Diary of Marie Bashkirtseff
CZENUKFR

Tuesday, 7 September 1880

It is raining; one would need... all the worst incidents of my existence parade through my head, and there are things, already distant, that make me start and clench my hands, like a physical pain that had just arrived...
I would need to be better, for everything around me to change... My own are more than disagreeable to me; I foresee in advance what my aunt or Maman will say, or what they will do, in each circumstance; how they are in the drawing room, on the walk, at the spa, and all this irritates me horribly... as if one were cutting glass. I would need to change everything around me, and then, calmed, I would no doubt love them as one should love them. Yet they let me perish of boredom, and when I refuse a dish, there are horrified airs... or else a thousand tricks not to serve ice cream at table because it might hurt me. Or else they come, like thieves, to close the windows I open. A thousand little follies that irritate me; but everything about the house obsesses me.
When my aunt enters my room, it seems to me an insult... But what worries me is that I am rusting in this solitude; all these dark tones obscure the intelligence and make me withdraw into myself. I fear that these dark clouds will forever leave a veil over my character and make me bitter, sour, gloomy... I have no desire to be so, and I fear becoming so, through raging and keeping silent.
[In the margin: Those who know how to read between the lines will understand that these are the words of a spoiled child.] [Note by Mme Bashkirtseff mere]
Where do you expect me to learn to converse, to carry myself in a drawing room?
They say I have a perfect bearing; the old Bonapartists said so to Adeline; they saw me at her house and at the theater. Now Blanc or Cassagnac will say I am cracked, yet the captain has changed his mind lately.
No, you see, my family does not know what it has made of me.
It seems to me that a sort of unease will always weigh upon me; the memory of the past will tarnish the future... I shall no longer dare... I am always afraid of being slandered, humiliated, blacklisted... and something of it must remain, whatever people say... Also, there has often been my fault... but I have committed extravagances only out of a kind of despair, to stun myself.
Now my isolation and my sadness frighten me only because I fear losing forever all the brilliant qualities indispensable to a woman...
This evening Mlle Moreau sends me the Black woman who teaches her guitar and who, protected by Queen Isabella, gives lessons to many Spanish women and girls.
She stayed an hour playing and sings with astonishing flair, and withdrew, kissing the hand of my aunt and me.
Why live? What am I doing here? What do I have?
Neither honors, nor happiness, nor even peace!