CONTENTS
Contents
About the Book
About the Author
Also by Irving Stone
Title Page
Dedication
PROLOGUE: LONDON
1. L’ange aux poupons; 2. Goupil and Company; 3. In its own image love creates love; 4. “Let’s forget it, shall we?”; 5. The Van Goghs; 6. “Why, you’re nothing but a country boor!”; 7. Ramsgate and Isleworth.
I. THE BORINAGE
1. Amsterdam; 2. Kay; 3. A stuffy, provincial clergyman; 4. Latin and Greek; 5. Mendes da Costa; 6. Where lies the greater strength?; 7. Evangelical school; 8. The Blackjaw; 9. A miner’s hat; 10. Success!; 11. Terril: 12. Marcasse; 13. A lesson in economics; 14. Fragile; 15. Black Egypt; 16. Exit God; 17. Bankruptcy; 18. An incident of little importance; 19. As one artist to another; 20. Enter Theo; 21. The old mill at Ryswyk.
II. ETTEN
1. “There’s a living in that!”; 2. Fou; 3. The student; 4. Mijnheer Tersteeg; 5. Anton Mauve; 6. Kay comes to Etten; 7. “No, never, never!”; 8. There are some cities in which a man is forever ill-fated.
III. THE HAGUE
1. The first studio; 2. Christine; 3. Work in progress; 4. A man needs a woman; 5. “You must hurry and begin to sell!”; 6. Goodness grows in curious places; 7. Savoir souffrir sans se plaindre; 8. The merciless sword; 9. Love; 10. The Holy Family; 11. Theo comes to The Hague; 12. Fathers are funny; 13. L’art, c’est un combat; 14. —And so is marriage.
IV. NUENEN
1. A studio in the vicarage; 2. The weavers; 3. Margot; 4. “It’s loving that’s important, not being loved”; 5. Whither thou goest; 6. Inquisition; 7. “Your work is almost salable, but . . .”; 8. The Potato Eaters.
V. PARIS
1. “Ah, yes, Paris!”; 2. The explosion; 3. “Why should anyone want to be a count when he can be a painter?”; 4. Portrait of a primitive; 5. Painting must become a science! 6. Rousseau gives a party; 7. A poor wretch who hanged himself; 8. Art goes amoral; 9. Père Tanguy; 10. The Petit Boulevard; 11. Art for the workingman; 12. The Communist Art Colony; 13. Southward, ever southward to the sun!
VI. ARLES
1. Earthquake or revolution?; 2. The painting machine; 3. Le Pigeon; 4. Postman; 5. The Yellow House; 6. Maya; 7. Gauguin arrives; 8. The sound and the fury; 9. Fou-rou; 10. “In existing society, the painter is but a broken vessel.”
VII. ST. REMY
1. Third Class Carriage; 2. The fraternity of fous; 3. An old crock is an old crock; 4. “I discovered painting when I no longer had teeth or breath.”
VIII. AUVERS
1. The first one-man exhibition; 2. A specialist in nervous diseases; 3. One cannot paint good-bye; 4. A more resilient earth; 5. “And in their death they were not divided.”
Note
Copyright
The classic fictional biography of Vincent Van Gogh. No artist was ever more ruthlessly driven by his creative urge, nor more isolated by it from most ordinary sources of human happiness, than Van Gogh. A painter of genius, his life was an incessant struggle against poverty, discouragement, madness and despair.
Lust for Life skilfully captures the exciting atmosphere of the Paris of the Post-Impressionists and reconstructs with great insight the development of Van Gogh‘s art. The painter is brought to life not only as an artist but as a personality and this account of his violent, vivid and tormented life is a novel of rare compassion and vitality.
Irving Stone was born in San Francisco in 1903 and received his B.A. from the University of California, Berkley in 1923 and his Master’s degree from the University of Southern California in 1924. He wrote plays and supported himself by writing detective stories until the publication of Lust for Life, his first novel, in 1934. Stone called his work “bio-history” and based his novels on meticulous and extensive research into the lives of the historical characters at the heart of his novels. He married his editor, Jean Factor, in 1934. He founded the Academy of American Poets in 1962. He died in Los Angeles in 1989.
Clarence Darrow for the Defence
They Also Ran
Immortal Wife
President’s Lady
Love is Eternal
The Agony and the Ecstasy*
The President’s Lady
The Origin
*also available in Arrow Books
To the memory of my mother
“MONSIEUR VAN GOGH! It’s time to wake up!”
Vincent had been waiting for Ursula’s voice even while he slept.
“I was awake, Mademoiselle Ursula,” he called back.
“No you weren’t,” the girl laughed, “but you are now.” He heard her go down the stairs and into the kitchen.
Vincent put his hands under him, gave a shove, and sprang out of bed. His shoulders and chest were massive, his arms thick and powerful. He slipped into his clothes, poured some cold water out of the ewer, and stropped his razor.
Vincent enjoyed the daily ritual of the shave; down the broad cheek from the right sideburn to the corner of the voluptuous mouth; the right half of the upper lip from the nostril out, then the left half; then down the chin, a huge, rounded slab of warm granite.
He stuck his face into the wreath of Brabantine grass and oak leaves on the chiffonier. His brother Theo had gathered it from the heath near Zundert and sent it to London for him. The smell of Holland in his nose started the day off right.
