Diary of Marie Bashkirtseff
CZENUKFR

Sunday, 18 May 1884

[Crossed out: My family will be the death of me] Mme Gaillard and Bagnitsky are at dinner. And Emile Bastien, deeply moved by my letter. He greeted me quite differently, and several times I could see him looking at me with tenderness — all perfectly proper. I had written so kindly: "say nothing to anyone to avoid gossip — let it remain between us."
And so here we are, friends — by reason of our shared tenderness for the great Jules. You will see what comes of it.
Bagnitsky tells me (I had been coming back from the Bois, where I had gone with the Saritsky girls who are passing through — the father who once wanted to marry Maman has become a grand personage, and now Maman pays court to his daughters) — he tells me that at the painter Bogoluboff's, people were discussing the Salon, and someone — an artist he would of course not name — said: "There is a very fine Bastien-Lepage, signed Bashkirtseff."
As I turned quite pale at this, for I had foreseen it, the architect tells me to calm myself.
— But you do not know what they are saying! (We were speaking Russian.)
— Yes I do. Come, let me tell you.
And in the anteroom he begins to console me — that it is absurd, that no one will believe it, and that if my painting resembles his brother's it is only because, like him, I seek truth and am sincere before nature, and so on. Meanwhile I, who felt myself like a guilty party and had nearly begun to think he must be furious with me on account of these slanders.
For it is infamous — for Jules Bastien-Lepage as much as for me! Well, this excellent man consoles me as best he can, reassures me; I am almost glad of it, so afraid was I that all this would make me look as though I had imitated Bastien-Lepage, compromised him, and so on... This man ought to be furious on his brother's behalf. And I regard him as the faithful echo of his brother... Well then, I am very saddened and I lament human infamy a little — so as to be reassured, consoled, and coaxed by Mme Gaillard, Bagnitsky, and Emile; the last two speak to me as they would to a child and end by kissing my hands. At bottom I rather enjoyed inspiring compassion — and especially Emile, who shook me by the arm saying: come now, rise above it. You are a force, and so on. You cannot imagine how much importance I attach to what this young man says.
He is sincerity itself. It is even comical. Sometimes I remark laughingly that I am the greatest of artists, and this charming innocent stops me in all seriousness: "Come now, you cannot think that — why speak like this when one has a genuine great talent?"
He is a little naive sometimes, but he is an artist and his judgements are remarkable — I attribute them, what is more, to Jules, which is perfectly natural.
And so there I was, saying sadly that life is bitter, while Maman [Crossed out: very stupidly] kept interfering and ruining all my effects by taking it tragically and coming to reassure me. She imagines! No, it is senseless. One cannot conceive it! She wanted me to believe that Bagnitsky had invented the whole thing to tease me, or that the gentleman who said it had said it on purpose to infuriate me, "being presumably acquainted with my character."
It is deranged, is it not. Monumental. Suppose, I said to her later, that I were truly, deeply upset by this gossip. Do you imagine your idiotic words will soothe me? With this woman there is simply no way.
[Crossed out: And to engage in arguments with me for the gallery — which simply is not done!!!] She thinks me an idiot — for at every moment, whenever I am displeased with something, she says I am mistaken, that it is not so, and invents childish fictions to calm me. Which makes me furious. But all that is the small dishes. Here is the main course. In front of Mme Gaillard, in front of Bagnitsky whom the architect barely knows, she begins blurting out the whole story of the doctors, the woman at Somny, Jules's illness — insisting on the details of his suffering and the dangers he faces. To understand what an outrage this is, one must know how much this man adores his brother and what a humiliating and horrible grief it is for him to hear his brother's illness picked over by strangers. He keeps to himself so that no one will speak of it. There [Words blacked out: two illegible lines] Is it pleasant to hear... But do you remember how I, and how my household, received the Mouzay, who wrote to me that I was dying and recommended this or that doctor?
And after what I had written. Ah! it was so stupid, so foolish, so indelicate, so clumsy... And I was reduced to looking like an idiot, a chatterbox, an indifferent person!
It will teach me, it will teach me, it will teach me! Why did I tell them? Ah! What wretchedness!
No, but just imagine — their great clumsy paws thrust into my tender friendships. Ah!
It is four in the morning. Seeing that I was furious, Dina kept Emile and Bagnitsky as long as she could so that it would be too late for family scenes. It changed nothing... I said all this to them between two and three in the morning, in Maman's room. Can one imagine such a thing! Ah! these people will be the death of me. If I were even asking them to assist me — no, I conjure them on my knees to leave me in peace, nothing more! That is all. Peace, peace, peace! Stay neutral. Neutral — that is all.
That I should have the freedom to complain, to speak of human wretchedness, to philosophise with the people who come here — without being subjected to ridiculous scenes.
On the whole I am flattered by the stir my painting is causing. I am envied, I am slandered — I am somebody. So I am perfectly entitled to pose a little if that is my pleasure. But no — I say in a woeful tone:
— Do you not find it horrible — is there not reason enough to be cast down! I spend six years — the six finest years of my life — working like a convict, seeing no one and enjoying nothing of life! After six years I produce something good, and they say it is not by me! The reward of so much labour turns into a dreadful calumny!!!
This I say stretched out on a bearskin rug, arms limp, sincere and posing at the same time. Whereupon dear Maman takes it literally — (and even that is not it; suppose I were truly desperate enough to die, it is not these foolish inventions and naive falsehoods that will console me,) and [Crossed out: puts her foot in it!!!!!!!]
I remain there repeating all this, and that they will be the death of me, and so on — sitting on the staircase and shouting loud enough to be heard from the bedroom. My throat is swollen. I shall not go to bed. But left alone and yielding to my invincible instinct for gaiety, I amuse myself by making wild-beast sounds to terrorise Coco, who goes quite mad and leaps about [Words blacked out: as if] an electric current were being applied to him. In the end he absolutely wanted to go off with Rosalie, looking at me with horror.
He is a peculiar creature — the more afraid of me he is, the closer he presses to me. That is to say: he bolts in a frenzy, and when I call him he throws himself into my arms with his head down, as though in despair, preferring to have it over with at once — hiding his nose in my neck and trembling. Poor old dear.
There — it is broad daylight and here we are, into the next day.

