Write again soon, and believe me
Ever yours,
Vincent
301 | The Hague, on or about Saturday, 13 January 1883 | To Theo van Gogh (D)
My dear Theo,
What you write about has literally not been out of my thoughts since I received your letter. And I’m writing again precisely because the matter preoccupies me so much. In cases like this one is faced by a patient who is ill in both body and soul. So it’s doubly serious. And financial help with the necessities of life etc. isn’t enough to bring about complete recovery, for the very best and most effective medicine is still love and a home. At least that’s what I felt last winter, and since then — now, for instance — far more so, precisely because the experience made clear to me what my feelings were also telling me. Maintaining a life above water is a great and fine thing, but it’s also very difficult and requires a lot of care. Making a home for the homeless, well, that’s something that must be good, whatever the world may say, it cannot be wrong. And yet it’s often seen as some sort of crime.
I couldn’t help thinking and thinking again about it. How will people take it? Will it bring you into conflict with the world? That, too, is a question in my mind that I can’t answer, because I don’t yet know the circumstances well enough. And there’s something else, which is actually the reason for this letter and which I wanted to suggest you consider and which you’ve probably thought of yourself.
Something like this is a long-term business. But I do think it possible that you’ll soon see the reward for your care, although the complete recovery in body and soul of a constitution that has had such a shock really is something that will take years.
The woman and the children are with me at the moment. There’s a big difference when I think back to last year. The woman is stronger and sturdier, has lost a great, a very great deal of that harried look. The little child is as charming, healthy and cheerful a little fellow as you can imagine. He crows like a cockerel — has nothing but the breast yet is fat and plump.
And the poor little girl — you can see from the drawing that the deep misery of the past hasn’t been wiped away yet, and I often worry about that, but still, she’s already very different from last year — then it was very, very bad, and now there’s already something truly childlike in her.
Anyway, though not yet completely normal, the situation is better than I would have dared hope for last year. And when I now reflect, would it have been better if the mother had had a miscarriage, or if the child had withered and wasted away for lack of mother’s milk, and if that girl had been left more and more unclean and neglected, and the woman herself in who knows what wretched, near indescribable state? — see, then I may not hesitate and I say, onward in good heart. Something simple — truly motherly — is coming in the woman, and as that strengthens she will be saved.
And how is progress made??? Not through doctors or through unusual remedies. Through the sense of one’s own home, through a regular, motivated life. Not by sparing oneself a great deal, for that cannot be done, but because the harried heart has more rest, even during hard and tedious work. With this case that I know intimately before me as a reality, I come back to what I wanted to say. It seems to me that you should pay special attention to the surroundings of the woman you write about if you want to see some benefit. It would be desirable for her to be somewhere other than in an empty room in a hotel or something like that, and for her to be in more domestic surroundings. Think about this, for I believe it’s an important thing. She needs to be distracted by very ordinary everyday things that keep her occupied.
Solitude or idleness is absolutely fatal. She should be able to talk to good people. In short, a domestic circle with nothing out of the ordinary would be wonderful. Occupy herself with children, say. I think it rather a pity that she has no child, in my view that makes the case even more critical.
Yes, I believe that the most practical thing you can do is to put her in a domestic circle. I believe that the main consideration for you at the moment is — this life must be saved — and that unselfishly you think more of her than of yourself. For my part, last year I knew of only one home for her, namely with me, and if I could have done something else I wouldn’t have taken her into my house immediately, precisely in order to avoid unpleasantnesses that couldn’t then be avoided. Unable to do otherwise, I didn’t hesitate though. And all in all everything has gone well so far. But with you the position is different, and perhaps you can take her, the person you write about, somewhere for the time being where she’ll be calm and safe until she’s fully recovered. I fear that it may be a long-term business, her recovery, and moreover, if it can be avoided one needn’t sin against society’s prejudices, which simply do exist. If it can’t be avoided, then what carries most weight must outweigh the rest, and this summer I would rather have sinned against all possible prejudices, even if there were more, than leave the woman without a roof and a hearth. But in your case everything can and should take place more calmly, it seems to me, and if I were you I’d provide her with a solid home. Not alone in a room, with no company. For her own good, and not because you want to spirit her away or keep her concealed, but for her it’s essential that emotions and shocking things are avoided as far as possible, and the sooner she’s in normal, everyday occupations and surroundings, the better.
Well, if you could take her in immediately, I wouldn’t speak of it. Yet I fear that’s not possible and you yourself wouldn’t immediately agree.
I’m very agitated and I think of you all the time. Just now I did another drawing for which the woman posed. Listen, old chap, to put it briefly, it has been my experience this year that while there are hard, very hard, moments of care and trouble, it’s infinitely better to live with a woman and children than without.