“Monsieur Van Gogh,” called Ursula, knocking on the door again, “the postman just left this letter for you.”
He recognized his mother’s handwriting as he tore open the envelope. “Dear Vincent,” he read, “I am going to put a word to bed on paper for you.”
His face felt cold and damp so he stuck the letter into his trouser pocket, intending to read it during one of his many leisure moments at Goupils. He combed back his long, thick, yellow-red hair, put on a stiff white shirt, low collar and a large knotted four-in-hand black tie and descended to breakfast and Ursula’s smile.
Ursula Loyer and her mother, the widow of a Provençal curate, kept a kindergarten for boys in a little house in the back garden. Ursula was nineteen, a smiling, wide-eyed creature with a delicate, oval face, pastel colouring and a small, slender figure. Vincent loved to watch the sheen of laughter which, like the glow from a highly coloured parasol, was spread over her piquant face.
Ursula served with quick, dainty movements, chatting vivaciously while he ate. He was twenty-one and in love for the first time. Life opened out before him. He thought he would be a fortunate man if he could eat breakfast opposite Ursula for the rest of his days.
Ursula brought in a rasher of bacon, an egg, and a cup of strong, black tea. She fluttered into a chair across the table from him, patted the brown curls at the back of her head, and smiled at him while she passed the salt, pepper, butter and toast in quick succession.
“Your mignonette is coming up a bit,” she said, wetting her lips with her tongue. “Will you have a look at it before you go to the gallery?”
“Yes,” he replied. “Will you, that is, would you . . . show me?”
“What a droll person he is! He plants the mignonette himself and then doesn’t know where to find it.” She had a habit of speaking about people as though they were not in the room.
Vincent gulped. His manner, like his body, was heavy and he did not seem able to find the right words for Ursula. They went into the yard. It was a cool April morning, but the apple trees had already blossomed. A little garden separated the Loyer House from the kindergarten. Just a few days before, Vincent had sown poppies and sweet peas. The mignonette was pushing through the earth. Vincent and Ursula squatted on either side of it, their heads almost touching. Ursula had a strong, natural perfume of the hair.
“Mademoiselle Ursula,” he said.
“Yes?” She withdrew her head, but smiled at him questioningly.
“I . . . I . . . that is . . .”
“Dear me, what can you be stuttering about?” she asked, and jumped up. He followed her to the door of the kindergarten. “My poupons will be here soon,” she said. “Won’t you be late at the gallery?”
“I have time. I walk to the Strand in forty-five minutes.”
She could think of nothing to say, so she reached behind her with both arms to catch up a tiny wisp of hair that was escaping. The curves of her body were surprisingly ample for so slender a figure.
“Whatever have you done with that Brabant picture you promised me for the kindergarten?” she asked.
“I sent a reproduction of one of Caesar de Cock’s sketches to Paris. He is going to inscribe it for you.”
“Oh, delightful!” She clapped her hands, swung a short way about on her hips, then turned back again. “Sometimes, Monsieur, just sometimes, you can be most charming.”
She smiled at him with her eyes and mouth, and tried to go. He caught her by the arm. “I thought of a name for you after I went to bed,” he said. “I called you l’ange aux poupons.”
Ursula threw back her head and laughed heartily. ‘L’ange aux poupons!” she cried. “I must go tell it to Mother!”
She broke loose from his grip, laughed at him over a raised shoulder, ran through the garden and into the house.
VINCENT PUT ON his top hat, took his gloves, and stepped out into the road of Clapham. The houses were scattered at this distance from the heart of London. In every garden the lilacs and hawthorn and laburnums were in bloom.
It was eight-fifteen; he did not have to be at Goupils until nine. He was a vigorous walker, and as the houses thickened he passed an increasing number of business men on their way to work. He felt extremely friendly to them all; they too knew what a splendid thing it was to be in love.
He walked along the Thames Embankment, crossed Westminster Bridge, passed by Westminster Abbey and the Houses of Parliament, and turned into number 17 Southampton Street, Strand, the London quarters of Goupil and Company, Art Dealers and Publishers of Engravings.
As he walked through the main salon, with its thick carpets and rich draperies, he saw a canvas representing a kind of fish or dragon six yards long, with a little man hovering over it. It was called The Archangel Michael Killing Satan.
“There is a package for you on the lithograph table,” one of the clerks told him as he passed.
The second room of the shop, after one passed the picture salon in which were exhibited the paintings of Millais, Boughton, and Turner, was devoted to etchings and lithographs. It was in the third room, which looked more like a place of business than either of the others, that most of the sales were carried on. Vincent laughed as he thought of the woman who had made the last purchase the evening before.
“I can’t fancy this picture, Harry, can you?” she asked her husband. “The dog looks a rare bit like the one that bit me in Brighton last summer.”
“Look here, old fellow,” said Harry, “must we have a dog? They mostly put the missus in a stew.”
Vincent was conscious of the fact that he was selling very poor stuff indeed. Most of the people who came in knew absolutely nothing about what they were buying. They paid high prices for a cheap commodity, but what business was it of his? All he had to do was make the print room successful.
He opened the package from Goupils in Paris. It had been sent by Caesar de Cock and was inscribed, “To Vincent, and Ursula Loyer: Les amis de mes amis sont mes amis.”
“I’ll ask Ursula tonight when I give her this,” he murmured to himself. “I’ll be twenty-two in a few days and I’m earning five pounds a month. No need to wait any longer.”
