Diary of Marie Bashkirtseff
CZENUKFR

Friday, 14 March 1884

It will not be finished — I shall therefore send only Un Meeting.
This evening an intimate gathering at Mme Hochon's — many artists, and several ladies: the Duchesse d'Uzès, the Comtesse Cornet, the maréchale. Us.
As for painters: Cabanel, Jalabert, Hébert, G. Ferrier, Boulanger, etc.
Music is performed, and Salvayre plays and sings pieces from his Henri III.
All these people were kind to me; Cabanel was charming.
I go out so little and so rarely that it astonishes me; my dress was very much admired. A draped skirt in very supple black silk muslin, a Directoire-style crossed bodice, and a wide sash of black satin.

Notes

Anne, Duchesse d'Uzès (1847–1933): one of the most prominent aristocratic women of the Belle Époque, celebrated for her sculpture, her hunting, and her political activism; later the first woman in France to receive a driver's licence (1898). ↩
Alexandre Cabanel (1823–1889): leading academic painter and professor at the École des Beaux-Arts, famous for his Birth of Venus (1863); a dominant figure in official French art of the period. ↩
Gaston Salvayre (1847–1916): French composer; his opera Henri III was premièred at the Paris Opéra in 1883. ↩
Directoire style: a revival fashion recalling the dress of the French Directory period (1795–99), characterised by high waists, crossed or draped bodices, and a deliberately neo-classical severity. ↩