Diary of Marie Bashkirtseff
CZENUKFR

Wednesday, 18 May 1881

Here is the notice in Le Sport (Saint-Amand). Julian dines with us this evening, and Tony comes later. They were to dine here on Friday but it shifted to today. We are a small party and it is very pleasant; later I put on my costume (the photographs had been admired) and Dina puts on hers, and we stay talking until one o'clock.
Maman gave Tony a kind of astrakhan dressing-gown — we put it on him for a moment. These good people had never seen my arms, so I showed off with arm poses and suppleness in the fine folds of the costume. Among artists one is not as one is with society people — it is more intimate, and more amusing.
Tony is enchanted with the costume and the arms — not as compliments, but purely from an artistic standpoint.
Julian appears to be enjoying himself on the divan under the rosy light of the room.
My aunt pesters him about Amélie. Great success for P. Orell of La Citoyenne — people are so polite as to doubt it can be me, it is so good and so apt.

Notes

Le Sport: a fashionable Parisian society gazette covering equestrian, sporting, and social life. Saint-Amand contributed regular notices. ↩
Astrakhan: curly lambskin fur from the Astrakhan region of Russia, fashionable for trimming and lining garments in this period. ↩
"P. Orell": Marie's pseudonym for her Salon criticism published in La Citoyenne, Hubertine Auclert's feminist newspaper. The praise moves her — the critics could not believe a woman so young wrote with such authority. ↩