit atrocities!
And among all peoples! painful beginnings, a moment of grandeur, then a frightful and repugnant decadence. I take inspiration from the Grevy election and send a lament in prose to Le Gaulois, but I do not believe they will print it since they criticize everything... one would need a newspaper like the one I planned the other day (book 8, small format).
Besides, I have never had the persistence to bring a piece of writing to completion. "The event" arrives, I have the idea, I make the draft, and the next day I see in the newspapers an article that resembles mine and renders mine useless, which I have moreover never finished nor put in suitable order. Persistence in art shows me that a certain effort is needed to overcome the first difficulty: it is only the first step that costs. This proverb has never struck me so much.
And then there is also, and above all, the question of milieu. Mine can be described, despite the best will in the world, as stupefying. The people of my family are ignorant and ordinary. Then there is Mme Gavini, once or twice a week, who is a society woman par excellence. On Sundays at her house there are people, but since one comes simply to visit, one rarely converses; then you know the regulars: Mouzay, de Daillens who elevates me the most, Cerny, a fool, a few colorless young men. So I assure you that if I did not so often shut myself up with myself and my reading, I would be even less sharp of mind than I am.
[In the margin: It is because she was already ill that she is discontented with everything.] [phrase added by Mme Bashkirtseff?]
I seem to smash windows, and yet sometimes no one has more difficulty putting herself forward! Often I become an imbecile, words crowd in my mouth and I cannot speak. I listen, I smile vaguely, and that is all.