One of her pleasures was to participate in the Russian sleighing parties, and sometimes I let her stay overnight with the Countess Czernicheff and her family without me.
At their home she met the secretary of Count Czernicheff, a M. Nigris. He was about thirty, of pleasing build and face. (A sigh escapes me as I sit here. Perhaps I should take up my brush and watercolors, should give myself to the scene before me.) Nigris had sweet manners and a certain melancholy manner which young and innocent girls often find intriguing. To my daughter, he seemed pale and interesting, and he wrote very well, as one might expect of a secretary. He also drew a little, but he had no truly remarkable talents. Nor had he family of note, nor fortune. Nonetheless, my daughter heedlessly fell in love with him.
Most regrettably the Czernicheffs encouraged her infatuation. As soon as I realized her state of mind, I asked about M. Nigris. Some spoke well of him, but others spoke ill of him, and I felt much confusion because I did not want to spoil my daughter’s happiness without good reason.
Even before this crisis occurred—for they wished to become engaged—my own friends had said to me of my treatment of my daughter, “You love her so much that you are blind; far from her obeying you, you obey her and indulge her wishes.” My greatest wish was to see her happy. When my friends tried to warn me, I replied, “Can’t you see that everybody loves her?” as though their admiration for her excused my indulgence toward her and my wish for her to enjoy life and its opportunities to the fullest.
With this attachment to M. Nigris, however, I was not so blind. I saw it closing the doors to happiness and opportunity rather than opening them, for there is no going back after such a choice. Because this was such a serious situation, I tried to persuade my daughter of my point of view. I told her with much ardor that in every respect this marriage, if allowed to take place, would make her far from happy. She was so excited by the prospect of this romance that she never stopped to think that I was vastly more experienced in the ways of the world. She did not understand that I spoke against the engagement only because I loved her so much.
Her governess, Mme Charrot, who had ridden with us out of Paris and had been with us all this time, took Julie’s view of the situation and did all she could to poison my daughter against me. This same Mme Charrot had let Julie read romantic novels behind my back, and that of course caused her to trust only her feelings and sensibilities and totally to ignore good sense. The Czernicheff family and their friends constantly tried to persuade me to allow Julie to have her way. The more I tried to reason with her and persuade her not to leap headlong into an ill-considered marriage, the more secretive she became. The more I thwarted Julie’s dream of romance, the more estranged we became.
Her friends “confided” to me that her passion was so strong that she would even elope with this M. Nigris and marry in secret if I did not consent. I did not entirely believe this, for he had no money and I discovered the Czernicheffs themselves could barely pay their bills. They even had the effrontery to question me on behalf of M. Nigris about what size dowry I was prepared to endow upon my daughter. On this front, the ambassador of Naples became their spokesperson and asked for an amount that far exceeded everything I had. I had left France without any fortune, leaving all my earnings in the hands of Julie’s father, and I had lost a great deal that I had earned in Italy when the Bank of Venice failed. But by working hard, I had earned again, just in Russia, a considerable sum.
Julie was so unhappy that her appetite decreased. Before my eyes I saw her grow thin and frail. Then she fell ill. I had nursed her through other illnesses due to the cold Russian winters, but this was entirely different. When I sat beside her and chatted with her then, or fed her hot soup with a bowl and spoon, her eyes always looked lovingly at me. A bit of sparkle would come to her face and appreciation for my attentions. Now when I entered her room, her face darkened and she looked more ill than ever. She refused any cheer or encouragement that I offered, and she cut short any expressions of love that I proffered as insincere and worthy only of scathing irony and disdain. I felt her very life was slipping away.
For her to marry, it was necessary to receive the consent of her father (despite my being her support and guardian). I had heard from her father and from others that in France, there was hope that our daughter might be married to the painter Guérin, whose reputation and promise had even reached me in Russia. I had welcomed that idea, but when I clumsily (I’ll admit) suggested this alternative, she thrashed her head back and forth on the pillow, and the tears gushed from her eyes. She refused all food the rest of the day.
