It may be politic to keep what one thinks to oneself, however it has always seemed to me that a painter, above all, had a duty to be sincere — you yourself once pointed out to me that whether people understand what I say, whether people judge me rightly or wrongly, didn’t alter the truth about me.
Well brother, know that, even if there’s any sort of a separation, I am, perhaps much more even than you know or feel, your friend and even Pa’s friend. With a handshake.
Ever yours,
Vincent.
In any event I’m not an enemy of Pa’s or yours, nor shall ever be that.
I’ve thought again about your remarks since I wrote the enclosed letter, and I’ve also spoken to Pa again. I had as good as definitely made up my mind not to stay here — regardless of how it would be taken or what might come of it — when, though, the conversation took a turn because I said: I’ve been here for a fortnight now and I don’t feel any further forward than in the first half hour. If only we’d understood each other better we’d have got all sorts of things sorted out and settled by now — I can’t waste time and I have to decide.
A door has to be open or shut. I don’t understand anything in between, and in fact it can’t exist. It has now ended up that the little room at home where the mangle is now will be at my disposal as a storeroom for my bits and pieces, as a studio too, should circumstances make this desirable. And that they’ve now started emptying the room, which wasn’t the case at first, when the case was still pending then.
I do want to tell you something that I’ve since understood better than when I wrote to you about what I thought of Pa. I’ve softened my opinion, partly because I believe I detect in Pa (and one of your tips would support this to some extent) signs that, indeed, he can’t follow me when I try to explain something. Gets stuck in part of what I say, which becomes wrong when it’s taken out of context. There may well be more than one reason for this, but old age is certainly to blame for a large part of it. Now, I respect old age and its weaknesses too, as you do, even though it may not seem so to you or you may not believe it of me. I mean that I probably humour Pa in some things that I would take amiss in a man with his full faculties — for the aforementioned reason.
I also thought of Michelet’s saying (which he had from a zoologist), ‘the male is very wild’. And because now, at this stage in my life, I know that I have strong passions, and so I should have, in my opinion — looking at myself I see that perhaps I am ‘very wild’. And yet, my passion abates when I’m faced with one who is weaker; then I don’t fight.
Although, for that matter, taking issue in words or about principles with a man who, mark you, occupies a position in society concerned with guiding people’s spiritual lives is, to be sure, not only permitted but cannot in any way be cowardly. For after all, our weapons are equal. Give this some thought, if you will, particularly since I tell you that, for many reasons, I want to give up even the battle of words because I sometimes think that Pa is no longer able to concentrate the full force of his thoughts on a single point.
In some cases, after all, a man’s age may be an added strength.
Going to the heart of the matter, I take this opportunity to tell you that I believe that it’s precisely because of Pa’s influence that you’ve concentrated more on business than was in your nature.
And that I believe that, even though you’re now so sure of your case that you must remain a dealer, a certain something in your original nature will still keep on working and perhaps react more than you expect.
Since I know that our thoughts crossed each other in our first years with G&Cie, that is that both you and I thought then about becoming painters, but so deeply that we didn’t dare to say it straight out then, even to each other, it could well be that in these later years we draw closer together. All the more so because of the effect of circumstances and conditions in the trade itself, which in the meantime has already changed compared with our early days and, in my view, will go on changing more and more.
I forced myself so much at the time, and I was so burdened by a conviction that I was certainly not a painter that, even when I left G&Cie, I didn’t turn my thoughts to it but to something else (which was in turn a second mistake, over and above the first). Being discouraged then about the possibility, because diffident, very diffident approaches to a few painters weren’t even noticed. What I’m telling you is not because I want to force you to think like me — I force no one — I’m just telling you it in brotherly, in friendly confidence.
My views may sometimes be out of proportion; that may be so. Yet I believe that there must be some truth in the nature of them, and in the action and direction. That I myself have now worked on getting the house here open again, even to the extent of having a studio here — I’m not doing it in the first place or primarily out of self-interest.
In this I see that even though we don’t understand each other in many things, there’s always a will to cooperate between you, Pa and myself, albeit in fits and starts. Since the estrangement has already lasted so long, it can’t do any harm to try to place some weight on the other side, so that we shouldn’t appear to the world, too, as being more divided than is the case, so as not to lapse into extremes in the eyes of the world.
Rappard says to me, ‘a human being isn’t a lump of peat, in so far as a human being can’t bear to be thrown up in the loft like a lump of peat and be forgotten there’ — and he points out that he thought it a great misfortune for me that I couldn’t be at home. Give this some thought, if you will. I believe that it has been regarded a little too much as if I acted capriciously or recklessly or, well, you know it better than I do, whereas I was more or less forced into things, and could do nothing other than what they wanted to see in it.
And it was precisely the biased view of seeing base objectives &c. in me that made me very cold and fairly indifferent towards many people.
