Diary of Marie Bashkirtseff
CZENUKFR

Thursday, 17 February 1881

I went to see Rosita, who is back from Spain and has called on me several times. Naturally one speaks of the evening parties and balls that are beginning... I am very humiliated at going nowhere and take shelter behind my picture. It is sad and humiliating, this foolish desire for the social pleasures of my age. The music of Paul et Virginie makes me want to weep... Massé has magnificently understood the poem. Although I have had nothing resembling this singular novel, it has the gift of moving me always... and above all on evenings like this, when I tell myself that my youth is lost and that I am dead.
I have just dressed as for an evening party and paraded before the mirrors, well lit. I have lost nothing and am in excellent form! I have perhaps put on weight with the asses' milk and other things I am made to take. I no longer dare, as at sixteen in Nice, to go into raptures over my body — I no longer have the naivety that made me say it quite naturally. My artistic studies have given me occasion to see a great deal of the nude, and I believe I can judge well. I have not changed my opinion of myself. Dazzling in colour; the neck too short; the hips and the...rest very ample; the feet and hands small but irregular, though expressive. Those are the criticisms.

Notes

Paul et Virginie: opera in three acts by Victor Massé (1822–1884), premiered at the Paris Opéra-Comique in 1876, based on Bernardin de Saint-Pierre's beloved 1788 novel of two children raised in nature on Mauritius. The sentimental plot of young love separated by society made it a natural focus for Marie's self-pity. ↩
Asses' milk (laits d'ânesse): a fashionable health remedy in 19th-century Paris, recommended for digestive complaints and general debility. It was sold at specialist establishments and prescribed by doctors. ↩