The time in the quiet back room of Goupils passed very quickly. He sold on an average of fifty photographs a day for the Musée Goupil and Company, and although he would have preferred to deal in oil canvases and etchings, he was pleased to be taking in so much money for the house. He liked his fellow clerks and they liked him; they spent many pleasant hours together talking of things European.
As a young chap he had been slightly morose and had avoided companionship. People had thought him queer, a bit eccentric. But Ursula had changed his nature completely. She had made him want to be agreeable and popular; she had brought him out of himself and helped him to see the goodness in the ordinary pattern of daily life.
At six o’clock the store closed. Mr. Obach stopped Vincent on his way out. “I had a letter from your Uncle Vincent Van Gogh about you,” he said. “He wanted to know how you were coming on. I was happy to tell him that you are one of the best clerks in the store.”
“It was very good of you to say that, sir.”
“Not at all. After your summer vacation I want you to leave the back room and come forward into the etchings and lithographs.”
“That means a great deal to me at this moment, sir, because I . . . I’m going to be married!”
“Really? This is news. When is it to take place?”
“This summer, I suppose.” He hadn’t thought of the date before.
“Well, my boy, that’s splendid. You just had an increase the first of the year, but when you come back from your wedding trip I dare say we can manage another.”
“I’LL GET THE picture for you, Mademoiselle Ursula,” said Vincent after dinner, pushing back his chair.
Ursula was wearing a modishly embroidered dress of verdigris faye. “Did the artist write something nice for me?” she asked.
“Yes. If you’ll get a lamp I’ll hang it in the kindergarten for you.”
She pursed her lips to a highly kissable moue and looked at him sideways. “I must help Mother. Shall we make it in a half hour?”
Vincent rested his elbows on the chiffonier in his room and gazed into the mirror. He had rarely thought about his appearance; in Holland such things had not seemed important. He had noticed that in comparison to the English his face and head were ponderous. His eyes were buried in deep crevices of horizontal rock; his nose was high ridged, broad and straight as a shinbone; his dome-like forehead was as high as the distance from his thick eyebrows to the sensuous mouth; his jaws were wide and powerful, his neck a bit squat and thick, and his massive chin a living monument to Dutch character.
He turned away from the mirror and sat idly on the edge of the bed. He had been brought up in an austere home. He had never loved a girl before; he had never even looked at one or engaged in the casual banter between the sexes. In his love for Ursula there was nothing of passion or desire. He was young; he was an idealist; he was in love for the first time.
He glanced at his watch. Only five minutes had passed. The twenty-five minutes that stretched ahead seemed interminable. He drew a note from his brother Theo out of his mother’s letter and reread it. Theo was four years younger than Vincent and was now taking Vincent’s place in Goupils in The Hague. Theo and Vincent, like their father Theodorus and Uncle Vincent, had been favourite brothers all through their youth.
Vincent picked up a book, rested some paper on it, and wrote Theo a note. From the top drawer of the chiffonier he drew out a few rough sketches that he had made along the Thames Embankment and put them into an envelope for Theo along with a photograph of Young Girl with a Sword, by Jacquet.
“My word,” he exclaimed aloud, “I’ve forgotten all about Ursula!” He looked at his watch; he was already a quarter of an hour late. He snatched up a comb, tried to straighten out the tangle of wavy red hair, took Caesar de Cock’s picture from the table, and flung open the door.
“I thought you had forgotten me,” Ursula said as he came into the parlour. She was pasting together some paper toys for her poupons. “Did you bring my picture? May I see it?”
“I would like to put it up before you look. Did you fix a lamp?”
“Mother has it.”
When he returned from the kitchen she gave him a scarf of blue marine to wrap about her shoulders. He thrilled to the silken touch of it. In the garden there was the smell of apple blossoms. The path was dark and Ursula put the ends of her fingers lightly on the sleeve of his rough, black coat. She stumbled once, gripped his arm more tightly and laughed in high glee at her own clumsiness. He did not understand why she thought it funny to trip, but he liked to watch her body carry the laughter down the dark path. He held open the door of the kindergarten for her and as she passed, her delicately moulded face almost brushing his, she looked deep into his eyes and seemed to answer his question before he asked it.
He set the lamp down on the table. “Where would you like me to hang the picture?” he asked.
“Over my desk, don’t you think?”
There were perhaps fifteen low chairs and tables in the room of what had formerly been a summer house. At one end was a little platform supporting Ursula’s desk. He and Ursula stood side by side, groping for the right position for the picture. Vincent was nervous; he dropped the pins as fast as he tried to stick them into the wall. She laughed at him in a quiet, intimate tone.
“Here, clumsy, let me do it.”
She lifted both arms above her head and worked with deft movements of every muscle of her body. She was quick in her gestures, and graceful. Vincent wanted to take her in his arms, there in the dim light of the lamp, and settle with one sure embrace this whole tortuous business. But Ursula, though she touched him frequently in the dark, never seemed to get into position for it. He held the lamp up high while she read the inscription. She was pleased, clapped her hands, rocked back on her heels. She moved so much he could never catch up with her.
“That makes him my friend too, doesn’t it?” she asked. “I’ve always wanted to know an artist.”
