October 5, 1919
from My Blue Notebooks, Liane de Pougy
Salomon came to pick me up most punctually at 9.45. The car was an open one and we glided off to the cemetery at Passy. Dear, brilliant Marie Bashkirtseff; dear, rather brilliant Pauline - you must lend me your beautiful voices for the celebration of this, my first visit to your tombs. I was so much moved when I saw the chapel where my little muse reposes! There are epitaphs in verse round the walls, beautiful poems, sad, desolate, definitive. At the far end, one of her paintings : a desolate woman in a fierce pose, seated, gazing despairingly into the distance. Nearby stands the misty figure of another woman, weeping into her hands. It seems that they put the furniture from her studio into her tomb. There is her bust in white marble, wilful and proud, and a little reading chair covered in bronze plush with a flowered strip down the middle, all buttoned. It was the period for buttoned upholstery. Her chapel is large and was designed by Bastien-Lepage, the ultimate offering of a loving and broken heart. She lies under a little dome, rather Russian: 1860 - 1884.
Pauline's chapel is long and narrow like a little bed. Yes, like her: long and narrow. A photograph of her, after Levy Dhurmer, is placed in the middle, under the altar; in front of it, an incense burner. The windows are yellow, with figures, bordered with violet; two ivory virgins, one Christ, two old Delft pharmacist's pots containing thistles dyed mauve, church embroideries flung here and there, little bunches of dried violets hung on the grill with lilac ribbons, a selection of her lovely poems carved all around... On the exterior wall two verses which went straight to my heart:
See, I have passed through this door
Oh my thorn-bedizened roses.
Gone is what used to be.
For ever more My dreaming soul with God reposesCalmly asleep, forgetting strife,
Having with its last breath,
For love of death,
Forgiven that crime, life.
Dear Pauline, have you forgiven me? We were tender rivals for Flossie, then friends. When I was in hospital having been crushed by my car on the public highway, you sent me flowers and copies of your books with beautiful inscriptions. And then one day your intimate friend, that little gnome Janot de Bellune, told me something very tart which you had said about me. I was ruffled and wrote you a letter - also very tart. Later I learnt of your illness and your death. Bitterness vanished from my heart. This morning's little pilgrimage was my symbol of repentance. Pauline died an edifying death. She suffered; she suffered in many ways. The dead are on the road between God and ourselves Georges has given Hartmann's nursing-home a name: 'The Cancervatory'.
Source: Liane de Pougy, My Blue Notebooks. Trans. Diana Athill. Tarcher/Putnam, 2002.