Leaving Van Gogh

Seven





WE ALL FELT LET DOWN after the excitement of the Van Goghs’ visit. Paul was especially sulky. That evening I tried to put some antiseptic lotion on his scratches, but he kept flinching and I finally left Marguerite to minister to him. It was at times like this that I missed Blanche the most. Seeing the accord between Theo and Johanna reminded me of what marriage had been like. Vincent had described the bond between Theo and Jo vividly: “If one draws a breath, the other notices.” I remembered those days, but sadly. There were so few of them.

Blanche found me dashing, brilliant, gifted. She came from a somewhat modest family of Gascon origin, and though she had lived her entire life in Paris, it had been a sheltered existence. She was dazzled by the breadth and depth of my interests. Naturally I flourished in the atmosphere of womanly warmth and admiration that she created. I never doubted myself in Blanche’s presence—until the last days of her illness, when I doubted everything. Man of medicine that I was, I could not even relieve her pain. Worse still, I refused her the one thing she asked of me.

I had thought, when I was drawing the madwomen at the Salpêtrière, that I was entering their madness in a way. After Blanche’s death, though, I truly knew their despair. In my bones, to my core, I knew what it was to fall into melancholy. I knew the bleakness, the withdrawal, the lassitude. I would sit for hours at a time, watching slices of dust-filled sunlight creep across a room. My dark mood frightened the children, which made me ashamed. Madame Chevalier grew impatient, then angry, and lectured me. She said that, for the children’s sake, I must at least feign an interest in life.

There is a saying I have always loathed: “L’appétit vient en mangeant.” My father used it often when I objected to working in his fabric mills. “You say you are not interested, Paul, but you will be! You will see how the business works, and soon you will be hungry to know more: L’appétit vient en mangeant.” As much as I hate the old proverb, I must ruefully confess that I did find this to be true when it came to my mourning for Blanche. Bit by bit, I forced myself to take up the threads of my former life. I discovered that Marguerite was learning to read. I visited Pissarro, whom I had neglected in the last months of my wife’s illness. Blanche had written a pretty piece of piano music that I had privately printed, giving it the title “Espérance.” I did not exactly feel hope, but I began to think that hope might exist, somewhere, if only for other people.

Still, the sadness remains. In some ways I am a solitary man, even though I am surrounded by my family. There is no one who shares all of my concerns, my doubts, my fears. Paul is the closest I have to a confidant these days, but in that summer Vincent was with us, Paul was only seventeen. I could not tell him—I could not tell anyone—that Johanna van Gogh’s affection for her husband made me feel lonely. I could not tell him that I feared for Theo’s health.

Besides, it was Vincent who was my primary concern, and, as the days went by, he did seem to be benefiting from the calm, wholesome atmosphere I had established in our home on the rue Rémy. He had gained some weight, I thought, and claimed to be sleeping better than he had slept in years. I guessed from Theo’s stories that Vincent had spent a great deal of time among people who did not have his best interests at heart. For all his stoicism, Vincent was desperate for honest friendship and concern, which I was happy to extend to him. And though he did not fit comfortably into a domestic setting, I sensed that he relished it deeply while he was with us.

However, in the summer of 1890 I was beginning to recognize a certain disruption of our tranquillity. Perhaps Vincent’s presence among us cast a brighter light on the issue, but the fact was, Marguerite was growing up. Paul reminded me of this when we were feeding the chickens one afternoon. He and Marguerite shared a birthday. He was turning seventeen, she twenty-one, and Paul was eager to know how the day would be celebrated. Could we, he wanted to know, invite Vincent for a birthday luncheon?

Nothing could have been easier, and so it came about. Yet I realized, that day when we were sitting around the red table in the garden, that it was a very quiet way to mark Marguerite’s birthday. At twenty-one, she might reasonably have expected something more exciting. I thought of her as a girl of good sense, practical, honest, and modest. But even sensible girls think about young men—and there were none in her life. At lunch, Marguerite looked pretty, in a pale pink dress with a few roses in her hair. She was quiet—she is always quiet—but I did catch her glancing at Vincent more than once with a somewhat speculative look in her eye.

The thought was laughable. I dismissed it. Vincent could be nothing to Marguerite Gachet, a gently reared girl of twenty-one. Vincent, with his false teeth, his constant odor of tobacco, and his impatient, single-minded temperament. Nor could Marguerite be anything to him. Theo had told me of his younger brother’s unfortunate relations with respectable women. Vincent and Marguerite were as ill-matched as a bear and a lapdog.