Vincent tried to say something tender, something that would pave the way for his declaration. Ursula turned her face to him in the half shadow. The gleam from the lamp put tiny spots of light in her eyes. The oval of her face was framed in the darkness and something he could not name moved within him when he saw her red, moist lips stand out from the smooth paleness of her skin.
There was a meaningful pause. He could feel her reaching out to him, waiting for him to utter the unnecessary words of love. He wetted his lips several times. Ursula turned her head, looked into his eyes over a slightly raised shoulder, and ran out the door.
Terror stricken that his opportunity would pass, he pursued her. She stopped for a moment under the apple tree.
“Ursula, please.”
She turned and looked at him, shivering a bit. There were cold stars out. The night was black. He had left the lamp behind him. The only light came from the dim glow of the kitchen window. The perfume of Ursula’s hair was in his nostrils. She pulled the silk scarf tightly about her shoulders and crossed her arms on her chest.
“You’re cold,” he said.
“Yes. We had better go in.”
“No! Please, I . . .” He planted himself in her path.
She lowered her chin into the warmth of the scarf and looked up at him with wide, wondering eyes. “Why Monsieur Van Gogh, I’m afraid I don’t understand.”
“I only wanted to talk to you. You see. . . I. . . that is . . .”
“Please, not now. I’m shivering.”
“I thought you should know. I was promoted today . . . I’m going forward into the lithograph room . . . it will be my second increase in a year . . .”
Ursula stepped back, unwrapped the scarf, and stood resolutely in the night, quite warm without any protection.
“Precisely what are you trying to tell me, Monsieur Van Gogh?”
He felt the coolness in her voice and cursed himself for being so awkward. The emotion in him suddenly shut down; he felt calm and possessed. He tried a number of voices in his mind and chose the one he liked best.
“I am trying to tell you, Ursula, something you know already. That I love you with all my heart and can only be happy if you will be my wife.”
He observed how startled she looked at his sudden command of himself. He wondered if he ought to take her in his arms.
“Your wife!” Her voice rose a few tones. “Why Monsieur Van Gogh, that’s impossible!”
He looked at her from under mountain crags, and she saw his eyes clearly in the darkness. “Now I’m afraid it’s I who do not . . .”
“How extraordinary that you shouldn’t know. I’ve been engaged for over a year.”
He did not know how long he stood there, or what he thought or felt. “Who is the man?” he asked dully.
“Oh, you’ve never met my fiancé? He had your room before you came. I thought you knew.”
“How would I have?”
She stood on tiptoes and peered in the direction of the kitchen. “Well, I . . . I . . . thought someone might have told you.”
“Why did you keep this from me all year, when you knew I was falling in love with you?” There was no hesitation or fumbling in his voice now.
“Was it my fault that you fell in love with me? I only wanted to be friends with you.”
“Has he been to visit you since I’ve been in the house?”
“No. He’s in Wales. He’s coming to spend his summer holiday with me.”
“You haven’t seen him for over a year? Then you’ve forgotten him! I’m the one you love now!”
He threw sense and discretion to the winds, grabbed her to him and kissed her rudely on the unwilling mouth. He tasted the moistness of her lips, the sweetness of her mouth, the perfume of her hair; all the intensity of his love rose up within him.
“Ursula, you don’t love him. I won’t let you. You’re going to be my wife. I couldn’t bear to lose you. I’ll never stop until you forget him and marry me!”
“Marry you!” she cried. “Do I have to marry every man that falls in love with me? Now let go of me, do you hear, or I shall call for help.”
She wrenched herself free and ran breathlessly down the dark path. When she gained the steps she turned and spoke in a low carrying whisper that struck him like a shout.
“Red-headed fool!”
THE NEXT MORNING no one called him. He climbed lethargically out of bed. He shaved around his face in a circular swash, leaving several patches of beard. Ursula did not appear at breakfast. He walked downtown to Goupils. As he passed the same men that he had seen the morning before he noticed that they had altered. They looked like such lonely souls, hurrying away to their futile labours.
He did not see the laburnums in bloom nor the chestnut trees that lined the road. The sun was shining even more brightly than the morning before. He did not know it.
During the day he sold twenty épreuves d’artiste in colour of the Venus Anadyomene after Ingres. There was a big profit in these pictures for Goupils, but Vincent had lost his sense of delight in making money for the gallery. He had very little patience with the people who came in to buy. They not only could not tell the difference between good and bad art, but seemed to have a positive talent for choosing the artificial, the obvious, and the cheap.
His fellow clerks had never thought him a jolly chap, but he had done his best to make himself pleasant and agreeable. “What do you suppose is bothering the member of our illustrious Van Gogh family?” one of the clerks asked another.
“I dare say he got out of the wrong side of bed this morning.”
“A jolly lot he has to worry about. His uncle, Vincent Van Gogh, is half owner of all the Goupil Galleries in Paris, Berlin, Brussels, The Hague, and Amsterdam. The old man is sick and has no children; everyone says he’s leaving his half of the business to this chap.”
“Some people have all the luck.”
“That’s only half the story. His uncle, Hendrik Van Gogh, owns big art shops in Brussels and Amsterdam, and still another uncle, Cornelius Van Gogh, is the head of the biggest firm in Holland. Why, the Van Goghs are the greatest family of picture dealers in Europe. One day our red-headed friend in the next room will practically control Continental art!”