The next morning, seeing the anguish in her eyes, which were ringed with dark circles, I told her that I would write to her father, M. Le Brun, and ask on her behalf for his consent to the marriage. I did write him, saying that because we had but one most dear child, we should sacrifice all else to her happiness.
After this letter was sent, I was most relieved to see that she did begin to regain her health. That was my only reward. She maintained the sullen attitude she had taken whenever she was in my company, despite the fact that now I was trying to support her choice. Not for a moment did she treat me in any loving way, or acknowledge my abiding love for her, or accept my explanation that I had opposed her “happiness,” as she called it, only because I had misgivings of a serious sort. Even such slight cautions as echoed perhaps in that statement were construed as an insult to her own judgment, and she took umbrage. Nothing could rekindle the light in her eyes when she looked at me. Her lovely face began to seem almost ugly to me.
Fearing my letter might have gone astray, I wrote several more letters asking for M. Le Brun’s consent for Julie to marry M. Nigris.
Because of the great distance between St. Petersburg and Paris, her father’s reply was naturally a long time in arriving. In that interval she accused me of not having written the letters. Her suspicion hurt me cruelly.
As pleasantly as I could, I offered to write another letter which she herself might read in its entirety and take to the post directly, without giving it back to my hand. Even then I did not reclaim her trust. Instead her loyalty remained with those who wished to inspire just such mistrust in her, and they continually painted me as an ogre. Sometimes I wondered if she had no memory of our happy and trusting times together, or our adventures and pleasures together, or how frank and open we had been in sharing our thoughts and impressions.
One day she said with accusing, hurt eyes, “I carry your letters to the post, but I am certain that you write my father other letters that contradict what you have said in the letters you show me. That is how you maintain the appearance of being my friend, when in fact you oppose me.”
I was so stunned by her suspicions that I could hardly speak.
For just a moment, I saw something like a flicker of remorse in her eyes, but she quickly turned away and left me alone in the room.
If for a minute I had thought that her marriage might lead to a good life for her, I would have apologized for my anxiety and strong misgivings, but nothing I saw gave me the slightest hope. That she could be so cruel and unimaginative as to my position left me dazzled with amazement. I could scarcely believe it was true: that she believed the poison about me that had been pumped into her ears. I tried to show no resentment to her, but my heart was much grieved every moment until her father’s letter finally reached us, a letter in which he gave the legal consent necessary for the marriage.
I thought perhaps she would realize that she had been mistaken in her estimate of my honest support, but she maintained the same mien toward me. It was as though she had succeeded in spite of me rather than because of me. It was a sign of her lack of adult aptitude that she could not relent from the pose she had assumed; she had to remain inflexible and rigid to justify her cruelty to me in her own mind. It had been a vain hope on my part that when her father’s letter should arrive, she might tender a small apology toward me. She did not show any sign of gratitude whatsoever. Those she so foo
lishly trusted as more wise than her mother had alienated her heart from considering me or my feelings at all. In her mind, I deserved no consideration, though surely she had seen my suffering in the disappointment of my hopes and desires for a marital condition that would increase, not decrease, the happiness of her life.
No time was lost from the moment of M. Le Brun’s letter’s arrival in St. Petersburg. The marriage was celebrated within a few days. I gave my daughter a handsome trousseau and jewels, just as though I were pleased with her choice; I gave her a bracelet with some very fine diamonds surrounding a miniature of her father. For a dowry, I placed with Livio the banker the money I had earned for the portraits I had completed while in St. Petersburg. I knew that I could replace the money by painting more portraits.
THE DAY AFTER JULIE’S MARRIAGE, I visited her. She received me calmly. I marveled to see no trace of excitement or of genuine happiness in her face. I went home very soberly, fearful that I had been all too correct in my prognosis concerning her marriage to M. Nigris. I knew that he had taken his pleasure with no concern for her feelings.
After they had a wedding trip, I saw her in her home again, in fifteen days.