So if you continue to think that this person is the woman for whom you want to live, I regard it as a happy thing for you. And then it’s precisely through love persevered with that she will bloom again. But it’s always desirable to get to know each other first, that’s more orderly and more prudent. And I too would have done that if it could have been arranged, even though I thought, I’ll stay with this person for ever. But there was no home immediately open to her except mine. Anyway, it’s the circumstances that one must take into account, and sometimes one can’t avoid giving offence. I don’t in the least want to advise you to give it up, since you write that you love her, but I believe we agree that it’s good to be careful vis-à-vis the world, which otherwise sometimes ruins everything.
And so, be careful. For the present the recovery is the main concern, and the other is secondary. Well then, I believe nothing will be better for her than to spend each day in a quiet circle. Don’t you know someone among your friends who would be willing to help and take her in for the time being?
For, I repeat, if she’s alone in a room, with no distraction or occupation, then I believe that could be quite fatal for her. And a kind of hospital (ordinary or private) where she had company would perhaps be preferable, provided you visited her often. It may be that all this has already been arranged; I write about it just because I don’t know anything definite in this regard.
I wish I knew when you were coming. If you come and are able, bring the old studies with you. As for my writing to ask whether you could send me a little more, well, I’m a little worried and wish it was possible, but don’t let her go short for my sake. And be assured that because of what you write I’ll gladly redouble my efforts to make progress, so that the burden on you is lightened. But that’s just the thing: working hard sometimes actually costs money, because one has more outgoings. Write soon, for I’m truly longing for news of you. My blessing in everything. Rappard is getting better, I have a letter from him. I’m busy with work, still doing various Heads. Adieu, with a handshake in thought.
Ever yours,
Vincent
You’ll say that I’m spending a lot of time writing, I can’t help it, for you’ve confided
in me, so I want to tell you that this didn’t fail to touch me.
It’s an odd thing about cases of this kind that it’s so extremely difficult to know how far one should go. You will experience this too. One asks oneself, should I help this woman and otherwise see only a friend in her, or should I definitely choose this woman as my wife with whom I want to live always? Is she the one? Or is she not?
You see, I believe that you haven’t avoided this conflict, or perhaps you’re still in it. For were it to be otherwise, it would seem to me rather unnatural.
At any rate I felt that conflict, and it was so difficult that for my part I couldn’t entirely answer those questions when circumstances forced me to make a decision. Because I thought, I don’t have the means to maintain two separate households, but perhaps I have enough for one, and so I must tell her how things stand: what I might be able to do and what I certainly couldn’t do. Perhaps we’ll be able to get by together, but if we don’t live together I won’t have enough. With you it may take a different form while still being the same conflict, and I remember a remark of yours last year that I thought very right and true: ‘marrying is such a funny thing’. Yes, by Jove, it certainly is. You said to me then, don’t marry her, and I conceded to you that the circumstances were such that there was good reason not to speak of that for the time being. And now you know that I haven’t spoken further of that, but also that she and I have remained true to each other. And precisely because I can’t say that you were wrong when you said ‘don’t marry her’, I ask you to consider these words of yours, and indeed believe that you’ve thought about them, for it isn’t I who says this but you yourself. And I remind you of this only because I believe that it was indeed good that it didn’t happen immediately.
So don’t let go of this thought, for it’s good for love to ripen so that marrying becomes very much a secondary matter. That is safer, and no one suffers harm as a result.
I wanted to say one thing to you in the beginning, which you’ll understand anyway. Whether or not this puts you in difficulties, I respect the noble feelings that prompted you to help, and because I respect that I hope that if you do run up against difficulties, large or small, you’ll think me worthy of your confidence.
Yet I do NOT view the matter with melancholy, but with every hope of a good outcome, namely happiness for you and for her.
But once again — I consider it likely that a crisis will come sooner or later, consisting of a kind of mutual disappointment — if there was a child, it would be like a lightning conductor for the two of you. Now there isn’t one in your case and so, above all when the crisis comes — not now but later — trust me then and talk to me. See, for that’s where there are rocks where many a love has foundered alas and could have been saved. Once one has surmounted those rocks there’s plain sailing ahead. Although I’m busy writing to you, I’m busy working too. I can’t say how much I long to discuss many things with you. Tomorrow I’ll be getting a sou’wester for the heads. Heads of fishermen, old and young, that’s what I’ve been thinking about for a long time and I had already done one, but then later I couldn’t get hold of a sou’wester again. Now I’m going to have one of my own, an old one that many gales and seas have swept over.
307 | The Hague, on or about Sunday, 4 February 1883 | To Anthon van Rappard (D)
My dear friend Rappard.
Sincerest thanks for your letter and for the information about the woodcuts you’ve found. I’d very much like to see some of them, particularly Degroux and Lançon.
The fact that you’re recovering so well gives me no little pleasure. You know that before your illness we were corresponding fairly regularly about the lithographs, and then we had to break off that correspondence.
Since then I’ve been toiling away, not directly on stone but using lithographic crayon.
