on such occasions, when a thousand cherished hopes are instantaneously
charred as though struck by lightning, and, worse still, all that
she had wished for becomes hateful in her eyes, and the shame of it
assumes a gigantic scale, and continues to increase, though maybe at
the cost of her life. Men have no suspicion of this, and they would
find it hard to understand, even supposing that they were given the
opportunity of observing it. They grow up amid the realities of
life; a girl, in the unreal. The disappointments which a man endures
are real ones, and unless he is a fool, he is in a position to form
an approximate valuation of his own importance. With a girl it is
different; her opinion of herself is exaggerated to an extent that is
quite fantastical and altogether unreal, and this is especially the
case when her education is of a strictly conventional character, and
has been conducted mainly by women. The preservation of her purity is
the foundation of her creed, but she is not told, nor does she guess,
wherein this purity consists, nor how it may be lost; and consequently
she imagines that it can be lost in every conceivable way,--by a mere
nothing, by a pressure of the hand, but in any case by a kiss. This
kiss Marie Bashkirtseff had actually given and received, and after it
she had been forgotten and despised! That kiss branded her in secret
all her life. She never forgot it.
This is not the only consequence of the change from the real to the
unreal which takes place when the outer world casts its reflection in
the mirror of a young girl’s soul. Every girl has an exaggerated idea
of the value of the mystic purity of her maidenhood in the eyes of men;
and when she makes a man happy by the gift of herself, she imagines
that she has given him something extraordinary, which he must accept on
bended knee. What words can describe the humiliation which she feels if
he does not set a sufficiently high value on the gift, or if he thrusts
it aside like a pair of old slippers that do not fit! All girls are
silly to a certain extent, even the cleverest; and the girl who is not
silly on this point must have lost something of her girlish modesty.
In the case of Marie Bashkirtseff, a part of her being was blighted
after her encounter with the Italian, and she never entirely recovered
from the effects of it. This, her first acquaintance with a man, was so
full of racial misunderstandings and others besides, that it destroyed
her faith in man, as indeed it is doomed to be destroyed sooner or
later in every girl with a strong individuality and healthy nature.
And for her, as for many another, followed the lifeless years into the
middle of the twenties, when a new and very different faith begins to
show itself as the result of wider views of life and internal changes.
But with her this faith never came. Her vitality gave way too soon.
Those dead years which must inevitably follow upon an all too promising
and too early maturity, leaving a young woman apparently trivial
and devoid of any true individuality of character, and which often
last until the thirties, when the time comes for a new and greater
change,--those years with Marie, as with many another “struggling”
girl, were filled with an unnatural craving for work.
She wanted to be something on her own account, as an individual. She
compelled her mother and aunt to go with her to Paris, where she could
go to Julian’s studio, which was the only one for women where painting
was taught seriously. The working hours were from eight to twelve, from
one to five.
But she worked longer. This spoiled child, who had never known what
it meant to exert herself, was not satisfied with eight hours of hard
labor. She works in the evenings as well, after she comes home; she
works on Sundays; she is dead to the world, and with the exception of
her daily bath, she renounces every luxury of the toilet, and succeeds
in condensing into two years the work of seven. One day Julian tells
her that she must work alone, “because,” he says, “you have learned all
that it is possible to teach.”
III
Marie Bashkirtseff was not born an artist, with that stern
predestination with which nature determines the career of persons
with one talent. If her voice had not been destroyed during its
development, she would in all probability have become one of those
great singers whose charm lies not only in the outward voice, but in
the indescribable fascination of a deep, strong individuality. Her
journal, especially the first part, reveals an authoress with a rare
psychological intuition, an understanding of human nature, a deep
sympathy, a mastery of expression, and an early-matured genius, which
are unsurpassed even among Russians, well known for the richness of
their temperament. If this young woman, whose short life was consumed
by a craving for love, had gained the experience she so greatly
desired, where would the woman be found who could have borne comparison
with her? Who like her was created to receive the knowledge whereby a
woman is first revealed to herself, and is developed into the being who
is earth’s ruler,--the great mother, on whose lap man reposes, and from
whence he goes forth into the world? All that she had was original; it
was all of the best material that the earth has to give; and therein
lay the mystery of her downfall.