Then I asked her, cheerfully, “You are, I hope, very happy, now that you are married?”
Her husband was in the same room, but his back was turned to us, and he was wearing a clumsy-looking fur coat. He had it on inside the house because he was quite ill with a very bad cold. We both knew he was oblivious to our conversation, and besides, we spoke in low tones.
With a cool glance at his back and no expression of joy whatsoever in her face, though she was too proud to show regret, she said quietly, “I do confess that his greatcoat is rather disenchanting. How could anyone be in love with such a figure?” She tapped her finger beside her pretty nose as though to imply that his nose was swollen, red, and disgusting.
I went home as quickly as I could, shaken, because I could feel my face turn to ash. I think she blamed me all the more because I had been right in trying to save her from just such a mistake as she had insisted on making.
SOON AFTER THE WEDDING, I received news that Julie had caught smallpox. I went to her bedside as fast as I could. Her face retained so much fluid that I was terrified she might die. Though I had never had smallpox, I did not contract it during my vigil. I stayed with her throughout the illness.
For days, I prayed on my knees beside her bed, not for her beauty or happiness but merely that she might live. Yet, I remembered Mlle Boquet’s similar illness, and I insisted that Julie wear thick gloves so as not to scratch and scar her face. The agony of watching beside the sickbed of a child is beyond description. I do not know if it is made all the greater by having only one child, but I do know that the taste of the fear of death on the back of one’s tongue is beyond compare in bitterness. I was able to contain my despair only by knowing its expression would create an atmosphere inappropriate to healing and hope. To be so far from home, at such a time! In Russia, God seemed less caring.
But my unceasing prayers were answered, and my Julie recovered fully. Her lovely face was not marked at all by the pox. My joy at her return to the world of the living, to my world, was checked because I still saw no love in her face. Nor even affection. Her expression toward me was hard. Dutifully, she did thank me for my care, but in a calm, uncaring way. At best, in times when we were together, she maintained a civil neutrality toward me. Sometimes when we were in the company of others, she smiled at me, but I think it was more so that they would not think ill of her than it was to gladden my heart.
Every day, when I first saw her, at a distance, my heart leapt with joy. I was always glad to see her, no matter how she might crush me, in a few moments, with a disdainful glance or through her tone of voice.
I believe she thought my early opposition had blighted her chances for the kind of marriage some young couples create for themselves. If it had been my fault, I would have been heartily sorry and begged her forgiveness, but my sense of justice kept me from assuming responsibility that lay at her doorstep. Now I wish I had knelt in the gutter, assumed whatever guilt she wished to place on my head, wept, and pleaded that she forgive and love me again, as she had once, when she was a child.
And yet . . . I do remember that I myself had been disappointed in my marriage; and my mother, as well, certainly had been mistaken in marrying my stepfather, but we did not blame others for our own mistaken choices. Looking back, I am sure that my mother, though she kept a good face for the sake of the household and especially for Étienne and me, her young children, must have found my father’s unflagging interest in other ladies quite hard to bear. Nonetheless, she had savored our outings and times at home when we did, in fact, enjoy each other’s company as a family.
I grieved for my daughter’s choice, but I hoped that she would also find for herself what satisfaction she could in her marriage or in occupations she might cultivate and find pleasurable. To think, fifteen days after her wedding, I saw no sign of passion for her husband left in her.
Because my daughter was unhappy, all charm seemed to have disappeared forever from my own existence. My love of painting had been a constant in my life, married or not, and by this time in my life painting sustained me yet, in Russia. My mother had found consolation in God and in the passion of Christ and the beauty of the rituals of the church. In music. Where would my daughter find solace? If I could, I would have turned my heart wrong side out, like a purse, and given her all its loving contents.
I was not in good spirits, or even healthy ones. I was exhausted from nursing Julie through the smallpox and worrying about her well-being and her future. My presence in St. Petersburg seemed blighted. Knowing how travel had always refreshed me, I decided to go to Moscow despite the fact that the weather was near freezing and there were mountains to be crossed. To stay in the city of St. Petersburg was a torture I could not endure.
