Diary of Marie Bashkirtseff
CZENUKFR

Saturday, 3 May 1884

Emile arrives at half past eleven; I come downstairs in complete surprise.
He has a host of good things to tell me. I have a real and genuine success! Not relatively speaking — not just among you or the atelier comrades — but with everyone. Yesterday he saw Ollendorff, who told him that if this were the work of a Frenchman, the State would have bought it. And what a formidable man this M. Bashkirtseff is. (The painting is signed: M. Bashkirtseff.) So he told him you were a young girl, and added: pretty. No! he could not get over it. And everyone is speaking of it to him as a great success!
Ah!! I am beginning to believe it, a little. For fear of believing too much, I allow myself only the most guarded satisfaction — you cannot imagine how guarded. I shall be the last to believe that people believe in me... But it seems it really is good.
— A real and very great success as an artist, says Emile.
So — like Jules in '74 or '75? Ah! Lord. Well, I am not yet flooded with joy, because I scarcely believe it. And one ought to be flooded with joy. This excellent friend asks me to sign an authorisation for Charles Baude the engraver, Jules's intimate friend. This Baude is going to photograph and engrave my painting for Le Monde illustré — that is something.
And then dear Emile speaks of dear Jules; we laugh with tenderness. He will bring me letters, and is going to write to him that since the Vernissage I am as famous as Mme de Lesseps — by reason of my children. But she took ten years to produce ten, whereas I took three months to produce seven.
He also says that Friant — a man of talent — is enthusiastic about my painting. People I do not know are talking about me, taking notice of me, passing judgement on me. What happiness! Ah! It is almost beyond belief, even though I have desired and awaited it so long!
And that idiot Maupassant, who has no idea that I too am somebody.
I was right to have waited before giving permission to photograph.
Someone wrote to me the day before yesterday to ask — I do not know who. I am glad it is to be Baude, the one Bastien calls Chariot, to whom he writes eight-page letters.
I am going down to Maman's Saturday reception to receive the congratulations of all those imbeciles who think I paint like a society lady, and who offer the same compliments with the same feelings to Claire and to the other little fools.
There.
For it is Rosalie, I believe, who feels my success most keenly. She is wild with joy, speaks to me with the tender emotion of an old nurse, and goes about telling everyone right and left like a village postmistress. For her something has happened — an event has come to pass.
I wish I could believe and feel the same.
My family is pleased as well, but we rarely talk; I give them nothing but bitterness. Rosalie is a servant, an inferior — I demand no elevated feeling from her — and as a lady's maid she is perfect, since she loves me, is always cheerful, and enters into my interests like the loyal old retainer in a comedy. So that is as good as it can be. But my own people — more and more I am estranged from them. My own people, my family, my mother: I once wanted feelings from them that resembled my own, and I have been so often and so cruelly disillusioned that it is finished.
I love them out of habit, as one loves a natural thing; I speak to them occasionally — for one sometimes confides one's impressions even to a dog — but... we exchange considered opinions now and then, though I repent it within twenty words, because these ladies always say something foolish or untrue to soothe me, or to flatter my vanity. Since I always see through it and find it horribly wretched, I fall silent... and say something harsh to them, or stop speaking altogether. And it starts again, and it goes on putting more and more distance between us — but it is irreversible; we have long since been at impassable distances from one another.