Oh, there must be a little bit of air, a little bit of happiness, but chiefly to let the form be felt, to make the lines of the silhouette speak. But let the whole be sombre.
I must say that the woman is bearing up well. She feels sorrow and I do too, but she isn’t despondent and is making an effort.
I bought a piece of cloth recently to make some study linen for myself, and now I’ve given it to her for vests for those scrawny children. And I’m having clothes of mine altered for them so that they’ll get one or two things, and she’s busy with that.
When I say we are separating as friends, that is true — but we are definitely separated, and I’ve since been more at peace with that than I expected, because what was wrong with her was of such a nature that it would have been fatal both for me and for her if we’d been bound to each other, given that one is responsible, so to speak, for each other’s failings. But I’m still left with the worry — how will she be in a year’s time? I’ll certainly not take her into my house again, but I didn’t want to lose touch with her, because I love her and the children too much.
That is also possible, precisely because it was and still is something different from a passion.
I hope the Drenthe plan goes ahead.
You ask what I might need.
I don’t need to tell you that I intend to do a lot of work, I must do that to revitalize myself. And over there they have nothing in the way of painting equipment, so as regards taking a supply, taking things that are really useful, definitely the more the better.
Good tools are never a waste, and they pay for themselves even if they are expensive. And to get ahead one must do a great deal of painting. I hope to lose very little of the time that I’ll spend there, and to have a lot of models too, which will probably be cheap enough there. But life is cheap there, and I’ll be able to do more with the 150 francs than here.
But in fact I can arrange all that as it suits me. I would think it desirable to be able to make one big purchase, because I lack many things that others have and that are actually indispensable.
My plan is to get a long way with painting in Drenthe so that I’ll be eligible for the Drawing Society when I come back. That, in turn, is linked to a second plan, to go to England.
I believe that it’s permissible to speculate provided one doesn’t do it in the air or on foundations that are all too shaky. As far as England is concerned, I certainly expect to sell something more easily there than here — that’s true — so I think of England from time to time. But I don’t know how the point that I’ve reached stands in relation to the English art lovers, and because I don’t know that I would first like to have a small, positive beginning of sales here before I think it advisable to take steps over there. If I begin to sell a few things here, then I shan’t hesitate for a moment but start sending things over there or go there. Yet as long as I sell absolutely nothing here, I would very likely be mistaken as to the timing if I didn’t have the wisdom to wait until I see just a beginning here.
I hope you find this idea reasonable, that would reassure me. For in England people are very serious once they begin; whoever finds favour in England finds loyal friends there. I need only mention E. Frère and Henriette Browne, for example, who are now just as well liked as on the first day their work was seen there. But if one wants to succeed over there, one must take a little care and be certain that one can be productive in what one sends over there.
Your letter pleased me greatly, for I see that you think that there’s something in the Drenthe plan, and that’s enough for me; later on it will become clear of itself what benefit there is to be gained. But for me it’s already linked directly to becoming a member of the Drawing Society and also to England — because I know for sure that the subjects from over there will be sympathetically received in England if I’m able to put some sentiment into them.
In short, press on with Drenthe, whether we can spend a great deal or a little for the time being.
I’ll go there when I have the money to travel, even though I have few painting materials left, because the time of autumnal effects has already begun, and I hope to capture some of them. Yet I hope I’ll be able to give the woman a little more for the early days. But if I can leave I shall.
I say to you that for the time being I plan to help the woman a little, I may not and indeed cannot make it very much. I’m telling no one else but you about this. And what I say to you — that whatever happens to her I cannot and shall not have her in my house again — you can rely on that, for it’s not in her to do what she should do. I also sent a few words to Pa to say that I was separated from her, but that my letter to Pa about staying with her and getting married remained a fact all the same, and that Pa had talked around that and given no answer to the real question, a second fact. I don’t know how it will appear in years to come, or whether that wouldn’t have been better than separating; now we’re too close to everything to see things in their true context and the consequences. I hope that it will all turn out for the best, but her future and my own look sombre to me. I do believe that something will still awaken in her, but that’s precisely the point — it ought to have been awakened already, and now it will be difficult for her to follow her better thoughts when she has no one to support her in that. Now she wouldn’t listen, then she will yearn to speak to me and it won’t be possible. As long as she was with me, she had no contrasting example, and now in other surroundings she’ll remember things that she didn’t care about and paid no attention to at the time. Now, because of the contrast, she’ll think about that sometimes. For me it’s sometimes thoroughly distressing that we both feel the impossibility of struggling through the future together, and yet that we’re so attached. She has been more confiding than normal of late, and the mother had incited her to play some tricks which she didn’t want to inflict on me. Things of the kind we talked about when you were here, such as starting a row and the like.
