Diary of Marie Bashkirtseff
CZENUKFR

Saturday, 13 September 1884

On the effect that an architect's bill can produce, item: "Fumisterie."
While they were putting Jules to bed, we stepped into his brother's studio, and as I teased him a little about his architecture, he showed me a handsome new notebook titled: Fumisterie.
— Don't disturb the pages!
I quickly shut it after turning the first page, for among my other qualities I have this refinement of never seeking even in jest to... That is not what I mean to say, but you take my meaning. So I closed the notebook — but not quickly enough, and I saw in large and handsome letters: Mac-Kay.
Bojidar's M. K. The parrot. Here is to come a passage from my brother.
So it is not Mackay, but rather Mac-Kay.
[In the margin: nor Maurice Clotz!]
The ailing Jules said in the carriage this evening, apropos of a novel by Maupassant that had taken Cartwright as its model, that what was interesting to study in that salon was the strays — those respectable women who had found themselves there by chance and by mistake.
The virtuous Mac-Kay. When he said strays I blushed. But after the fumisterie item — well, it is all very pleasant.
I return home and begin to sing.
If you only knew how I sing in such a mood. It sounds foolish to say of oneself that one sings well. But the thing is, I rediscover my voice once every three months, sometimes less often — yet tonight, on a stage, it would have brought down the house. [Words cancelled] Then again, one never sings like that at the theatre; I think the emotion would be too much.
I sang alone, shut in, enraptured. I ought to be grateful for this heavenly pleasure to the architect's Fumisterie…
But still... I tell you I cannot bear the thought that this woman is there…
Come now, we are friends, he likes us, he esteems me, he cares for me, I interest him. He said yesterday that I am quite wrong to torment myself, that I ought to count myself very happy.
Not one woman, he says, has achieved the success I have after so few years of work.
You are known, people say Mademoiselle Bashkirtseff, so many people know you. A genuine success, at last! But there it is — one would like two Salons a year; to arrive, to arrive more quickly! It is only natural, one is ambitious, I have been through that myself... etc., etc.
And today he laughed:
— They see me driving with you; it is fortunate that I am ill, otherwise they would accuse me of having painted your picture.
— They have already done so, said Emile.
— Not in the press! [One line blacked out]
— Oh! no.
But, but, but…
[Words cancelled]
My head aches, and men are wicked.
O immortal Victor Hugo. O supreme poet, how everyone finds in you all their miseries. O sublime genius, universal genius, gentle genius, tender genius, earthly genius, profound genius, humble genius, human genius!
My good little Zola, let me tell you. I am entirely of your opinion, in everything, everything, everything.
And what you criticize in Victor I too repudiate; my admirations are not blind. [Crossed out: But despite certain things] I do not wish anyone to think I admire his stream of nonsense that mixes here and there with divine things. But that stream counts for so little — one does not even notice it; one is forgiving of the weaknesses of a man like Victor Hugo, and to reproach him for them is absurd, childish.
Music! you say with contempt, O Zola. Music, be it so! But what music.
And what is more beautiful than music. Listening to it, one is brought to believe in the most ravishing things — God, angels, heaven, that eternal bliss of which one never tires. A divine swoon in the strains of that music you dismiss as a trifle, Zola.
I know perfectly well that one must keep to the earth; such raptures are a pleasure chiefly by virtue of their rarity.
[Three lines cancelled]
Blue! blue! But blue, Victor Hugo.
Do you believe, Zola, that there will ever be a man or woman who will not have an hour or a minute in their life when the scientific novel no longer suffices? What an oddly constructed sentence — well, Ruy Blas is an absurd work, agreed, I scoff at its plausibility, but it contains admirable verses that express things we have all felt or shall yet feel.
Victor Hugo, I adore you. Zola, I am with you.

Notes

Fumisterie: literally chimney/heating work, but also a common slang word for a hoax or sham. ↩