Diary of Marie Bashkirtseff
CZENUKFR

Wednesday, 9 May 1883

We have a little republican-artistic-poetic dinner this evening. Gaillard and his wife, Clovis Hugues and his wife, Dusautoy — Dusautoy was one too many; it is only to make gossip, as is a journalist friend of the Gaillards whose name I do not recall. Then there is Julian and Tony. I was very eager to invite the brothers, and wrote a few words this morning to… the architect, explaining this impromptu dinner: will your brother come? If you bring him, I shall give you a painting!
No — but something happened, something happened! Ah, it is ravishing. When one does not expect it, while expecting it all the same, and it does not keep one waiting, and yet it is unexpected. He came. At half past seven. They both came. He came at last!
Ah, it is charming. No — admit it is charming, admit it is very charming. But I dined between Clovis Hugues and Émile Bastien, and Jules farther away — deliberately… Can you believe it! That is how I love things to happen!
Hugues is extraordinary. He improvised thirty-four verses on L'Amour au village — on the spot, in the album, signed. And then his imitations! Gambetta, Madier, Clemenceau — one after another, each more devastating than the last, with that remarkable eloquence that makes parody terrifying. Meanwhile Bastien was sketching him — Hugues rendered with a dozen arms radiating out around him like a Hindu idol, each arm in a different gesture. Hilarious and yet something true about it.

Bastien said he is jealous of Saint-Marceaux and will get rid of him gradually. He repeated it several times. I said I loved Saint-Marceaux more. He said: not the way a woman would love. There was teasing about a resemblance between Saint-Marceaux and Shakespeare, and about my once having drawn the sculptor as an egg in an eggcup — the Easter egg affair. The architect told me later that Jules had come entirely of his own accord, without needing to be persuaded.

Jules left at midnight. He said late nights were ruinous; the others stayed until two. Tony was enchanted with something I had said about the Salon entries — there was a moment when everyone fell silent and listened while I talked to Julian about the paintings. I was afraid afterwards that I had said too much, that Bastien would hate me for it. One feels a mutual hostility between us — small inexplicable tensions, nothing said, nothing definite — but we are not in sympathy. I cannot say the things before him that might make him like me better. We think identically about art, both of us, and yet I am paralysed. I wonder if it is simply because he does not like me.