From The Journal of Marie Bashkirtseff, Tuesday, Aug 24th, 1874

 
"The noise of Paris, this hotel as large as a city, with its people always walking, talking, reading, smoking , looking, makes me dizzy.  I love Paris and my heart beats.  I wish to live faster, still faster, faster. "I have never seen such fever of life," said D-, looking at me.  It is true, I fear, that this desire to live by steam is a forewarning of a short existence."

Sadly. t'was true.  She passed away from consumption at the age of 25.

From The Journal of Marie Bashkirtseff, Tuesday, Aug 24th, 1874.

Marie Bashkirtseff (1858 -1884)

Click here for an earlier post of Marie's.

And here.

Y'know, I am forever learning more and more about the women who came before me and their achievments. Often I find myself irked when I do.

But exactly why am I irked? 

Could it be because I realize that I am nearly 50 and just barely learning about some of these women. Its not like I haven't gotten around a bit in the life either.  Nor is it as I have never lifted a book.  Lord knows that the written word is one of my greatest passions.  I've also been lucky to have travelled much over the years and I hope with all my heart and soul to travel again someday.

Perhaps is bothers me so much because I remember that the only female names I learned about back in school were Florence Nightingale, Harriet Tubman and....and....hmmm.  Oh I know!  Pocahantas and Sacagawea. 

Nothing about Mary Shelley.  Not a word about her mum Mary Wollstonecraft. We briefly touched upon the Renaissance here and there but I don't remember being told much in the way of female acheivements throughout history.

 

 Artists? Architects? Writers? Suffragettes from overseas? Zero.  I've had to search them out on my own.  While it get my goat that no one helped me along in my earlier days, I don't mind each and every new discovery. I have the rest of my life to uncover and treasure so much and apparantly, so many. 

 

"I spent two hours at the palace, I did not sit down an instant and I am not tired...Things that I love do not tire me.  As long as there are paintings, and especially statues, to see, I am of iron.  Ah, if I had to walk through the stores of the Louvre, or of the Bon-Marche, or even Worth's, I should cry in three-quarters of an hour."  Sep 13, 1874.

 Lol. Sorry Marie.  I was with ya until you got to the part about Worth's.