Amice Rappard,
Thanks for your letter, which I received this morning. I'm
glad to see that you took all that I told you in such a
good-natured way. Later when I find an opportunity to tell you
more particulars to explain the circumstances more clearly, I
hope you will not have to change your opinion that I have acted
honestly and in good faith. I have to do with a woman who had
one foot in the grave when I met her, and whose mind and
nervous system were also upset and unbalanced - whose only
chance of staying alive was what that professor at Leyden had
prescribed: a regular home life. And even then it will take
years before she is entirely normal again.
As to her past life, I believe that you condemn
“fallen women” no more than I do. Frank Hol once
expressed it this way - in a drawing which as far as I know has
not yet been reproduced - he called the drawing “Her
Poverty but Not Her Will Consents.” Amice, at this very
moment I can think of no fewer than four women in this town
(mine included) who have either fallen, or have been deceived
and deserted, and have illegitimate children, and their fate is
so melancholy that it is difficult to think of, especially as
three of them have hardly a chance of getting out of their
misery - that is, in theory they do, but not in practice, as I
see it. And I feel obliged to add that I do not consider my
relation with the woman in question as something of a passing
nature.
My words about a past disappointment are based on something
I won't speak about - at least not now. And yet I think it
right to tell you this much. Suppose a man experiences a
disappointment through a cruel injury to his love, a
disappointment so deep that he is calmly desperate and
desolate - such a condition is possible, for there is something
like the white heat of steel or iron. Feeling that he
has been disappointed irrevocably and absolutely, and carrying
within himself the consciousness of it as a deadly, at least an
incurable, wound, and yet going about his ordinary affairs with
an unruffled countenance... would it be inexplicable to you
that a man in this condition should feel a singular sympathy,
involuntary and unintentional, for somebody he meets who is
deeply unhappy, oh, perhaps unhappy beyond redress? And that,
notwithstanding this, that sympathy or love or tie should be
and remain strong? When Love is dead, is it impossible
for Charity to be alive and awake still?
And now allow me to start talking about the wood engravings.
Thc daily work is something that does not change, and it is
less dangerous to be absorbed in it than to stare into the
unfathomable.
I have found another beautiful Jacque,
“Woodcutters” - unfortunately covered with colours
from a child's paintbox - but I have washed most of it off. It
is a very lovely sheet.
Two Daumiers: “Those who have seen a drama meeting
those who have seen a vaudeville” - “Lovers of
Pictures.”
Two females (one with a child), sitting and chatting, by
Oberländer, and by the same, two old men who seem to be
discussing abstruse official business. Both of them uncommonly
typical.
Fine Edmond Morins, especially the “Chestnut Trees in
the Champs Elysées,” a “Race” and a
“Wine Harvest.” John Lewis Brown's “Hunters
in the Wood.” “The Fall of the Leaf” by G.
Doré - a very old Doré, roughly done but
excellent in sentiment. “Gypsies” by Valerio;
Renouard's “Beggars on New Year's Day.”
These are some of the new sheets I have.
I am glad you have taken Harper's Christmas Papers; perhaps
this publication is also too good to last. How beautiful
Abbey's “Winter Girl” and “Dutch
Patrol” are.
Judging from these, you can imagine how excellent his big
sheet “Christmas in Old Virginia” is. Swain has
engraved it in such a way that it has remained exactly like the
pen-and-ink drawing - “it does not look cut at
all”1 - as little as Caldecott's
“Brighton Promenade,” which I think you have.
I know Harper's magazine from some old issues in my
possession; I am considering subscribing for this year, but
perhaps there will be a chance of getting it secondhand by the
end of the year.
Do you know that I am carrying on a correspondence just at
present about the way such sheets - those in the Christmas
Papers, for instance - are done?
I am still keeping a beautiful sheet by Dagnan for you,
“Jardin des Tuileries,” and one by Montbard,
“Arab Beggars,” and certainly some smaller ones
besides the duplicates from the Graphic.
Before your illness you wrote me that you had a duplicate of
Heilbuth's “Two Ladies in a Boat.” This is the one
that is missing from my collection, although I have other large
Heilbuths, so I wish to remind you of it.
I don't remember whether I wrote you about the Caldecott
illustrations for Washington Irving's Sketch Book - “Old
Christmas” and “Bracebridge Hall.”
Two sixpenny books, published by Macmillan & Co., London
- in each of them a hundred little drawings by Caldecott, but
sometimes they are so beautiful that they remind you of
Menzel.
I should like to know sometime what the theme of De Groux's
“Winter in Brussels” is.
Have I written you about Lhermitte? He seems to be the
Master of Black and White drawing; they say of him, “He
is the Millet and Jules Breton of Black and White.” In a
“general survey” there is mention, among other
things, of women saying their prayers on the Brittany cliffs, a
“Banc des Pauvres,” and an “Old
Market.”
Although in consequence of having taken the woman and her
two children into my house I have had some unpleasant
experiences - some of them very nasty indeed - still the
encounter has given me a certain calm and serenity. And I
worked hard this winter. I had some very striking models.
2
I think I have at least 150 drawings that you have not seen
yet.
The changes in my household, instead of causing me to work
less, have caused me to work more; I worked even with a sort of
fury, but a quiet fury, if you will allow me to use the
expression. I also started reading again, which I had neglected
for some time.
I think you will be delighted with the baby - those who
abandon a woman when she is pregnant know not what they do -
such a baby can be said to bring a rayon d'en haut - a ray from
heaven - into the house. As for the woman herself, do you
remember what Gavarni said? - “Il y a une creature,
insupportable, bête, méchante, c'est la jeune
fille; il y a une creature sublime et dévouée
c'est cette fille devenue mère.” [A young girl is
an unbearable, stupid, vicious creature: a sublime and devoted
creature is that same girl as a mother.] I don't think these
words are meant to stigmatize all young women or girls
absolutely - of course not - but they are meant to show that
something vain in a woman before she has become a mother is
replaced by something sublime later on, when she is working
hard for her children.
I saw a little figure by Paterson in the Graphic, an
illustration for Hugo's Quatre-vingt-treize3 called
“Dolorosa.” It struck me because it resembles the woman
at the time I found her. In the same book there is a scene of a
proud, hard-hearted man who is suddenly softened by seeing two
children in danger - he forgets his own danger and saves the
children, even though he is selfish by nature. One never finds
an exact likeness of oneself in a book - but one occasionally
finds things taken from nature in general which are in one's
own heart in a vague and indeterminate way.
I find much that is true in Dickens's The Haunted Man. Do
you know it? Neither in Quatre-vingt-treize nor in The Haunted
Man do I find my own self - everything is different,
occasionally even quite the opposite - but much that has gone
on in my mind is reawakened when I read such books.
Adieu, with a handshake,
Ever yours, Vincent
-
Vincent wrote this in English.
-
See letter 266 to Theo, after February 8, 1883
-
The original title is `93, that is, 1793, the year of
the Reign of Terror in France.
At this time, Vincent was 29 year oldSource: Vincent van Gogh. Letter to Anthon van Rappard. Written c. 7 February 1883 in The Hague. Translated by Mrs. Johanna van Gogh-Bonger, edited by Robert Harrison, number R21. URL: https://www.webexhibits.org/vangogh/letter/12/R21.htm.
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