Ever Yours

by Vincent Van Gogh

  Having asked the price for sending the consignment that went off by goods train, it will be 7 francs at the station in Paris. As I don’t have very much left I didn’t put postage on it here — but if they asked more you’d have to complain. The crate is marked UV and W1042.

  We’ve had the mistral again yesterday and today. I hope my consignment arrives before Tersteeg comes to Paris.

  Handshake, write to me soon.

  Ever yours,

  Vincent

  611 | Arles, on or about Sunday, 20 May 1888 | To Theo van Gogh (F)

  My dear Theo,

  What you write about your visit to Gruby has upset me, but at the same time it reassures me that you went there.

  Have you considered that your lethargy — a feeling of extreme lassitude — could have been caused by this heart condition, and that in that case potassium iodide couldn’t be blamed for these periods of stupefied exhaustion? If you remember how stupefied I was myself this winter, to the point of being quite incapable! of doing anything whatsoever, apart from a little painting, although I wasn’t taking potassium iodide at all. So if I were you, I’d have it out with Rivet if Gruby tells you not to take it.

  And it will in any case — I have no doubt about it — be your intention to be friends with both the one and the other.

  I often think of Gruby here and now, and in short I feel well, but it’s because here I have the pure air and the heat, which make things more possible for me. Among all the trials and the bad air of Paris, Rivet takes things as they are without trying to create a paradise and without in the slightest way trying to make us perfect. But he forges a suit of armour, or rather, he inures us to illness and keeps morale up, I find, by making fun of the trouble we have.

  So if you could now have just one year of living in the country and close to nature, that would make Gruby’s treatment much easier. So I think he’ll urge you not to see women except in case of necessity, but as little as possible. Now for myself, I feel fine here in that respect, but here, since I have work and nature, and if I didn’t have that I’d become melancholy. As long as work has some appeal for you over there, and the Impressionists are going well, that would be a great gain. Because loneliness, worries, vexations, the need for friendship and fellow-feeling not sufficiently met, that’s what’s very bad, the mental emotions of sadness or disappointments undermine us more than riotous living: us, that is, who find ourselves the happy owners of troubled hearts.

  I think potassium iodide purifies the blood and the whole system, doesn’t it — will you be able to do without it? Anyway, you’ll have to have a straight talk about it with Rivet, who shouldn’t be jealous.

  I could wish you had near you something more rudely alive, warmer than the Dutch — but all the same, Koning with his whims is an exception for the better. Anyway, it’s always good to have somebody. But I could still wish you had one or two good friends among the French. Would you do me a great favour: my friend the Dane, who leaves for Paris on Tuesday, will give you 2 small paintings — nothing much — that I’d like to give to Mme the Countess De la Boissière at Asnières. She stays in boulevard Voltaire, on the first floor of the first house at the end of the Clichy bridge. Père Perruchot’s restaurant is on the ground floor. Would you take them to her personally on my behalf, saying I had hopes of seeing her again this spring and that even here I haven’t forgotten her; I gave them 2 small ones last year as well, her and her daughter. I’d have hope that you wouldn’t regret making these ladies’ acquaintance. After all, they’re a family. The countess is far from young but she’s first of all a countess, then a lady, the daughter ditto.

  And it makes sense for you to go, since I can’t be sure that the family’s staying in the same place this year (however, they’ve been coming there for several years, and Perruchot must know their address in town). Perhaps I’m deluding myself — but I can’t help thinking of them, and perhaps it will be a pleasure for them and for you too, if you meet them.

  Listen — I’ll do all I can to send you some new drawings for Dordrecht.

  This week I’ve done two still lifes.

  [Sketch 611A]

  611A. Still life with coffee pot

  A blue enamelled tin coffee-pot, a royal blue and gold cup (on the left), a pale blue and white chequered milk jug, a cup — on the right — white, with blue and orange designs, on a yellow grey earthenware plate, a blue barbotine or majolica jug with red, green, brown designs, and lastly 2 oranges and 3 lemons; the table is covered with a blue cloth, the background is yellow green, making 6 different blues and 4 or 5 yellows and oranges.

  The other still life is the majolica jug with wild flowers.

  I thank you very much for your letter and for the 50-franc note. I hope the crate will reach you in the next few days. The next time I think I’ll take the canvases off the stretching frames and send them rolled, by fast service. I think you’ll soon make friends with this Dane — he doesn’t do much but — he has intelligence and a good heart, and he probably started painting not long ago. Take him out a bit one Sunday to get to know him.

  For myself, I feel infinitely better, my blood is circulating well, and my stomach’s digesting. I’ve found very, very good food now, which had an immediate effect on me.

  Have you seen Gruby’s face when he pinches his lips tight and says ‘No women’? It would make a really good Degas, that face, like that. But there’s nothing to be said against it, because when you have to work all day long with your brain, calculating, thinking, planning business, that’s quite enough in itself for your nerves. So go off now and visit women in the world of artists and suchlike, you’ll see you’ll succeed — really. You’ll see it’ll work out like that and you won’t lose much, will you?

