Letter from Vincent van Gogh to His Parents (c. 27 October 1883) ... feeling even better here these first days than during those
last months in The Hague, when I suffered much from my nerves.
And that is quite calmed down now. I think there is no better
place for meditation than by a rustic hearth and an old cradle
with a baby in it, with the window overlooking a delicate green
cornfield and the waving of the alder bushes.
At present I am studying the ploughers all the time, so I
must be off again. Goodbye, dear parents; my overcoat is all
right, the woolen undervest is very comfortable, believe
me,
Your loving Vincent
...
Letter from Vincent van Gogh to Theo van Gogh (c. 4 May 1888) ... is absolutely nothing doing
there.
I should very much like to look around a little myself, but
being in no way anxious to fly into a rage, I shall wait till
my nerves are steadier.
In the very letter I had addressed wrongly I again said
something about Bonger. It is probable that he dares to say so
much because at the moment the Russians are having so much
success at the Théàtre Libre, etc. But this is no
reason, is it, to try and make use of this success in order to
denigrate the French? I have just reread Zola's Le [Au] Bonheur
des Dames, and it seems to me more beautiful than ever.
Now it is news indeed that Reid is back. I told Russell that
as I was the one to introduce him, I felt it more or less my
duty to explain the cause of the quarrel. That Reid was
ambitious, and that, being short of money like all of us, he
was beside himself when it was a question of earning money.
That I looked upon these as involuntary acts (and consequently
he...
Letter from Vincent van Gogh to Wilhelmina van Gogh (c. 22 June 1888) ... than put up with another flight of stairs. In
Paris I could never accustom myself to climbing stairs, and I
always had fits of dizziness in a horrible nightmare which has
left me since, but which came back regularly then.
If I should not mail this letter immediately, I feel
absolutely sure that I should tear it up if I read it over -
and so I will not read it over, and I think its legibility
doubtful. I don't always have time to write. I truly believe
there is nothing in this letter, and I should not be able to
understand by what means it got this long. Thank Mother in my
name for her letter. A long time ago now I designated a painted
study for you, and you are sure to get it. I am afraid that if
I should send it by parcel post, even if I prepaid the
carriage, I should make you pay for insufficient postage, as in
the case of the flowers from Menton, and this one is even
bigger - but Theo will be sure to send you one; so if I should
not think of it, please ask him for it....
Letter from Vincent van Gogh to Theo van Gogh (c. 17 September 1888) ... or anyway you will find some opportunity.
When we have mistral down here, however, it is the exact
opposite of a sweet country, for the mistral sets one on edge.
But what compensations, what compensations when there is a day
without wind - what intensity of colour, what pure air, what
vibrant serenity.
Letter from Vincent van Gogh to Emile Bernard (6 October 1888) ... the first place
I am always smoking a pipe, and then I have always had an
unutterable horror of sitting like that on precipitous cliffs
verging on the sea, as I suffer from vertigo. So if that is
meant to be my portrait, I protest against the aforementioned
improbabilities.
1 am terribly absorbed in decorating my house; I dare
believe it will be rather to your taste, although it is
certainly very different from what you do. But at the time, you
spoke to me about pictures, one representing flowers, another
trees, another fields. Well, I myself have the “Poet's
Garden” (2 canvases; among the sketches you have there is
the first conception of it , done after a smaller study that is
already at my brother's) . Then the “Starry Night,”
further the “Vineyard,” then the “`Furrows,”
then the view of the house, which might be called “The
Street.” So that there is a certain unintentional
consecutiveness....
