“Yes. I hadn’t known I was so tired.”
The Reverend took his hat and walked down the street with Vincent, oblivious to the stares of his neighbours.
“You will probably want to sleep tonight,” he said, “but surely you will come to dinner tomorrow at twelve? We will have a great deal to talk about.”
Vincent scrubbed, standing up in an iron basin, and although it was only six o’clock, went to sleep holding his empty stomach. He did not open his eyes until ten the next morning and only then because hunger was pounding implacably on some anvil within him. The man from whom the Reverend Pietersen rented the room lent Vincent a razor, a comb, and a clothes brush; he did what he could to make himself look neat and found everything repairable except the shoes.
Vincent was ravenous for food, and while Pietersen chatted lightly about the recent events in Brussels, piled it in unashamedly. After dinner the two men went into the study.
“Oh,” said Vincent, “you’ve been doing a lot of work, haven’t you? These are all new sketches on the walls.”
“Yes,” replied Pietersen, “I’m beginning to find a great deal more pleasure in painting than in preaching.”
Vincent said smilingly, “And does your conscience prick you occasionally for taking so much time off your real work?”
Pietersen laughed and said, “Do you know the anecdote about Rubens? He was serving Holland as Ambassador to Spain and used to spend the afternoon in the royal gardens before his easel. One day a jaunty member of the Spanish Court passed and remarked, ‘I see that the diplomat amuses himself sometimes with painting,’ to which Rubens replied, ‘No, the painter amuses himself sometimes with diplomacy!’”
Pietersen and Vincent exchanged an understanding laugh. Vincent opened his packet. “I have been doing a little sketching myself,” he said, “and I brought along three figures for you to see. Perhaps you won’t mind telling me what you think of them?”
Pietersen winced, for he knew that criticizing a beginner’s work was a thankless task. Nevertheless he placed the three studies on the easel and stood a long way off looking at them. Vincent suddenly saw his drawings through his friend’s eyes; he realized how utterly amateurish they were.
“My first impression,” said the Reverend, after some time, “is that you must be working very close to your models. Are you?”
“Yes, I have to. Most of my work is done in the crowded miners’ huts.”
“I see. That explains your lack of perspective. Couldn’t you manage to find a place where you can stand off from your subjects? You’ll see them much more clearly, I’m sure.”
“There are some fairly large miners’ cabins. I could rent one for very little and fix it up as a studio.”
“An excellent idea.”
He was silent again and then said without effort, “Have you ever studied drawing? Do you block the faces on squared off paper? Do you take measurements?”
Vincent blushed. “I don’t know how to do those things,” he said. “You see, I’ve never had a lesson. I thought you just went ahead and drew.”
“Ah, no,” said Pietersen sadly. “You must learn your elementary technique first and then your drawing will come slowly. Here, I’ll show you what’s wrong with this woman.”
He took a ruler, squared off the head and figure, showed Vincent how bad his proportions were, and then proceeded to reconstruct the head, explaining as he went along. After almost an hour of work he stepped back, surveyed the sketch, and said, “There. Now I think we have that figure drawn correctly.”
Vincent joined him at the opposite end of the room and looked at the paper. There could be no doubt about it, the woman was now drawn in perfect proportion. But she was no longer a miner’s wife, no longer a Borain picking up coal on the slope of her terril. She was just any perfectly drawn woman in the world, bending over. Without saying a word Vincent went to the easel, placed the figure of the woman bending over her oval stove beside the reconstructed drawing, and went back to join Pietersen.
“Hummmm,” said the Reverend Pietersen. “Yes, I see what you mean. I’ve given her proportion and taken away character.”
They stood there for a long time, looking at the easel. Pietersen said involuntarily, “You know, Vincent, that woman standing over her stove isn’t bad. She isn’t at all bad. The drawing is terrible, your values are all wrong and her face is hopeless. In fact she hasn’t any face at all. But that sketch has got something. You caught something that I can’t quite lay my finger on. What is it, Vincent?”
“I’m sure I don’t know. I just put her down as I saw her.”
This time it was Pietersen who walked quickly to the easel. He threw the sketch he had perfected into the wastebasket with a “You don’t mind, do you, I’ve ruined it anyway,” and placed the second woman there all by herself. He rejoined Vincent and they sat down. The Reverend started to speak several times but the words did not quite form. At last he said, “Vincent, I hate to admit it, but I really believe I almost like that woman. I thought she was horrible at first, but something about her grows on you.”
“Why do you hate to admit it?” asked Vincent.
“Because I ought not to like it. The whole thing is wrong, dead wrong! Any elementary class in art school would make you tear it up and begin all over again. And yet something about her reaches out at me. I could almost swear I have seen that woman somewhere before.”
“Perhaps you have seen her in the Borinage,” said Vincent artlessly.
Pietersen looked at him quickly to see if he was being clever and then said, “I think you’re right. She has no face and she isn’t any one particular person. Somehow she’s just all the miners’ wives in the Borinage put together. That something you’ve caught is the spirit of the miner’s wife, Vincent, and that’s a thousand times more important than any correct drawing. Yes, I like your woman. She says something to me directly.”
Vincent trembled, but he was afraid to speak. Pietersen was an experienced artist, a professional; if he should ask for the drawing, really like it enough to . . .
“Could you spare her, Vincent? I would like very much to put her on my wall. I think she and I could become excellent friends.”
20
WHEN VINCENT DECIDED he had better return to Petit Wasmes, the Reverend Pietersen gave him a pair of his old shoes to replace the broken ones, and railroad fare back to the Borinage. Vincent took them in the full spirit of friendship which knows that the difference between giving and taking is purely temporal.
On the train Vincent realized two important things; the Reverend Pietersen had not once referred to his failure as an evangelist, and he had accepted him on equal terms as a fellow artist. He had actually liked a sketch well enough to want it for his own; that was the crucial test.
“He has given me my start,” said Vincent to himself. “If he liked my work, other people will, too.”
At the Denises’ he found that “Les Travaux des Champs” had arrived from Theo, although no letter accompanied them. His contact with Pietersen had refreshed him, so he dug into Father Millet with gusto. Theo had enclosed some large sized sketch paper, and within a few days Vincent copied ten pages of “Les Travaux,” finishing the first volume. Then, feeling that he needed work on the nude, and being quite certain he could never get anyone to pose for him that way in the Borinage, he wrote to his old friend Tersteeg, manager of the Goupil Galleries in The Hague, asking him if he would lend the “Exercises au Fusain” by Bargue.
In the meanwhile he remembered Pietersen’s counsel and rented a miner’s hut near the top of the rue Petit Wasmes for nine francs a month. This time the hut was the best he could find, not the worst. It had a rough plank floor, two large windows to let in light, a bed, table, chair, and stove. It was sufficiently large enough for Vincent to place his model at one end and get far enough away for complete perspective. There was not a miner’s wife or child in Petit Wasmes who had not been helped in some way the winter before by Vincent, and no one ever turned down his request to come and pose. On Sundays the miners would throng to his cabin and let him make quick sketches of them. They thought it great fun. The place was always full of people looking over Vincent’s shoulder with interest and amazement.