When Vincent walked into the dining room of the Loyers’ that night he found Ursula and her mother talking together in undertones. They stopped as soon as he came in, and left a sentence hanging in mid-air.
Ursula ran into the kitchen. “Good evening,” said Madame Loyer with a curious glint in her eye.
Vincent ate his dinner alone at the large table. Ursula’s blow had stunned but not defeated him. He simply was not going to take “no” for an answer. He would crowd the other man out of Ursula’s mind.
It was almost a week before he could catch her standing still long enough to speak to her. He had eaten and slept very little during that week; his stolidity had given way to nervousness. His sales at the gallery had dropped off considerably. The greenness had gone from his eyes and left them a pain-shot blue. He had more difficulty than ever in finding words when he wanted to speak.
He followed her into the garden after the big Sunday dinner. “Mademoiselle Ursula,” he said, “I’m sorry if I frightened you the other night.”
She glanced up at him out of large, cool eyes, as though surprised that he should have followed her.
“Oh, it doesn’t matter. It was of no importance. Let’s forget it, shall we?”
“I’d like very much to forget that I was rude to you. But the things I said were true.”
He took a step toward her. She moved away.
“Why speak of it again?” Ursula asked. “The whole episode has quite gone out of my mind.” She turned her back on him and walked down the path. He hurried after her.
“I must speak of it again. Ursula, you don’t understand how much I love you! You don’t know how unhappy I’ve been this past week. Why do you keep running away from me?”
“Shall we go in? I think Mother is expecting callers.”
“It can’t be true that you love this other man. I would have seen it in your eyes if you had.”
“I’m afraid I’ve not got any more time to spare. When did you say you were going home for your holiday?”
He gulped. “In July.”
“How fortunate. My fiancé is coming to spend his July holiday with me, and we’ll need his old room.”
“I’ll never give you up to him, Ursula.”
“You’ll simply have to stop this sort of thing. If you don’t, Mother says you can find new lodgings.”
He spent the next two months trying to dissuade her. All his early characteristics returned; if he could not be with Ursula he wanted to be by himself so that no one could interfere with his thinking about her. He was unfriendly to the people at the store. The world that had been awakened by Ursula’s love went fast asleep again and he became the sombre, morose lad his parents had known in Zundert.
July came, and with it his holiday. He did not wish to leave London for two weeks. He had the feeling that Ursula could not love anyone else as long as he was in the house.
He went down into the parlour. Ursula and her mother were sitting there. They exchanged one of their significant looks.
“I’m taking only one grip with me, Madame Loyer,” he said. “I shall leave everything in my room just as it is. Here is the money for the two weeks that I shall be away.”
“I think you had better take all your things with you, Monsieur Van Gogh,” said Madame.
“But why?”
“Your room is rented from Monday morning. We think it better if you live elsewhere.”
“We?”
He turned and looked at Ursula from under the deep ridge of brow. That look made no statement. It only asked a question.
“Yes, we,” replied her mother. “My daughter’s fiancé has written that he wants you out of the house. I’m afraid, Monsieur Van Gogh, that it would have been better if you had never come here at all.”
THEODORUS VAN GOGH met his son at the Breda station with a carriage. He had on his heavy, black ministerial coat, the wide lapelled vest, starched white shirt, and huge black bow tie covering all but a narrow strip of the high collar. With a quick glance Vincent took in his father’s two facial characteristics: the right lid drooped down lower than the left, covering a considerable portion of the eye; the left side of his mouth was a thin, taut line, the right side full and sensuous. His eyes were passive; their expression simply said, “This is me.”
The people of Zundert often remarked that the dominie Theodorus went about doing good with a high silk hat on.
He never understood to the day of his death why he was not more successful. He felt that he should have been called to an important pulpit in Amsterdam or The Hague years before. He was called the handsome dominie by his parishioners, was well educated, of a loving nature, had fine spiritual qualities, and was indefatigable in the service of God. Yet for twenty-five years he had been buried and forgotten in the little village of Zundert. He was the only one of the six Van Gogh brothers who had not achieved national importance.
The parsonage at Zundert, where Vincent had been born, was a wooden frame building across the road from the market place and stadhuis. There was a garden back of the kitchen with acacias and a number of little paths running through the carefully tended flowers. The church was a tiny wooden building hidden in the trees just behind the garden. There were two small Gothic windows of plain glass on either side, perhaps a dozen hard benches on the wooden floor, and a number of warming pans attached permanently to the planks. At the rear there was a stairway leading up to an old hand organ. It was a severe and simple place of worship, dominated by the spirit of Calvin and his reformation.
Vincent’s mother, Anna Cornelia, was watching from the front window and had the door open before the carriage came to a full stop. Even while taking him with loving tenderness to her ample bosom, she perceived that something was wrong with her boy.
“Myn lieve zoon,” she murmured. “My Vincent.”
Her eyes, now blue, now green, were always wide open, gently inquiring, seeing through a person without judging too harshly. A faint line from the side of each nostril down to the corners of the mouth deepened with the passage of the years, and the deeper these lines became, the stronger impression they gave of a face slightly lifted in smile.
Anna Cornelia Carbentus was from The Hague, where her father carried the title of “Bookbinder to the King.” William Carbentus’s business flourished and when he was chosen to bind the first Constitution of Holland he became known throughout the country. His daughters, one of whom married Uncle Vincent Van Gogh, and a third the well known Reverend Stricker of Amsterdam, were bien élevées.
