More soon, I hope — write to me without much delay and believe me, after asking you to give my warm regards to Mother, Sister and your fiancée, your brother who loves you dearly,
Vincent
I’ll send you Camille Lemonnier’s book quite soon.
756 | Arles, Wednesday, 10 April 1889 | To Paul Signac (F)
My dear friend Signac,
Thanks very much for your postcard, which gives me news of you. As for my brother not having replied to your letter yet, I’m inclined to believe that it’s not his fault. I’ve also been without news of him for a fortnight. It’s because he’s in Holland, where he’s getting married one of these days. Now, while not denying the advantages of a marriage in the very least, once it has been done and one is quietly set up in one’s home, the funereal pomp of the reception &c., the lamentable congratulations of two families (even civilized) at the same time, not to mention the fortuitous appearances in those pharmacist’s jars where antediluvian civil or religious magistrates sit — my word — isn’t there good reason to pity the poor unfortunate obliged to present himself armed with the requisite papers in the places where, with a ferocity unequalled by the cruellest cannibals, you’re married alive on the low heat of the aforementioned funereal receptions.
I remain much obliged to you for your most friendly and beneficial visit, which considerably contributed to cheering me up.
I am well now and I’m working in the hospital or its surroundings. Thus I’ve just brought back two studies of orchards.
[Sketch 756A]
756A. Orchard in blossom with a view of Arles
Here’s a hasty croquis of them — the largest is a poor green countryside with little cottages, blue line of the Alpilles, white and blue sky. The foreground, enclosures with reed hedges where little peach trees are in blossom — everything there is small, the gardens, the fields, the gardens, the trees, even those mountains, as in certain Japanese landscapes, that’s why this subject attracted me.
The other landscape is almost all green with a little lilac and grey — on a rainy day.
Very pleased to hear you say that you’ve settled down, and will very much wish to have more news of you. How is work going, what is the character of those parts?
[Sketch 756B]
756B. La Crau with peach trees in blossom
Since then my mind has returned yet more to the normal state, for the time being I don’t ask for better, provided it lasts. That will depend above all on a very sober regime.
For the first few months, at least, I plan to go on staying here. I’ve rented an apartment consisting of two very small rooms. But at times it isn’t completely convenient for me to start living again, for I still have inner despairs of quite a large calibre.
My word, these anxieties . . . who can live in modern life without catching his share of them?
The best consolation, if not the only remedy, is, it still seems to me, profound friendships, even if these have the disadvantage of anchoring us in life more solidly than may appear desirable to us in the days of great suffering.
Thank you again for your visit, which gave me so much pleasure.
Good handshake in thought.
Yours truly,
Vincent
Address until end of April, place Lamartine 2, Arles.
760 | Arles, Sunday, 21 April 1889 | To Theo van Gogh (F)
My dear Theo
You’ll probably be back in Paris when this letter arrives. I wish you and your wife lots of happiness.
Thanks very much for your kind letter and for the 100-franc note it contained.
Out of the 65 francs which I owe him, I’ve paid my landlord only 25 francs, having had to pay 3 months’ rent in advance on a room where I shan’t live but where I’ve stored my furniture, and having in addition had around ten francs in various removal expenses &c.
Then, since my clothes were in not too brilliant a state — so that when I went out into the street it became necessary to have something new — I took a 35-franc suit and 4 francs for 6 pairs of socks. Thus I have only a few francs left out of the note, and at the end of the month I must pay the landlord again, although we could make him wait a few days, more or less. At the hospital, after having settled the bill up to today, there’s still almost enough for the rest of the month from the money I still have on deposit there.
At the end of the month I’d still wish to go to the mental hospital at St-Rémy or another institution of that kind, which Mr Salles has told me about.
Forgive me for not going into details to weigh up the pros and the cons of such a course of action.
It would strain my mind a great deal to talk about it.
It will, I hope, suffice to say that I feel decidedly incapable of starting to take a new studio again and living there alone, here in Arles or elsewhere — it comes down to the same thing — for the moment — I’ve nevertheless tried to make up my mind to begin again — for the moment not possible. I’d be afraid of losing the faculty of working, which is coming back to me now, by forcing myself to have a studio, and also having all the other responsibilities on my back.
And for the time being I wish to remain confined, as much for my own tranquillity as for that of others.
What consoles me a little is that I’m beginning to consider madness as an illness like any other and accept the thing as it is, while during the actual crises it seemed to me that everything I was imagining was reality. Anyway, in fact I don’t want to think or talk about it. Excuse the explanations — but I ask you, and Messrs Salles and Rey, to act so that at the end of the month or the beginning of the month of May I may go there as a confined boarder.
Beginning again this painter’s life I’ve led up to now, isolated in the studio sometimes, and without any other source of entertainment than to go to a café or a restaurant with all the criticism of the neighbours &c., I CAN’T DO IT. Going to live with another person, even another artist — difficult — very difficult — one takes too great a responsibility upon oneself. I dare not even think of it.
