Diary of Marie Bashkirtseff
CZENUKFR

Friday, 11 July 1884

Monsieur Kartsoff, the Russian Consul-General, came to pay a call yesterday. Maman is beside herself with joy over it; I was obliged to come down to the drawing room.
But I am making myself ill with doing nothing.
Chasing after my wrestlers I waste all my time; I lounge on the sofas, I move from armchair to armchair, I fall asleep. And the result of this inaction is a restlessness that is absolutely maddening.
All the more so as I see my family delighted that I am resting.
These idiots think I have already worked enough in my life and that there is nothing left for me to do but a painting from time to time. I seem to share their opinion by doing nothing, and this kind of complicity enrages me to the point of making me genuinely ill.
Around six o'clock we went to the rue Legendre; he had gone out. We were about to leave when this great man arrived in a cab with his mother, with folding stools and travelling rugs. They are returning from the Bois, where they went to feed the ducks.
We are like true, dear friends; he accepts all attentions with that fine tranquillity which always disconcerts me a little.
I know perfectly well that I cast myself as the humble admirer and disciple and that he plays the grand master... All the same, his mother, Maman, or Dina renders him small services without his showing surprise or treating it differently. Yes, we are friends, yet there is no warmth, which is perhaps owing (first to his rotten temperament) and then to his illness; so I let the others court him and do not stir. It seems we have a thousand habits in common, and he recounts to us, as the confirmed invalid he is: I am like this or like that, and Maman says: that is like Marie, and his mother repeats: Mademoiselle Marie is exactly the same, you see! It is true — handkerchiefs, for instance. I never know where to find mine, I lose them, I scatter them everywhere and often discover five or six at once in my pocket, because Maman put one there, Rosalie another, Dina a third, and so on. Well, it is absolutely the same with him, and food — he has the caprices of an invalid, things whose shape or colour displeases him... A gravy that was running to the right of the cutlet and which seemed to him... In short, exactly like me. I cannot say what I want to eat and afterwards I am dissatisfied. And for several other things as well. Do you think these resemblances enchant me? I am indifferent to them. [Crossed out: Only in front of the others with whom]
And yet I think about discovering what might please him. But I would have done the same for Tony, Julian, S, Y, Z, if I saw in them this fine confidence. He let himself be shorn; one asks would you like this or that, and he answers yes or no as he would to his mother.
If he loves us and considers us friends... I would like a few warm words... Perhaps it is not in his nature.
Wholly intent on getting well, he only comes alive to recount what he has eaten or might eat. And [words blacked out: not quite as] simply: "I shall come to lunch at your house," with a serious air and not a word of conventional civility.
Only, don't fix a day — I know the lunches one is invited to; I want what I find there, the unforeseen. Formal luncheon parties are all the same.
— Well then, you are no more particular than I am, and since I lunch at home every day you will surely find something.
— Precisely.
Only since I never speak to him of my painting, he tells me it is not only very foolish but not kind of me either. And how to speak of it to him with Maman and Dina and the others present... For that, one would need... Besides, my family always constrains me. It is his mother who is a fine and good woman, I like her — but she must bore him as mine bores me... And yet...
He makes me think of Dupuis in the role of a certain Monsieur Médard at the Variétés. An unalterable calm with which the actor achieves extraordinary comic effects.
— What are you doing there, Monsieur Médard?
— Nothing, Monsieur the Chief.
— What do you mean, nothing?! You are looking at me!
— I am looking at you, Monsieur the Chief.
— But I am leaving, Monsieur Médard!
— I am watching you leave, Monsieur the Chief.
And in another moment, when he enters in the middle of an important scene and another actor would pull faces or raise his voice, Dupuis says very simply: I have come for my mackintosh!
But how much is contained in this good humour. My brother Paul is a little like that too, but without any malice; he also resembles Dupuis physically. What an artist that Dupuis is — he rescues the most inane pieces.
This Jules has something of that calm — the calm of a sick child — and when he was well it had a sly character to it.
I touched on Meissonier; he defended him very feebly and we came to an agreement. It is because I truly think Meissonier is extraordinarily overrated. It is curious how everyone agrees to call him great — one almost senses a choice was made, as if he were selected as a lightning rod in order to demolish the others. One seizes on Meissonier and hammers away.
It seems to me this evening that I am very witty and that I produce two or three remarks per day that are absolutely wasted... Yesterday at dinner people were speaking of a Madame Merle who had been, they say, I don't know what — a concierge...
— Which one? people were asking.
— Why, the one who had a front box at the Italiens...
— You mean a box-facing.
But they had just served a timbale, Gavini was enraptured by it and... perhaps it was not witty at all.
I know nothing and see the necessity of nothing.
This morning I thought I was going to get cholera — I felt sick to my stomach, I had a shiver... So I took some laudanum, I gave some to Angélique, to Rosalie, and even offered some to the model, Edwige.
Jules bought a bottle today, identical to mine.
But he does not seem to open up... Is it because he is ill, or simply because he accepts our attentions without enthusiasm, or is it his rotten nature?
The truth is that in reality we have seen very little of each other, and if we are intimate it is through his brother, through painting... through our admiration — but in sum we still know each other little... I myself, who speak of his opening up, have not even let myself be glimpsed sincerely.

Notes

Adolphe Dupuis (1824-1891), celebrated comic actor at the Théâtre des Variétés in Paris. ↩
Laudanum (tincture of opium) was widely used in the 1880s as a preventive against cholera. ↩