Diary of Marie Bashkirtseff
CZENUKFR

Sunday, 30 March 1884

Church, the Bois, Saint-Amand, Gavini — Saint-Amand sings Italian opera; we bring him to the Gavinis'...
Then a visit to Boulanger, who promises to do what he can to secure a good placement. Holy misery! He says they gave number 1s to very bad things...
Dreaming of medals and having to scheme just to be well placed...
Oh! But why did all those blessed creatures say it was so good! Franceschi said medal. Emile Bastien said medal. A sculptor and an architect. Wretched! Yes, but they are artists all the same, and the architect is a painter — and besides, when one is the brother of a man like Jules...
Well, I have promised a hundred and fifty francs to the paint supplier to bribe the employees who hang the canvases.

Monday, 31 March 1884

Almost nothing done.
I spoke again of the necessity of my aunt's journey and of other indispensable arrangements — but it has been so long since I first raised it that I can no longer do so without weeping with exasperation...
Then I lay in a very hot bath for more than an hour, and spat blood.
Foolish, you will say — perhaps, but I have no wisdom left; I am discouraged and half mad from my struggles against the obliviousness of my family.
These people do not understand. So, at the end of their arguments, they say: "There is nothing we can do — get married." Then I reply that I am willing enough, but in that case give me a house, set me up properly. Get married to go on living with them — and with a man I shall not love, into the bargain!!
But to establish me properly, one must go to Russia, sort out all manner of financial affairs — and these ladies prefer to drag out a quiet little existence here, leavened with my tears to which they are accustomed. I should prefer [blacked out: peers or honest loose women]. And since they are decent women who do not live for themselves and who adore me, the whole world will hold me in the wrong if I despise them publicly. They tell themselves: it will sort itself out, everything will sort itself out. And they do nothing. If at least they dressed up, went out, had some passion or some vice, it would be sad for me but would at least constitute some explanation for my misfortunes, and though distressed I would not feel the atrocious rage of thinking [blacked out: as now when I suffer] for nothing, and because of the stupidity of these creatures. "No one is stupid to that extent," you will say, "and by now you have been explaining things to them for so long..." You see, however, that they are: it is a complete lack of energy and an enormous, selfish trust in chance — they are still waiting for Prince Charming to come and marry me; I swear to you it is literally true.
Well... What to say, what to do? If this goes on I have perhaps eighteen months; but if I had a little peace I could live twenty years more. Well, no doubt they are saying to themselves now that it is my number 3 that has put me in a bad humour.
Yes, that 3 is hard to swallow. Zillhardt was no better supported than I, and she got a 2 — I am not certain, but I am certain Breslau got a 2. So why not I? There are forty jurors, and apparently I had so many votes for a 2 that people thought I had it. Let us say I had 15 votes. And 25 against — the jury being made up of 15 or 25 known figures and 20 scheming nonentities who paint atrocities.
This is common knowledge.
Well, all this is true — but it has always been so and always will be; consequently my case is not a deliberate injustice.
I submit to the common law; I have no particular enemies, and I am no less supported than Breslau or others.
It must be, then, that my painting does not impose itself — that it is not good, that it is inferior to Breslau's or even Zillhardt's. To Breslau I am willing to concede... But...
Well, it is so. And it is a tremendous blow.
Come — I am lucid enough, and I see myself... No, there is nothing to say... I have not suffered injustice.
Indifference or chance — these gentlemen chat away; 2 or 3, what does it matter — in a word and in a thousand: if my painting had been very good, like Bastien's portrait of his grandfather in 1874, there would have been no number 3...
Yet in 1882 Breslau had two canvases — a painting and a portrait I would have been very happy to have made — and she got a number 3 and was hung high. And last year the same Breslau received no number at all.
Oh, go on then — I know very well I must find consolations, otherwise...
Ah! Never, never, never!! I have never touched the bottom of despair as today. As long as one is sinking downward it is not yet death — but to feel with one's feet the black and viscous floor... To say to oneself: it is neither circumstances, nor my family, nor the world; it is my lack of talent. Ah! that is too horrible, for there is no appeal, no human force, no divine one.
I no longer see any possibility of working — everything seems finished. Well then, a complete sensation? Vexation to the bottom? Yes. Well, according to your theories it ought to be a pleasure. There you have it. I don't care — I shall take bromide, it will make me sleep; and then God is great, and some small consolation always finds me after profound miseries.
And to think that I cannot even tell all this — exchange ideas, console myself in conversation... Nothing, no one, no one...
Blessed are the simple in spirit; blessed are those who believe in a good God to whom one can appeal. Appeal against what? Against my having no talent?
You see perfectly. This is the bottom. So it ought to be a pleasure. It would be, if my miseries had witnesses... The sufferings of those who later become celebrated are recounted by their friends, for one has friends, people one talks with. I see no one. And suppose I lamented! Suppose I said: no, I shall paint no more! And then? It would be no loss to anyone — I have no talent. If I were to take up crochet instead of painting, no one would complain.
So all these things one must keep locked within oneself, which matter to no one... there it is — the worst of torments, the most humiliating. For one knows, one feels, one believes oneself to be nothing.
If this lasted one could not survive it.

