Letter from Vincent van Gogh to Theo van Gogh (19 March 1889) ... I beg you to leave me quietly here.
I am convinced that the Mayor as well as the commissioner is
really rather friendly, and that they will do what they can to
settle all this. Here, except for liberty and except for many
things that I could wish otherwise, I am not too badly off.
Besides, I told them that we were in no position to bear the
expense. I cannot move without expense, and here are three
months that I haven't been working, and mind, I could have
worked if they had not vexed and worried me.
How are our mother and sister?
As I have nothing else to distract me - they even forbid me
to smoke - though the other patients are allowed to - I think
about all the people I know all day and all night long.
It is a shame - and all, so to speak, for nothing.
I will not deny that I would rather have died than have
caused and suffered such trouble.
Well, well, to suffer without complaining is the one lesson
that has to be learned in this life.
Now with all...
Letter from Vincent van Gogh to Theo van Gogh (29 March 1889) ... out into
the town to get things to work with. When I went home, I was
able to ascertain that the real neighbours, those whom I knew,
were not among the petitioners.
However it may be in other quarters, I saw that I still have
friends among them.
In case of need M. Salles will undertake to find me within a
few days an apartment in another part of town. I have sent for
a few more books so as to have a few sound ideas in my head. I
have reread Uncle Tom's Cabin, you know Beecher Stowe's book on
slavery, Dickens's Christmas books and I have given Germinie
Lacerteux to M. Salles.
And now I am returning to my portrait of “La
Berceuse” for the fifth time . And when
you see it, you will agree with me that it is nothing but a
chromolithograph from the cheap shops, and again that it has
not even the merit of being photographically correct in its
proportions or in anything else.
But after all, I want to make an image such as a sailor at
sea would dream of...
Letter from Vincent van Gogh to Theo van Gogh (24 April 1889) ... normally, which was not the case. So that has much softened
many of the judgements which I have too often passed with more
or less presumption on people who nevertheless were wishing me
well. Anyhow, it is certainly a pity that with me these
reflections reach the stage of feeling rather late.
But I want you to think all that over and to consider the
step we are taking now, just as I spoke of it to M. Salles,
this going into an asylum, as purely a formality, and in any
case the repeated attacks seem to me to have been serious
enough to leave no room for hesitation.
Besides, as to my future, it is not as if I were twenty,
since I have turned thirty-six.
Really, I think it would be torture for other people as well
as for myself if I were to leave the hospital, for I feel and
am, as it were, paralyzed when it comes to acting and shifting
for myself. Later on - well, let's wait and see.
I should like to ask you loads of things about Holland and
about...
Article by M. J. Brusse (May 26 1914) ... he came back in the evening
for a few hours. For the rest,
he had no intercourse with anybody; he led an absolutely solitary
life. He took many walks all over the island, but always alone.
In the shop he hardly spoke a word. In short, he was something of a
recluse.”
