Ever Yours

by Vincent Van Gogh

  363 | The Hague, Sunday, 22 July 1883 | To Theo van Gogh (D)

  My dear Theo,

  I thank you for your letter, and for the enclosure, although I can’t suppress a feeling of sadness over what you say, ‘as for the future, I can give you little hope’. If you mean that only in relation to financial matters, I wouldn’t be downcast, but if I’m to take it as applying to my work, I really don’t see how I deserve that. It just so happens that I can now send you the prints of photos after a few of my recent drawings, which I promised you earlier but couldn’t manage because I was flat broke.

  I don’t know how you intended those words, nor can I know. Your letter is too brief, but it gave me an unexpected blow right in the chest.

  But I would like to know what the position is, whether you noticed something in me, that I wasn’t making progress or something.

  As for financial matters, you’ll remember writing to me months ago about bad times. My answer was: very well, a reason for us to do our very best on both sides; see that you send me the absolutely essential, I’ll get on with making more progress so that perhaps we can place something with the illustrated magazines. I’ve since made a start on various large compositions in which there was more of a subject than in studies of single figures.

  So now my first consignment of photos to be shown to someone or other if needed coincides with your ‘as for the future, I can give you little hope’. Is there something in particular???

  I’m rather nervous about this. You must write again soon. Well, as you see, the photos are SOWER — POTATO GRUBBERS — PEAT DIGGERS. I’ve now done some more, SAND QUARRY, WEED BURNERS, DUNG-HEAP, POTATO GRUBBER 1 figure, COAL LOADERS, and at Scheveningen this week I worked on MENDING NETS (Scheveningen fishermen’s wives).

  And two larger compositions of Dune workers (one of which I showed to Tersteeg again) which, although they’ll require a lot more labour, are still what I’d most like to complete.

  Long rows of diggers — poor fellows set to work by the city — in front of a piece of dune land that’s to be dug over. But to do that is terribly difficult.

  Peat diggers gives you a first idea of it. I wouldn’t be so melancholy about it, brother, if you hadn’t added something that worries me. You say ‘let’s hope for better times’.

  You see, that’s one of the things one must be careful about, in my view. Hoping for better times mustn’t be a feeling but a doing something in the present.

  My doing depends on your doing, in the sense that if you were to reduce what you send I couldn’t go on and would be desperate.

  Precisely because I felt the hope of better times alive within me, I continued to throw myself into it with all my strength — into the work of THE ‘PRESENT’ — without thinking about that future other than to trust that work would bring its reward, although the spending on food, drink, clothes had to be reduced again and again, week after week, more and more. I was faced by the question of going to Scheveningen, the question of painting. I thought: come, press ahead. But now I wish I hadn’t begun, old chap, for it means extra expenses and I don’t have it. The weeks passed, many, many weeks and months of late, when each time the expenses were slightly more than I could keep up with, even with all the fretting and worrying and economizing. So when the money arrives from you, not only do I have to manage on it for 10 days but I immediately have to pay out so much that in those 10 days that lie ahead one couldn’t be in a more meagre situation from the outset. And the woman must breastfeed the child, and the child is strong and growing, and she’s often worried because there’s no milk.

  I, too, have an enormous feeling of faintness at times in the dunes or elsewhere, because there’s nothing coming in.

  Everyone’s shoes patched and worn out and other petty vexations that give one wrinkles. Anyway — it would be nothing, Theo, if only I could hold on to the thought: it will work all the same, just press on. But now to me your words ‘as for the future, I can give you little hope’ are like ‘the hair that breaks the camel’s back at last’. The burden is sometimes so heavy that one hair more makes the animal fall to the ground.

  Well, what to do? I’ve seen and spoken to Blommers twice already in Scheveningen, and he saw a few things of mine and asked me to call on him sometime.

