Friday, 22 February 1884

Dina’s head, begun yesterday, is painted — except for the accents in the eyes.

It seems too good to me — it will probably turn out very bad.

That idiot Gavini drove me to fury at luncheon by talking nonsense about the Meissonier-Mackay affair.¹

Mme Mackay (the immensely rich one) goes to Meissonier and commissions her portrait. After some hesitation — it seems — Meissonier says yes, but it will be seventy thousand francs, exactly double what he charged for the portrait of Baron de Guntsbourg (same dimensions) some years ago; but Guntsbourg is far less rich than Mme Mackay. This portrait is exhibited at the Triennial — and found mediocre!

Mme Mackay asks for retouching; Meissonier refuses. Mme Mackay threatens to leave the portrait on his hands; Meissonier says they will litigate. Mme Mackay, persuaded by some friends, pays, accepts the portrait — and hangs it in her WC.

The newspapers make an uproar, and Le Voltaire asks whether one finds Lamartine manuscripts there.

Mme Mackay destroys the portrait. End.

And all Paris attacks the foreigner.

And here is my opinion.

Mme Mackay lacked delicacy in showing her displeasure to an artist of Meissonier’s stature — who had, after all, done everything he could, who is seventy-three years old and has produced masterpieces.

But! M. Meissonier entirely lacked dignity and nobility in forcing this ignorant woman — this bourgeoise (I grant you that) — to pay all the same. He behaved like a tradesman, which led Mme Mackay to do what she did without anyone crying vandalism.

But Mme Mackay is a foreigner. She will be in the wrong.

Princess Karageorgevitch brings us Alexis, just returned from Vienna, Hungary, etc. He has spent nine months outside Paris, and I believe him to be extremely intimate with Mme Petzold née Soutzo, the Soutzo’s sister; she married Petzold, a kind of very rich agent who is delighted to have a princess for a wife. I myself believe that the Slavic, Oriental Alexis accepts Mme Petzold’s friendship with all the benefits that Rastignac² derived from the Baronne de Nucingen.

Mme Karageorgevitch is delighted, even proud.

I have just had a stroke of genius. The only thing that truly upsets my stupid family is seeing me without decent clothes or not eating.

When I do not eat, there is consternation.

I therefore want to try this method. I shall eat only a little soup — “so as not to die of hunger.” And I have already worked out with Rosalie a system for smuggling in provisions — for as you can well imagine I have no intention of genuinely fasting. What faces they will pull!

I laugh about it all by myself.

And I shall tell them it will be like this until such time as as long as as we continue not to be introduced to the Princess Mathildes, at the houses of painters like Munkácsy, etc., etc. But to be introduced one must ask — and we would be greatly honoured [to be] introduced.