Diary of Marie Bashkirtseff
CZENUKFR

Wednesday, 14 May 1884

A letter from Maupassant. What does this man think? He is a hundred leagues from knowing who I am, since I have told no one — not even Julian. And what am I going to say to him? If it were Zola I should manage well enough, but him — I do not admire him sufficiently; he has talent, but not enough for me to adore him.
My painting Jean et Jacques has received an honourable mention at Nice. Everyone is wild with joy — except me.

Thursday, 15 May 1884

At ten o'clock in the morning Emile Bastien arrives with M. Hayem.
How strange. It does not seem possible. I am an artist and I have talent. And this is serious.
And here is a man of standing — this M. Hayem — who comes to call, who takes an interest in what I do. Can it be.
Emile Bastien is quite delighted by it; the other day he said to me: "It feels as though it were happening to me."
This good fellow is very unhappy — I believe Jules will not recover. We are giving him a napkin on which Dina has embroidered his painting L'Amour au village. Emile will send it to him in Algiers, but first he has me kiss it to bring him good luck.
Hayem has taken a fancy to Dina's pastel, but I cannot sell it to him. He is very amiable. And very influential. The medal was spoken of as an almost certain thing.
And all afternoon I wander through my rooms in fairly good spirits, with little shivers at the back of my neck at the thought of the medal.
The medal is for the general public — and on the whole I prefer a success like mine without a medal to certain medals.
Since Emile Bastien was to have lunched with us but could not, we sent him a pâté to astonish him. He writes this evening to say that Hayem was delighted by his visit and will speak to me on Tuesday about buying something.
Louis Canrobert made his first communion today; I sent him a missal from Gruel's, and he came with the Marshal this afternoon.
The Marshal came in crying that I am as good as I am beautiful! They have visited only family — and us. And poor little Louis kept saying, "Papa, let us hurry, otherwise we shall not have time to go to Mme Bashkirtseff's." The Marshal tells me this himself.
The priest to dinner, and in the evening the tall Bikowski from Nice.
Ugh!