Anna Cornelia was a good woman. She saw no evil in the world and knew of none. She knew only of weakness, temptation, hardship, and pain. Theodorus Van Gogh was also a good man, but he understood evil very thoroughly and condemned every last vestige of it.
The dining room was the centre of the Van Gogh house, and the big table, after the supper dishes had been cleared off, the centre of family life. Here everyone gathered about the friendly oil lamp to pass the evening. Anna Cornelia was worried about Vincent; he was thin, and had become jumpy in his mannerisms.
“Is anything wrong, Vincent?” she asked after supper that night. “You don’t look well to me.”
Vincent glanced about the table where Anna, Elizabeth, and Willemien, three strange young girls who happened to be his sisters, were sitting.
“No,” he said, “nothing is wrong.”
“Do you find London agreeable?” asked Theodorus. “If you don’t like it I’ll speak to your Uncle Vincent. I think he would transfer you to one of the Paris shops.”
Vincent became very agitated. “No, no, you mustn’t do that!” he exclaimed. “I don’t want to leave London, I . . .” He quieted himself. “When Uncle Vincent wants to transfer me, I’m sure he’ll think of it for himself.”
“Just as you wish,” said Theodorus.
“It’s that girl,” said Anna Cornelia to herself. “Now I understand what was wrong with his letters.”
There were pine woods and clumps of oaks on the heath near Zundert. Vincent spent his days walking alone in the fields, gazing down into the numerous ponds with which the heath was dotted. The only diversion he enjoyed was drawing; he made a number of sketches of the garden, the Saturday afternoon market seen from the window of the parsonage, the front door of the house. It kept his mind off Ursula for moments at a time.
Theodorus had always been disappointed that his oldest son had not chosen to follow in his footsteps. They went to visit a sick peasant and when they drove back that evening across the heath the two men got out of the carriage and walked awhile. The sun was setting red behind the pine trees, the evening sky was reflected in the pools, and the heath and yellow sand were full of harmony.
“My father was a parson, Vincent, and I had always hoped you would continue the line.”
“What makes you think I want to change?”
“I was only saying, in case you wanted to . . . You could live with Uncle Jan in Amsterdam while you attend the University. And the Reverend Stricker has offered to direct your education.”
“Are you advising me to leave Goupils?”
“Oh no, certainly not. But if you are unhappy there . . . sometimes people change. . . .”
“I know. But I have no intention of leaving Goupils.”
His mother and father drove him to Breda the day he was to leave for London. “Are we to write to the same address, Vincent?” Anna Cornelia asked.
“No. I’m moving.”
“I’m glad you’re leaving the Loyers,” said his father. “I never liked that family. They had too many secrets.”
Vincent stiffened. His mother laid a warm hand over his and said gently, so that Theodorus might not hear, “Don’t be unhappy, my dear. You will be better off with a nice Dutch girl, later, later, when you are more established. She would not be good for you, that Ursula girl. She is not your kind.”
He wondered how his mother knew.
BACK IN LONDON he took furnished rooms in Kensington New Road. His landlady was a little old woman who retired every evening at eight. There was never the faintest sound in the house. Each night he had a fierce battle on his hands; he yearned to run directly to the Loyers’. He would lock the door on himself and swear resolutely that he was going to sleep. In a quarter of an hour he would find himself mysteriously on the street, hurrying to Ursula’s.
When he got within a block of her house he felt himself enter her aura. It was torture to have this feel of her and yet have her so inaccessible; it was a thousand times worse torture to stay in Ivy Cottage and not get within that penumbra of haunting personality.
Pain did curious things to him. It made him sensitive to the pain of others. It made him intolerant of everything that was cheap and blatantly successful in the world about him. He was no longer of any value at the gallery. When customers asked him what he thought about a particular print he told them in no uncertain terms how horrible it was, and they did not buy. The only pictures in which he could find reality and emotional depth were the ones in which the artists had expressed pain.
In October a stout matron with a high lace collar, a high bosom, a sable coat, and a round velvet hat with a blue plume, came in and asked to be shown some pictures for her new town house. She fell to Vincent.
“I want the very best things you have in stock,” she said. “You needn’t concern yourself over the expense. Here are the dimensions; in the drawing room there are two uninterrupted walls of fifty feet, one wall broken by two windows with a space between . . .”
He spent the better part of the afternoon trying to sell her some etchings after Rembrandt, an excellent reproduction of a Venetian water scene after Turner, some lithographs after Thys Maris, and museum photographs after Corot and Daubigny. The woman had a sure instinct for picking out the very worst expression of the painter’s art to be found in any group that Vincent showed her. She had an equal talent for being able to reject at first sight, and quite peremptorily, everything he knew to be authentic. As the hours passed, the woman, with her pudgy features and condescending puerilities, became for him a perfect symbol of middle-class fatuity and the commercial life.
“There,” she exclaimed with a self-satisfied air, “I think I’ve chosen rather well.”
“If you had closed your eyes and picked,” said Vincent, “you couldn’t have done any worse.”
The woman rose to her feet heavily and swept the wide velvet skirt to one side. Vincent could see the turgid flow of blood creep from her propped-up bosom to her neck under the lace collar.
“Why!” she exclaimed, “why, you’re nothing but a . . . a . . . country boor!”