Brother, once again — think a great deal at this stage in your life; I believe that you’re in danger of taking a distorted view of many things, and I believe that you should examine your life’s aim once more, and that then your life WILL BE BETTER. I don’t say it as if I knew it and as if you didn’t know it, I say it because I’m increasingly coming to see that it’s so terribly difficult to know where one is right and where one is wrong.
417 | Nuenen, on or about Wednesday, 26 December 1883 | To Theo van Gogh (D)
My dear Theo,
I came back to Nuenen yesterday evening, and now I must get what I have to tell you off my chest straightaway.
I packed up my tools, studies, &c. there and sent them here and, Pa and Ma having cleared out the little room, I’m already installed for the time being in this new workplace, where I hope I may be able to make some progress.
Know also that I spoke to the woman and that it’s our decision, even more definitely, that she will stay by herself and I by myself in any event, so that the world can’t reasonably find fault.
Now that we’ve parted we’ll remain parted, only looking back we regret that we didn’t choose a middle way instead, and even now there remains a mutual attachment that has roots or grounds that go too deep to be transitory.
Now I have to tell you a few things that I won’t return to again after this — which you may take as you will — which you’re at liberty to reflect about or to dismiss — that’s not my business — you must decide that for yourself.
Know, then, that I look back with deep regret on your visit this summer, on our conversations then, and on what arose out of them. Time has now passed over it, but I can’t deny, looking back, that it seems to me that we weren’t right. And now I regard your words and you yourself rather differently, and I can no longer think of you with exactly the same feeling as before.
For I now see more clearly how you and others appeared to wish that I should part from her.
I don’t doubt the good intentions.
It was up to me to decide and so, if I did wrong, I may not, in my view,
blame you in the first place (in the first place I blame myself), but you in the SECOND place.
The levers that worked on me so that I was unsettled, and with which you were at least to some extent concerned — were, first, touching on an infinitely tender question from the past that troubled me, secondly your saying that ‘my duty’ would perhaps lead me to part. Well — if what you said had been entirely isolated — I wouldn’t even mention it — but it’s too much like the feelings of other people with whom I also differ for me to be able to regard your opinions as being entirely isolated. I accepted your point of view — although probably with intentions very different from what you imagine, and concerning which time will clear up one thing and another for you that now isn’t the time to discuss.
You drew my attention to a case where it ‘had worked well’ that a certain man had left a certain woman.
That may be true in itself — very true — but was it applicable here concerning her and me? You see, that’s something else.
And I’ve taken the liberty of looking back over it to see ‘whether it had worked well’. And — my friend — that’s only too doubtful now.
Know that the woman has managed well, working (namely as a washerwoman) to keep herself and her children, consequently has done her duty, and that in great physical weakness.
You know that I took her into the house with me because things happened during her confinement that made the doctors in Leiden say that she had to be somewhere quiet if she and her child were to pull through.
There was anaemia and perhaps already the first signs of consumption, too. Well, as long as I was with her she didn’t get any worse, but stronger in many respects, so that various nasty symptoms didn’t recur.
But now all that is worse again, and I fear very much for her well-being; and the poor baby, which I cared for as if it were my own, is no longer what it was either.
Brother, I found her in great wretchedness and I’m very sad about it.
I know that it’s more my own fault, of course, but you could have spoken differently too. Now, too late, I understand better that some of her fits of temper, and some things that I thought she did wrong deliberately, were also symptoms of nerves, and that she did them more unwittingly, as it were. As she said to me on more than one occasion later, ‘Sometimes I don’t know what I’m doing’.
Both you and I have an excuse, in that it’s understandable that one sometimes doesn’t know how to deal with a woman like that, and then there were the financial difficulties — but still we should have chosen more of a middle way, and if we could still find it even now — although it will be difficult to find now — it would still be humane and less cruel.
I didn’t want to get her hopes up though, and I encouraged her and tried to comfort her and strengthen her on the path she is on now, alone, working for herself and her children. Yet my heart is strongly drawn to her with the same profound pity as in the past, pity that has always lived on in me during these last months, even with a separation.
Well, our friendship, brother, has taken a heavy blow from this, and if you should say, we were certainly not mistaken, and if you should reveal yourself to me to be of exactly the same mind now as you were then — I would no longer be able to esteem you precisely as I did in the past.
I respected you then precisely because, at a time when other people didn’t want to know me because I was with her, you helped me to keep her alive.
I don’t say that no change or alteration was necessary, but — I think we (or rather I) went too far. Now that I have a studio here, perhaps more than one financial difficulty is less fatal.
I end by saying, think about it if you will — but if, after what I’ve told you, your sentiments remain precisely the same as this summer, I can no longer have the same respect for you as I did before.
