SUNDAY, 4 MARCH
Maman received a telegram from Jean, my godfather’s valet, telling her that he is much worse, so we hailed a carriage and went straight to his house. When I went into his room, my poor godfather frightened me because his face was all crooked. I was sure that I would never see him again. We stopped at Saint-Roch86 on our way home to pray for him and I could hardly contain my tears.
FRIDAY, 9 MARCH
This morning my poor Oncle Parrain died. It is just two years since he fell ill. How tragic it is to see all one’s family dying like this … first Papa, then my Aunt Yves, and now my godfather. He was much older, it is true, but it doesn’t make it less horrible. I loved him, he loved me, although we didn’t talk much. Perhaps I wasn’t nice enough to him; God, please forgive me if I wasn’t… O death! Last week my mother lost her best friend, Madame Hubbard,87 whom she loved so much.
Today it was the funeral of my Oncle Parrain at the Madeleine; tomorrow he will be buried at Gennevilliers. Maman went to the house, but I only went to the church with Paule. It’s the first time I’ve been to a funeral. How sad to think that I’ll never again see him, or any of the others who are dead. Paule gave me a very affectionate kiss as we left the church. She is well acquainted with grief. Poor Paule and Jeannie are orphans and all alone in life. Their brother doesn’t give them much support.
TUESDAY, 13 MARCH
Today my godfather was buried at Gennevilliers. Maman was there for a very long time. In the evening we left for Brussels, where we stayed at the Hôtel de Suède, which Tante Suzanne mentioned, whose proprietor88 is also the owner of Argenteuil by Oncle Edouard.
WEDNESDAY, 14 MARCH
We went sightseeing all morning. The Cathedral of Sainte-Gudule is gorgeous. Set in a square on a slight slope, it has imposing staircases; and the delicate arches look as though made of marble. Magnificent old stained-glass windows in very pretty colours in one of the chapels.
We went through the Place de l’Hôtel de Ville, called the Grand-Place, which is very impressive; opposite is the king’s house, which is all gilded, as are other buildings around the square. It certainly gives the impression of great opulence.
We wanted very much to see the hotel owner’s collection but no one was there, so we had time to pop into the Museum, where we saw some wonderful little oil sketches by Rubens: I like this artist even more than before now I have seen these. We also looked at large paintings by him, as well as a triptych by Quentin Metsys.89
Got back very late for lunch and then went out again to buy thick woollens as it’s very cold here. Supper at the hotel was at six, at a table d’hôte with just a few guests. I was glad to get to bed after writing to Jeannie as I am finding the trip tiring.
THURSDAY, 15 MARCH
This morning, we visited Monsieur Van Cutsem’s collection but about the only attractive picture was Oncle Edouard’s.90 The rest are Belgian painters, among which is a Monsieur Collin,91 who showed us around and who seemed well pleased with his own work (really pretty awful, if the truth be known).
Went to the Libre Esthétique92 exhibition where Maman is exhibiting.93 It’s very well installed with all sorts of things to see: paintings, metalwork, embroidery, tapestry, books and furniture. From the windows, one can see all of Brussels, with its town hall, with the splendid belfry rising above the rooftops.
So far as paintings are concerned, there are lots of things, both Pissarros (father and son), the watercolours by the younger are very pretty; some by Denis, Gauguin etc. … I am forgetting an especially lovely thing by Monsieur Renoir of two women reading the same book, one in pink, the other in green, both full-length. This canvas is in the same room as Maman’s paintings, which look very good too.
FRIDAY, 16 MARCH
Back to the museum and for a walk in the park, then on a hill from which we could see Brussels. After an early lunch and a visit to a church, we returned to La Libre Esthétique for a concert by Ysaÿe.94 Monsieur Maus,95 the director, gave us very good seats. Ysaÿe is large, fat and quite ugly: he looks like a bull and fidgets a lot but played Bach, especially the Chaconne, very well: he is a great violinist, without the natural talent of Sarasate96 but with more style. After the concert, Monsieur Maus introduced us to the maestro, saying I played the violin too. I was very intimidated and embarrassed. We also met some painters, one with a ginger beard, who walked me through the show.
We took the train back in the evening and had dinner in the dining car. At the border, we went into a first-class carriage, where we got some sleep. We arrived home in Paris by 11 o’clock, and went to bed.