You see, there’s something in her like the beginning of something more solid, and may that remain so. I wish she could marry, and when I tell you that I’ll keep an eye on her it’s because I advised her to do that. If only she can find a man who is half good, that’s enough, then the beginnings of what has come into her here will develop further, that is, a more domestic, simple disposition, and if she sticks to that I won’t have to leave her entirely to her fate in the future either, for then at least I’ll remain her friend, and sincerely so.
Write to me again soon, and regards.
Ever yours,
Vincent
I’m adding a few words here. You ask what I need. I thought about that and it’s impossible for me to say what I really regard as necessary, for that would be no small amount, so let’s see what’s within our reach and make do with that. What’s within our reach will probably remain below what’s fundamentally needed, but in life it’s already something if one can carry out one’s plans in part. And I for one say to you that I’ll make do with what you can spare.
Life is cheaper over there, and I’ll be able to make savings automatically compared to here. And when a year has passed I’ll have made substantial progress through those savings alone. I can have paint &c. sent by parcel post when I’m over there. So I’ll take a supply if I can, that goes without saying, but if I can’t I shan’t postpone the journey because of that.
I have hopes that the past year will turn out to have been solid, for I haven’t neglected my work and, on the contrary, I’ve strengthened a number of weak points. There are more that need strengthening, of course, but it’s their turn now.
As for what I wrote to you in a previous letter, that the woman had immediately broken certain promises, that was bad enough, namely an attempt to be a maid in a whorehouse, an opportunity the mother had fished out and urged on her. The woman herself immediately regretted it and has rejected it, but all the same it’s very, very weak of her, and especially to do it at that particular time, but that’s what she’s like — up to now at least
— so far she hasn’t had the strength to refuse such a thing with an absolute no. Anyway, she forces me to take measures that I’ve often previously postponed and postponed.
On this occasion, though, I saw something in her as if it had been a crisis — I hope a ‘thus far and no further’. And so it is that she herself views this separation as possibly turning out for the best in the end.
And because there’s an all too fatal rapport between her and her mother, those two must go together down the wrong or the right road.
And it will come down to living with the mother and going out to work together by turns, and trying to get by in an honest way. That’s their plan, and they already have some workdays, and I’ve placed advertisements, and they look every day and are beginning to enjoy it.
I’ll keep on doing that and carry on with advertisements as long as necessary, and in short all the things whereby I can be of use or assistance.
And if I can I’ll pay several weeks’ rent for them when I go, as well as a loaf a day or some such to give them yet more time to set their plan up properly and add to it. But the fact that I intend to give them that is something I haven’t yet promised them, because I don’t know myself if I’ll be able to do it. I’ll act according to circumstances.
And I firmly recommend to her a marriage of convenience with a widower or someone, to which I add that she’ll have to be better for such a person than she was for me.
And that she herself knows well enough in what ways she fell short with me, that now she must be wise and learn from that that I don’t blame her in the least, because I know that an improvement or reform doesn’t succeed all at once but has steps, so to speak, and so, provided she stays at the point where she is now and works her way up, starting from there, without allowing herself any relapse, she needn’t take her mistakes with me to heart or become despondent, just try to make amends by being better for someone else.
And she herself well understands these things for the present, and I hope to keep them alive. Becoming despondent and then letting oneself go is, however, a weakness they share, yet at the same time they’re also patient when it comes to starting afresh, the woman in particular is showing that more, and I, although her faults are many and troublesome enough, yet I know that fundamentally there’s something good that extenuates everything, and for that reason, too, I don’t despair of her future. That MISERICORDE MUST lie in nature itself for such a person is something I wish I could fully believe, and I find it wicked of myself that I’m not fully persuaded of it, in so far as I’m not yet able to resign myself to everything, however, and can’t, for the time being at least, give up everything that I’ve struggled so hard to put right.
Write to me again soon, won’t you?
383 | The Hague, Friday, 7 or Saturday, 8 September 1883 | To Theo van Gogh (D)
My dear Theo,
I’ve got so far with packing &c. that I’ll leave as soon as I have the travel money. It’s best in the circumstances that I set to work straightaway. For during the removals &c. one can’t do anything good in the way of work, and I shan’t get back into my stride until I’m somewhere in the country. So I hope to be able to get away if you send something towards the 10th, if I can’t go straight through I’ll stay in a village close by for a day or two if need be.
I hope things will turn out as you think possible, indeed as I do too, more or less, that it will make the woman change direction for the better. Yet I fear that won’t happen and she’ll go down the old road.
If I judge by my intimate knowledge of her, she’s too weak in spirit and willpower in particular to continue on a proper course.
When I talked about it during your visit I was determined to decide, but in my view there were two roads, and the decision as to how depended more on her than on me. If she had definitely wanted to carry on with me, so that it was something more than words and a turning away from those faults that had made the situation impossible, I believe that it would have been a better lot for her than that awaiting her now, however difficult and poor things might have been for us. But I saw in her something like a sphinx that cannot say either yes or no. And if you were to ask me if I knew what she’s going to do, all I know is this, ‘certainly not as straight as she could have done’.