Incidentally, I’ve also resolved not to say another word to you about a possible change in your circumstances or career. For I see as it were two natures in you, struggling with each other within you — a phenomenon that I also see in myself, but there are still, perhaps, a few questions fermenting in you that in your eyes have already been resolved for me because I’m 4 years older. Think about what I’ve said, that would be very good, although you can also dismiss it. But for my part I wanted to talk to you frankly about it, and can’t conceal my feelings from you. With a handshake.
Yours truly,
Vincent
As to my view about how far one may go in a case where one concerns oneself with a poor, forsaken, sick creature, I’ve already told you on a previous occasion, and repeat,
to INfinity.
And on the other hand, our cruelty can be infinite too.
428 | Nuenen, on or about Sunday, 3 February 1884 | To Theo van Gogh (D)
My dear Theo,
I was glad to get your letter today and the enclosure, and thank you very much for both. It seems to me that Ma’s recovery is proceeding very well so far, generally speaking. And that the longer it goes on, the less immediate danger there is, and the more it’s reduced to a question of time above all. Yet — Ma will certainly not be entirely the same once the fracture has healed. The effect on her, and perhaps as a result on Pa too, will in my view be to push them instantly a whole lot further into old age.
I was glad to be at home in the circumstances, and the fact of the accident naturally having pushed some questions (on which I have a considerable difference of opinion with Pa and Ma) entirely into the background — it’s all going pretty well between us, and it may mean that I’ll stay more and longer in Nuenen than I originally imagined could be the case.
To some extent it’s in the nature of things, after all, that it’s precisely at a later stage, when Ma will have to be moved more &c., that I’ll be able to lend a hand. Now that the consternation of the first few days has subsided a little, I can do my work quite regularly, in the circumstances.
Every day I paint studies of the weavers here, which I think are better in technique than the painted studies from Drenthe that I sent you.
I think those things of the looms with that quite complicated machinery, in the middle of which sits the little figure, will also lend themselves to pen drawings, and I’ll make some as a result of the tip you give me in your letter.
Before the accident happened, my arrangement with Pa was that I would live here free of charge for a while, so as to get breathing space to settle some bills at the beginning of the year.
And the money that you sent at New Year and about the middle of January was ready for that. Because I gave that to Pa when the accident happened, this time it’s those paint bills that are waiting their turn.
The more so since Pa has just had a windfall of 100 guilders from Uncle Stricker, which I think very kind of Uncle S. So I have NOT profited financially from being here. And my plan is to press ahead vigorously with the work.
In a year or so the financial difficulties that Ma’s accident can’t fail to bring in its train will be more noticeable to Pa than now, I think. So in the meantime, let’s also try to do something with my work.
After all, Pa and Ma personally are secure for their lives, Pa’s pension being equivalent to his current income. But brother, THE POOR SISTERS — without capital, at a time when there’s no great inclination in society to marry girls without money — for them life could well remain drab and sad, and their normal development thwarted. We don’t want to anticipate things, though.
How lying still all the time will affect Ma’s constitution is difficult to tell in advance.
All the precautions we can take to prevent bedsores are important, of course. We’ve made a sort of stretcher in order to be able to change Ma’s bedclothes when needed — although the less this happens the better for the time being. Lying quietly is number 1.
Fortunately Ma’s mood is very equable and content, considering her difficult situation. And she amuses herself with trifles. I recently painted the little church with the hedge and the trees for her, something
like this,
[Sketch 428A]
428A. The Reformed Church in Nuenen
You will certainly find the fact that I love the countryside here very understandable.
If you ever come I’ll take you into the weavers’ cottages sometime. The figures of the weavers and the women who wind the yarn will certainly strike you. The last study that I made is the figure of a man sitting in the loom on his own, the bust and the hands.
I’m also painting a loom — of old oak gone greenish brown — with the date 1730 carved into it. Next to that loom, by a little window through which one can see a small green field, there’s a high chair, and the little child sits in it, watching the weaver’s shuttle fly back and forth for hours. I’ve tackled that affair just as it is in reality, the loom with the little weaver, the small window and that high chair in the wretched little room with the clay floor.
If you would, write to me in rather greater detail about the Manet exhibition, tell me which of his paintings are to be seen. I’ve always found Manet’s work very original. Do you know Zola’s piece on Manet? I regret that I’ve only seen very few paintings by him. I would particularly like to see his female nudes. I don’t find it excessive that some people, Zola, for instance, idolize him, although for myself I really don’t think that he can be counted among the very best of this century. Still, it’s a talent that very certainly has its raison d’être, and that’s a great deal in itself. The piece that Zola wrote about him is in the volume ‘Mes haines’. For myself I can’t share the conclusions that Zola draws, as if Manet were a man who’s opening up a new future for modern ideas in art, as it were; to me Millet, not Manet, is that essential modern painter who opened the horizon to many. Regards, with a handshake in thought.
Yours truly,
Vincent
Regards from all — do write to Ma a bit more often, the letters are such a diversion.
Ever Yours Page 57