Letter from Vincent van Gogh to Theo van Gogh (1 May 1888) ... the better. I want to make sure of that.
You know, if I could only get really strong soup,
it would do me good immediately: it's preposterous, but I never can get what I ask for, even the
simplest things, from these people here. And it's the same everywhere in these little
restaurants.
But it is not so hard to bake potatoes?
Impossible.
Then rice, or macaroni? None left, or else it is messed up
in grease, or else they aren't cooking it today, and they'll
explain that it's tomorrow's dish, there's no room on the
stove, and so on. It's absurd, but that is the real reason my
health is low.
All the same, it cost me positive agony to decide on a
definite step, for I reminded myself that in The Hague and
Nuenen I had tried to take a studio, and how badly it turned
out! But many things have changed since then, and the ground
feels firmer underfoot, so let's get on ahead. Only we have
spent such a lot already on this blasted painting that we must
not forget...
Letter from Vincent van Gogh to Theo van Gogh (c. 15 May 1888) ... then I have been feeling
much better. It was mainly their bad food which kept me down,
and their wine, which was regular poison. I get a very good
meal now for 1 franc or for 1.50.
Letter from Vincent van Gogh to Theo van Gogh (c. 20 May 1888) ... circulation
good and my stomach digesting. I have found a place
where the food is very, very good, and the result is immediately apparent.
Did you notice Gruby's face when he shuts his mouth tight
and says - “No women!”? It would make a fine Degas,
that. But there is no answering back, for when you have to work
all day with your brain, calculating, considering, planning,
you've had as much as your nerves can stand.
So go out now and meet women socially; you'll find that
you'll get on swimmingly - artists and all that. That's how it
will turn out, you'll see. And you won't miss much by doing it,
you know.
I have not yet been able to do business with the furniture
dealer. I have seen a bed, but it was dearer than I expected. I
feel that I must polish off some more work before spending more
on furnishing. I have my room for 1 Fr. per night. I have
bought some more linen, and some paints too. I took very strong
linen.
Bit by bit as my blood quickens,...
Letter from Vincent van Gogh to Theo van Gogh (c. 4 June 1888) ... Holland without the dunes, and bluer.
You get better fried fish here than on the Seine. Only fish
is not available every day, as the fishermen go off and sell it
in Marseilles. But when there is some, it's frightfully
good.
If there isn't - the butcher is not much more appetizing
than the fellah butcher of M. Gérôme's - if there
is no fish, it is pretty difficult to get anything to eat, as
far as I can see.
I do not think there are 100 houses in the village, or town.
The chief building, after the old church and an ancient
fortress, is the barracks. And the houses - like the ones on
our heaths and peat bogs in Drenthe; you will see some
specimens of them in the drawings.
I am forced to leave my three painted studies here, for of
course they are not dry enough to be submitted with safety to
five hours' jolting in the carriage.
But I expect to come back here again.
Next week I'd like to go to Tarascon to do two or three
studies....
Letter from Vincent van Gogh to Wilhelmina van Gogh (c. 22 June 1888) ... growing among the herbs with healing
powers. Nevertheless, I am in the habit of taking large
quantities of bad coffee in such cases, not because it is very
good for my already damaged collection of teeth, but because my
strong imaginative powers enable me to have a devout faith -
worthy of an idolater or a Christian or a cannibal - in the
exhilarating influence of said fluid. Fortunately for my fellow
creatures I have until today refrained from recommending this
and similar remedies as efficacious.
The sun in these parts, that is something different,
and also if over a period of time one drinks wine, which - at
least partly - is pressed from real grapes. I assure you that
in our native country people are as blind as bats and
criminally stupid because they do not exert themselves to go
more to the Indies or somewhere else where the sun shines. It
is not right to know only one thing - one gets stultified by
that; one should not rest before one knows the opposite
...