In recent days I again saw clearly how looking at the advertisements was done merely for the sake of appearances, and that they’re probably waiting for my departure before embarking on something they don’t discuss with me.
All the more reason for me to leave immediately, for otherwise they’d resort to delaying things deliberately. And the mother again has a hand in this.
This plan, which is again a twisting of what they began a few days ago, will almost certainly lead to nothing but wretchedness.
But I would have to be mad to help when they’re not being open with me, wouldn’t I? So I intend simply to leave and to let fourteen days or so go by. Then I’ll write to them and see how things are.
I’m also beginning to think that I must leave in order to make them be serious. But such a test is dangerous, for even in a short time they can spoil a great deal.
Why, why is the woman so unwise? She’s what Musset has called ‘A child of the age’ through and through — and I sometimes think of the ruin of Musset himself when I consider her future.
There was something elevated in Musset; well, in her there’s also a je ne sais quoi, although she’s certainly not an artist. If only she were, a little. She has her children, and there’ll be something solid in her if they become her idée fixe even more than they are now, but that too isn’t what it should be, even though her mother love, although imperfect, is still the best thing in her character, in my view.
It’s a difficult thing for me that I assume that, once I am gone, she’ll regret a few things and want to be better and will need me. I’m ready to help in that case, but I’ll get into her head what you told me about the woman you met, you found me when I had sunk very low, I must climb up again. Instead of I must climb up again, she will say the abyss draws me.
I once heard that there was a relationship between Musset and George Sand. George was composed, positive, highly industrious. Musset was nonchalant, indifferent, and even neglected his work.
Things came to a head and a separation between these two characters. Later a desperate attempt by Musset and remorse, but not before he had sunk still deeper into the mire, and in the meantime George Sand had got her affairs in order and was completely absorbed in a new work, and said ‘it’s too late, it’s impossible now’.
But these are so much questions of inner conflict, and hearts shrink more in pain because of them than appears.
Theo, when I leave I shan’t leave feeling easy about her — on the contrary, uneasy — because I fear so much that she won’t wake up until it’s too late, not have a keen desire for something simpler and purer until the moment for attaining it has passed.
When I see that sphinx-like quality in her, I recognize it of old both in her and in others, and it’s a very bad sign. Then staring melancholically into the abyss is fatal too, and the way to make that go away is hard work. And now — Theo — she’s again too passively resigned to things — well, melancholy, if it can be overcome, must be overcome by toil, and whoever doesn’t feel that is lost for ever and will go straight to the dogs. I’ve told her this, even got a little of it into her at times.
You see, she’s on the edge, isn’t she?
It shan’t be my hand that pushes her in, but nor can I stand beside her forever, holding her back. A person must have enough common sense to cooperate when he is warned and helped.
I know, there are cases where the melancholic appears to be unwilling, but later quietly does what he must and recovers. If she’s like that, then that’s fine and she’ll be all right.
The melancholic is helped by nothing more — in the period of recovery — than by a friend. That’s a great deal then, even if the friend is poor. Well, she’ll continue to find that
in me — even if now it’s true that she has been and is at times extremely nasty — of course nonetheless.
She’ll need a support, and I’ll still be that support even though I am gone, provided I see a little energy and good will. The people who tried to turn her away from me (in her family) did something that would be as bad as murdering her and her children if it weren’t that they did it in their obduracy and stupidity. For without that she’d be much further along.
Do your best towards the tenth to send me enough for me to be able to leave if need be, because this would be wise.
All the same, don’t put yourself in difficulties for I’ll act according to the circumstances and write to you straightaway to say what I’ve done.
If it’s too little for Drenthe I’ll go to Loosduinen for a day or so and wait there. I’ve found splendid things in Loosduinen, old farmhouses, and the effects in the evening are superb there. In that case I would probably send my things ahead or put them in storage.
But it’s also just the moment at which I can conveniently end the tenancy, and when your letter comes I’ll leave here.
That will be a sign for the woman that she must persevere. I’ll place more advertisements, but these last two days it was idling about again, and I fear they’ve changed the plan fundamentally.
Adieu, Theo, I wish things were already sorted out, for days like these are difficult and little good to anyone. I wish you well and good fortune, believe me
Ever yours,
Vincent
I hope you haven’t fallen ill, I also had diarrhoea a while ago but it stopped. Eggs may be the best thing for strengthening the stomach, at least if weakness is the cause.
384 | The Hague, Monday, 10 September 1883 | To Theo van Gogh (D)
My dear Theo,
I’ve just received your letter and the 100 francs enclosed. And I leave tomorrow for Hoogeveen in Drenthe. Then on from there, and from there I’ll give you an address.
Ever Yours Page 51