Weissenbruch made little stabs in Vincent’s direction with his brush. “The man who has never been miserable has nothing to paint about, Van Gogh. Happiness is bovine; it’s only good for cows and tradesmen. Artists thrive on pain; if you’re hungry, discouraged and wretched, be grateful. God is being good to you!”
“Poverty destroys.”
“Yes, it destroys the weak. But not the strong! If poverty can destroy you, then you’re a weakling and ought to go down.”
“And you wouldn’t raise a finger to help me?”
“Not even if I thought you the greatest painter of all time. If hunger and pain can kill a man, then he’s not worth saving. The only artists who belong on this earth are the men whom neither God nor the devil can kill until they’ve said everything they want to say.”
“But I’ve gone hungry for years, Weissenbruch. I’ve gone without a roof over my head, walking in the rain and snow with hardly anything on, ill and feverish and abandoned. I have nothing more to learn from that sort of thing.”
“You haven’t scratched the surface of suffering yet. You’re just a beginner. I tell you, pain is the only infinite thing in this world. Now run on home and pick up your pencil. The hungrier and more miserable you get, the better you will work.”
“And the quicker I’ll have my drawings rejected.”
Weissenbruch laughed heartily. “Of course they’ll be rejected! They ought to be. That’s good for you, too. It will make you even more miserable. Then your next canvas will be better than the one before. If you starve and suffer and have your work abused and neglected for a sufficient number of years, you may eventually—notice I say you may, not you will—you may eventually turn out one painting that will be fit to hang alongside of Jan Steen or . . .”
“. . . or Weissenbruch!”
“Just so. Or Weissenbruch. If I gave you any money now I would be robbing you of your chances for immortality.”
“To hell with immortality! I want to draw here and now. And I can’t do that on an empty stomach.”
“Nonsense, my boy. Everything of value that has been painted has been done on an empty stomach. When your intestines are full, you create at the wrong end.”
“It doesn’t seem to me that I’ve heard you suffering so much.”
“I have creative imagination. I can understand pain without going through it.”
“You old fraud!”
“Not at all. If I had seen that my work was insipid, like De Bock’s, I would have thrown my money away and lived like a tramp. It just so happens that I can create the perfect illusion of pain without a perfect memory of it. That’s why I’m a great artist.”
“That’s why you’re a great humbug. Come along, Weissenbruch, be a good fellow and lend me twenty-five francs.”
“Not even twenty-five centimes! I tell you, I’m sincere. I think too highly of you to weaken your fabric by lending you money. You will do brilliant work some day, Vincent, providing you carve out your own destiny; the plaster foot in Mauve’s dustbin convinced me of that. Now run along, and stop at the soup kitchen for a bowl of free broth.”
Vincent stared at Weissenbruch for a moment, turned and opened the door.
“Wait a minute!”
“You don’t mean to tell me you’re going to be a coward and weaken?” asked Vincent harshly.
“Look here, Van Gogh, I’m no miser; I’m acting on principle. If I thought you were a fool, I’d give you twenty-five francs to get rid of you. But I respect you as a fellow craftsman. I’m going to give you something you couldn’t buy for all the money in the world. And there’s not another man in The Hague, except Mauve, that I’d give it to. Come over here. Adjust that curtain on the skylight. That’s better. Have a look at this study. Here’s how I’m going to work out the design and apportion my material. For Christ’s sake, how do you expect to see it if you stand in the light?”
An hour later Vincent left, exhilarated. He had learned more in that short time than he could have in a year at art school. He walked some distance before he remembered that he was hungry, feverish, and ill, and that he had not a centime in the world.
A FEW DAYS later he encountered Mauve in the dunes. If he had any hopes of a reconciliation, he was disappointed.
“Cousin Mauve, I want to beg your pardon for what happened in your studio. It was stupid of me. Can’t you see your way clear to forgive me? Won’t you come and see my work some time and talk things over?”
Mauve refused point blank. “I will certainly not come to see you, that is all over.”
“Have you lost faith in me so completely?”
“Yes. You have a vicious character.”
“If you will tell me what I have done that is vicious, I will try to mend my ways.”
“I am no longer interested in what you do.”
“I have done nothing but eat and sleep and work as an artist. Is that vicious?”
“Do you call yourself an artist?”
“Yes.”
“How absurd. You never sold a picture in your life.”