SATURDAY, 17 MARCH
Paule and Jeannie came to see us this morning. This afternoon, there was a viewing of the Duret97 Collection before the sale, which was lovely, in which there is one of Maman’s paintings of a woman dressed in a low-cut white robe on which is a garland of glorious white flowers; then several of Oncle Edouard’s large canvases: Le Repos98 (a portrait of Maman dressed in white on a red sofa with one foot stretched out in front), Le Père Lathuile,99 and a small portrait of Maman in three-quarter profile, dressed in black with a bouquet of violets and wearing a small hat. I adore this portrait – the brushwork is so good and the blacks are quite magnificent, as are the whites in the other portrait. Oncle Edouard was such a master of the paintbrush!
There is also a very attractive picture by Monsieur Monet in the collection, of some white turkeys100 on a great lawn and behind them a castle made of brick, surrounded by pine trees, and a forest beyond. As for Monsieur Renoir’s two paintings, they’re really lovely – a landscape and a nude combing her hair. There is a lot of grace in this one; the head, which is slightly foreshortened, is ravishing, and the whole effect is very attractive, with lovely colours.
The one painter whom I really like very much, from what I have seen of his here, is Cézanne;101 above all it’s his well-modelled apples that I love (I only know these three paintings by him). I was forgetting a painting of Albert Wolff102 by Oncle Edouard which is unfinished, a wonderful portrait, such as only Manet could have painted, and it must be an extremely good likeness. Looking at this portrait one has to say to oneself: what a marvellous thing, especially considering how stupid and ugly the sitter looks! Also in the collection are some of Monsieur Degas’s racehorses and some of the beautifully drawn ballet dancers also by this great Master. Maman had friends to dinner, Monsieur Degas, Monsieur Mallarmé, Monsieur Renoir, Monsieur Bartholomé, Paule and Jeannie. Monsieur Degas was terribly jolly and amusing but Monsieur Bartholomé103 seems to be frightfully sad and hardly ever speaks.
MONDAY, 19 MARCH
We went to the Duret sale today, when we met Chabrier,104 Monsieur and Madame Lerolle,105 Monsieur Monet, the Helleu(s) etc.106 Maman bought her portrait in a hat for 4,500 francs. But her large portrait Le Repos was bought in for 11,000 francs. A Matador107 also by Oncle Edouard didn’t make much either.
Wishing to revisit Brittany, which she had loved as a child, and particularly impressed by a poster that she saw at the Gare Saint-Lazare, Berthe Morisot took Julie, Laertes the greyhound and Octavie, her maid, as well as her cousins Paule and Jeannie, who joined them a bit later, for what turned out to be their last summer holiday all together. They took a house in Portrieux and spent their days taking long walks and, at least for Julie and her cousins, bathing in the Atlantic.
We leave today for Brittany on the night train that leaves at 8. We have to get off at Saint-Brieuc to get to Portrieux. We took a compartment for the four of us, but there was also a grumpy old man who immediately started complaining about Laertes. I caught a glimpse of Chartres Cathedral at night, which seemed very fine and extremely tall.
THURSDAY, 9 AUGUST
We got to Saint-Brieuc at 6 and it looked pretty, all built in grey granite. However, the station buffet wasn’t very appetiz-ing; everything looked very unappetizing indeed. We caught an omnibus to Portrieux whose driver was very rude and we could hardly understand what he was saying because he stut-tered so much. Quite a long journey but picturesque until we got to Binic, where at last we saw the sea, a pretty harbour with a boatyard, but we went on to Portrieux, which we reached at lunchtime. We needed to wash and have lunch at the seafront hotel, after which some women came to take us to visit houses to let. We spent some time on the beach observing the waves on the sand. Laertes was a bit scared and was terribly funny: courageously rushing right up to them and then backing off and running away when they rolled in. At the end of the day, we decided on a house that we had seen for 400 francs: it is quite large, has a large garden, but no view because it is right on the beach.
Octavie, who had never ever seen the sea, thinks it very beautiful but told us she didn’t realize it was so big and had always thought it was just a pool of water!
FRIDAY, 10 AUGUST
We woke up in our house ‘La Roche Plate’ but still quite weary from the journey.
SATURDAY, 11 AUGUST
The boxes of things that we had left at Saint-Brieuc station were delivered this morning.
SUNDAY, 12 AUGUST
We arrived late for the 8 o’clock Mass at Saint-Quay, thinking it was in Portrieux. After the service, Paule and Jeannie went for a swim but they found the sea very unpleasant. Today is the feast day of Portrieux. There are regattas but the sea is very grey. Nevertheless, we did some watercolours from the terrace of our outhouse.