She stormed out, the tall feather in her velvet hat waving back and forth.
Mr. Obach was outraged. “My dear Vincent,” he exclaimed, “whatever is the matter with you? You’ve muffed the biggest sale of the week, and insulted that woman!”
“Mr. Obach, would you answer me one question?”
“Well, what is it? I have a few questions to ask, myself.”
Vincent shoved aside the woman’s prints and put both hands on the edge of the table. “Then tell me how a man can justify himself for spending his one and only life selling very bad pictures to very stupid people?”
Obach made no attempt to answer. “If this sort of thing keeps up,” he said, “I’ll have to write to your uncle and have him transfer you to another branch. I can’t have you ruining my business.”
Vincent moved aside Obach’s strong breath with a gesture of his hand. “How can we take such large profits for selling trash, Mr. Obach? And why is it that the only people who can afford to come in here are those who can’t bear to look at anything authentic? Is it because their money has made them callous? And why is it that the poor people who can really appreciate good art haven’t even a farthing to buy a print for their walls?”
Obach looked at him queerly. “What is this, socialism?”
When he reached home he picked up the volume of Renan lying on his table and turned to a page he had marked. “To act well in this world,” he read, “one must die within oneself. Man is not on this earth only to be happy, he is not there to be simply honest, he is there to realize great things for humanity, to attain nobility and to surpass the vulgarity in which the existence of almost all individuals drags on.”
About a week before Christmas the Loyers put up a dainty Christmas tree in their front window. Two nights later as he walked by he saw the house well lighted and neighbours going in the front door. He heard the sound of laughing voices inside. The Loyers were giving their Christmas party. Vincent ran home, shaved hurriedly, put on a fresh shirt and tie, and walked back as fast as he could to Clapham. He had to wait several minutes at the bottom of the stairs to catch his breath.
This was Christmas; the spirit of kindliness and forgiveness was in the air. He walked up the stairs. He pounded on the knocker. He heard a familiar footstep come through the hall, a familiar voice call back something to the people in the parlour. The door was opened. The light from the lamp fell on his face. He looked at Ursula. She was wearing a sleeveless green polonaise with large bows and lace cascades. He had never seen her so beautiful.
“Ursula,” he said.
An expression passed over her face that repeated clearly all the things she had said to him in the garden. Looking at her, he remembered them.
“Go away,” she said.
She slammed the door in his face.
The following morning he sailed for Holland.
Christmas was the busiest season for the Goupil Galleries. Mr. Obach wrote to Uncle Vincent, explaining that his nephew had taken a holiday without so much as a “with your leave.” Uncle Vincent decided to put his nephew into the main gallery in Rue Chaptal in Paris.
Vincent calmly announced that he was through with the art business. Uncle Vincent was stunned and deeply hurt. He declared that in the future he would wash his hands of Vincent. After the holidays he stopped washing them long enough to secure his namesake a position as clerk in the bookshop of Blussé and Braam at Dordrecht. It was the very last thing the two Vincent Van Goghs ever had to do with each other.
He remained at Dordrecht almost four months. He was neither happy nor unhappy, successful nor unsuccessful. He simply was not there. One Saturday night he took the last train from Dordrecht to Oudenbosch and walked home to Zundert. It was beautiful on the heath with all the cool, pungent smells of night. Though it was dark he could distinguish the pine woods and moors extending far and wide. It reminded him of the print by Bodmer that hung in his father’s study. The sky was overcast but the night stars were shining through the clouds. It was very early when he arrived at the churchyard at Zundert; in the distance he could hear the larks singing in the black fields of yong corn.
His parents understood that he was going through a difficult time. Over the summer the family moved to Etten, a little market town just a few kilometres away, where Theodorus had been named dominie. Etten had a large, elm-lined public square and a steam train connecting it with the important city of Breda. For Theodorus it was a slight step up.
When early fall came it was necessary once again to make a decision. Ursula was not yet married.
“You are not fitted for all these shops, Vincent,” said his father. “Your heart has been leading you straight to the service of God.”
“I know, Father.”
“Then why not go to Amsterdam and study?”
“I would like to, but. . .”
“There is still hesitation in your heart?”
“Yes. I can’t explain now. Give me a little more time.”
Uncle Jan passed through Etten. “There is a room waiting for you in my house in Amsterdam, Vincent,” he said.
“The Reverend Stricker has written that he can secure you good tutors,” added his mother.
When he received the gift of pain from Ursula he had inherited the disinherited of the earth. He knew that the best training he could get was at the University at Amsterdam. The Van Gogh and Stricker families would take him in, encourage him, help him with money, books, and sympathy. But he could not make the clean break. Ursula was still in England, unmarried. In Holland he had lost the touch of her. He sent for some English newspapers, answered a number of advertisements, and finally secured a position as teacher at Ramsgate, a seaport town four and a half hours by train from London.
MR. STOKES’S SCHOOLHOUSE stood on a square in the middle of which was a large lawn shut off by iron railings. There were twenty-four boys from ten to fourteen years of age at the school. Vincent had to teach French, German, and Dutch, keep an eye on the boys after hours, and help them with their weekly ablutions on Saturday night. He was given his board and lodging, but no pay.
Ramsgate was a melancholy spot but it suited his mood. Unconsciously he had come to cherish his pain as a dear companion; through it he kept Ursula constantly by his side. If he could not be with the girl he loved, it did not matter where he was. All he asked was that no one come between him and the heavy satiety with which Ursula crammed his brain and body.