  I still haven’t been able to make a deal with the furniture dealer, I’ve seen a bed but it’s dearer than I thought. I feel the need to get more work done before spending more on furniture.

  My lodgings cost me 1 franc a night. I’ve bought more linen and colours as well.

  I’ve bought some very strong linen.

  Just as my blood is returning to normal, so the idea of succeeding is returning to me too. I shouldn’t be too surprised if your illness was also a reaction to this dreadful winter, which lasted an age. And then it will go the same way as with me; take as much spring air as possible, go to bed very early because you’ll need to sleep; and then food, lots of fresh vegetables and no bad wine or bad liquor. And very few women and A GREAT DEAL OF PATIENCE. If it doesn’t clear up at once that doesn’t matter. And now Gruby will give you a heavy meat diet over there. Here, for myself, I couldn’t take very much, and it’s not necessary here. It’s just my stupefaction that’s going away, I don’t feel as much need to amuse myself, I’m less at the mercy of my passions and I can work more calmly, I could be alone without being bored. I came out of it feeling a little older, but no sadder.

  I wouldn’t believe you if in your next letter you told me there was nothing wrong with you any more; it’s perhaps a more serious change and I shouldn’t be surprised if, during the time it will take you to recover, you had some dejection. There is and there remains and it always comes back at times, in the midst of the artistic life, a yearning for — real life — ideal and not attainable.

  And we sometimes lack the desire to throw ourselves head first into art again and to build ourselves up for that. We know we’re cab-horses and that it’ll be the same cab we’re going to be harnessed to again. And so we don’t feel like doing it and we’d prefer to live in a meadow with a sun, a river, the company of other horses who are also free, and the act of generation. And perhaps in the final account your heart condition comes partly from there; it wouldn’t greatly surprise me. We no longer rebel against things, we’re not resigned either — we’re ill and it’s not going to get any better — and we can’t do anything specific about it. I don’t know who called this condition being struck by death and immortality. The cab we drag along must be of use to people we don’t
know. But you see, if we believe in the new art, in the artists of the future, our presentiment doesn’t deceive us. When good père Corot said a few days before he died: last night I saw in my dreams landscapes with entirely pink skies, well, didn’t they come, those pink skies, and yellow and green into the bargain, in Impressionist landscapes? All this is to say there are things one senses in the future and that really come about.

  And we, who, I’m inclined to believe, are by no means so close to dying, nevertheless feel the thing is bigger than us and longer-lasting than our lives.

  We don’t feel we’re dying, but we feel the reality of the fact that we’re not much, and that to be a link in the chain of artists we pay a steep price in health, youth, freedom, which we don’t enjoy at all, any more than the cab-horse that pulls a carriage full of people who, unlike him, are going out to enjoy the springtime. Well then — what I wish you as well as myself is to succeed in recovering our health, because we’ll need it. That Hope of Puvis de Chavannes is such a reality. There’s an art in the future and it will surely be so beautiful and so young that, really, if at present we leave it our own youth, we can only gain in tranquillity. Perhaps it’s too silly to write all this, but it’s what I felt; it seemed that like me, you suffered to see your youth going up in — smoke — but if it comes back and appears in what we do, there’s nothing lost, and the power to work is a second youth. So be serious about getting better, because we’ll need our health. I shake your hand firmly, and Koning’s too.

  Ever yours,

  Vincent

  615 | Arles, Monday, 28 May 1888 | To Theo van Gogh (F)

  My dear Theo,

  I was very pleased to receive this morning’s letter from you; I thank you very much for the 100-franc note that was included in it.

  And am glad in the end that the crate has arrived.

  If you think the Souvenir de Mauve is among those that are passable — then you should add it to the next Hague consignment, with a simple all-white frame. If you found another study among them that seemed to you more suitable for Tersteeg, you should put it in without a dedication, and you should keep the one with the dedication to him, which you could then scratch out. Because it’s better to give him one without any sort of dedication. He can then claim not to have understood that it was a gift for him, and send it back without saying anything if he would rather not have something of mine.

  I’ll certainly have to give him one myself, to prove that I have some enthusiasm for the cause and that I appreciate his having taken it in hand — but in short, do as it turns out, don’t send any, send that one with or without a dedication, send another one, it makes no difference to me whatsoever. Only as Mauve and he were so close, in the emotion of the moment it seemed to me a very simple thing to do something for Tersteeg at the same time as I was doing a souvenir of Mauve. And I had scarcely another thought but that. So that’s enough.

  The orchard study you mention — where there’s a lot of stippling — is half of the main subject of the decoration. The other half is the study in the same format, without a stretching frame.

  And those two together would give an idea of how orchards are laid out here. But I myself thought one study too feeble, the other too harsh, both of them failures. The changeable weather certainly had something to do with it too, and I was like the Russian who tried to swallow up too much ground in a day’s march.

  I’m very curious to see the results of the Gruby system — in the long run, after, let’s say, a year’s application. It will be wise to show up sometimes — to chat with him — and — to extract his real attention, a real, big effort on his part, as Bonger in the end gained his friendship and deeper interest. Then I’d feel easier on your account. I couldn’t feel that way now. The proposal by those gentlemen to have you make short trips overseas is wearing you out.

