That I’ve had no lack of unpleasantness with former friends who no longer looked me in the eye is something that didn’t particularly surprise me.
This was happily not the case with my best friend, namely my brother — for he and I are more friends than brothers — and he’s someone who understands such matters, and not only that — he himself has helped and still helps many an unfortunate. Nonetheless, I’ve lost some friends because of it, but I’ve gained more light and shade in my own house and more of a Home, even though sometimes when cares weigh heavily on me it’s as if I were on a ship in a storm. Anyway, though I know very well that the sea holds dangers and one can drown in it, I still love the sea deeply and despite all the perils of the future I have a certain serenity.
Now I have a great desire to speak to you again, and I’d very much like you to come to see The Graphics before long, if you can, but I write to you in advance about the changes in my household because I don’t know exactly what you think of such matters in life. If we were in the days of the ‘Bohème’, a painter’s family and studio like mine would be nothing unusual. Nowadays, though, we’re a very long way from the original Bohème, and among the painters there are considerations of decency that I don’t exactly understand, but I don’t wish to offend those who have them.
Again, were we still in the days of Bohème, I’d let everything take its course, but now I say to you, my dear friend Rappard, I live with a poor woman and two children, and there are so many who will have no dealings with me, for that and other reasons, that I’m bound to tell you this when I write, Would you like to come and go through The Graphics one of these days?
What I must also tell you is that when my father first heard about this, you will understand that he wasn’t best pleased, or rather didn’t know what to think, not having expected such a thing from me. Then we saw each other again nonetheless, which hadn’t happened since I came here after leaving home because of the problems there. And when he heard more of the details, he looked at it differently from at first. The disagreement I had with him when I left home didn’t last long, and we’d already settled our differences before I was with this woman. Since then even my father has paid me a visit while I was living with her.
But how many misunderstandings there are in life, and how much better everything would be if people cooperated a little more instead of arguing.
Oh, old chap, I wish more of the Bohème was left in society, and especially among the painters.
Above all, you mustn’t think that it’s because of the woman that they don’t visit me; that’s one thing, but in general it’s because of the painting itself, although this summer I certainly painted studies too. In short, contact with painters here has been a severe disappointment to me. Will it get any better???
One painter here recently ended up in the madhouse — Boks, a landscape painter. It was very difficult to get help for him before he was in there, although during one illness he did get some help after all, chiefly through Mauve. Now that he’s inside, everyone speaks sympathetically of him and calls him very clever. Among others, a person who refused him help on several occasions and rejected studies by him said lately, ‘finer than Diaz’, which I find rather an exaggeration. The chap himself told me a year ago that he got a medal in England — which he’d sold for the silver. Another painter, Breitner, with whom at first I occasionally went out drawing in the street, and who was in the hospital at just about the same time as I was, has become a teacher at the secondary school, although I know he wasn’t looking forward to it.
Is it a good time for the painters??? When I first came here to the city I went to all the studios I could get into for the sake of seeking contact and making friends. Now I’m much cooler on that point, and believe that there is a very dark side to it, precisely because the painters seem warm-hearted but all too often try to trip you up. That’s the fatal thing. We should help and trust each other, for there are hostilities enough in society anyway, and in general we’d do better if we did no harm to each other. Envy drives many to malign others, systematically. And what is the result? — instead of one large entity, a body of painters where unity is strength, everyone withdraws into his shell and works by himself. Those who are now cock of the walk create a kind of desert around them just because of their envy, and that’s very unfortunate for themselves, it seems to me. A battle with paintings or drawings is good in a sense, and at any rate fair, but we shouldn’t become personal enemies of each other or use other means for fighting.
Anyway, if this kind of thing is no obstacle for you, think about coming to see those Graphics, for they’re splendid, and I’d like to have a word with you about what to do with the duplicates. For there are many, and among them some of the very finest, Last muster by Herkomer, old women’s home, Low lodging house St Giles’s by him. Emigrants and BOARD SCHOOL by Frank Holl. Caxton printing by Small, Barque at sea by Nash, Old Gate by Fred Walker and suchlike that are the core of a woodcut collection. In short, it’s a lot. From earlier correspondence I understand that you don’t want to have them for nothing, though for my part I would gladly give you what I have in duplicate without further conditions, as long as you take pleasure in them and love them.
But I know for sure that we can arrange it so that you needn’t feel any qualms about accepting them and, since this can certainly be settled one way or another, it seems to me that perhaps we may soon meet each other again, especially if your recovery continues to progress.
And I would find it all the more desirable if you came because I’ve now put together a large number of studies from this winter which I’d like to speak to you about.
I would have written to you before about one or two things that I’m telling you now, but it was still so strange for me myself, and I was rather put out by some unpleasantness with others. And I’m writing about it now, not because I regard you as someone with narrow views on life, and not because I believe you’ll find anything incomprehensible in what I did, but because I wouldn’t think it honest of myself if, while asking you: couldn’t you come and see these woodcuts?, I didn’t say that things in my household had changed considerably since your visit, and that because of that change many avoid me and would certainly never set foot inside.
