Dear brother,
I just received your letter, many thanks for it.
I will tell you a few more of my experiences here. In the
first place, I had a letter from Rappard from West
Terschelling, and he is very hard at work there, first having
been here in Drenthe at Rolde, in the neighbourhood of Assen. I
hope to go and see him there this winter, and make a few
studies - unless it is difficult to cross to Terschelling; as
far as I can make out, the journey there and back will cost
about 3 guilders.
But it is certainly worth that much to be with a painter
again, and it will break my solitude.
I long very much for your next letter, which I hope will
come soon. Do not forget to tell me the result of your approach
to C. M., whether you have told him I was here and if that
letter also remained unanswered.
If so, I shall most certainly go and call on C. M. someday -
not now, of course - to ask him to explain why he didn't
answer. I will not write to him, but I am firmly resolved not
to put up with his not answering, especially not answering
you, and in addition, his not answering me.
I have never pretended that he was obliged to do something,
nor do I now. I consider what he did or might do a favour, for
which I have always thanked him; and for my part, I have given
him studies for it, at least fifty in all, with the right to
exchange them later.
This being so, I certainly need not put up with insults, and
it is a decided insult that he did not acknowledge the receipt
of the past packages of studies. Not a syllable.
And if it should happen that your letter remains
unanswered too, then it would be cowardly to let the matter
rest, and in that case I shall and must demand an
explanation, and, as I said, even if I have to postpone it for
some time, I shall do so very resolutely and by means of a
personal visit. I would certainly not drop the matter in case
he should be unwilling to receive me, for I am firmly resolved
to get satisfaction. If he is willing to give it, all right
then; but if he should refuse (I did not make use of a single
discourteous expression in addressing him, I only wrote in a
very cool vein), if he should refuse, then I shall tell
him to give me - and I have a right to tell him so - an
eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, and then in my turn I
shall insult him without restraint, quite cold-bloodedly.
Listen well, brother, understand this once and for all -
however desirable it may be to get some financial help, this is
far from being the principal thing. The principal thing is that
he goes too far in losing sight of my rights as a human being.
Even if I were a stranger (I never mention our relationship, I
never count on that), I could not endure being treated as a
reprobate, being judged or accused of things without being
heard myself. I have the right, the full right, to
demand an answer, and I must take it as a gross insult
if he remains silent.
I must speak about this without reserve, seeing that until
now I had thought matters would come out right of their own
accord, and I should receive a few words in reply. But this
suffering in silence has its limits, and, as I said, beyond
these limits it would be cowardly and unmanly of me not to make
a stern protest.
So I beg you simply to tell me the result of your letter,
then I shall know for myself what to do. I will not say another
word about it, and even if more than a year passes over it, I
will retain - just as untarnished, clear and bright as at this
moment - the same conviction that I must have an explanation,
and I will not rest before I have settled this matter with him
in some way or other.
I believe you will approve of this feeling, even more so if
you knew exactly what happened between him and me years ago,
when I was very skeptical about the plan of studying, whether
the promise to carry it through was sincere and well
considered. I then thought that they had made the plan rashly
and that I had approved of it rashly. And in my opinion it
always remains an excellent thing that a stop was put to it
then, which I brought about on purpose and arranged so that the
shame of giving it up fell on me, and on nobody else. You
understand that I, who have learned other languages, might have
managed also to master that miserable little bit of Latin -
which I declared, however, to be too much for me.
That I did not lack courage, I tried to prove by going to
the Borinage, where life was certainly much harder than it
would have been for me if I had become a student.
I thought that C. M., for instance, might have understood me
better, and I have all the more reason to think him
inconsiderate when I think how he has treated me with a certain
suspicion since then. Then and now I have kept
back a lot of things I might have said, but when the time comes
for me to attack him, he will feel in his conscience, whatever
he may say, that neither in the past nor at present have I ever
committed a base action towards him, so that there are no
reasonable grounds for this insult of not answering. The more
so as it would have been better if, from the moment I went to
The Hague, we had let bygones be bygones, and all had been
forgiven and forgotten, and we had decided to be on good terms
with each other, as I told His Honour at the time. But,
brother, I do not say peace at any price, and I
prefer an unpleasant explanation to a poor-spirited letting
things slide, whenever this would really be poor-spirited.
But be assured that I shall not mention you, although it is
a fact that if he will not undo his insulting you (I have the
impression he is inaugurating the same policy toward you), it
makes my resolve to have it out with His Honour inexorable, and
it is my firm intention to tell him a lot of home truths. Only
I promise you that I shall seem to be speaking for myself
alone, as if I did not know anything about you.