  I did some painted studies there, a bit of sea, a potato field, a field with women mending nets, and here at home a chap in the potato field planting cabbage in the empty spaces between the potato leaves, and then I’m working on the large drawing of beeting the nets, as they call it. But I feel my enjoyment fading, one needs a fixed point somewhere. You see, the fact that you say to me, just have hope for the future, is as if you yourself no longer have any hope for me. Is that so? I can’t help it, I feel unwell because of the worry, and I just wish you were here.

  You say that the effect of the autographs is rather meagre. That doesn’t surprise me in the least when I consider that someone’s physical state influences his work, and my life is too dry and too meagre. Honestly, Theo, for the sake of the work we ought to have eaten a little better, but we couldn’t afford it and things will stay like that if I don’t get a little more leeway by one means or another. So do show the photos to Buhot or someone if you can’t arrange it yourself, and try to find a market through him, if you can.

  I almost regret starting to paint again, for if I can’t make any progress I would rather I had given it up. It can’t be done without paint, and paint is dear, and because I still owe Leurs and Stam some money I can’t run up a bill. And I like painting so much. Now that I was doing it again I took more pleasure in things from last year, and have hung painted things in the studio again. The sea, which I love very dearly, needs to be attacked with painting, otherwise one has no grip on it.

  Look, Theo, I just hope that you aren’t losing heart, but truly, if you’re going to talk about ‘giving no hope for the future’ then I feel sad, for you must have the courage and the energy to send, otherwise I’ll be stuck and powerless to move forward, for those who could be friends have become hostile, and appear to want to stay like that.

  Consider the fact that, after all, I’ve done nothing that could justify this, at any rate not explain why Mauve, say, or Tersteeg or C.M. are so cool as not to want to see anything or say a word. I find it human that a coolness may arise over one thing or another, but to maintain the coolness now that more than a year has passed, and after repeated attempts at reconciliation, is not kind.

  Thus I end for today with the question, Theo, when in the beginning you spoke to me about painting, and if we could have foreseen then the work now, would we have hesitated to think it was right that I should become a painter (or draughtsman then, what difference does it make?)? I don’t believe that we’d have hesitated to press ahead if we could have foreseen these photos, for instance, would we?, for a painter’s hand and eye are needed after all if one wants to create such a scene in the dunes in one form or another. But now I often feel so wretched when I see people remaining so apathetic and cold that I lose heart. Well, then I recover again and go back to work and smile about it, and because I work in the present and don’t let a day go by without working, I believe that I do indeed have hope for the future, although it doesn’t feel like that because, as I say, there’s no room left in my brain for philosophizing about the future, either to upset me or to console me. Holding on to the present and not letting it pass by without managing to get something out of it — now that’s what I believe duty is.

  So you should also try to hold on to the present with respect to me, and let’s persevere with what we can persevere with, preferably today rather than tomorrow.

  But you needn’t spare me, Theo, if it’s just a question of money, and if you, as friend and brother, retain some sympathy for the work, saleable or unsaleable. As long as that’s the case, that I still retain your sympathy in this respect, then it matters precious little to me, and we must confer calmly and coolly. Then, if there’s no hope for the future financially, I would
propose a move to the country, saving half the rent in a village deep in the country, and for the same amount of money that one pays here for bad food getting good, healthy food, which is needed for the woman and the little ones, and for me too in fact. Also having advantages perhaps for models.

  As you know, last summer I painted — now I’ve hung up several studies again, because when I was doing new ones I saw that there was something in them after all. Painting helped me indirectly with my drawing during the winter months and the spring, and I worked that up right until these recent drawings. Now, though, I feel it would be good to paint again for a while, and I need that to become richer in tone, in the drawings too. I had planned to paint the women sitting in the grass mending the nets in a fairly large format, but after what you said I’ll wait until I’ve spoken to you.

  I’ve received small prints of the autographs, but weak ones, yet the man tells me he ought really to have put on more ink and that he’ll give me better ones. No matter, I’ve experimented with doing a croquis in a small format as if for an illustrated magazine. Oh, Theo, I could make much more progress if I was a little better off.