Before I left St. Petersburg, I received a letter of apology from Count Czernicheff. He wrote: “I confess that carried away by my high spirits, I accused you of a thousand wrongs and I dared to reproach you bitterly, yet your own conduct was admirable. Your tenderness toward your daughter served as an example to all mothers and it causes me to blush with embarrassment for having harbored and expressed shameful suspicions about you, which were my own formulation. I beg your forgiveness . . .”
How could I forgive him? He had helped to doom my daughter to a life far less happy than that she was worthy of. I hid my pain. I complained not at all, not even to my brother, Étienne, with whom I was in correspondence. Alas, he informed me from Paris our dear mother had died a natural death in the city. Natural—so much sorrow!
I hurried as rapidly as I dared to finish the large portrait of the Empress Maria, the wife of the new emperor, Paul, and I left for Moscow on October 15, 1800, a year for which I had hoped greater general happiness than in the preceding century, but I found only the most profound personal unhappiness.
I recall that in respect to weather October 15, though quite cold, was still too early for comfortable traveling. The Russian roads were not yet frozen solid. The logs that would have been stabilized by ice were untethered, and the surface of the road bobbed up and down; our wheels visited deep ruts and were half submerged in mud. I thought I would die of misery.
At the only inn along the road, the Novgorod Inn, which I had been assured would provide well for me, I was served food that I could hardly eat. I feared vomiting. In my room, I soon detected a horrible stench. When I inquired, I was told, “Madame, a man died in the room just beyond the glass door dividing this room from the next. He’s still there, and that must be the cause of what Madame smells.” Without further inquiry, I ordered the horses to be harnessed again to the carriage and for us to continue toward Moscow. For the second half of the journey, we traveled in dense fog, so there was constant danger of collision and no view. The pall over the countryside depressed my spirits even more. In my hand I carried only a crust of bread snatched
up as I left the inn, and I had nothing else till we reached Moscow.
FAR AWAY AND LONG AGO was that October from this May in Louveciennes. If I walk over this slope, on the sunny, south-facing downside, there trumpet daffodils will be in bloom in the open areas, and perhaps some bluebells and violets as well near the shady margins of the trees. The daffodils are hardy, robust, with a slight greenish cast to their golden yellow; they appear year after year, and yet I am always afraid for them, these flowers unguarded in the great woods.
My own garden would be jealous if it knew I lavished some feelings on these little wild things. Back there close to my home, protected by a rock wall should the breezes blow too hard, the tulips in my garden are blooming (their bulbs having been imported from the Dutch): bright red, dazzling white, some purple. They are cups of color, and later I shall pick some for the table for my dinner party tonight. Best are the multicolored, ruffled ones, flamboyant as parrots, or the streaked Rembrandt ones, sedate in shape but inventive with their darts and stripes of color. And fragrant lilac, I’ll mix some of that with the tulips, both white and purple panicles of lilac.
With only a little stiffness, I rise from my chair, not having taken up the pencil. I am rested in body. I will conjure up other memories to refresh my mind and spirit. Ahead, at a certain place I have designated this morning, I will find by prearrangement another chair, an easel, my papers, my watercolors, and my brushes waiting for me. Ah, the warmth of the sun feels good on my face. And these daffodils, I believe they have more of glorious gold and less of sickly green about their faces this spring.
Oh, the golden domes of Moscow, when I finally entered that place, unlike any other city in Europe, more like drawings of Persian Isfahan. Ah, the wide streets of Moscow, the superb palaces situated with whole villages between the palaces, all within the city, and the enormous golden crosses surmounting those myriad golden domes! My artist’s eye falls on the soft fur of a young rabbit crouching among the May apples of Louveciennes, and I, an old woman, think, Never have I loved any human creature so well as I loved Julie, my daughter. And yet I could not save her, child so wise, child so foolish. Nor, though I preserved our lives, was I able to ensure her happiness.