The studio is much larger than my old one, but I’m always afraid that the landlord will raise the rent or find tenants who can pay more than I.
Still, as long as I can keep it, it’s a very good studio.
If you reckon that almost every one I already had from The Graphic has now become a duplicate, you’ll understand that it’s rather a lot.
And I have hopes of getting some more, especially from the very first volumes.
I’ve had both illusions and disappointments with other women once or twice, and in the past I didn’t imagine that I would end up like this. But there was something that struck me in this woman, that as a mother she was so alone and abandoned, and I didn’t hesitate, and neither then nor now do I believe I did wrong. For in my view one shouldn’t pass by where a woman is a mother and is abandoned and in need. This is a figure like those done by Holl or Fildes.
If you do come before long, don’t make your visit too short. The Graphics are so beautiful that I believe that, even while you’re still weak, provided the journey itself isn’t too tiring (as it happens, I live close by Rijnspoor station), looking at them could revive and strengthen you. Anyway, do as you think fit.
With a handshake.
Ever yours,
Vincent
310 | The Hague, Thursday, 8 February 1883 | To Theo van Gogh (D)
8 Feb.
My dear Theo,
My sincere congratulations to you too on Pa’s birthday, and thank you for your letter, which I received just now and am delighted by. I congratulate you especially on the operation being behind you. Things such as you describe make one shudder. May it now be overcome — and at least the crisis over. Poor woman!
If women sometimes don’t have the same energ
y and resilience in their thinking as men who have striven to think things through and analyze them — are they to be blamed for that? I believe not, because in general they must devote so much more strength than we to suffering pain. They suffer more and are more sensitive. And even if they sometimes don’t understand what one is thinking, they’re sometimes quite capable of understanding whether one is good for them. Not in every respect perhaps, but ‘the spirit is willing’ and there’s a sort of goodness in women at times that is entirely peculiar to them.
It must be a weight off your mind that the operation has been done.
What a riddle life is, and love is a riddle within a riddle. Staying the same is the only thing that it certainly doesn’t do in a literal sense, but on the other hand the changes are a kind of ebb and flow and make no difference to the sea itself.
I’ve rested my eyes a little since I last wrote to you and felt better for it, although they still sting.
Do you know what I couldn’t help thinking? — that in the first part of life as a painter one sometimes unintentionally makes things difficult for oneself — through a feeling of not yet having mastered the business — through the uncertainty one feels about whether one will master it — through the fierce desire to make progress — through not yet trusting oneself — one cannot put aside a certain feeling of being harried, and one harries oneself despite not wanting to be harried when one works. There’s nothing to be done about it, and this is a time that one also can’t do without, and that should not and cannot be otherwise, in my view.
In the studies, too, one sees for oneself the agitation and a certain precision that’s diametrically opposed to the calm breadth one seeks — and yet one feels bad if one works specifically for that breadth and devotes oneself to that.
As a result there’s sometimes a bottling up of nervous restlessness and stress, and one feels an oppressiveness as on some summer days before a storm. I’ve just had that again, and when I feel like that I change to different work, precisely in order to start from scratch.
The difficulties one faces in the first phase give the studies a painful quality at times.
I don’t regard this as something that discourages me, though, because I’ve noticed it in others as much as in myself, and in them it has increasingly gone away of its own accord.
And work remains difficult at times throughout one’s life, I believe, but not always with so few results as in the beginning.
What you write about Lhermitte is entirely in accord with what it said in a review of an exhibition of Black and White.
That also talks about a rude assault that is almost impossible to compare with anything else except Rembrandt.
I’d like to know how someone like that sees Judas — you write about a drawing of Judas before the scribes by him. I believe Victor Hugo could describe that in detail so that one saw it. But it would be even more difficult to paint the expressions.
I’ve found a Daumier print, Those who have seen a tragedy and those who have seen a vaudeville. I begin to long for Daumier more and more as time passes. There’s something pithy and ‘considered’ in him. He’s amusing and yet full of emotion and passion. Sometimes, it seems to me I find a passion that might be likened to white-hot iron, in the drunkards, for instance, and probably in the Barricade too (which I don’t know). That’s also in some heads by Frans Hals, for example. It’s so subdued that it seems cold, and when one takes a look at it — — — one is amazed that someone evidently working with so much emotion and becoming completely absorbed and lost in nature at the same time has that presence of mind to set it down with such a steady hand. I found something similar in studies and drawings by Degroux. Perhaps Lhermitte is another white-hot one. And Menzel too. There are sometimes passages in Balzac and Zola — in Père Goriot, for example — in which one finds a degree of passion in words that’s white-hot.
I sometimes think about experimenting with a completely different way of working, namely daring and risking more. But I don’t know whether I ought not to study the figure more directly, definitely with a model.