  But I can’t think of a way out, I come up against expenses on all sides. When I read the life story of one painter or another, I see that in fact they all needed money, and were miserable when they couldn’t carry on.

  Write soon, for I’m not well and in two minds as to whether I dare go ahead with Scheveningen, which will involve the costs of painting materials.

  I had hoped that you would have been able to send something — well, in any event, especially if you have no money, you must write to me soon, for it’s quite a feat to keep one’s spirits up in the circumstances.

  I think the drawings from which the photos have been taken aren’t yet deep enough in tone, not yet depicting the emotion nature evokes sufficiently, but if you compare this with what I began with, the earlier figures, I believe I’m not mistaken in seeing signs of progress and we mustn’t let go of that advance, so let us toil on.

  I wish you could come. Write soon in any case. Adieu, with a handshake.

  Ever yours,

  Vincent

  I don’t think it right, Theo, to spend more than one receives — but if it’s a question of stopping or carrying on working, I’m for carrying on to the end. Millet and other predecessors carried on right up to the bailiff, and some went to prison or had to move hither and thither, yet I don’t see in them that they stopped. And with me it’s still only the beginning, but I see it in the distance like a dark shadow, and it sometimes makes working sombre.

  I’ve spoken to Breitner again, about those three compositions in progress. It was indeed so that he had done them in a moment when he was out of sorts. He told me that he regretted doing them like that, and showed me an altered composition of the drunkard and studies of low street women that were infinitely better. And I also saw some watercolours in the making and a painting of a farrier’s that were done with a calmer and more correct hand and head. I read a book he lent me, Soeur Philomène by De Goncourt, who wrote Gavarni. The story is set in a hospital, very good.

  367 | The Hague, on or about Wednesday, 25 July 1883 | To Theo van Gogh (D)

  My dear Theo,

  A man comes to me this morning who had repaired the lamp for me 3 weeks ago, and from whom at the same time I bought some earthenware that he himself pressed me to take.

  He came to tell me off because I had just paid his neighbour but not him. Accompanied by a lot of noise, swearing, ranting &c. I tell him I’ll pay him as soon as I receive money but that I don’t have it at the moment, and that adds fuel to the flames. I ask him to leave, and in the end I push him out of the door but, perhaps deliberately letting things get to this point, he grabs me by the neck and throws me against the wall and then flat on the floor. You see, this is the sort of thing from which you can see the petty vexations one is faced with. A chap like that is stronger than I am, right? — they aren’t at all ashamed. Well, all the small shopkeepers &c. one deals with for daily necessities belong to the same type. They come themselves to ask you to take this or that from them or, if one goes to someone else, they ask for your custom, but if one must unfortunately put off payment for longer than a week it’s cursing and scolding. Anyway, that’s the way they are, and what can one say? They themselves are sometimes hard pressed. I’m telling you about this to show you that it’s rather urgent that I make some money if possible. When I went to Scheveningen I had to leave one or two others waiting. I’m a little worried, brother, and have considerable sorrow and difficulty. I long for you to come because I want to decide whether or not I should move. To carry on here I would need to earn a bit more in general; the little that I lack makes life here unbearable.

  Otherwise, I have so few setbacks in the work that all the petty vexations don’t affect my pleasure in it and don’t prevent me doing one thing and another. There are a couple of small seascapes at De Bock’s, one with a choppy, one with a calm sea, a genre I’d very much enjoy pursuing. Yesterday a peasant cottage with a red roof under tall trees. Well, I believe that painting figure studies would help me with many things, I made a start with one boy in the potato field and one in the garden by a cane fence. I ought to be able to put some effort into them.

  The incident this morning is a sign to me that it’s a duty to confer and to take a smaller place in a village if there’s no hope of being a little better off here. Otherwise, the studio here is practical enough, and there’s no lack of beautiful subjects to do here. And it isn’t everywhere that one has the sea.

  What I said to you about not feeling strong is true, it has now come down to pain between the shoulders and in the lumbar vertebra, which I’ve had before from time to time, but I know from experience that one must then be careful, otherwise one gets too weak and can’t easily recover.