I wondered whether Marguerite thought about marriage. Many girls were wed by her age, yet I knew almost nothing about how jeunes filles à marier were courted. Blanche was not young when we married, and I had met her, strangely enough, in the park in front of the Church of the Trinity. I had always thought it was remarkable good luck, for a sudden gust of wind blew her umbrella inside out just as I was passing. Of course a well-bred girl would not ordinarily speak to a passing man, but Blanche’s struggle with the broken umbrella in the storm compelled her to accept my help. I walked her home, and received her father’s permission to call on her. Until that time I had had very little contact with young ladies in Paris. I was never one of the youths with gloves at evening parties, assessing the relative charms of Mademoiselle this or that.

Who would assess Marguerite’s charms? There were no gentlemen in Auvers. There were farmers, of course. The man who punched my ticket to Paris every Tuesday was pleasant, and just a few years older than Marguerite, but he probably had a wife and three babies already. Who would give Marguerite babies? And how could she meet him? I had overlooked one of the principal responsibilities of a parent: to find his daughter a husband. Just like that, I had overlooked it.

My daughter did not seem aware of my concern. She sat in the dappled shade, smiling at her brother’s teasing and Madame Chevalier’s affectionate praise. She was presentable. She played the piano. She could run a house. I had made sure she had a dowry. But what could be her future? Not the red-haired man across from her, lighting his pipe, thinking of something else entirely. She glanced at him again. No, there was nothing but curiosity in her gaze. But I resolved to talk to some of my friends in Paris about her. Some of them had wives, and mentioned first communions and daughters who went to dances. Perhaps Marguerite could go to Paris to stay with one of them and see the wider world.

“Marguerite, would you play for us?” I asked, as she stood up to help Madame Chevalier clear the table. I knew that she took her music quite seriously, but she normally did her practicing on the days when I was in Paris, so as not to disturb me.

“Oh, how dull!” Paul cried. “It’s my birthday, too!”

“Yes, and do you have an accomplishment you would like to share with us?” I asked. “Have you been working at something special? Perhaps you would like to recite? Some lines of Racine? Plutarch?” Paul blushed; he was not a brilliant scholar.

“Possibly you and I may rent a skiff to fish later this afternoon,” I told him. This was a treat, since I preferred to fish on the quieter weekdays. I did not care for the loudness and roughhousing of the day-trippers from Paris. They shrieked and splashed each other and scared away the fish—but Paul adored the bustle, especially on a summer Sunday.

He turned scarlet and said, “Thank you, Papa.” Then he murmured to his sister, “I will clear away the coffee cups while you decide what to play.”

We moved the little piano to the window facing the garden so we could enjoy an alfresco recital. Vincent and I puffed away on our pipes while my daughter made a reasonable job of playing a pair of Chopin waltzes. Paul lay in the grass at our feet, messing about with a sketch pad and some charcoal.

Marguerite made an appealing picture with her hands moving over the keyboard, unaware of her audience. She was a self-contained young lady, but her concentration on the notes seemed to dissolve a layer of her personal decorum. She did not sway and pant over the music, of course, but a little smile lit up her face, and her feet worked the pedals with a kind of emphasis.

We all applauded when she finished, which appeared to please and disconcert her. Vincent, gripping his pipe between his teeth, said, “Doctor, with your permission, I would like very much to paint Mademoiselle Gachet at her piano. I think she would be a splendid subject.” He had barely glanced at her during her little recital: I had thought he was dozing. But of course nothing ever really escaped Vincent’s eye. I was delighted, and we agreed that the following weekend, when I returned from Paris, he would begin the portrait. He thanked us for the party and walked with Paul and me down to the landing stage, where we were able to secure a gaudily painted rowboat for a few hours, but he refused to come fishing with us, despite Paul’s urging. As Paul carefully maneuvered us through the confusion of craft on the river (many being rowed with notable lack of skill), I caught sight of Vincent, walking slowly past the cheerful café tables set out along the riverbank. He trudged along, hands in pockets, puffing his pipe, his eyes devouring it all. He had said he planned to head up to a nearby vineyard and paint it in the afternoon light. He seemed to feel obligated to do so. “I must …” was how he had put it. But I thought that, as he walked past all the merrymakers, couples, and families on a Sunday outing, he seemed forlorn.

At dinner that evening I asked Marguerite if she looked forward to being painted by Vincent. She glanced at me with a furrowed brow, and lowered her gaze to her empty plate. “Will it be difficult?” she asked. “I don’t know if I can do it right.”

Paul crowed with laughter. “You’ll just sit there, silly,” he said. “And pretend to play the piano. Anybody could do it.”