“Can’t you pay me just a small sum, Mr. Stokes?” asked Vincent. “Enough to buy tobacco and clothes?”
“No, I will certainly not do that,” replied Stokes. “I can get teachers enough for just board and lodging.”
Early the first Saturday morning Vincent started from Ramsgate to London. It was a long walk, and the weather stayed hot until evening. Finally he reached Canterbury. He rested in the shade of the old trees surrounding the medieval cathedral. After a bit he walked still farther until he arrived at a few large beech and elm trees near a little pond. He slept there until four in the morning; the birds began to sing at dawn and awakened him. By afternoon he reached Chatham where he saw in the distance, between partly flooded low meadows, the Thames full of ships. Towards evening Vincent struck the familiar suburbs of London, and in spite of his fatigue, cut out briskly for the Loyers’ house.
The thing for which he had come back to England, the contact with Ursula, reached out and gripped him the instant he came within sight of her home. In England she was still his because he could feel her.
He could not quiet the loud beating of his heart. He leaned against a tree, dully aching with an ache that existed outside the realm of words of articulate thought. At length the lamp in Ursula’s parlour was extinguished, then the lamp in her bedroom. The house went dark. Vincent tore himself away and stumbled wearily down the road of Clapham. When he got out of sight of the house he knew that he had lost her again.
When he pictured his marriage to Ursula he no longer thought of her as the wife of a successful art dealer. He saw her as the faithful, uncomplaining wife of an evangelist, working by his side in the slums, to serve the poor.
Nearly every weekend he tried tramping to London, but he found it difficult to get back in time for the Monday morning classes. Sometimes he would walk all Friday and Saturday night just to see Ursula come out of her house on the way to church on Sunday morning. He had no money for food or lodgings, and as winter came on he suffered from the cold. When he got back to Ramsgate in the dawn of a Monday morning he would be shivering, exhausted and famished. It took him all week to recover.
After a few months he found a better position at Mr. Jones’s Methodist school in Isleworth. Mr. Jones was a minister with a large parish. He employed Vincent as a teacher but soon turned him into a country curate.
Once again Vincent had to change all the pictures in his mind. Ursula was no longer to be the wife of an evangelist, working in the slums, but rather the wife of a country clergyman, helping her husband in the parish just as his mother helped his father. He saw Ursula looking on with approval, happy that he had left the narrow commercial life of Goupils and was now working for humanity.
He did not permit himself to realize that Ursula’s wedding day was coming closer and closer. The other man had never existed as a reality in his mind. He always thought of Ursula’s refusal as arising from some peculiar shortcoming on his part, a shortcoming which he must somehow remedy. What better way was there than serving God?
Mr. Jones’s impoverished students came from London. The master gave Vincent the addresses of the parents and sent him there on foot to collect tuition. Vincent found them in the heart of Whitechapel. There were vile odours in the streets, large families herded into cold, barren rooms, hunger and illness staring out of every pair of eyes. A number of the fathers traded in diseased meat which the government prohibited from sale in the regular markets. Vincent came upon the families shivering in their rags and eating their supper of slops, dry crusts and putrid meat. He listened to their tales of destitution and misery until nightfall.
He had welcomed the trip to London because it would give him the chance to pass Ursula’s house on the way home. The slums of Whitechapel drove her out of his mind and he forgot to take the road through Clapham. He returned to Isleworth without so much as a brass farthing for Mr. Jones.
One Thursday evening during the services the minister leaned over to his curate and feigned fatigue. “I’m feeling frightfully done in this evening, Vincent, You’ve been writing sermons straight along, haven’t you? Then let’s hear one of them. I want to see what kind of minister you’re going to make.”
Vincent mounted to the pulpit, trembling. His face went red and he did not know what to do with his hands. His voice was hoarse and halting. He had to stumble through his memory for the well-rounded phrases he had set down so neatly on paper. But he felt his spirit burst through the broken words and clumsy gestures.
“Nicely done, Vincent,” said Mr. Jones. “I shall send you to Richmond next week.”
It was a clear autumn day and a beautiful walk from Isleworth to Richmond along the Thames. The blue sky and great chestnut trees with their load of yellow leaves were mirrored in the water. The people of Richmond wrote Mr. Jones that they liked the young Dutch preacher, so the good man decided to give Vincent his chance. Mr. Jones’s church at Turnham Green was an important one, the congregation large and critical. If Vincent could preach a good sermon there, he would be qualified to preach from any pulpit.
Vincent chose as his text, Psalms 119:19, “I am a stranger on the earth: hide not Thy commandments from me.” He spoke with simple fervour. His youth, his fire, his heavy-handed power, his massive head, and penetrating eyes all had a tremendous effect on the congregation.
Many of them came up to thank him for his message. He shook their hands and smiled at them in a misty daze. As soon as everyone had gone, he slipped out the back door of the church and took the road to London.
A storm came up. He had forgotten his hat and overcoat. The Thames was yellowish, especially near the shore. At the horizon there was a dash of light, and above it immense grey clouds from which the rain poured down in slanting streaks. He was drenched to the skin, but he tramped on at an exhilarated speed.
At last he was successful! He had found himself. He had a triumph to lay at Ursula’s feet, to share with her.