The backbone of her nature was that indomitable pride whereby a great
character reveals the consciousness of its own importance. The lioness
cannot wed with the house-dog. The same instinct which, in animals,
marks the boundary line between the different species, determines in
a still higher degree--higher far than the materialistic wisdom of
our schools will allow--the attractions and antipathies of love. The
iron law which compels healthy natures to preserve their distinction,
prevented this girl from sinking to the level of the men of her own
class, amongst whom she might have found some to love her. She tried
it more than once, but it did not answer. Her exceptionable nature
required a husband superior to herself. One or two such men might be
found nowadays, who not only as productive minds, but also in the
subtle charm of their manly characters, would have been the born
masters of an enchantress such as Marie Bashkirtseff. But these men
are not to be met with in the drawing-rooms and studios of Paris, nor
yet in the Bois de Boulogne; not in St. Petersburg either, nor on the
family estates of Little Russia, and she never got to know them.
This woman, who was born to become a great singer, a great painter, a
great writer, born--before all else--to be loved with a great love,
never learned to know love, and died without being great in any way,
because she was enchained all her life long to that which was greater
than all her possibilities,--a young girl’s infinite ignorance.
In spite of all the knowledge that she had acquired, in spite of all
the probings of her sensitive nerves and sharp intellect, she remained
always and in everything incomplete. It is one of the results of the
incompleteness of which unmarried women are the victims, that they
seek everywhere the complete, the perfected in man,--_i.e._, they seek
for that which is only to be found in men who are growing old, and
have nothing more to give; in whom there are no slumbering ambitions,
and no hidden aspirations. She must have passed by, unheeding, many
a young genius, who perhaps went to an inferior woman to satisfy the
passion which might have proved to both of them an endless source of
blessedness, health, and regeneration. She must have felt many a look
rest upon her, arousing sensations which, to her white soul, were a
mystery. For this girl, who had drunk deeply of the literature of her
time, and who knew theoretically everything that there was to know,
was yet unspoiled by a single trace of premature knowledge. The pages
of her journal are innocent from beginning to end,--an innocence that
is stupid while it is touchingly intact. Marie Bashkirtseff’s journal
is not merely a contribution to the psychology of girls, it is a young
girl’s psychology in the widest, most typical sense,--the psychology
of the unmarried state, bequeathed by one who is ignorant to those
who know, as her only memorial upon earth, but a memorial that will
last longer than marble or bronze. She died young, but she had no wish
to die. She took twelve years to write this book, and she wrote it on
her travels, in the midst of her pleasures, in the midst of her work,
in the despair of her loneliness, and in her fear when she shrank from
death; she wrote it during sleepless nights, and on days passed in
blessed abstraction in the beauties of nature. She always addressed
the unknown hearers who were ever present to her imagination; she
spoke to them so that, in case she should die young, she might live
upon earth in the memory of the strangers who happened to read her
journal. A “human document,” by a young girl, she thought, must be
of sufficient interest not to be forgotten, and she promises to tell
us everything connected with her little person. “All, all,--not only
all her thoughts, but she will not even hide what is laughable and
disadvantageous to herself; for what would be the object of a book like
this, unless it told the truth absolutely, accurately, and without
concealment?”
The confessions are by no means a human document in the sense that her
three patron saints--Zola, Maupassant, and Goncourt--would have used
the word. They do not contain a single naked reality. They are modest,
not only with the modesty of a child of nature, but with the modesty of
a young hot-house beauty, a delicate lady of fashion, beneath whose
snow-white resplendent dress--the work of a Parisian dressmaker--are
concealed the bleeding wounds and the pitiless signs of death. But she
lets us follow her from the rich beginnings of her youth onwards, until
the stream of life trickles away drop by drop, leading us on to the
weary resignation of her last days.
This exhaustion begins to show itself immediately after the two years
of reckless overwork and study in Julian’s studio; but the cause of
it was mental rather than physical. Julian’s last words were: “You
have learned all that it is possible to teach--the rest depends upon
yourself.” And Robert-Fleury, the principal academical professor,
nodded his approval. After that they left her. But where was she to
begin? Where was the rest to come from? What was she to do--she, who
had been such a phenomenal pupil? How was she to obtain sufficient
individuality for original production? Learn! yes, of course. A girl
can do that better than the most painstaking young man of the faculty.
