Dear Theo,
Your letter and its enclosure came and I paid the landlord
straight away. Since there is a mortgage on the house, the rent
is collected by someone else who turned the people downstairs
out last month and gave them short shrift. What you say about
dividing the month into 3, so that I would get the money on the
1st, 10th and 20th, is extremely welcome news. That
will make things much easier for me.
I need not tell you what a relief your letter was.
Did you receive the drawing, “The Fish Drying
Barn”? I am busy doing a few more of them, so that you
will have 2 or 3 done in the same way. C. M. has also got some
done like this but I haven't heard from him yet.
I want to tell you something about what you seem to be
afraid of, namely the possibility that the family may want to
take steps to place me under legal guardianship. If you really
think “a few witnesses (and even then false ones) are
all that would be needed to testify that you cannot manage your
financial affairs and that would be enough to entitle
Father to deprive you of your civil rights and place you under
guardianship,” if, I say, you really think that this sort
of thing is so easy to do these days, then I take the liberty
of questioning it.
The legal procedure of guardianship, which has been
disgracefully abused so often in order to get rid of
individuals considered “troublesome” or
“unpleasant” (mauvais coucheur [awkward customer]),
can no longer be applied quite so easily these days. And the
law gives the accused the right to appeal and many another
remedy.
But you might say: a clever lawyer can twist the law, etc.,
etc. Que soit, I tell you that it isn't quite so quick and easy
to place somebody under guardianship nowadays…I know of
a case in which even the Jesuits failed to have a guardianship
order placed on someone they wanted out of the way, for the
simple reason that the man said, “I am positively the
last person for whom a guardianship order is even slightly
appropriate,” and refused to give in.
Again, there was the case of someone who, placed under
supervision somewhere against his will so that he couldn't go
where he chose, warned the person under whose supervision he
had been placed that he had no right to deprive him of his
liberty and that he would have to let him go … warned
him a few times coolly and quite calmly, but was rebuffed. Then
bashed his guardian's brains in with a poker and stood there
quite calmly and gave himself up. The case was investigated and
the result was a complete acquittal, since in certain extreme
cases there exists a “right of self-defence,” and
when the murder question came up the original case was
re-examined and it turned out that the accused was not someone
who merited guardianship.
In short, it is far from easy nowadays to place under
guardianship someone who protests in a calm, manly and open
manner. I really do not believe that the family would do
anything like that … but, you may say, they already
tried to do it on the Gheel occasion. Alas, yes, Father is
capable of doing it, but I must tell you that if he dares to
try anything of the sort again, I shall resist him for all I'm
worth. He had best think twice before he starts attacking me,
but once again, I doubt they would dare do such a thing. If
they do have the will and the temerity, I am not going to say,
“Oh, please don't do that,” but on the contrary
will have no hesitation in letting them get on with it so that
they incur public disgrace and are saddled with the costs of
the case.
Let me tell you, I know of a case where a noble and very
rich family tried to place somebody under guardianship and
enlisted the services of lawyers and Jesuits - and yet failed
with the person in question - although there were two
complaints raised against him, in the first place his
incompetence in financial affairs and in the second place his
being of unsound mind. He protested and the judge let the
family know unofficially that they would do well to drop the
case. The family had to give up even before the legal
proceedings actually started.
Now I would just like to add this - since you are aware that
I would always protest against anything of the kind, if at some
time or other they should try to take advantage of my being ill
or indisposed, by, for instance, “taking action against
me,” you will know that it is without my consent. In the
event of my being ill, I hope you would object if anyone tried
to profit from my helplessness. When my health is good I can
take care of myself and am afraid of nothing of that sort. And
I simply cannot imagine anyone really taking such a step - but
should you ever hear that such moves are afoot, please let me
know.
I don't mean if they are talking about it or
saying something about it, of course, I take no notice
of tittle-tattle, but I do take notice when it is translated
into action. If they should do something, then I hope
you will warn me. I know the law on guardianship, and I do
not believe they can do anything to me.
Once before in my life, though many years ago, I received a
letter written in the same vein as your last one. And that was
from H. G. T., whom I had consulted about something, and I have
regretted ever since that I broached the matter with him. I
well remember that I was seized by a kind of panic at the time
and that I was frightened of my family. Now, some 10 or 12
years later, I have learned to think differently of my
obligations towards and relations with my family.
It would be a pretty kettle of fish if I ordered
my life the way Father would like me to. My drawing would most
certainly come to an end, for I should be unable to do any
more. I might be able to come to terms with Father's way of
thinking and talk things over with him if he acquired some
understanding of art, but that will never happen.
Now I am glad that you have given me your frank opinion of
Sien, namely that she tricked me and that I allowed myself be
taken in, and I can understand why you should think that,
because such things do happen. However, I remember once when a
girl did try something like that, I shut the door in her face
so hard that I rather doubt I am likely to be taken in by such
sharp practices.
Her mother is a little old woman just like the ones
Frère paints.