Anyhow, let’s begin with 3 months, afterwards we’ll see. Now the cost of board must be around 80 francs and I’ll do a little painting and drawing. Without putting as much fury into it as the other year. Don’t get upset about all this.
So there you have it, these days have been sad, moving house, transporting all my furniture, packing up the canvases which I’ll send you, but above all it seemed sad to me that all that had been given to me by you with so much brotherly affection, and that for so many years, it was however you alone who supported me, and then to be obliged to come back to tell you all this sad story . . . but it’s difficult for me to express that as I felt it.
The kindness you have had for me isn’t lost, since you have had it and you still have it, so even if the material results should be nil, you still have that all the more, but I can’t say that as I felt it.
Now you well understand that if alcohol was certainly one of the great causes of my madness, then it came very slowly and would go away slowly too, should it go, of course. Or if it comes from smoking, same thing.
But I would hope only that it — this recovery . . . The frightful superstition of certain people on the subject of alcohol, so that they prevail upon themselves never to drink or smoke. We’re already advised not to lie or steal and not to commit other great or small crimes, and it becomes too complicated if it was absolutely indispensable not to possess anything but virtues in a society in which we’re very indubitably rooted, be it good or bad.
I assure you that these strange days in which many things seem odd to me because my brain is shaken up, I don’t hate père Pangloss in all of this.
But you’ll do me a service by tackling the question forthrightly with Mr Salles and Mr Rey.
It would seem to me that with a boarding cost of around seventy-five francs a month there must be a way of confining me such that I have all I need.
Then I’d very much wish, if the thing is possible, to be
able to go out in the daytime to go and draw or paint outside. Seeing as I go out here every day now, and I think that may continue.
I warn you that by paying more I’d be less happy. The company of the other sick people, you understand, isn’t at all disagreeable to me, on the contrary it distracts me.
Ordinary food suits me perfectly well, especially if, like here, I could be given a little more wine than usual down there, half a litre instead of a quarter, for example.
But a separate apartment, it remains to be seen what the rules of an institution like that will be. Be aware that Rey is overburdened with work, overburdened. If he or Mr Salles writes to you, it’s better to do exactly what they say.
Anyway, my dear fellow, we must accept it, the illnesses of our time, all in all it’s only fair that having lived for years in relatively good health, sooner or later we have our share of them. As for me, you’ll feel a little that I wouldn’t exactly have chosen madness if there had been a choice, but once one has something like that one can’t catch it any more. However, in addition there will still perhaps be the consolation of being able to continue to work on some painting a little. What will you do so as not to say to your wife either too many good or too many bad things about Paris and of a heap of things? Do you feel in advance completely able to keep exactly the right measure always, from every point of view?
I shake your hand heartily in thought, I don’t know if I’ll write to you very, very often, because all my days aren’t clear enough to write somewhat logically. All your kindnesses for me, I’ve found them greater than ever today.
I can’t tell you it as I feel it, but I assure you that that kindness has been of great worth, and if you don’t see its results, my dear brother, don’t be upset about it, you will still have your kindness. Only transfer this affection onto your wife as much as possible.
And if we correspond a little less you’ll see that if she is as I think she is, she will console you. That’s what I hope.
Rey is a really good fellow, terribly hard-working, always at the daily grind. What people today’s doctors are!
If you see Gauguin or if you write to him, give him my kind regards.
I’ll be very happy to have a little news of what you say about Mother and Sister and whether they’re well, tell them to take my story, my word, as a thing they mustn’t upset themselves about excessively, for I’m relatively unfortunate, but in spite of that, after all, I perhaps still have some almost ordinary years ahead of me: it’s an illness like any other, and currently almost all those we know among our friends have something. So is it worth talking about? I regret causing trouble to Mr Salles, to Rey, especially also to you, but what can one do — the mind isn’t steady enough to begin again like before — so it’s a matter of no longer causing scenes in public, and naturally being a little calmer now, I feel completely that I was in an unhealthy state, mentally and physically. And people were kind to me then, those I remember and the rest, anyhow I’ve caused anxiety, and if I’d been in a normal state all of this wouldn’t have happened in that way. Adieu, write when you can.
Ever yours,
Vincent
764 | Arles, between about Sunday, 28 April and Thursday, 2 May 1889 | To Willemien van Gogh (F)
My dear sister,
Your kind letter really touched me, especially since it tells me that you’ve returned to care for Mrs du Quesne.
Certainly cancer is a terrible illness, as for me, I always shiver when I see a case — and it isn’t rare in the south, although often it’s not the real incurable, mortal cancer but cancerous abscesses from which one sometimes recovers. Whatever the case, you’re very brave, my sister, not to recoil before these Gethsemanes. And I feel less brave than you when I think of these things, feeling awkward, heavy and clumsy in them. We have, if my memory serves, a Dutch proverb to this effect: they aren’t the worst fruits that wasps gnaw at . . .
This leads me straight to what I wanted to say, ivy loves the old lopped willows each spring, ivy loves the trunk of the old oak tree — and so cancer, that mysterious plant, attaches itself so often to people whose lives were nothing but ardent love and devotion. So, however terrible the mystery of these pains may be, the horror of them is sacred, and in them there might indeed be a gentle, heartbreaking thing, just as we see the green moss in abundance on the old thatched roof. However, I don’t know anything about it — I have no right to assert anything.