  I’m relatively resigned to things. Circumstances have been a little too much for me recently, and my plan to win back old friends by working constantly and sensibly has been shattered. Theo, there’s one thing that it would be good for us to discuss at some point — I’m not saying that there’s any question of this right now, but the days could become darker still and I would like us to agree on this for that eventuality. My studies and everything in the way of work in the studio is definitely your property. The question doesn’t arise now — I repeat — but in due course, for instance because of unpaid tax, the things may be sold, and in that case I would like to put the work in a safe place and out of the house. It’s my studies that I can hardly do without for later work, things that have taken me a great deal of trouble to do.

  So far there hasn’t been a soul here in the street who pays tax, yet all have been assessed for various sums, including me, and I have twice had appraisers here; I drew their attention, however, to my 4 kitchen chairs and unpainted table and said I wasn’t eligible to be assessed for so much. That if they found carpets, pianos, antiques &c. at a painter’s, they might not be wrong to assess such a man as being able to pay, but that I couldn’t even pay my paint bill, and that there were no luxury items but only children in my house, and that consequently there was nothing to be had from me. They then sent me demands and final notices but I ignored all that and said, when they came back again, that it was pointless because I simply lit my pipe with them. That I didn’t have it, and my 4 chairs, table &c. wouldn’t raise anything anyway. That they weren’t worth as much new as they wanted to assess me for.

  They have indeed left me in peace since, for months now. And other people here in the street aren’t paying either.

  Still, now that we’re talking about this, I wish I knew where to store my studies in such an event. Well, I could take them to Van der Weele, say, or someone. Together with my tools. I always have a certain hope that when you come to the studio sometime you will yet find things in which someone might possibly be interested, even though they have no particular commercial value.

  There’s no lack of work.

  Despit
e everything, at heart I don’t have a feeling of dejection, and on the contrary I can agree with what I read recently in Zola, ‘If at present I’m worth something, it’s because I am alone and because I hate the ninnies, the incapable, the cynics, the idiotic and foolish mockers’. But none of that can perhaps do away with the fact that I can’t withstand the siege if I stay here. I write about this very matter because it’s at the beginning, and the manoeuvre of moving to a cheaper place may perhaps be the solution, although it’s very urgent in itself purely for the sake of spending less on accommodation.

  Van der Weele has the silver medal for his painting that he more than deserves, I’m glad he has got it.

  I’ve thought a good deal about that painting by Van der W. because I saw it being done in part, and talked quite a lot about it with him and was immediately attracted by it.

  I believe, Theo, that I too could do something like that through carrying on working regularly and calmly in the future.

  But in any event, there would have to be a period of constant painting in between, and for that there would have to be means, and at present the prospect of getting them seems to me slight. Van der Weele has managed it by sacrificing half of his time on things he doesn’t do for pleasure but through which he raises the means to keep his painting box filled and to eat &c. Perhaps, perhaps, if there were to be some article in my work that people wanted to have, I might be able to pull it off too. Otherwise I don’t care much about selling in itself, other than as a means of being able to keep going. I tell you plainly that few of the ideas about art with which I became familiar during my time with Goupil — in so far as they had to do with practice — have been borne out, although I’ve kept the same taste. Creating things doesn’t take place as one imagines if one is a dealer, and the life of a painter is different, the study is different. I would find it hard to say in what sense, but Daubigny’s words, ‘my paintings that I value more highly aren’t the ones that bring in the most’ are something I now believe, and if I’d heard them when I was with G&Cie, I would have thought he was just saying that as a manner of speaking. Adieu, old chap — I’m a little worried, you can see from what I’ve written about my skirmish this morning that people don’t treat me with much consideration. They’d probably keep their distance more if one wore a top hat and I don’t know what else besides. One has one’s sense of things after all, and it isn’t pleasant. Anyway, I wish there was something to be found in the work so that a little more leeway would be possible. Adieu, write soon, I long for that so much.