1r:1
I can very well understand that you say in your letter that it did you good ‘to have lots of people around again’ when Anna’s
children and
Lies were with you.
1 Wil described the house to me in detail, and I’m very glad that your experience proves that the reasons for the change were justified.
2 And so I hope that you’ll have many more very good days in Leiden — and rest assured I think of you very often here, where I spend my days more turned in on myself than sometimes seems to me desirable. All the same, I certainly have no reason whatsoever to complain, feeling stronger and healthier and calmer than before and compared with this time last year; then I certainly thought I wouldn’t recover again. I’ll always go on feeling the shock of that time, though, and if I just stick to my work it will be all right, wholly giving up the rest as difficult to reconcile, and as worrying about things can do little either way.
1v:2 As regards the exhibition in Brussels, why it doesn’t leave me indifferent is because I’ll have a few paintings
3 from here which, notwithstanding that they were made in a very different region, have remained completely and utterly as if they were painted in Zundert, say, or Kalmthout, and I believe could also be understood by people who don’t, as they say,
know anything about paintings. And so people could say that it would perhaps have been simpler had I just stayed quietly in North Brabant — but that’s as it is, and what is a body to do about it?
4Your thoughts will be much with Theo and
Jo; I think it’s a very good plan for
Wil to go and lend a hand in January and hope that that will work out, and if you go to stay with
Aunt Mina in the meantime will also be doing a favour there, now Aunt is ill.
5 Please don’t forget to remember me to her when you see her. It’s brave of her that, as you write, she suffers without complaining.
1v:3 I imagine I’ll spend a large part of next year here, too, since even if this were no longer absolutely necessary for my health, it would turn out best for my work — since I’m now fairly oriented here. It’s certainly not cheap for what one gets for it — but change is always damaging to the painting, and so I’m seriously thinking about staying, seeing as I can be very regular in my work here. And apart from that the region has hardly been painted, if at all, by anyone else yet. Because this is a region of the south here that’s no warmer than at home, and the other painters usually go a little further, to Nice, for instance. It’s great news that
Aunt is no longer in Princenhage,
6 but in any case she was very right to have dispensed with
Jacob and Co., since they indeed seemed to have always been the actual owners of the whole show — and that was really too much to bear.
7
1r:4 It’s one of those strange things in life that one finds hard to make head or tail of in order to understand the reason for them. Anyway, I think she’s absolutely right — and yet she must have been or still is attached to Princenhage. And attachment to things is a part of us and it’s hard for others to take away from us.
And now I say goodbye to you and
Wil for today. Thanks again for the messages about
Cor — and embraced in thought by
Your loving
Vincent
