“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.
6
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.