May she not rebel against me, then, dear brother. I think that she is beginning to see that I’m not an intruder or bully, but rather quieter and calmer on the inside than I seem on the surface. She didn’t realize that immediately. At first, for a time, she really had an unfavourable opinion of me, but lo and behold, I don’t know why, while the sky clouds over and darkens with difficulties and curses, light rises up on her side. Pa and Ma have always passed for such gentle, quiet people, so kindly and good. But how can I reconcile that with this morning’s scene or that matter of Geel last year?
They really are good and kindly, but even so, they have prejudices they want to impose. And if they want to act as the ‘wall of partition’ between me and her, I doubt whether it will do them any good.
Now, old chap, if you send me some ‘travelling money’ you’ll soon receive 3 drawings, ‘Mealtime’, ‘the fire-lighter’ and ‘an almsman’. So send the travelling money, if you can, for the journey won’t be completely in vain! If I have but 20 or 30 francs, at least I can see her face once again. And write a word or two, if you will, about that certain (terrible?) curse and that banishment, because I’d like so much to go on working quietly here, that’s what I’d like best. I need her and her influence to reach a higher artistic level, without her I am nothing, but with her there’s a chance. Living, working and loving are actually one and the same thing. Now, adieu with a handshake,
Ever yours,
Vincent
A word from you ‘from Paris’! That would possibly carry some weight, even against prejudices.
That matter of the asylum happened last year ‘out of a conscientious conviction’, as they call it, now it’s another ‘conscientious conviction’ that’s forbidding me to write to Kee Vos. But that’s simply a ‘conscientious conviction’ based on very slight grounds, one that doesn’t hold water. No, it can’t be allowed to happen for no good reason!
And if one asks Pa, ‘Explain to me the basis of your conviction’, he answers, ‘I don’t owe you an explanation’, ‘it’s not fitting to ask your father such a question’. That, however, is no mode of reasoning!
Another mode of reasoning that I don’t understand either is Ma’s: You know that we’ve been against it from the beginning, so stop going on about it! No, listen to me, brother, it would really be too bad if I had to leave my field of work here and waste a lot of money elsewhere, where it’s much more expensive, instead of gradually earning some ‘travelling money’!
That matter of Geel last year, when Pa wanted to have me put in an asylum against my will!!! taught me to be on the qui vive. If I didn’t watch out now, Pa would ‘feel compelled to do’ a thing or two.
190 | Etten, Wednesday, 23 November 1881 | To Anthon van Rappard (D)
23 November 1881
My dear Rappard,
When I re-read your letters, old chap, I find such good, nice remarks in them, and, you see, that’s precisely what spurs me on to keep up this correspondence.
Aha! So I’m actually a headstrong person after all! Well, I’ll admit defeat, you’ve stung me to the quick! So be it. I thank you for that revelation, yes, thank God, at first I didn’t dare believe it myself but you’ve made it clear to me, so I have a will, an inclination, I’m going in a definite direction, and, what’s more, not satisfied with that, I want others to go with me! Thank God, so I’m a headstrong person! Well, from now on I want to be nothing else. And now I’d really like to have my friend Rappard as my travelling companion — it’s not a matter of indifference to me to lose sight of him — am I wrong about that?
Well, I was saying, in my haste, that I wanted to drive people ‘to the open sea’ (see previous letter). If that’s all I did I would be a terrible barbarian. But there’s something else that makes the matter more reasonable. A man can’t stand it on the open sea for long — he has to have a little hut on the beach with a fire on the hearth — with a wife and children around that hearth.
You see, Rappard, where I myself seek to go, whither I seek to push others as well, is to become fishermen in the sea that we call the ocean of reality, but for myself, and for those fellow human beings I sometimes buttonhole, I definitely want ‘that little hut’ as well. And in that little hut the above-mentioned things. So the sea and that haven, or that haven and the sea.
