Marie Bashkirtseff (from Childhood to Girlhood)

Part 1

MARIE BASHKIRTSEFF

(From Childhood to Girlhood)

TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH BY MARY J. SAFFORD

PREFACE

THE SOUL OF A LITTLE GIRL

Marie Bashkirtseff, beginning at twelve years old, wrote her journal ingenuously, sincerely, amusing us by her whims, thrilling us by her enthusiasms, touching us by her sufferings.

We have gone through these note-books bound in white parchment, slightly discoloured, like the winding sheet in which sleeps a memory, and have already gathered a volume, precious, not because it describes such an entertainment or such an event, but because it reveals the mentality of a young girl.

This time we have been especially interested by the first books, written in a large, unformed hand, dashing, variable, following the successive impressions of a changeful, sensitive nature.

Very few documents exist concerning children, in whom the nineteenth century alone began to interest itself.

In fact the real personality of the child is very secret, for it distrusts these comprehensive and authoritative beings, "grown-up people." And it hides its ironical observations, its dreams, all the ardour of its little soul.

Children play. They have built, with sand and twigs, a fantastic world peopled with their familiar toys: a grey cloth elephant, a multi-coloured duck as big as that white plush bear. And they are in the jungle, tracking, hunting, killing. Then they dance round to a secret rhythm. Stop to look at them, the game will end. The little mouths will become silent. The child will always hide the ingenuous observations it makes with its clear eyes.

Therefore it seems to us very interesting to show a little girl's existence, not told from the distance of past years, but written day by day. Marie Bashkirtseff was a child of precocious intelligence, ardent will, extreme intensity of life. Maurice Barrès defines it sensibly in saying that she had, "when very young, amalgamated five or six exceptional souls in her delicate, already failing body."

The nomad life led by her parents, residences in Paris, London, Nice, Rome, hastened the development of a vivid intelligence.

This little "uprooted" girl accommodated herself to these varied lives with the versatility of children, but she knew how to reserve her personal life of study. It was a strange intellectual solicitude of the little girl living among idle people and dreaming of "becoming somebody famous." And, completely surrounded by refined luxury, she knew how to see the humble folk, whose expressive features she has inscribed in a way not to be forgotten in her pictures.

If this journal reveals a precocious intellect, it preserves--and this is its charm--a spontaneity of childhood--for the little Slav was a bewitching little girl, with rosy cheeks and clear eyes. Has she not evoked all the marvellous imagination of the little ones in these words: "Because I put on an ermine cloak, I imagine that I am a queen"?

Marie's sentimental life has greatly perturbed her biographers. They have accused her of having a cold, indifferent heart. Others, more penetrating, have seen that Marie considered love as a religion for which a god was necessary. Hence her dream as a young girl: "to love a superior being." And she wrote to Maupassant.

Jean Finot has pointed out that there was something "infinitely tragical in the approach from a distance of these two sublime beings already stamped by death." Besides, Marie did not know the novelist.

Another person interested the young girl, Bastien-Lepage. Their double death-struggle drew them together for a moment, and death permanently unites their names in our memory.

So let us not seek the sentimental secret which Marie did not wish to reveal to us. Goncourt tells us the story of that Hokousaï who signed "An old man crazy to be conspicuous." Let us think that Marie was also the young girl crazy to be conspicuous.

But let us go back to an idyl little known of Marie's twelfth year. The fact itself is not very extraordinary. The little girl is training herself for motherhood by lavishing caresses on wretched papier-mâché baby dolls. She is practising for her part of woman by playing at being in love. Artless little affairs outlined in the catechism, pervaded by the fragrance of incense. Very similar to these appears to us the enthusiasm the little Slav felt for the Duc de H----. Candid, affectionate little girl, she says deliciously: "I love him, and that is what makes me suffer. Take away this grief, and I shall be a thousand times more unhappy. The pain makes my happiness. I live for it alone. All my thoughts are centred there. The Duc de H---- is my all. I love him so much. That is a very ancient and old-fashioned phrase, since people no longer love."

After such a passage of captivating vivacity, in which work and pleasures inflame this ardent vitality, other days,--numerous, alas! have the mere mention of a date followed by a dash. These are the stations of the disease when the charming body was weakening like a dying flower. And there were the alternations of hope, the physicians consulted when at first she believed everything, to doubt, later, all the remedies with which their pity beguiles anxiety, at last the resigned almost certainty:

"And, nevertheless, I am going to die."

Should the shortness of her existence be regretted for Marie? Certainly, thoroughly in love, she would not have found happiness in marriage, which fashionable society too often transforms into a partnership of egotisms, interests, and hypocrisy. But would not maternity have consoled her, affording her a delicious refuge, her who bent patiently over the faces of the very little children, expressed their fleeting occupations, their intent looks?

Sly death did not permit her to finish her destiny, and the little Slav preserves for us her disturbing virgin charm.

In that villa in Nice, where Marie Bashkirtseff lived, clearly appears the vision of a young girl, harmonious in the whiteness of her usual clothing, with a gaze sparkling with ardent life, her who, Maurice Barrès says, "appears to us a representation of the eternal force which calls forth heroes in each generation and that she may seem of sound sense to us, let us cherish her memory under the proud name of Our-Lady who is never satisfied."

RENÉE D'ULMÉS.

NEW JOURNAL OF MARIE BASHKIRTSEFF

JANUARY, 1873

Part 2

(Marie was then twelve years old.)

I must tell you that ever since Baden I have thought of nothing except the Duc de H----. In the afternoon I studied. I did not go out except for half an hour on the terrace. I am very unhappy to-day. I am in a terrible state of mind; if this keeps on, I don't know what will become of me.

How fortunate people who have no secrets are!

Oh, God, in mercy save me!

The face makes very little difference! People can't love just on account of the face. Of course it does a great deal, but when there is nothing else--. They have been talking about B----. He has exactly my disposition. I am fond of society; he likes to flirt; he likes to see and to be seen; in short, he is pleased with the same things that please me. They say he is a gambler. Oh! dear! What evil genius has changed him!

Perhaps he is in love--hopelessly?

Happy love ought to make us better, but hopeless love! Oh, I believe it must be that!

No, no, he is simply dragged down like so many young men by that terrible gulf. Oh, what an accursed place! How many wretched beings it has made! Oh, fly from it! Take your sons, your husbands, your brothers away from there, or they are lost. B---- is beginning. The Duc de H---- has begun, too, and he will go on, while he might live happily. Live and be useful to society. But he spends his time with wicked men and women. He can do it as long as he has anything, and he used to be immensely rich.

Dr. V---- has said that Mademoiselle C---- is ill, that she may live five years or die in three weeks, because she is consumptive. How many misfortunes at once!

If, when I am grown up, I should marry B---- what a life it would be! To stay all alone, that is, surrounded by commonplace men, who will want to flirt with me, and be carried away by the whirl of pleasure. I dream of and wish for all these things, but with a husband I love and who loves me--.

Ah, who would suppose it was little Marie, a girl scarcely twelve years old; who feels all this! But what am I saying? What a dismal thought! I don't even know him, and am already marrying him--how silly I am!

I am really much vexed about all this. I am calmer now. My handwriting shows it. The spontaneous burst of indignation is a little quieted. It is soothing to write or communicate one's ideas to somebody.

B---- isn't worth while. I shall never marry him. If he begs me on his knees, I shall be--oh, I forgot the word--I shall be firm. No, that isn't the word, but I know what I mean. Yet if he loves me very much, very deeply, if he cannot live without me--vain phrases! Do not let us meet. I don't wish to be weak.

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