There is nothing to prevent it; her sex will slumber as long as the
brain is kept at work. But artistic production is another matter.
Whence should it come? Not from herself, for she has nothing; she
has had no experience. She can represent what she has seen, or she
can imagine, but that is all. Marie’s nature was too truthful to be
satisfied with imitation. The old academical art did not appeal to
her, as was very natural, and the new was just bursting its shell,
and contained all the impurity and rubbish that belongs to a state of
transition. The imperfect in her desired the perfect; she who was an
incomplete woman felt the need of a perfected man.
She made no progress. She painted at home from models, and she went
out driving with her maid, accompanied by some young Russian friends,
and sketched street scenes from the carriage. So great was her need
for ideas that she attempted pictures on religious and historical
subjects, and with some difficulty she finished a picture for the
next Salon,--went half mad with empty pride, but had to admit that it
was very much inferior to the former one which she had painted under
Julian’s supervision. For two years she meets with no success. Her
pictures contain nothing that is characteristic; she has no individual
style, no personal experiences, and no original ideas. But her
individuality, though dormant, is too strong to allow her to imitate
the style of other lady artists, one half of whom are too amateurish,
and their painting too devoid of character, to content her, while the
others have betrayed their sex, and adopted a severe, masculine style.
At last the day came when Bastien Lepage was a public celebrity. Marie
Bashkirtseff saw his pictures, became his pupil, worshipped him, and
ever after sang his praises.
Yet, in all this, there was something lacking.
His bright coloring, and the atmosphere of his landscapes, with their
pale, sultry heat, the aggressive physical character of his people,
etc.,--all these points appealed strongly to her South-Russian nature.
He set free her national feelings, which had hitherto been bound and
suppressed beneath academical influences, and she discovered a kindred
spirit in him, a primitive element at the root of his being, which
made her tenderly disposed towards him. But she had no intention of
remaining his pupil. She was too deeply conscious of the difference
between them, and saw clearly that his influence was not likely to be
more than a passing phase.
She worshipped him from a long-suppressed desire to worship some one,
but her worship was calm and passionless. This little Bastien Lepage
was not the man to arouse her deepest affections; he was too bourgeois,
and his fine art was too tame.
And yet she praised him, half mechanically. Saint Marceaux, the
sculptor, had appealed to her feelings more deeply than he had done.
There was a reason for it. There was a strong tie between these two
beings, who seemed only destined to exert a passing influence over one
another.
They were both ill when they made each other’s acquaintance: life, with
its deceptive pleasures, had ruined the health of Bastien Lepage; and
Marie Bashkirtseff was ill from want of life,--her youth, her beauty,
her vitality, had all been wasted.
It is the usual fate of the cultured young people of our time: he comes
to her ruined, because he has satiated his thirst; she comes to him
ruined, because her thirst has never been satisfied.
They are as far apart as two separate worlds, and they do not
understand one another.
The development of the last few years, through which Marie Bashkirtseff
had passed before she met Bastien Lepage, had brought her and the
readers of her journal nothing but pain and dulness.
What with ambitious plans for artistic work, and the life with her
family,--which resembled a convent more than anything else, interrupted
by occasional smart dinners, balls, and various projects of worldly
marriages, which came to nothing,--Marie Bashkirtseff had become
superficial and almost stupid. Her genius appeared to have flown, and a
sickly, _blasée_ hot-house plant, solely occupied with herself, was all
that remained of her. She was like the ordinary girl of good family,
who has grown rather disagreeable, and is no longer quite young, who
is still ignorant of most things, and becomes extremely tiresome by
chattering on subjects which she does not understand. All this is
changed after her meeting with Bastien Lepage.
She regains her youth in a wonderful way; she becomes shy and easily
bewildered. When he pays his first visit she gets quite confused,
turns back three times before entering the drawing-room, and cannot
think of anything to say after they have shaken hands. But he, with
his unaffected manner, and little insignificant person, soon succeeds
in putting her at her ease. The long tirades in her journal come to an
end at last, and are followed by short, cautious, but very expressive
sentences.
