“Is that all I am ever to do in life — dress myself carefully, put leaves in my hair, and think…

“Is that all I am ever to do in life — dress myself carefully, put leaves in my hair, and think about the effect?”

The new issue of Lapham’s Quarterly is Youth-themed and features, among many other delights, a beautifully unhinged 1876 diary entry from a teenage girl named Maria Bashkirtseva:

I was rude to Auntie, and then I went out on the terrace. I stopped out in the garden till dusk. How lovely the twilight is with the sea and space for background, and these luxuriant plants and thick-foliaged trees! And then, by way of contrast, the bamboos and palms. The fountain, the grotto with its little waterfall trickling from rock to rock before falling into the basin. All around, the bushy trees give the spot a look of peacefulness and mystery, which makes one lazy and sets one dreaming.

Why does water always make one dreamy?

I stopped in the garden and looked at a stone vase in which a lovely canna was just unfolding. I thought how pretty my white dress and leafy crown must look in that entrancing garden.

Is that all I am ever to do in life — dress myself carefully, put leaves in my hair, and think about the effect?

Her closing line: “What do I want? Oh, you know well enough. I want glory.” [LQ]