“Not at all,” I corrected him. “It is precisely your sister that he wants to paint. Not ‘anybody.’ ”

“But he’s already painted you,” Paul retorted. A sister less gentle than Marguerite might have pointed out that Vincent had not asked to paint her brother—who was, to be fair, a lively, handsome youth who would have made a wonderful model.

“Yes, and now he thinks that Marguerite will make a beautiful painting, and I have no doubt she will.” I turned to her. “Vincent will not ask anything of you that you cannot do,” I told her. “I am sure of that.”

Though I rarely feel bound by society’s conventions of propriety, I was relieved that Vincent had asked to paint Marguerite’s portrait when I would be in Auvers. I felt it would have been inappropriate for the sittings to take place in my absence. Vincent understood that both my permission and my presence were necessary for him to paint my daughter. As he set up his easel on the following Sunday morning, he gleefully recounted what he had painted that week: young women. “The daughter of Monsieur Ravoux, all in blue with a blue background, in profile. You will see the way her hair and her skin stand out. And then a peasant woman, sitting in the corn, wearing a beautiful straw hat with a big blue bow. The clothes of these women are such a delight.” He turned around to look at me. “You see, Doctor, we men wear dark things on the whole. Look at poor Theo, buttoned into a black frock coat every day. But the women in their pinks and greens and reds are like bouquets of flowers.” He straightened up, assessing the distance to the piano. Marguerite was still upstairs, no doubt readying herself for the sitting. “Could we perhaps pull the piano this way? I would like to have Mademoiselle Marguerite in full figure, you see, against that wall,” he pointed.

I called for Paul to come and help. He appeared instantly; apparently he had been just outside the window, drawing in the garden. The three of us pushed the piano on its tiny wheels while Vincent continued his monologue. “I could not find anyone to pose at St.-Rémy. Well, you can’t blame them, they were all crazy. Aside from one or two, I could never get anyone to sit still for more than a few minutes. But even in Arles, it wasn’t easy with the women. I suppose I didn’t know any, except prostitutes.” I glanced at Paul, who turned bright red but pretended not to have heard.

“But here in Auvers, I have been so fortunate,” Vincent continued. “It is a great thing for me to be able to paint a young lady like Mademoiselle Marguerite.” He turned to me and asked, “Is she wearing the pink dress?”

“Oh, yes,” Paul said, with the weary tones of a man among men, discussing women’s vanity. “She knows you’re here, Monsieur Vincent. But she had to do her hair. She said she would be down in a moment.”

“Never mind,” Vincent said, “I can set up my palette.” He set to work, squeezing colors from tubes in what seemed like fantastic amounts, glossy coils of crimson lake and lead white and yellow ocher and emerald green. Finally Marguerite’s skirt rustled down the stairs, and she entered the room with as much self-effacement as is possible in a woman three men have waited for. She avoided looking us in the eye and cast her gaze to the floor, murmuring an apology for the delay. Without any direction, she sat on the piano stool.

“Excellent!” Vincent exclaimed, looking at her. “Mademoiselle, this will be a beautiful painting.” He screwed the cap on his tube of Prussian blue and tossed it back into his box, then gently set the loaded palette onto the stool I’d brought down from the studio.

“Now, as for the pose.” Marguerite looked up at him, blushing. My children were keyed up this morning, it seemed. Vincent moved over to Marguerite and opened the lid of the keyboard. “Could you sit just as you did on Sunday, when you so kindly played for us? Perhaps play a chord or two?”

She complied, resting her fingers on the keys. I was struck by what a pleasing sight she made, silhouetted against the wall as Vincent wanted, her slender figure all gentle curves against the black-lacquered angles of the little piano. Her small foot tapped the pedal, her fingers lifted from the keys, and Vincent said, “Lovely. Do you think you can stay in this position, mademoiselle? Will you be comfortable?”

Until then Marguerite had not addressed a word to him. She turned and said, “Yes, monsieur, thank you,” in her quiet voice. I noticed for the first time how very blue her eyes were. She was really quite attractive. It was one of those strange moments when you see a familiar person with new eyes; in this case, with Vincent’s eyes. I felt a rush of affection for my daughter.

Vincent had placed a tall rectangular canvas on his easel, and he stood hesitating for a moment, glancing back and forth between Marguerite and the canvas. He usually painted with apparent fearlessness and spontaneity, but today he first took a small notebook from his jacket pocket and roughly sketched his subject, establishing the positions of the piano, Marguerite, the wall, and the floor. Once he had done this, however, I did not see him refer back to it.

He stepped back, took up a brush, began to blend the red and the white paint, then put down his palette. He stepped over to Marguerite and placed a hand under each elbow. “Like so, mademoiselle, if you can,” he said, moving them forward. “Will this tire you?”