I have the deepest contempt for this mysterious, sphynxlike
silence, and I hereby declare to you, I find it anything but
straight and honest or upright. It may be like the general
politics of the present day, I know that very well, but you
know that I don't agree with the general politics of the
present day, because I consider them mean and carrying all the
signs of decadence which will lead to a regular periwig and
pigtail period! One might almost weep over what is now spoiled
on every side; what our predecessors gave their honest labour
to is now neglected and abandoned in a cowardly way. The time
we live in is perhaps outwardly a little more respectable than
the one that is past, but the nobleness is disappearing too
fast, so that one no longer expects from the future the same
great things which they did in the past. Well, everybody must
find his own way.
Now, to change the subject (but it was necessary to deal
with this matter, though I do not like writing about it in the
slightest), I come back to my experiences here. The more I walk
around here, the better I like Hoogeveen, and I do not doubt
that it will remain so.
Even without C. M.'s help. And I am afraid this will be the
case, in the long run it will be cheaper here than in The
Hague. But without C. M.'s help, I shall have to stint myself
for a certain time before I can carry out my plans. And
perhaps, after all, nothing will be lost by it.
But the fact is that I need money, and a supply of colours
and various other things, before I can expect any good results
from a ramble through the southeast corner of Drenthe.
But in six months, for instance, I hope to have saved up
enough, and in the meantime I shall be able to make some things
here. So for the present I will not go farther, but stay here
and work in the neighbourhood. I will try to save some money
for two trips, one to the southeast district, one through the
moors between here and Assen. And I hope to combine the visit
to friend Rappard with the latter excursion northward, and to
stay awhile in Terschelling, at his inn called “The
Shiplet.”
It would be too reckless to undertake these two excursions
if one did so without a stock of materials and without taking
the necessary precautions. But with patience they will be
possible, for I see clearly enough that I have fewer expenses
here than in The Hague. And before undertaking them, I want to
pay back Rappard, though it may be that later I shall borrow
some more from him after having seen him, and when I know for
sure that it will help me make something in particular.
At first I had some bad luck with my models on the heath;
they laughed at me, and made fun of me, and I could not finish
some studies of the figure I had started because of the
unwillingness of the models, notwithstanding that I had paid
them well, at least by local standards.
However, I did not give up, and on that same spot I
concentrated on one single family, from which I can now have an
old woman, a girl, and a man, and I hope they will remain
willing. I have made a few studies of the heath which I shall
send you when they are dry, and I have also started a few
watercolours. And I began some pen drawings too, just with a
view to painting, because with the pen one can enter into such
details as are impossible in painted studies, and it is
advisable to make two studies, one solely drawn for the
composition and one painted for the colour. That is to say, if
it is possible and circumstances permit, this is the way to put
vigour into the painted studies later on.
The heath is splendid, and there are marshy meadows that
often remind me of Th. Rousseau.
Well, I can tell you that the country air and life here are
doing me a lot of good.
I am worried about her because I have not heard anything,
and must conclude that either she did not want or was not able
to do the things I advised her to do. I can hardly even write
to her, because in the first place, as long as she continues to
live in Bagijnestraat, I know that my letter will probably be
opened by her brother or her mother; and in the second place,
as long as she lives there, I do not want to have
anything to do with them, not even with her. Well,
perhaps I may hear something yet, but if not, it will give me a
melancholy feeling. I had hoped to have news from an address
other than Bagijnestraat, namely that she had started a small
laundry with her mother.
Oh, Theo, if she hadn't had any family, she would have
behaved so much better. Women of her kind are certainly bad,
but in the first place they are infinitely - oh, infinitely
more to be pitied than condemned; and in the second place they
have a certain passion, a certain warmth, which is so truly
human that the virtuous people might take them as an example,
and I for my part understand Jesus's words when He said to the
superficially civilized, the respectable people of His time,
“The harlots go into the Kingdom of God before
you.”
Women like her can be thoroughly bad (I do not speak here of
the Nanas, hot blooded and voluptuous, but of the more nervous,
reflective temperaments among them), women like her quite
justify Proudhon's saying, “La femme est la
désolation du juste” [Woman is the desolation of
the just]; they do not care at all for what we call reason, and
they act straightway and wickedly against it. I know that, but
on the other hand they have that truly human feeling, so that
one cannot but like them and cannot but spare them, and it
makes one feel there is some good in them, a something very
good even though one cannot define it otherwise than as a
“je ne sais quoi qui fait qu'on les aime après
tout” [I don't know what makes one like them after
all].
Gavarni was quite serious when he said, “Avec chacune
que j'ai quittée, j'ai senti quelque chose se mourir en
moi.” [With every one of them whom I have left I felt
something die within me.] And the most beautiful saying and the
best I know about women is the one you also know,
“O femme que j'aurais aimée” [O woman
whom I might have loved], and one should like to enter
eternity with it - without wanting to know any more about it
than that. I know that there are women absurd enough to be
entirely governed by ambition (they do even more harm with it
than men). Lady Macbeth is the archetype of such; these women
are dangerous, and notwithstanding their charm, one must avoid
them, or one becomes a scoundrel, and in a short time finds
oneself face to face with a terrible evil one has committed and
can never repair. But that was not the case with the one whom I
was with, though she was vain, as we all are at times; the only
thing I felt in the beginning was, Poor, poor, poor creature,
and I still feel it at the end. Bad? que soit? but who is there
that is good in these times? What man feels himself so pure
that he can set himself to judge? Far from it. Delacroix would
have understood her, I say, and I sometimes think God's mercy
will understand her even better.