That’s an excellent material.
If I write quite frequently now, please bear with me, and for your part write often too, for you have some way to catch up — although not you yourself but the circumstances of your illness are to blame for that.
I do assure you that The Graphics I now have are amazingly interesting. More than 10 years ago I used to go every week to the display case of the printer of The Graphic and London News in London to see the weekly publications. The impressions I gained there on the spot were so strong that the drawings have remained clear and bright in my mind, despite everything that has since gone through my head. And now it sometimes seems to me as if nothing lies between those old days and now — at any rate my old enthusiasm for them is now greater rather than less than it was originally. I don’t doubt for a moment that you’ll have no complaints if you come to see them one day.
I know that you don’t look on the Black and White in the way that most of the Dutch do, and while I don’t know for sure whether you have plans to make use of this means yourself to express what you feel, I do believe that at any rate you have no prejudice about it. The one needn’t rule out the other, and in many cases Black and White especially is a means that makes it possible to put effects on paper in a relatively short time which would lose something of what people call their ‘spontaneity’ if done in another way. I wonder whether the London sketches — such as Low lodging house St Giles’s by Herkomer, Casual ward by Fildes — wouldn’t be a little less compelling and full of character if painted than they are in the rough Black and White.
There’s something manly about it, something rough that I find highly attractive. Something else — the boss of Black and White may be someone neither you nor I know. In reviews of exhibitions I see mention made of the work of Lhermitte, a Frenchman who does scenes from the life of fishermen in Brittany. It’s said of him that ‘he is the Millet and Jules Breton in Black and White’, and his name crops up again and again. I’d like to be able to see something by him, and have recently written about him to my brother, who has given me very good information several times in the past (about Daumier’s painted work, for example).
As to the lithographs, the one of the chap sitting on a basket slicing his bread is a failure. When it was being transferred to the stone, the upper half came out all blotted and I could only partly correct it with the scraper. All the same you’ll see that there are things in them that prove that with this technique one can work vigorously and render materials, for example the basket, the trousers and muddy boots. And while I myself found this sheet very ugly in the first days, I’ve since become more reconciled to it, and if I began again I’d continue in the same, more vigorous way — with a background behind.
I read in Herkomer’s biography how in his early days (when the incident with the rough sketch of Sunday at Chelsea Hospital took place) he did his best to find some among the artists of that time who also wanted to do figures from the people. He then found Gregory, who was the first to come up with sketches from the Franco-Prussian War (Paris under the red flag ((I didn’t know at first that this print was by him)) and an emergency hospital in a theatre), and later confined himself to scenes on board ships. And Gregory and Herkomer have remained friends ever since.
Now your writing to me about getting better brings back the days last summer when I too was getting better.
There’s something that dates from that time that I must tell you about. Perhaps I wrote to you about it at the time but I don’t remember for sure. Do you recall that when you visited me last summer we met a woman and I told you that she was a model I’d found, and also told you how I discovered that she was pregnant and tried all the harder to help her because of that?
Soon after that I fell ill myself. She was then in the hospital in Leiden, and in hospital I got a letter from her saying how anxious she was. Before then — during the winter when she suffered terribly — I did what I could, and now I was deeply divided within myself as to what to do. Could, should I help? I was ill myself and the future was so dark. Nonetheless, I got up, against the doctor’s advice in fact, and went to see her. I saw her in the hospital in Leiden on 1 Ju
ly. That night she had given birth to a boy who lay sleeping in his cradle beside her with his pert little nose above the blanket — knowing nothing, of course, about the ways of the world. At any rate, a sick painter like me struggling to get by knows things about it a child like that doesn’t know.
And what should I do? I had much to think about at that moment. She’d had a very difficult birth, the poor creature of a mother. Aren’t there moments in life when remaining inactive or saying, ‘What’s it to do with me?’ is criminal? At any rate, I said to the woman, when you’re better, move in with me. I’ll do what I can. Now, my dear friend, this woman had another child as well, a sickly, neglected lamb. It was an undertaking that was in fact considerably further beyond my strength than, say, buying The Graphic, but what else could I do? A person has a heart in his body after all, and if we didn’t dare take on things we wouldn’t be worthy of life. Well, she moved in with me — I went to live in a house that wasn’t even entirely finished and that I could get for a relatively low rent. That’s where I still live, two doors along from my old studio, it’s No. 138. And we’re still there. But now the baby from the cradle in the hospital doesn’t sleep as much as in those first few days. He’s turned out to be a delightful, lively fellow, now 7 or 8 months old. I fetched his cradle from a junk shop on my shoulders, and that child — for me he was a light in the house through the whole dark winter. And the woman, although she isn’t strong and must nevertheless work hard to keep everything in order, has still become stronger because of it. So you see that while I try to penetrate deeper into Art, I also try to do that in life itself — the two go together.
Ever Yours Page 39