Bastien Lepage is anything but a lover. His manner is straightforward
and simple, and he holds himself strikingly aloof, maybe for want of
practice in the art of love-making, or perhaps out of sheer weariness.
When he leaves her, she becomes as vain and egotistical as before; but
when he is there she watches his every movement with a still, calm joy.
She had been ill for several years. One lung was affected, and now the
other followed suit; she also suffered from deafness, and that troubled
her more than anything else. She had never given a thought to her
health.
When Bastien is there, all is well. She is always able to hear what
he says, and in his eyes she is always pretty; her art takes a new
turn, and inspired by him she becomes original. The result is the
picture in the Luxembourg, called “A Meeting,” besides several very
good portraits. There is no question of love between them; he is never
anything but the artist, and her old coquettish manner vanishes. She
has a peculiarly tender affection for him, and the development from a
self-centred girl to a full-grown woman is accomplished within her.
He suddenly becomes violently and hopelessly ill. He is seized with
violent pains, followed by the cramp, and his legs are paralyzed.
The green bud of her love withers without ever having blossomed. But as
his illness grows worse, his longing to have Marie always beside him
increases. When he is sufficiently free from pain to go out driving, he
gets his brother to carry him up to her; and at other times she comes
with her mother to visit him. It is quite a little idyl. His mother, a
worthy woman of the working-class, cooks his soup; while her mother,
who is a smart lady, cuts his hair, which has grown too long, and his
brother, the architect, crops his beard. After their united efforts he
looks as handsome as ever, and no longer so ill. Then Marie must sit by
his bedside, while he turns his back upon the others and looks only at
her,--and speaks of art.
It is September, 1884. Marie coughs and coughs. Bastien is getting
worse and worse, and he cannot bear her to leave him, even while he
is undergoing his worst paroxysms of pain. On the 1st of October she
writes in her journal:
“_Tant de dégoût et tant de tristesse!_
“What is the use of writing?
“Bastien Lepage is getting worse and worse.
“And I cannot work.
“My picture will not be finished.
“Alas! Alas!
“He is dying and suffers a great deal. When one is with him, one seems
to have left the world behind. He is already beyond our reach, and
there are days when the same feeling comes over me. I see people, they
talk, and I answer; but I seem to be no longer on the earth,--a quiet
indifference, not painful, almost like an opium dream. And he is dying!
I go there more from habit than anything else; he is a shadow of his
former self, and I, too, am scarcely more than a shadow; what is the
good of it all?
“He is hardly conscious of my presence now; there is little use in
going; I have not the power to enliven him. He is contented to see me,
and that is all.
“Yes, he is dying, and it is all the same to me; I do not take myself
to account for it; it is something that cannot be helped.
“Besides, what difference does it make?
“All is over.
“In 1885 they will bury me.”
In that she was mistaken, for she died the same month. Until the last
few days Bastien Lepage had himself carried up to her; and she, shaken
by the fever of the last stage of consumption, had her bed moved
into the drawing-room, where she could receive him. There, by her
bedside, as she had formerly sat beside his, with his legs resting
upon a cushion, he remained until the evening. They scarcely spoke;
they were together, and that was all they cared for. And she, who ever
since her first awakening consciousness had yearned so passionately
and so impatiently for permission to live her life, died now, silent,
resigned, without a murmur; and knowing that the end was near, she was
great in death, since she had not succeeded in being great in her short
life.
IV
What remained of her? A book of a thousand pages, of which, in ten
years, nearly ten thousand copies were sold, which André Theuriet
provided with an introductory poem written in his best style, and to
which Maurice Barrès dedicated an altar built by himself and sanctified
a rather mistaken Marie Bashkirtseff cult. There was also “A Meeting”
in the Luxembourg, which, according to Marie Bashkirtseff’s own report,
Bastien Lepage criticised as follows: “He says that it is comparatively
easy to do _choses canailles_, peasants, street urchins, and especially
caricatures; but to paint beautiful things, and to paint them with
character,--there is the difficulty.”
In order to complete the sketch of this girl, in which I have tried
especially to accentuate the typical element, I should like to let her
speak for herself, with her characteristic expressions, her impulsive
views and peculiar temperament.