And as regards that doctrine I’m preaching. That tenet of mine, ‘people, let us love what we love’, is based on an axiom. I thought it unnecessary to mention that axiom, but now for the sake of clarity I’ll spell it out. That axiom is ‘People, we love’. From that I derive the first proposition.
People, let us love what we love, let us be ourselves, ‘let us not want to know better than God’. (‘Let us not want to know better than God’ is not an expression of mine but of Mauve’s.) And I’ll prove that proposition with a reductio ad absurdum, namely in this way. To begin with, suppose a man didn’t love what he loved, how much misery he would cause himself and others, and how much trouble he would stir up in the world of our blessed Lord. In short, if everyone were like that person of whom we assume for the moment — if it’s possible for us to do so, that is — that he didn’t love what he loved, how the world would gradually (which in my view was ordained uprightly by our blessed Lord, and is maintained in that position by Him, and for the time being, for at least as long as you and I shall live, will stay in that position, it will no doubt last out our time), if, I say, everyone were like that supposed man, intentionally standing upside down and turned inside out (it’s fortunate that he can exist only in our imagination as an abstraction in our reductio ad absurdum of an ungeometric proposition!), how the world rightly created by God would start to look very like a totally wrong world. It seems to me, starting off with that as an abstraction, that the person in question, intentionally standing upside down and turned inside out, existing for the moment only in our imagination (and not even that), who wouldn’t choose to love what he loved, we feel to be going so much ‘against the grain’ that we may in fact take as proved the logic or the reasonableness of the proposition ‘people, let us love what we love’. (Moreover, if I haven’t proved clearly enough that the falseness of the proposition in question is a great absurdity, you, who are much further along in geometry than I am, would — with a bit of good will — easily succeed in finding more conclusive proof of my proposition.)
We now come to remarkable conclusions or ‘consequences’ of this basic principle, which include,
First, a man who flatly refuses to love what he loves drives himself into the ground.
Second, he’d have to have a very strong dose of O/Abstinence (the O and the A are both applicable, coincidentally. Eh!) to stand it for long.
Third, if he were to change, his conversion wouldn’t be great.
Yes, and whether I say it or don’t say it, I think you’ll understand in any case that I’m more or less insinuating: Rappard, that by sticking so close to the academy you’re keeping a spare turn of rope around your arm with which many a man has ‘hanged’ himself — because he couldn’t be free of it when he wanted to choose the sea!
Because you, though, have rather strong muscles, you will be able to break that spare turn of rope in time of need. But others! Believe me, there are those who hang themselves with it!
Are there, in addition to ‘academic’ ones, yet other ‘turns of rope’? There are, by your leave, as many kinds of turns of rope as there are eye beams. (See chapter on ‘eye beams’ in previous letter.)
How many? ‘LEGION’, I SAY, ‘LEGION’.
‘Hanging oneself’ by the ‘spare turn of rope’ is a much more protracted and fearful death than hanging oneself straightforwardly with a noose.
Are there also moral turns of rope?
And why shouldn’t they be just as good as moral eye beams? But you and I haven’t really laboured under them, nor do we labour under them, nor shall we labour under them.
Hmm — I’m not so very sure of that, and if instead of speaking of you and me I were spe
aking of myself alone, I’d say: as far as I’m concerned, I have laboured under, am labouring under, shall continue to labour under moral eye beams and moral turns of rope, but that did not, does not and will not alter the fact that I have cast out, am casting out and shall continue to cast out moral eye beams from my eye. And moral turns of rope I have rent asunder, am rending asunder and shall continue to rend asunder with flashes of lightning.
Until at the end I’ll stand with a single eye and a free arm. When?
Provided I persevere until the end — in the end.
Well, you will indeed see that together we’ll win this by persevering with our correspondence, that this correspondence will gradually become more serious.
