Alexandrine Patchenko (Nini)

Who she was

Alexandrine Patchenko -- Marie writes "Pachtenko" in carnet 087 -- was the wife of Marie's brother Paul. The diary calls her "Nini", "la femme à Paul", "Mme Paul", and once, in a joke on the way home from Russia in 1882, "Alexandra" (097.0067). She came from the same part of the Poltava region as the Bashkirtseffs: "of good enough family, known, from the same country, a neighbour, rather rich, young, pretty and, to judge from her letters, of good nature", as Marie summed up the fiancée on 28 December 1879 (087.0078). Her father is M. Patchenko and her sister Catherine ("la sœur de Nini"). Her birth and death dates are not in the diary; Marie guesses in October 1882 that she is "twenty-four or twenty-five" (096.0401). The Rijksmuseum names her Alexandrine Patchenko and catalogues the portrait Marie painted of her (Rijksmuseum, SK-A-1988).

Marie and Nini

The engagement, 1879-80. On 28 December 1879 Marie learns in Paris that Paul wants to marry, and consents: "she adores him and is keen on the marriage"; a telegram from the girl to Maman reads "Happy, thanks Maman on my knees, come back quickly, I am bored to death. -- Alexandrine" (087.0078-0079). On 31 December Marie writes her a letter, "Chère mademoiselle... I wish you every happiness" (087.0106-0108). Constantin Bashkirtseff, the father, objects by telegram on 10 January 1880 (087.0172). In March 1880 Paul and his fiancée "were entering the church to be married when M. Bashkirtseff arrived with a letter from the archbishop and everything was upset"; Marie thinks of "the scandal for the girl" (087.0590-0591, 10 March 1880).

The marriage. The wedding took place later at the country house of "Micha" or "Michel", a young man of the Poltava circle whom Marie does not further identify (see Micha), where, as Nini told Marie in July 1881, the company supped until seven in the morning and she had "a female society" (092.0249). Marie does not date the marriage; she says that two months afterwards Paul took his wife to the great New Year's ball (092.0252), which puts it in the autumn of 1880. The day after the wedding they came to Gavronzi: Nini threw herself at Maman's feet, sobbing, "her hair undone, very beautiful black hair"; they were lodged in a separate pavilion, and her father, "rat comme tout", gave her nothing (091.0191, 25 February 1881).

Gavronzi, summer 1881. On 29 May 1881, in her first days at Gavronzi, Marie describes her: "rather pretty, superb black hair, a beautiful complexion, not badly made; a very good little woman, but common" (092.0074). She makes a dress for her on 1 June (092.0085) and, on 7 June, "does the portrait of Nini, Paul's wife. A nice creature, so good, so gentle, she kisses my hands and regards me as a being apart" (092.0103). When M. Patchenko comes on 6 July and leaves her without a rouble, she begs him in vain for five hundred roubles to go to Paris with Marie (092.0201, 092.0207); Marie decides to take Paul and Nini with her. On 13 July Marie writes her harshest early verdict: Nini "is married, that is all that the girls here aim at"; she kept an older, rich suitor during Paul's courtship and "had herself carried off because it is romantic and chic here"; the couple's pavilion "has the air of a nest drowned in tall trees" but they sleep in two narrow beds separated by the washstand; "no gleam of youth". Marie fears that Micha "will cuckold Paul in a year" (092.0249-0254). A week later she has told the couple her views and "they look kinder already" (092.0261). Throughout the month Nini is a friendly confidante who tells her Lihopoy's declarations (092.0262).

Paris, winter 1881-82. Paul and Nini arrive in Paris on 28 November 1881 (094.0024). On 15 December Marie gives her four dresses, a jacket and an emerald, after Constantin arrives and shows Nini "an indifference bordering on hostility" (094.0070). On 29 December she begins her portrait, wanting "at one go Dina, Nini and Irma" (094.0113); on 31 December the sketch is "very original in arrangement and well started" (Tony Robert-Fleury, 094.0116); the picture is finished on 11 January 1882 (see Portrait de sa belle-sœur). On 2 January 1882, on a sunny drive, Marie opens a carriage window and Nini is "all in supplications and tears" (094.0127-0128). Nini is "charming, pretty, magnificent shoulders" at the great evening of 12 January (094.0166). On 22 January she is at the Opéra-Comique in the box sent by Étincelle (094.0196); on 21 February she is in the Watteau costume at the battle of flowers in Nice (094.0284).

Marie's change of mind. Marie's verdicts darken. On 13 February 1882: "a good person but... provincial, bourgeois, silly and vain" with a habit of small clumsy lies, and Marie, "with the rage to improve everything", would like to educate her (094.0254-0255). On 11 March, when Paul and Nini leave, Marie writes at length of her carelessness, her untidiness ("black nails, torn and dirty lace"), her sighs, her certainty that she is beautiful and that Poltava is the smartest place on earth -- and that, for all that, she is a "bonne femme, patient and gentle" (094.0305-0307). The same entry shows that they had left a baby of six weeks at home to travel; Nini is again four months pregnant (094.0306-0307). On 12 April Constantin is left "alone with the lugubrious M. and Mme Paul" (094.0390).

Gavronzi, autumn 1882. In September 1882 she gives birth (096.0237) -- a son, "fifteen days old" on 15 October, when Marie finds also "the little girl, a year old, charming, with long black lashes" (096.0389). On 18 October Marie records a morning scene between Paul and "his wife": "this woman is stupid, dirty, ill-bred and ugly, with dreadful teeth, one missing at the front", who has written to Paul that she will go to her father with the children; Paul, "the best husband in the world", got no dowry and spends what Maman gave him on his family (096.0400-0404). On 4 November the couple's quarrels are "endless" (097.0016-0019); on 15 November, in the train to Paris, Marie writes down her view at length, including the joke that Nini would be "Alexandra" because Basile Kotchoubey kissed her hand, that she thinks herself a duchess and that she does not love Paul (097.0064-0076).

1883. On 13 July 1883, when Paul and his wife treat Maman "like pigs", Marie writes Paul five pages of insults and calls Nini his "ignoble wife" (100.0311). Nini does not reappear by name after that.

In Marie's art

Marie says on 7 June 1881 at Gavronzi that she is painting Nini's portrait (092.0103); the picture now in the Rijksmuseum was begun in Paris on 29 December 1881 and finished on 11 January 1882, and Marie judged it a failure. It shows the sitter on a sofa with a book in her right hand and is signed "M.B. 1881". See Portrait de sa belle-sœur (Alexandrine Patchenko).

Related entries

Sources