Monday, 19 May 1884

Without sleep. I was too overwrought — it is five in the morning.
I have calmed down a little from writing.
No — listen — it is heartbreaking. It will teach me to say anything to them. But then what an idea — telling them that I write intimate things to the architect and that I dream of saving him! Ah! poor little thing. It is like a bouquet of delicate flowers someone has sat on. But I am foolish to tell them such things. Yet as it is something so simple, so honest, so pure, I was not even thinking of... earthly feelings when I said it...
It will teach you. But truly Maman is stupid, and I am all the more furious in that she forced me to make it clear to those who were there yesterday. It is humiliating.
Well... It is inconceivable. We quarrel all our lives, and now she imagines she can thrust herself into my... feelings.
Ah! Damn it all!
And it is always so devoid of tact and delicacy that I come out of it flayed. These things are too fragile — even the tenderest, most beloved friend risks a heavy hand in touching them, and Maman [Crossed out: is not my friend. She is Maman, I love her because she is] Maman — because it is habit — [Crossed out: but personally she does nothing but irritate and wound me.]
And it will go from bad to worse. For she adores me and is afraid of displeasing me to an extreme degree, which is why the blunders and stupidities redouble — because at bottom there is the unshakeable conviction that she is very intelligent and that I am a child. All this is beyond repair.
These ladies are just too simple. For example: I drink goat's milk to gain weight and I drink it with pleasure. Very well — this evening Dina has the goat milked (the goat lives in the glasshouse, the stairway, and the garden), and since she knows I detest being told what to do, she starts spinning subtle manoeuvres so that I will not notice she is reminding me to take my milk.
They have annoyed me so much with medicines and remedies that it is enough for them to say: do this, for me to rear up like a fury. That is how they have caused me to do very foolish things. So fearing to put me off my goat, yet also wanting to remind me to drink it... These little stratagems that I see through at once and that exasperate me.
Ah! this household is no fun. I spend eight, nine, even ten hours working; I come down to dinner, and within two hours I am thoroughly infuriated. So here is a difficult existence — I shall not hold out. The work alone is enough, but to be plagued and distressed during the hour I eat and the one or two hours during which I should be resting!
Eight days without working, and all this! Ah, misery.
Maman is altogether too...
For example, suppose they give the medal of honour to Bouguereau. Naturally I cry out that it is an indignity, a disgrace, that I am revolted, furious, and so on.
Maman: — But no, but no, don't agitate yourself like this! Ah! Lord, they haven't given it to him! It isn't true! He hasn't got it! And if they have given it to him it was on purpose — they know your character, they knew you would rage, so they did it on purpose, and there you are letting yourself be caught like a little fool, really. It isn't even an exaggeration — it is only premature; wait until Bouguereau has his medal of honour and you will see.
Another example. The novel by the pitiful M. Ohnet, which is fashionable just now, has reached I know not how many editions.
Naturally I leap up: so this is the fodder of the majority, this is what is preferred — o tempora, o mores! Do you want to wager that Maman launches into the Bouguereau speech, or something like it? It has already happened over several things. She is afraid I shall shatter, that I shall die from the slightest shock, and in her immense naïveté she tries to protect me by means that will end by giving me a raging fever.
X, Y, or Z arrives and says: you know, the La Rochefoucauld ball was superb. I darken. Maman sees it, and five minutes later recounts as if by chance something that is intended to discredit the ball in my mind — unless she undertakes to prove that the ball never took place at all. It has happened. Childish inventions and subterfuges, and I foam with rage to think they believe I can swallow it!

Notes

O tempora, o mores! — "O the times, O the customs!" A famous exclamation from Cicero (In Catilinam, I.1), used here as a lament over the public's literary taste. ↩