I’m also looking for a way of shutting out the light in the studio or letting it in as desired. At present not enough comes from above, I believe, and there’s too much. I’ve sometimes closed it off with cardboard temporarily, but I’ll see if I can get shutters from the landlord.
What was in the letter I told you I had torn up was in the spirit of what you say. But as one realizes more and more that one isn’t perfect and has shortcomings, and that others do too, and thus there are continual difficulties that are the opposite of illusions, so I believe that those who don’t lose heart and don’t become apathetic as a result mature through it, and one must endure in order to mature.
Sometimes I can’t understand all the same that I’m only 30 and feel so much older.
I feel older especially when I think that most of the people who know me regard me as a failure, and I believe that if a few things don’t change for the better this really could be the case, and when I think, it could turn out like that, then I feel that with such reality that I’m totally oppressed by it and I lose all enjoyment, as if it were really so. When I’m in a more normal and calm mood, I’m sometimes glad that 30 years are past and haven’t gone by without my learning something in them for the future, and I feel strength and zest for the next 30 — if I last that long. And in my imagination I see years of serious work, and happier ones than the first 30.
How it will turn out in reality doesn’t depend on me alone — the world and circumstances must also cooperate.
What concerns me, and what I’m responsible for, is that I make the most of the circumstances I’m in, and do my best to make progress.
As a working man, at the age of 30 one is at the beginning of a period in which one feels steadiness in oneself. As such, one feels young and full of zest.
Yet at the same time a period of life is over, which makes one sad that this or that will never come back. And it isn’t weak sentimentality to feel a certain sorrow now and then. Anyway, much only begins when one is 30, and it’s certain that not everything is over by then. But one doesn’t expect from life what one already knows from experience that it cannot give. Rather, one begins to see much more clearly that life is only a time of fertilization and that the harvest is not here.
This is why one sometimes thinks, what do I care about the world’s judgement?, and if that judgement is too much of a burden, one can shrug it off.
Perhaps now I ought to tear up this letter as well.
I can understand that you’re very much preoccupied with the woman’s condition, and that’s one of the things needed to save her and to ensure that she makes a good recovery.
For one must throw oneself into it, and the saying applies, If you want it well done you must do it yourself, you mustn’t leave it to others.
That is to say, one must keep hold of the general care and overseeing of the whole.
We’ve had a couple of true spring days, including last Monday, which I enjoyed. The change of the seasons is something the people feel very much. For example, in a neighbourhood like the Geest district and in the almshouses or so-called ‘gift houses’ winter is always an anxious and difficult and frightening time, and spring a deliverance. If one looks closely, one sees that there’s a kind of gospel on the first day of spring.
And on such a day it’s heart-rending to see so many grey, withered faces expressly coming out of doors, not to do anything in particular but as if to convince themselves that spring has come. So, for example, sometimes all kinds of people in whom one wouldn’t expect it crowd round a spot on the market where a trader is selling crocuses, snowdrops, goatsbeard and other bulbs. Sometimes a parchment ministry official, a sort of Josserand evidently, in a threadbare black coat with a felt collar — I find him beside the snowdrops beautiful.
I believe that the poor and the painters have the sentiment of the weather and the changing seasons in common. Of course everyone feels that,
but for the better-off they’re hardly events at all, and don’t generally make much difference to their state of mind.
I like this remark by a polder worker: ‘In the winter I suffer as much cold as the winter corn’.
Now, your patient will certainly welcome the spring too. May she do well. What a difficult operation that is, at least I was shocked when I read the description.
Rappard is getting better — did I write to you that he’d had a nervous fever of the brain? It will be some time before he can work as before, but he has started going for walks now and then.
I’ll follow your advice to bathe my eyes with tea if it doesn’t go away. It’s lessening, so for the present I’ll let things take their natural course. Because I was never troubled by it in the past, except this winter along with toothache, and so I believe it to be something accidental caused by my unusual exertions. And now I can bear the tired eyes when drawing better than in the beginning. Write again soon if you can, and believe me, with a handshake,
Ever yours,
Vincent
I don’t know if you know the ‘gift houses’ on Brouwersgracht opposite the hospital. I’d like to draw there when the weather permits. I’ve already made a few scratches there this week. They’re some rows of houses with small gardens which belong to the poor board, I believe.
312 | The Hague, Sunday, 11 February 1883 | To Theo van Gogh (D)
Dear brother,
It’s Sunday again and I’m writing again. Sometimes it seems to me that I haven’t told you warmly and sincerely enough how deeply touched I’ve been by what you’ve told me of late.
As to whether a sincerely felt love could turn into a lost illusion, I don’t doubt that it sometimes happens — it would surprise me very much if it happened in your case, and I don’t believe it will happen to me. Michelet says, singularly, that love is a spider’s web at first and grows to be as strong as a cable.
Ever Yours Page 40