  And I blame myself for wearing you out like this — me — with my constant needs for money.

  It seems to me that what those gentlemen are demanding of you could, however, be reasonable if they first agreed to give you a year’s leave (on full salary) to regain your health. You’d devote that year to going to see all the Impressionists and connoisseurs of the Impressionists at their homes again. That would still be working in the interests of Boussod & Co. After that you’d go off with your blood and your nerves more settled, and fit to do new business over there.

  But to go and pull the chestnuts out of the fire for those gentlemen in the state you’re in now is to spend a year that will wear you out.

  And that does nobody any good.

  My dear brother — the Muslim idea that death only comes when it must come — let’s just see about that.

  To me, it seems that we haven’t any proof of such a direct guidance from above.

  On the contrary, it seems to me that it’s been proved that good hygiene may not only prolong life but above all, can make it more serene — its waters more limpid — while poor hygiene not only muddies life’s current, but even more than that, lack of hygiene may put an end to life before time.

  Have I not myself seen a fine figure of a man die before my very eyes for want of an intelligent doctor — he was so calm and tranquil through all of that, only he kept saying — ‘if I had another doctor’, and he died shrugging his shoulders in a way I’ll never forget.

  Would you like me to go to America with you? It would be only right that those gentlemen paid my fare.

  There are many things that wouldn’t matter to me one way or the other, but not that — that you didn’t first build up your health properly.

  Now I think you need to immerse yourself again even more, both in nature and among artists.

  And would prefer to see you independent of the Goupils and working on your own account with the Impressionists, to this alternative of a life of travelling with the expensive paintings that belong to those gentlemen. When our uncle was an associate of theirs, in some years he managed to be very well paid — but just count what it cost him.

  Now you, your lungs are good — but but but — — — a year of Gruby first, and then you’ll see the danger you’re in now.

  At present you’ve had over 10 years of Paris, which is more than is good. You’ll tell me that Detaille, for example, has had perhaps thirty years of Paris and that he holds himself as straight as a ramrod.

  Good, do the same if you have comparable capacities. I’m not against it, and our family has a tenacious grip on life.

  Everything I could wish to say is summed up in this: if those gentlemen make you pull the chestnuts out of the fire over such distances, see that you’re well paid, or refuse, and throw yourself into the Impressionists, doing less business from the point of view of the sums handled, but living closer to nature.

  For myself, I’m definitely recovering, and since the past month my stomach has improved enormously. I still suffer from unaccountable, involuntary feelings, or a stupor on some days, but it’s getting calmer.

  I plan to make an excursion to Saintes-Maries, to see the Mediterranean at last.

  Our two sisters will doubtless be quite happy to come to Paris and it won’t do them any harm, that’s quite certain.

  I’d like everybody to come here to the south too.

  I’m always blaming myself for the fact that my painting isn’t worth what it costs.

  We must work nevertheless — but you should know that if circumstances ever made it desirable for me to involve myself more in business, as long as it took a burden off you, I’d do it with no regrets.

  Mourier will give you two more pen drawings.

  Do you know what we should do with these drawings? Albums of 6 or 10 or 12, like the albums of original Japanese drawings.

  I’m very keen to make such an album for Gauguin and one for Bernard. Because the drawings will become better than that.

  [Sketch 615A]

  615A. Album of drawings

  I bought some colours here today, and canvases, because depending on the weather I’ll have to
go onto the attack. Another reason why there’s nothing urgent in the order for colours, except the ten large tubes of white.

  It’s funny that one evening recently at Montmajour I saw a red sunset that sent its rays into the trunks and foliage of pines rooted in a mass of rocks, colouring the trunks and foliage a fiery orange while other pines in the further distance stood out in Prussian blue against a soft blue-green sky — cerulean. So it’s the effect of that Claude Monet. It was superb. The white sand and the seams of white rocks under the trees took on blue tints. What I’d like to do is the panorama of which you have the first drawings — it’s so wide — and it doesn’t fade into grey, it stays green to the last line — and that’s blue, the range of hills. Thunderstorm and rain today, which will do good anyway. If Koning prefers a painted study, do whatever turns out.

  Think carefully before you agree to everything the Goupils demand, and if that brought a change for me, really, now my health’s improving I could work anywhere, and don’t have an idée fixe about work, if it comes to that. Handshake to you and to Koning.

  Ever yours,

  Vincent

  I think that for the white orchard we need a cold and raw white frame.

  You should know that I’d rather give up my painting than see you wear yourself out to earn money. We need it of course, but have we reached the point where we have to go and look for it so far away?

  You see so clearly that ‘preparing oneself for death’, a Christian idea — (fortunately for him Christ himself didn’t share it at all, it seems to me — he who loved the people and things of this earth, more than is wise according to those who see him as nothing more than a crackpot), if — you see so clearly that preparing oneself for death is a thing — to leave there for what it is — don’t you also see that — devotion — living for others — is a mistake if it’s complicated by suicide — since in that case one truly makes murderers of one’s friends.