Friday, 16 May 1884

We go to the Salon.
A fair number of acquaintances. Bertier, with whom we exchange predictions about the medal. Ducros. The Faleyeffs — they bore me — and so on.
Mme Abbema tells me that her brother-in-law M. Paul Mantz (of Le Temps, you know) thinks I have great talent. A little later we meet a paintress [sic] named Mlle Arosa whom Maman has seen at Abbema's; she is with a lady who gets herself introduced in order to say that she is the daughter of M. Paul Mantz, and so forth. It seems rather foolish to go on repeating all the flattering things here. When they are merely society people I never mention it, since politeness requires these compliments.
But Abbema and Paul Mantz's daughter, in telling me what this great critic thinks of me, insist on making me understand what an enormous thing it is to have the opinion of a man like him.
There has apparently already been an article in Le Temps. And I have already received twenty-two or twenty-three cuttings from various newspapers.
We also meet the Clovis Hugues. He looks very unhappy. It is that dreadful affair from a few months ago.
You know that an agency and several newspapers said that Mme Hugues, before her marriage, had had a liaison. It was false — it was proved so. Everyone sided with Hugues, but something always remains from these slanders, and who knows — perhaps even a suspicion lodged at the bottom of the husband's heart.
We are to go tomorrow to a celebration they are giving in honour of Mistral. I had Emile Bastien invited several days ago already.
I wrote to him this morning asking him to tell me exactly the state of Jules's illness. There is, apparently, at Somny in Russia a woman who cures diseases of the stomach, and the doctors of Kharkov have even given her a diploma permitting her to practise medicine. She is said to work miracles. Why not try?
If it is cancer... the great doctors can do nothing. And yet — thirty-five, a man of genius, and to die! It would be monstrous.
La Mackay has something to do with it.
As for me... I make myself laugh. My painting is looked at a great deal, and I am looked at a great deal. Some people know who I am. This beginning of... And in Paris it is a pleasure.
I was wearing grey for the first time — a very dark grey wool dress, very simple and very smart. A black straw hat in the Watteau style.
And what dreams! To take Bastien-Lepage to Russia and cure him! Once cured he falls in love with me, and I would love him only as a mother would. Since he has been so ill every prick of wounded vanity has vanished; I no longer think about how indifferent he was toward me, and I regard him as a very dear friend. I am no longer in awe of him, and there is a kind of pleasure in that — imagine an emperor whom one greeted from afar with humiliating deference, who falls into a ravine, breaks both legs, and whom one is free to go and help.
Poor dear — would I kill Coco to save him? Yes. But would I, by any chance, kill Coco for anyone else — for Engelhardt, for Missak? Well... I don't know — no — I would scream and run away with my eyes shut and my ears stopped. But for Bastien I would do it myself.
And for Dina, for my aunt, for Maman, for Paul... even for whom else? No — definitely not for Engelhardt, not for Missak — oh! no. Unless their mothers cried out, and then I tell you I would run away leaving it to happen — no, taking Coco with me.
You see, a sacrifice can be made in two ways — for one's own pleasure, or for something great and just. For Bastien, it would be for my pleasure at the same time as for something great and just.
Poor Coco. If you knew how sweet he is. He is smaller than a poodle — white with black patches, black head with a white tip. Long, uneven fur, neither curly nor flat; sometimes he loses half of it and looks wretched. His tail is like a plume. Beautiful eyes. He is not handsome, but so pampered, so sweet, and always looking either bewildered or very sad — except when I come home; even if I were to come home four times a day, there is ten minutes of delirium: he cries until I speak to him.
When Rosalie puts on my shoes, he sits on Rosalie's back.
Then he retreats under the dressing table and does not emerge until I am ready to go downstairs — it is quite settled.
He understands when I say: sit down — go under there — explain yourself! He explains himself by throwing himself into my arms. And when I say: what have you done? He hides his head under my skirt, or in my bodice if my dress is loose-fitting. And if I say: you are not going, he fidgets and implores me, then Maman, then everyone in turn.
He gives his paw, and when I say: paws on the shoulder, he places them on my shoulder.
Only the words go away are poorly understood. The more I say go away, the more he presses himself against me — climbs onto my lap, puts his head on my arm or in the crook of my neck, as if to protect himself from some terrible fate. He has a very lively imagination. I hold him by the paws and slap the floor with all my strength right beside him, and he screams blue murder. I have made him as supple as a clown from playing with him since his tenderest infancy — for, as you know, he was born here from Pincio, who brought him into the world in a hat from Virot's. I roll him into a ball, take him by the tail and spin him round on the floor, and he is delighted. He is a unique dog. [Crossed out: he loves me with]
And I would kill him to cure Bastien.

Saturday, 17 May 1884

To thank Etincelle I sent her flowers; she wrote me a charming letter, and I replied so well that she came in person today. We went straight up to the studio — it annoyed me to have it appear that Etincelle is our friend.
Once up there she confides in me; it comes to this: she is married to Double, in Germany. It is a very irregular situation, but on the whole I think it is perfectly fine — they adore each other; one lives but once.
The architect replies that his brother has rheumatism in the kidneys, and that he will come to talk about it at length. He is, he says, very touched — and besides, "one cannot have the talent that I have without possessing a good heart."
This evening at the Clovis Hugues'.
Ah! it is curious. Atrocious women and long-haired poets — passionate félibres. When Mistral arrived even the ladies rose. He was presented with heaven knows how many passages of verse. Mistral looks like a handsome gendarme.
He sang twenty or thirty couplets taken up in chorus by the audience.
There were fewer celebrities than I expected... On the whole there was only Mistral, Hugues, Paul Arène, Faure, and the small fry.
And I danced a round of the polka with Clovis Hugues!
After which we leave with Mme Gaillard, who is in raptures over what M. Paul Mantz has said to her about me.
This great man's daughter, Mme d'Astoin, came today with Mlle Arosa.

Notes

The Félibrige was the literary movement founded by Frédéric Mistral and others to promote the Occitan language and Provençal culture. Its members, the félibres, were poets and writers devoted to the revival of southern French literature. ↩