“If I am as pretty as I think, why is it that no one loves me? People look at me! They fall in love! But they do not love me! And I do so want to be loved.”
At seventeen, the first entry in her journal for that year:—
“When shall I get to know what this love is of which we hear so much?”
Later on:—
“Very much disgusted with myself. I hate all that I do, say, and write. I despise myself, because not a single one of my expectations has been fulfilled. I have deceived myself.
“I am stupid, I have no tact, and I never had any. I thought I was intellectual, but I have no taste. I thought I was brave; I am a coward. I believed I had talent, but I do not know how I have proved it.”
At the age of eighteen:—
“My body like that of an antique goddess, my hips rather too Spanish, my breast small, perfectly formed, my feet, my hands, my child-like head. À quoi bon? When no one loves me.
“There is one thing that is really beautiful, antique: that is a woman’s self-effacement in the presence of the man she loves; it must be the greatest, most self-satisfying delight that a superior woman can feel.”
In 1882, at the beginning of her illness:—