Not very far from here there’s a very, very, very ancient tomb, more ancient than Christ, on which this is inscribed, ‘Blessed be Thebe, daughter of Telhui, priestess of Osiris, who never complained about anyone.’ I couldn’t help thinking of that when you told me in your previous letter that the sick lady you’re caring for didn’t complain.
Mother must be pleased with Theo’s marriage, and he writes to me that she looks as if she’s getting younger. That pleases me greatly. Now he too is very pleased with his matrimonial experiences, and is considerably reassured.
He has so few illusions about it, having to a rare degree the strength of character to take things as they are without making pronouncements about good and evil. In which he’s quite right, for what do we know of what we do?
As for me, I’m going for at least 3 months into an asylum at St-Rémy, not far from here.
In all I’ve had 4 big crises in which I hadn’t the slightest idea of what I said, wanted, did.
Not counting that I fainted 3 times previously without plausible reason, and not retaining the least memory of what I felt then.
Ah well, that’s quite serious, although I’m much calmer since then, and physically I’m perfectly well. And I still feel incapable of taking a studio again. I’m working though, and have just done two paintings of the hospital. One is a ward, a very long ward with the rows of beds with white curtains where a few figures of patients are moving.
The walls, the ceiling with the large beams, everything is white in a lilac white or green white. Here and there a window with a pink or bright green curtain.
The floor tiled with red bricks. At the far end a door surmounted by a crucifix.
It’s very, very simple. And then, as a pendant, the inner courtyard. It’s an arcaded gallery like in Arab buildings, whitewashed. In front of these galleries an ancient garden with a pond in the middle and 8 beds of flowers, forget-me-nots, Christmas roses, anemones, buttercups, wallflowers, daisies &c.
And beneath the gallery, orange trees and oleanders. So it’s a painting chock-full of flowers and springtime greenery. However, three black, sad tree-trunks cross it like snakes, and in the foreground four large sad, dark box bushes.
The people here probably don’t see much in it, but however it has always been so much my desire to paint for those who don’t know the artistic side of a painting.
What shall I say to you, you don’t know the reasonings of good père Pangloss in Voltaire’s Candide, nor Flaubert’s Bouvard et Pécuchet. These are books from man to man, and I don’t know if women understand that. But the memory of that often sustains me in the uncomfortable and unenviable hours and days or nights.
I’ve re-read Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom with EXTREME attention precisely because it’s a woman’s book, written, she says, while making soup for her children, and then also with extreme attention C. Dickens’s Christmas Tales.
I read little so as to think about it more. It’s very likely that I have a lot more to suffer. And that doesn’t suit me at all, to tell you the truth, for I wouldn’t wish for a martyr’s career in any circumstances.
For I’ve always sought something other than the heroism I don’t have, which I certainly admire in others but which, I repeat, I do not believe to be my duty or my ideal.
I haven’t re-read those excellent books by Renan but how often I think of them here, where we have the olive trees and other characteristic plants and the blue sky. Ah, how right Renan is and what a fine work his is, to speak to us in a French like no other person speaks. A French in which, in the sound
of the words, there’s the blue sky and the gentle rustling of the olive trees and a thousand true and explanatory things in short that turn his history into a resurrection. It’s one of the saddest things I know, the prejudices of people who through bias oppose so many good and beautiful things that have been created in our time. Ah, the eternal ‘ignorance’, the eternal ‘misunderstandings’, and how much good it then does to happen upon words that are truly Serene . . . Blessed be Thebe — daughter of Telhui — priestess of Osiris — who never complained about anyone.
For myself, I quite often worry that my life hasn’t been calm enough, all these disappointments, annoyances, changes mean that I don’t develop naturally and in full in my artistic career.
‘A rolling stone gathers no moss’
they say, don’t they?
But what does that matter if, as rightly the above-mentioned père Pangloss alone proves, ‘everything is always for the best in the best of worlds’.
Last year I did about ten or a dozen orchards in blossom and this year I have only four, so work isn’t going with much gusto.
If you have the Drône book you speak of I’d very much like to read it, but do me the pleasure of not buying it especially for me at the moment. I’ve seen some very interesting nuns here, the majority of the priests seem to me to be in a sad state. Religion has frightened me so much for so many years now. For example, do you happen to know that love perhaps doesn’t exist exactly as one imagines it — the junior doctor here, the worthiest man one could possibly imagine, the most dedicated, the most valiant, a warm, manly heart, sometimes amuses himself mystifying the little women by telling them that love is also a microbe. Although then the little women, and even a few men, let out loud shouts, he doesn’t care at all and is imperturbable on that point.
As for kissing and all the rest that it pleases us to add to it, that’s just a natural kind of act like drinking a glass of water or eating a piece of bread. Certainly it’s quite indispensable to kiss, otherwise serious disorders arise.
Ever Yours Page 99