At the age of thirteen, she writes:--
“My blood boils, I am quite pale, then suddenly the blood rises to
my head, my cheeks burn, my heart beats, and I cannot remain quiet
anywhere; the tears burn within me, I force them back, and that only
makes me more miserable; all this undermines my health, ruins my
character, makes me irritable and impatient. One can always see it in a
person’s face, whether they take life quietly. As for me, I am always
excited. When they deprive me of my time for learning, they rob me for
the whole of my life. When I am sixteen or seventeen, my mind will be
occupied with other thoughts; now is the time to learn.”
And afterwards, with a depth of understanding worthy of Nietzsche:--
“All that I say is not original, for I have no originality. I live only
outside myself. To walk or to stand still, to have or not to have,
it is all the same to me. My sorrows, my joys, my troubles do not
exist....”
And again:--
“I want to live faster, faster, fast.... I am afraid it is true that
this longing to live with the speed of steam foretells a short life....”
“Would you believe it? To my mind everything is good and beautiful,
even tears, even pain. I like to cry, I like to be in despair, I like
to be sad. I like life, in spite of all. I want to live. I long for
happiness, and yet I am happy when I am sad. My body cries and shrieks;
but something in me, which is above me, enjoys it all.”
Then this simile, drawn with wonderful delicacy:--
“At every little sorrow my heart shrinks into itself, not for my own
sake, but out of pity--I do not know whether anybody will understand
what I mean--every sorrow is like a drop of ink that falls into a
glass of water; it cannot be obliterated, it unites itself with its
predecessors and makes the clear water gray and dirty. You may add as
much water as you like, but nothing will make it clear again. My heart
shrinks into itself, because every sorrow leaves a stain on my life,
and on my soul, and I watch the stains increasing in number on the
white dress which I ought to have kept clean.”
At the age of fourteen she wrote these prophetic words:--
“Oh! how impatient I am. My time will come; I believe it, yet something
tells me that it will never come, that I shall spend the whole of my
life waiting, always waiting. Waiting ... waiting!”
When she was sixteen, at the time of the incident with the cardinal’s
nephew:--
“If I am as pretty as I think, why is it that no one loves me? People
look at me! They fall in love! But they do not love me! And I do so
want to be loved.”
At seventeen, the first entry in her journal for that year:--
“When shall I get to know what this love is of which we hear so much?”
Later on:--
“Very much disgusted with myself. I hate all that I do, say, and write.
I despise myself, because not a single one of my expectations has been
fulfilled. I have deceived myself.
“I am stupid, I have no tact, and I never had any. I thought I was
intellectual, but I have no taste. I thought I was brave; I am a
coward. I believed I had talent, but I do not know how I have proved
it.”
At the age of eighteen:--
“My body like that of an antique goddess, my hips rather too Spanish,
my breast small, perfectly formed, my feet, my hands, my child-like
head. _À quoi bon?_ When no one loves me.
“There is one thing that is really beautiful, antique: that is a
woman’s self-effacement in the presence of the man she loves; it must
be the greatest, most self-satisfying delight that a superior woman can
feel.”
In 1882, at the beginning of her illness:--
“So I am consumptive, and have been so for the last two or three
years. It is not yet bad enough to die of it.... Let them give me ten
years longer, and in these ten years, fame or love, and I shall die
contented, at the age of thirty.”
The following year:--
“No, I never was in love, and I never shall be any more; a man would
have to be very great to please me now, I require so much....
“And simply to fall in love with a handsome boy,--no, it would not
answer. Love could no longer wholly occupy me now; it would be a matter
of secondary importance, a decoration to the building, an agreeable
superfluity. The idea of a picture or a statue keeps me awake for
nights together, which the thought of a handsome man has never done.”
In another place:--
“Whom shall I ask? Who will be truthful? Who will be just?”
“You, my only friend, you at least will be truthful, for you love me.
Yes, I love myself, myself only.”
Two weeks before her death, after a visit from Bastien Lepage:--
“I was dressed entirely in lace and plush, all white, but different
kinds of white; Bastien Lepage opened his eyes wide with joy.
“‘If only I could paint!’ he said.
“‘And I!’
“Obliged to give it up,--the picture for this year!”