Diary of Marie Bashkirtseff
CZENUKFR

Thursday, 12 April 1883

There are days when I hear worse… And then one wants to flee from oneself, to go mad.
There were two telegrams yesterday from Poltava. My father is gravely ill. We are still awaiting another telegram, and Maman will probably leave this evening. She fell into such despair… One must [words blacked out: believe she truly loves him] in spite of all his faults… To marry without love, or with little, to remain separated twenty years, to meet again and love. He has always been in love with her — but as for Maman, that is only these last three years. He may perhaps die. Be that as it may, he is not an agreeable person.
He is wicked and treacherous.
When I went to Russia for the first time, six years ago — I was seventeen — he tried to make insinuations about Maman, truly abominable things, all the more infamous for being lies. Absurd, impossible lies. Even were they true, he would be the last person who ought to say them. I was born at seven months; they thought I would not live two hours; and contrary to all custom and…
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…stories — that I was full-term, perfectly so. And as he presumably feared I had not understood, he repeated it: you were born at term, like everyone else — though admittedly after the wedding, Maman… Then, as I showed no reaction at all, he began to tell me how one passed the time when he was engaged, and how one evening they had lingered at the…
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…like a very honest man.
An unpaid official, agreeable, lavish — he is beloved on his estate. Alongside all that there are the young Eristoffs. Mlle Bashkirseff is to marry an Eristoff — a widower with three children, two boys and a girl.
After the prince's death, the children are with their stepmother at Gavronzi, where there also reside an Italian Alphonse picked up in a Naples street and a French actress. The little princess — aged ten and twelve — went out with this actress; and my father's kept woman called the child ma petite Nadine and was practically her governess. As for the Alphonse, the princess tried to pass him off as Michka's private tutor, but the latter — though only thirteen — made such an uproar that the plan had to be abandoned.
This vile insinuation I have just described has its explanation of a kind in the contempt that grandfather and grandmother always showed for their son-in-law. I was raised with these ideas — one always spoke of Maman's absurd marriage, of my father's worthlessness, of the family's loose morals — and so he wished to strike this blow to make me believe people had been only too grateful that he married her, and so on… Be that as it may, it is not an admirable trait.
Well — if Maman becomes a widow we shall not go to the coronation; I shall remain to paint without interruption, and as deep mourning forbids going out, I shall be able to look after my right side. I shall put on a yellow patch if the need makes itself felt.
These are so many advantages. And for later — within a year we shall secure support at the embassy.

Notes

Alphonse: 1880s slang for a kept man or male parasite, drawn from the title character of Alexandre Dumas fils's play Monsieur Alphonse (1873). ↩