Now you will understand that, given that I remain faithful
to her, I should set little store by the formality of marriage
were it not that the family does. Father, for one, and I know
this for certain, attaches great importance to it, and although
he won't approve of my marrying her, he would consider it even
worse if I lived with her without being married. His advice
would be to leave her, and he would give that advice in this
form: wait, which is cold comfort and quite
inappropriate. That is typical of Father…he puts things
off that are urgent and pressing, and this can be absolutely
infuriating. So Father had best keep his “waiting”
to himself, for if he came out with it, I should not be able to
contain myself.
I am a man of 30 with wrinkles on my forehead and lines on
my face that make me look 40 and my hands are full of furrows -
yet when Father looks at me through his spectacles he sees me
as a little boy (1½ years ago Father wrote to me,
“You are in your first youth”). And that is said
with the tuppence-worth of profundity I have heard so often
before.
Do you know what I think Father and Uncle Stricker are like?
Like `Les deux augures' by Gérôme. But I am a
“mauvais coucheur” - que soit.
Now you will say, Vincent, you had far better lose yourself
in perspective and the Fish Drying Sheds. And then I shall say,
you are quite right, brother, and that is why I am getting down
to work on the two drawings that go with that first one, and
which you will soon be receiving as proof that I like nothing
better than losing myself in nature and drawing and not losing
myself in such things as being placed under guardianship which
seem to me utterly ridiculous. Regards, with my heartfelt
thanks for your loyal help,
Ever yours, Vincent
I kept this letter back because I wanted to send you the
small drawings at the same time, but they still need more work.
One is finished, though, namely another fish drying shed.
Sien and I have been camping in the dunes from
morning till night for days on end, like real Bohemians. We
took bread along and a small bag of coffee and fetched hot
water from a hot-water-&-coals woman in Scheveningen.
That hot-water-&-coals woman and her surroundings are
marvellous, charming beyond words, I've called at her little
shop as early as 5 o'clock in the morning when the
street-sweepers go there for their coffee. My dear fellow, that
would really be something to draw!!! Just getting the people I
want to pose would cost a pretty penny, but I've a good mind to
do it.
Write to me when you get a chance, particularly what you
think of these last three drawings. And also if it is really
your view that I ought to be more afraid than I am of being
placed under guardianship, to my mind an impossible
eventuality. Because I should not remain indifferent if steps
were actually being taken, that goes without saying. Having to
go to Etten would be most inconvenient for me right now, in the
first place because I'm so busy, and 2nd because the
trip would cost more than I feel I can afford and I would
sooner spend it on Sien.
I think it a delightful prospect that you are coming, I am
longing to know what impression Sien will make on you. There is
nothing special about her, she is just an ordinary woman of the
people who has something of the sublime for me. Whoever loves a
plain, ordinary person and has endeared himself to her is happy
- despite the dark side of life. Had she not needed help last
winter then the bond between her and me would not have been
forged in the circumstances, that is after my disappointment
and spurned love. As it was, however, it was precisely the
feeling of being able to do something useful après tout
[after all], despite that disappointment, that brought me to
myself again and revived me. Not that I went out looking for
it, but I found it, and now there is a warm affection between
her and me and it would be quite wrong to give that up.
I might easily have grown disenchanted and sceptical if I
had not met Sien - but she and my work now keep me going. And I
should like to add this: because Sien has taken to all the toil
and moil of a painter's life and is so willing to pose, I think
I shall become a better artist with her than if I had ended up
with Kee Vos. For though Sien is not as graceful, and her
manners are perhaps, or rather certainly, quite different, she
is so full of goodwill and dévouement [devotion] that I
am moved by it.
Heyerdahl has seen Sorrow now, but I should be glad if a
draughtsman, for instance Henri Pille, could have a look at the
last three drawings. I'm sure H. Pille no longer remembers me -
though I have been in his company and know that he is someone
who can behave very oddly at times - and I don't know whether
he would say anything. But all I should want to know is whether
the drawings make any impression on him and if they appeal to
him. I say this in case you run into Henri Pille from time to
time, for it would have to be as if by chance that you let him
see them.
I must also repeat that I am getting on very well with my
collection of woodcuts, which I regard as belonging to you,
with me holding a life-interest in them. I now have a good
thousand sheets of English (mainly Swains), American and
French. And Rappard, for instance, who is also collecting them
these days, was greatly taken with them. So that is something
which belongs to you though you haven't seen it yet. I only
regret that I was unable to buy Doré's London recently,
for which the Jew asked 7.50 guilders, which I couldn't afford.
And also a Boetzel Album. Anyway, when you come here, you shall
have a look at them and, I hope, like them, and perhaps through
them become acquainted with some artists of whom you knew
little or nothing until now.
Vincent
At this time, Vincent was 29 year oldSource: Vincent van Gogh. Letter to Theo van Gogh. Written 1-2 June 1882 in The Hague. Translated by Mrs. Johanna van Gogh-Bonger, edited by Robert Harrison, number 204. URL: https://www.webexhibits.org/vangogh/letter/11/204.htm.
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