Because although, as I’ve already said, I’m giving free rein to my imagination, I’m nevertheless writing to you truly, not without but very much with earnestness. And, while far from writing to you out of any desire to argue, my intention nonetheless is: ‘to wake Rappard up’, and I doubt whether in that ‘waking of Rappard’ I’ll nod off myself. God forbid that such would be the case, far from it.
I told you on a previous occasion that I generally scrutinize, with artists in particular, the man who produces the work just as much as the work itself. Lacking the man, I must sometimes draw conclusions from the work alone (we can’t know all artists personally), lacking the work, I must take the measure of the man alone. Well, of a certain Mr van Rappard I know, first, his work to some extent, second, him to some extent.
His work always says to me, hereafter better.
His person says the same.
From good to better.
Do you think that a very unmerciful judgement? Now (turning to a completely different subject), as regards my special ‘bête noire’, I’ve had little opportunity today to occupy myself with pursuit of the same; even so, I couldn’t refrain from attacking it just for a bit.
But we’ll discuss this in more detail at some point. It’s beginning, however, to be slightly on the qui vive, the fact is that resignation is accustomed to resignation and, I thought, it would give up the fight, but you see, I’m not inclined to do it yet. Anyway, perhaps I’ll tell you later about the bête noire in question. Bloody bête noire! It does me good all the same.
Meanwhile, believe me, with a handshake,
Ever yours,
Vincent
I’m now writing to you often because I’ll soon have a lot of other correspondence.
192 | The Hague, on or about Sunday, 18 December 1881 | To Theo van Gogh (D)
My dear Theo,
It’s possible that you’ve been expecting a word from me to hear what I’m doing these days. And for my part I’ve been looking forward to a word from you.
I’m still going to Mauve’s every day, during the day to paint, in the evenings to draw. Have now painted 5 studies and 2 watercolours, and naturally a few scratches.
I can’t tell you how good and kind Mauve and Jet have been to me these days. And Mauve has shown and told me things which I can’t do straightaway but will gradually put into practice. But I must go on working hard, and when I’m in Etten again a couple of changes will be necessary, among other things I’ll have to see about renting a large room somewhere in which I can stand back a sufficient distance, otherwise figure drawing isn’t really possible, except for studying a few fragments.
Anyway, I’m considering the matter with M. and I’ll write to you about it again one of these days.
The painted studies are still lifes, the watercolours done from a model, a Scheveningen woman. Perhaps M. will write a letter to you himself soon.
But Theo, I’ve been gone almost a month now, and you’ll understand that I’ve had more expenses than usual. M. has in fact given me various things, paint &c., but I’ve had to buy more of this and that, I’ve also paid the model for several days. And needed a pair of shoes, and besides, I didn’t always pay attention to every penny, so that I’ve rather exceeded the 100-franc limit, for the whole trip has now cost me 90 guilders altogether. And now I think that Pa is rather short of money and I don’t know what to do.
For my part, I’d like to stay here a while longer, would even like to rent a room here for a couple of months, in Scheveningen, for example, and possibly for more than a couple of months. But in the circumstances it would perhaps be better to return to Etten. I find Scheveningen so almightily beautiful and the types and figures. But the models there cost 1.50 or 2 guilders a day, some of them even more.
But here one is in touch with painters &c. When I wrote to Pa this week for money, he thought the 90 guilders I’d spent so terribly much.
You, though, will understand, I think, that this wasn’t unreasonable, because everything is expensive. But I damned well hate having to give Pa an account of every penny, the more so because everything is blabbed to everyone else, not without embellishments and exaggerations.
What’s more, Pa has now spent money on an overcoat for me that hung to the ground when I got it, and was a vulgar, flamboyant style to boot. Perhaps Pa did it out of kindness, but it really wasn’t the time to do it, since we have so many expenses already, and it’s also no way to buy clothes, without consulting the person and without fitting or measuring. Pa sent the coat here, but I immediately sent it back. So I only want to say, Theo, I’m beginning to get rather hard up.