WEDNESDAY, 15 AUGUST
On our walk, we meet women dressed in their Sunday best especially today for the Feast of the Assumption. They all wear white bonnets with black shawls and little black silk aprons. I must say it is not a very jolly costume.
FRIDAY, 17 AUGUST
The Hitiers, to whom Paule had written, arrived today. They had lunch but Monsieur Hitier had a dizzy fit at table. Madame Hitier is very fat, literally enormous, in a pink dress with puff sleeves. In the late afternoon she went swimming with Jeannie, who now finds the sea lovely.
SATURDAY, 18 AUGUST
We spent the afternoon painting in the garden, which reminds me of Mézy108 and Le Mesnil.109
MONDAY, 20 AUGUST
I had my first ever swim this morning early and found it an astonishingly powerful experience.
TUESDAY, 21 AUGUST
We went fishing for shrimp then had a swim.
TUESDAY, 28 AUGUST
I had my first swimming lesson.
WEDNESDAY, 5 SEPTEMBER
I decided to write to my Oncle Adolphe,110 who is really very ill. He doesn’t seem to be able to recover in Cherbourg and I got an affectionate answer from him via my Aunt Edma. Aunt Edma seems to think he is terribly ill, in fact desperately ill. They must be so sad.
A telegram from Blanche111 arrived to tell us that our poor uncle has died. What a poor, sad family! Both sides keep on losing members. Everyone keeps on disappearing and we will never see my Oncle Adolphe again. I loved him dearly. I feel so sorry for them all and I know what they are going through. In a second wire, we heard that the funeral was at Maurecourt.
MONDAY, 10 SEPTEMBER
We have planned to go back to Paris tomorrow morning in time for my uncle’s funeral on Wednesday but a telegram arrived to tell us that Jeanne would be going alone because Paule is poorly (although Monsieur Hitier declares she is fine).
THURSDAY, 13 SEPTEMBER
My cousin Edme112 is 16 today: what a sad birthday for him! We will leave on Saturday morning. The sea is very rough and jumps over the jetty. I love the sea, sometimes furious, sometimes so calm, sometimes blue, green and sometimes silvery and pink. When the tide is out, it is such fun to walk between the rocks where ravishing things like sea anemones are to be discovered, all pink, green, mottled or red, that close and then spurt water or let themselves be rolled around by the waves. The sea is like hair, both light and dark, that twists around the rocks. I am reading La Mer by Michelet,113 which is so very appropriate here!
SATURDAY, 15 SEPTEMBER
The weather was beautiful for our departure. We took the half-past-eight service to Paimpol then took a trip to the island of Bréhat on a little sailboat with a pale pink sail against the blue sky and relatively calm sea. Halfway across it got a bit rougher and the boat was leaning a lot but there wasn’t time to be sea-sick since the crossing only takes 20 minutes! The island is not nearly as pretty as it seems from afar and the return journey was even shorter because the wind had got up and there was quite a swell. After a carriage ride, the four of us went to bed in a pretty four poster with white curtains.
Julie and her mother, as well as both her cousins, travelled slowly back to Paris by coach, staying in Treguier, Morlaix, Lannion, and visiting Ploumanach, Perros-Guirec and Trégastel. In Morlaix, Berthe Morisot stopped in a china shop and bought herself a pretty blue and white bowl, a couple of bright yellow plates and a vase, as well as some photographs of the town from a local photographer. They also visited Julie’s violin teacher Jules Boucherit, whose family is also staying in Morlaix. Julie, who has something of a crush on Jules, describes this meeting in detail and notes that he is as brown as a berry and looks very well. On Thursday, 20 September, Jeannie and Paule went straight back to Paris while Julie and her mother travelled to Brest. In Vannes, they picked up their letters at the poste restante and found a note from Renoir that said ‘I have to announce a totally ridiculous piece of news: we have had a second son, called Jean.’114 They arrived in Nantes in the evening of 22 September and stayed at the Hôtel de Bretagne. On the Sunday they visited the Cathedral and the museum, where Julie particularly liked Madame de Sénonnes115 by Ingres .
MONDAY, 24 SEPTEMBER
We arrived in Paris this morning at 8 and our trip, which was supposed to last another fortnight, is already over. My Oncle Octave,116 whom I don’t know very well, my cousin Octave and my cousin Gabriel117 drop in. He had a grandson of 10, who has just died, run over during a pleasure ride by his own carriage in front of his eyes. He picked the child up, who whispered: ‘Grandpa, I am dead.’ The poor little chap survived another 48 hours. His mother, my cousin Calire, whom I have never met, is ill over it. What an awful thing!
