Julius Caesar made many wars. Sir Francis Drake went sailing over the seas. It was all child's play and counts for nothing. Here are the Pile of Stones and a Barrel of Lime.
And so this is how it is early in the evening just before dinner, when I sit in the uncomfortable chair with my elbows on the window-sill and my head resting on one hand.
I have two pictures of Marie Bashkirtseff high upon my wall. Often I lean my head on the back of the chair with my feet on the bureau--always with my feet on the bureau--and look at these pictures.
In one of them she is eighteen years old and wears a green frock which is extremely becoming--of which fact the person inside of it seems fully aware. The other picture is taken from her last photograph, when she was twenty-four.
Marie Bashkirtseff is a very beautiful creature. And evidently _she_ is not obliged to arrange a moreen petticoat over her plumpness. She has a wonderfully voluptuous look for a woman of eighteen years. In the later picture vanity is written in every line of her graceful form and in every feature of that charming face. The picture fairly yells: "I am Marie Bashkirtseff--and, oh, I am splendid!"
And as I look at the pictures I am glad. For though she was admirable and splendid, and all, she was no such genius as I. She had a genius of her own, it is true. But the Bashkirtseff, with her voluptuous body and her attractive personality, is after all a bit ordinary. My genius, though not powerful, is rare and deep, and no one has ever had or ever will have a genius like it.
Mary MacLane, if you live--if you live, my darling, the world will one day recognize your genius. And when once the world has recognized such genius as this--oh, then no one will ever think of profaning it by comparing it with any Bashkirtseff!
But I would give up this genius eagerly, gladly--at once and forever--for one dear, bright day free from loneliness.
The portraits of the Bashkirtseff are certainly beautiful, but there is something about them that is--well, not common, but bourgeois at least, as if she were a German waitress of unusual appearance, or an aristocratic shop-girl, or a nurse with good taste who would walk out on pleasant forenoons wheeling a go-cart--something of that sort. Perhaps it is because her neck is too short, or because her wrists are too muscular-looking. I thank a gracious Devil as I look up at the pictures that I have not those particular points and that particular bourgeois air. I am bound to confess that I have one of my own, but mine is Highland Scotch--and anyway, I am Mary MacLane.