And I’m writing to you to tell you this. I haven’t any money to stay, I haven’t any money to go back. I’ll wait a day or so in any case and do whatever you want.
Do you think it’s better that I stay here a while? I’d very much like to stay a bit longer, and not go back before I’ve progressed a great deal more.
If you want me to go back immediately, that’s also fine with me. Provided I find a good room somewhere, somewhat larger than the little studio at home. Then I can potter about by myself for a while, and go back to The Hague again later. In any event, Theo, I’ve been so enlightened by Mauve as regards the mysteries of the palette and painting in watercolour. And that will repay the 90 guilders this trip has cost. M. says that the sun is rising for me but that it’s still shrouded in mist. Oh well, I have nothing against that. Sometime I’ll tell you more about how kind and good M. was.
So now I’ll wait here a couple of days, awaiting your answer. But if your answer doesn’t come within 3 or 4 days, I’ll ask Pa for the money to go back immediately.
I still have all kinds of things to tell you which you’ll perhaps be interested in, about the way of working from a model at Etten, but as I already said, I’ll write to you about this later — soon. I’m sending you herewith scratches of the two watercolours. I have every hope of making something saleable within a relatively short time, yes, believe that if necessary it ought to be possible to sell these two. Especially the one in which M. has added some touches. But I’d prefer to keep them myself for a while, the better to remember various things regarding their execution.
How marvellous watercolour is for expressing space and airiness, allowing the figure to be part of the atmosphere and life to enter it.
Now would you like me to make a few more watercolours for you here? I’d like nothing better, but accommodation here and the models and the paint and the paper &c. &c. all cost me money, and I haven’t got any more.
So write to me in any case by return of post, and if you want me to stay, send me some money if possible.
I really think that I’ll be able to make more progress now, now that I’ve heard some practical things about colour and the handling of the brush. And you can imagine that I set great store by M. not having to regret his kindness.
We’ll try and pull through and put some energy into it.
Now adieu, I’m counting in any case on your writing a word by return of post, address A. Mauve. Uilenbomen 198. Believe me, with a handshake in thought,
Ever yours,
Vincent.
I have extremely bad ink here which has something red in it that has come through in the sketches.
[Sketches
192A–C]
192A–C (bottom to top, left to right). Scheveningen woman standing; Sculpture; Still life with cabbage and clogs
These are the subjects of 2 painted studies. One is a terracotta head of a child wearing a fur cap, the other a white cabbage and some potatoes &c.
[Sketches 192D–E]
192D–E (left to right). Scheveningen woman sewing; Scheveningen woman knitting
193 | Etten, on or about Friday, 23 December 1881 | To Theo van Gogh (D)
Sometimes, I fear, you throw a book away because it’s too realistic. Have compassion and patience with this letter, and read it through, despite its severity.
My dear Theo,
As I already wrote to you from The Hague, I have some things to discuss with you now that I’m back here. It’s not without emotion that I look back on my trip to The Hague. When I went to see M. my heart was beating rather hard, because I was thinking to myself, will he too try and fob me off or will I find something else here? And well, what I experienced with him was that he instructed and encouraged me in all manner of kind and practical ways. Though not merely by always approving of everything I did or said, on the contrary. But if he tells me, this or that isn’t good, then it’s because he’s saying at the same time ‘but try it this way or that way’, and that’s entirely different from criticizing for the sake of criticizing. Or if someone says ‘you’re ill with this or that’, that doesn’t help much, but if someone says ‘do this or that and you’ll get better’, and his advice isn’t deceit, look, that’s the real thing, and — and — it naturally helps. Now I’ve come from him with a few painted studies and a couple of watercolours. Of course they aren’t masterpieces and yet I truly believe there’s something sound and real in them, more at least than in what I’ve made up to now. And so I now consider myself to be at the beginning of the beginning of making something serious. And because I now have a few more technical resources at my disposal, namely paint and brush, all things are made new again, as it were.
Ever Yours Page 23