Laertes is on very good form and seemed both happy and sad to see us again!
SUNDAY, 28 OCTOBER
We go to ‘Colonne’, where we found seats and sat near Madame Boucherit and her daughter, who looks very pretty today. The concert started with a Beethoven symphony, then we had Massenet and Charpentier, then Sarasate played the Max Bruch concerto followed by Lalo. Jules was in a trance while playing; Jules is very stylish when he plays Gypsy airs. It’s obvious that Jules is a born First Violinist and Maman tells Madame Boucherit that we prefer her son to Sarasate. We had supper with cousin Gabriel.
TUESDAY, 30 OCTOBER
Monsieur Mauclair gave us a very interesting lesson on mythology and religions and seems to want to make more of an effort than he did last year.
FRIDAY, 2 NOVEMBER
We took a carriage to go to the cemetery at Gennevilliers where the body of my poor godfather is buried, and laid a wreath and a bouquet on his tomb. My dear old Oncle Parrain, the last of the Manets. Now I really am the only descendant of the three Manet brothers; all that’s left are one poor young girl and two widows to mourn them. We dropped in on Tante Suzanne, where we saw some sketchbooks of drawings which Oncle Edouard did on his travels – they’re sketches in pen and ink of sculptures, paintings etc. We brought back three of them – a red chalk drawing of a woman after Raphael, I think, and two watercolour medallions, one of the Three Graces on a mauve ground, the other a woman with a violin at her side, probably Saint Cecilia.
The Tzar,118 who has been very ill for many days, has died at Livadia (?). When he arrived there, someone remarked to him that it was funny to have named a sea so blue the Black Sea. ‘If it is called the Black Sea,’ he said, ‘it’s because I am going to die here.’ Unfortunately, he was right.
Monsieur Renoir called while we were having our literature lesson with Monsieur Mauclair, who today spoke about secret writing in French, écriture secrète, but nothing else of particular interest.
WEDNESDAY, 7 NOVEMBER
Went to Camentron’s,119 who as always is sure he can sell some of Maman’s paintings; but they’re still there after a year. He showed us a beautiful pastel of a woman at a milliner’s trying on a hat in front of a cheval mirror by Degas. Racehorses and dancers too. And he showed us a photograph of a section from the first sketch of L’Exécution de Maximilien.120 This painting was kept at the printing works of Tante Suzanne’s brother, Monsieur Léon,121 who first cut out the figure of Maximilien to sell it separately, then gave the rest to Monsieur Camentron, who passed it to Monsieur Portier;122 it was the last dealer who cut out the sergeant behind the soldiers and sold it off. This means the painting is now in three pieces! Monsieur Degas is looking for them, and has already found two. He’s going to reassemble them and try to put the painting back as it was.
On Thursday, when we went to Tante Suzanne’s, Maman rightly asked her what had become of this sketch. ‘It is absolutely ruined’, she replied; ‘it was so damp in Léon’s printing works, it wasn’t worth anything.’
We went to see Madame Jammes,123 who was very pleasant; she knows Paimpol and the Île Bréhat, and likes Brittany and the Breton people.
I might have to go to history classes, which start on Thursday 15th, and most certainly to the science classes, which begin on Saturday 17th.
MONDAY, 12 NOVEMBER
We went to reserve a box at the Comédie Française for Wednesday evening. We walked through the old Paris streets and we visited Saint-Séverin,124 a church I didn’t know, but it was terribly windy, tiles and chimneys flying about all over the place. On the omnibus home, going round the Place de l’Étoile I thought the windows would shatter; the street lamps flickered on and off and a man was clutching a tree for dear life! A real gale and I could imagine the poor sailors in Brittany!
WEDNESDAY, 14 NOVEMBER
It’s my sixteenth birthday today. The sunrise was quite extraordinary – it was magical, pink, pink, pink everywhere like a firework display, everything looked as though it was enveloped in tulle – truly marvellous! Paule and Jeannie brought me flowers and Berthe125 sent me some lovely plants. We had supper at Madame Renault before the ‘Français’.126 First, we saw Molière’s Mariage Forcé; this parody has some quite amusing moments; the ‘calm’ philosopher is entertaining, while the other one is terribly vulgar. La joie fait peur127 was well acted by Got128 and I really enjoyed Il ne faut jurer de rien by Alfred de Musset:129 it was elegant and simple. Reichenberg130 was amazingly young looking and light on her feet, especially when she had to dance. The male lead could have acted much more convincingly, which would have made the whole performance totally charming. It was Maman’s idea to go to the ‘Français’ for my birthday.