As I told you, the little boy was very fond of me, and when
I was already on the train, I still had him on my lap. And so I
think we parted from both sides with inexpressible sadness, but
not more than that.
I tell you, brother, I am not good from a clergyman's point
of view. I know full well that, frankly speaking, prostitutes
are bad, but I feel something human in them which prevents me
from feeling the slightest scruple about associating with them;
I see nothing very wrong in them. I haven't the slightest
regret about any past or present association with them. If our
society were pure and well regulated, yes, then they would be
seducers; but now, in my opinion, one may often consider them
more as sisters of charity.
And now, as in other periods when civilization is in
a decline, the corruption of society has turned all the
relations of good and evil upside down, and one falls back
logically upon the old saying, “The first shall be last,
and the last shall be first.”
Like you, I have visited “Père Lachaise.”
I have seen there graves of marble, for which I have an
indescribable respect.
I am speaking rather seriously in this letter, not because I
think Father's feelings and opinion wrong in everything - far
from it; in many things you will do well to follow Father's
advice. We spoke about Father during your visit here, as you
will remember, and also at the moment of your departure - but I
can now express in clear terms what I felt only vaguely at the
time: If you speak with Father, then think of Corot at
the same time; then you will be able to avoid certain extremes,
to which Father is far too much inclined; but as I see it,
provided there is less inflexibility, Father's advice is
generally sound, and I myself have taken it more than once. But
I just want to point out that Father and many others do not
know that besides their own righteous lives - for Father's
life is righteous - there are other righteous lives in a milder
spirit, like Corot's, Béranger's, for instance. At all
events you, and I too, feel this more strongly. Because Father
and others do not know this, they are often hopelessly
mistaken in their judgement of certain things, mistakes of the
kind that, for instance, C. M. makes, who feels sure that De
Groux is a bad man, in which, however sure he may be of it, he
is mistaken.
I will tell you another thing now, to prove to you that I am
not speaking abstractly, but about things of foundation and
substance.
Do you want an example of somebody who origionally possessed
an ordinary good Dutch character and feeling, and yet has since
modified that feeling, having thought better of it, and who, I
think, will modify it even more? Then I mention as an example
Rappard, who now is already much more gentle and humane than
when I first became acquainted with him. In my opinion, he has
improved greatly, though he was good already; but I am afraid
that not everybody will think so, and that he has been in
conflict about it already. It is true he was good already, but
still he became dissatisfied with that, and is now
deeper and more humane than he was. It has not made his life
easier - he used to have less inner struggle - I am sure of
that, for I used to call him jokingly “the tranquil
conscience,” and teased him about it, which I no longer
do at all now, because I see a revolution has taken place in
him. He is a little less elegant, and he is much less
superficial as a man, and a certain germ of genius has begun to
develop, and he has sailed clear of the cliff of
“withering.”
As to people who honestly seek the best, I think what Hugo
says so true: Il y a le rayon noir et il y a le rayon
blanc. [There is a black ray and there is a white ray.] In
my opinion, Father has more the rayon noir and Corot has more
the rayon blanc, but both have a rayon d'en haut.
So I do not call anybody we mentioned bad, quand même
I do not; but I say that the rayon noir has a perilous side.
And as I have more than once thought over what you said on the
station platform when you went away, I now say by way of
explanation of what I could not find words for at the time: I
know Father is Father, but there is something apart from that,
namely what we may call the rayon blanc. And in this I find
more positive, more veritable peace, and my attention is much
more fixed on it.
As to Millet, he is, above all others, the man who has this
white light. Millet has a gospel, and I ask you, isn't there a
difference between a drawing of his and a nice sermon? The
sermon becomes black by comparison, even supposing the sermon
to be good in itself.
I know that you too are having a hard struggle these days,
though I do not know exactly how or what it is. At all events I
tell you exactly what I think about some things out of
sympathy, because I, too, have had a hard struggle, and have it
still.
And more and more I wish this white light were yours. Thanks
for what you sent me, and a handshake in thought,
Yours sincerely, Vincent
At this time, Vincent was 30 year oldSource: Vincent van Gogh. Letter to Theo van Gogh. Written c. 22 September 1883 in Drenthe. Translated by Mrs. Johanna van Gogh-Bonger, edited by Robert Harrison, number 326. URL: https://www.webexhibits.org/vangogh/letter/13/326.htm.
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