Tuesday, 1 April 1884

It continues — but since one must find some way round it, I find this.
Yes, I am nothing — but [blacked out: there is [illegible] and I am going to love him so as to be something through him.] Wolff speaks of the Exhibition in the rue de Sèze which opens this evening. He is the triumphant one. Every time, everywhere. And there are people who deny it! They are wretches. What a sublime artist — sublime and unique.
And to think he did not have enough votes to be a member of the jury — while I, from so much weeping, have clouded eyes.
Nothing remains but to persuade myself that I adore him — or else to die. Both, perhaps. Ah! I am furious at having written to ask for a good placement. It is cowardly, it is vile, it is shameful.
After all, he is the one who realises the paintings I dream of... I see nature and he reproduces it; I have no talent but he has, and I shall believe that I love him so as to share in his genius.
I made a pastel of Armandine.
The Canroberts come around six; I was waiting for them to suggest the horse show, so as to refuse — but they do not suggest it. And that wretched little baggage Claire tells me I am wrong to take the number 3 badly.
"After all, it is obvious you will not be on the cimaise — but in sum..."
What do you make of that? And it is because of that wretched creature that I have lost so much time, for ten months now she has prevented me from working in peace.
So it is natural that I should not even aspire to being well placed. That vile creature's words so stunned me that I said nothing. So then everyone who has said to me about my paintings what I ended up believing — are they all liars?
Serious men, honest, conscientious? Tony, whom I implored to be frank, who has known me and followed my work for six years. Bastien-Lepage himself. And his brother the architect — but then the entire jury who so admired the portrait of Dina last year?
And now it would be natural, simple, ordinary that I am not even on the cimaise — when I was there last year with a study of Irma? An entire painting, six figures, each of which is worth three times the head of Irma? I truly believe I am going mad. I expected everyone to be indignant about the 3 — and they appear to find it natural that I should not even be on the cimaise. And the dreams of a medal? And the eighteen newspapers that spoke of my landscape?
And the more than thirty people who spoke of it to Emile Bastien.
And even those who carried kindness so far as to suppose this landscape was made by someone more capable than myself? Julian said the painting had...
"After all," he says, "you nearly had a 2, and it was found quite good."
Now a wild desire to go and ask Tony what was said — and why, isn't it? Yes — what do they find to criticise in my painting? This painting of which that withered Tony said: "It is very good, truly very good; it is observed — it is the opposite of the banal; the heads have perfectly observed characters. That little fellow in the foreground is extremely good, well drawn and well painted. It lacks here and there a little breadth of touch, but in sum it is set, composed, drawn, and there are qualities that compensate... It is seriously good."
And then? Is he mad? Am I mad? Honest Emile said even more. Boulanger and Franceschi too. And then? I never, of course, speak of those where there might be the shadow of flattery. So?? Well??
To believe oneself a beginning of strength and find oneself nothing!!! The architect tells me: "Oh, you know, the number doesn't mean much — it all happens any which way."
Yes, but the placement?? I shall not speak of my family, who told me today that I am not happy because I am wicked and do not know what I want.
So I take more bromide after a two-hour hot bath. If these people continue to exasperate me I answer for nothing. I could brain one or two of them with anything at hand — a candlestick, a hammer, whatever comes to hand.
[Across the page: It is because, my dear, my very dear child, you are ill. (Mme Bashkirtseff's handwriting)]

Notes

Bromide (potassium bromide): widely prescribed as a sedative and anticonvulsant throughout the 19th century; essentially a general nerve-calming drug. ↩