“No, not at all,” Marguerite whispered to the keyboard. Her face was flaming. I knew why, or thought I did. Vincent’s hands on her elbows, his voice in her ear, the heat of his body against her back—all of these sensations were utterly new to her. No man besides me had ever touched my daughter. I was not sure what I thought about this.

Clearly Vincent thought nothing of it. Moving back to his palette, he took up the brush and began to outline her figure swiftly, laying down a thick layer of pigment that he would then shape with his brush, stroking brighter or darker colors into the pale pink. To him, Marguerite was a set of shapes and textures to be rendered in his own remarkable combination of colors. When he had his painter’s eye on me, I found it to be both searching and impersonal. Now I looked at him as he frowned at my daughter. No. There was nothing in his gaze beyond the calculation of the artist, considering, selecting, eliminating. A streak of gray-blue defined the billow of Marguerite’s sleeve. Lightened, it slid down her bust. Another touch marked the cuff. There was nothing to worry about.

Vincent normally enjoyed having someone to talk to while he painted, but he was so quiet as he painted Marguerite that I went into my study to take care of the mail that always accumulated during the days when I was in Paris. During the course of the morning, I went about my business, cutting some verbena from the garden to dry, discussing household accounts with Madame Chevalier. Once as I walked by the open window, I saw that Marguerite was sitting in an armchair while Vincent said, “Lean back and rest, mademoiselle, you have been a remarkable model.” At one point I heard the opening bars of a waltz coming from the music room. By the time we gathered for luncheon, the whole figure had been laid out and a few lines of dark violet paint indicated the piano. Paul had been attempting to draw his sister, too, but so badly that I sent him up to the studio after luncheon to get a pair of vases out of the cupboard for us to draw together. If he was so intent on sketching, I thought, I could at least share with him some of the fundamental principles that I had learned so long ago in Lille.

Marguerite must indeed have been a patient model, for by the time Vincent had finished working that evening, he had all but completed her figure. Once again, I was awestruck by his skill as a portraitist. But this time his painting exhibited an adaptability that was new to me. On his canvas Marguerite’s dress was a beautiful arrangement of the most delicate hues, ranging from the deep rose of her sash to cream to slate in the folds. Vincent had painted the gown with vertical strokes that curved around the hem of the skirt. It was true that the paint did not look in the least like the crisp folds of muslin or batiste or whatever it was that Marguerite was wearing. Yet at the same time, Vincent had created an image of delicate femininity with the sculpted application of oil paint on canvas.

Vincent stayed for dinner that night. Marguerite went upstairs to rest for a while and eventually came down in her everyday brown calico to help Madame Chevalier in the kitchen. Once I had showed Paul the rudiments of using light and dark to model volume, he was fascinated, so he prowled around the house looking for simple shapes to draw. Every now and then he would show me the result. When I saw what he’d made of a cylindrical jug, I resolved that perspective would be the next lesson.

Vincent told us that he would not need Marguerite for most of the next day, so she was in the yard when he arrived on Monday morning. When the bell for the street door clanged, Paul’s light footsteps sounded on the gravel as he dashed to the gate to let Vincent in. I came to the door of the salon to greet the painter, who entered the house carrying a loose bunch of flowers that I assumed he had gathered to paint.

“Shall we put those in a vase?” I asked, gesturing toward the poppies and daisies in his hand.

“Perhaps, but they are actually for Mademoiselle Marguerite,” he answered. “To thank her for posing so generously yesterday. She was a wonderful model, so patient and still. I hope it did not tire her. I cut these in the fields this morning.”

First a portrait, now flowers! Marguerite would not know what to think of this. Still, it was a kind gesture, and I could not reasonably prevent Vincent from giving my daughter the nosegay. “She is in the courtyard gathering eggs,” I said. “The flowers will please her.” Vincent went out the back door to find her, and I returned to my desk, slightly disturbed. It struck me as significant that the blossoms did not appear on the luncheon table. Evidently Marguerite had taken the little bouquet up to her bedroom.

The portrait progressed. Although the wall behind Marguerite was, in real life, hung with numerous paintings, Vincent chose to paint it in a vivid apple green, covered with tiny orange dots. This, he explained, would emphasize the pink of Marguerite’s dress. Also contrary to fact, he painted the carpet crimson stippled with vertical green dashes, which made for a strange recession that surged upward to meet the wall. Our mahogany piano stool was also painted apple green. The dots and the dashes took Vincent well into the afternoon.

“Doctor, might I request Mademoiselle Marguerite’s presence again?” he said, standing at the door of the studio. I was making a list of supplies to bring back from Paris, so the cupboard doors were all open. Even the paintings were in disarray, since I had used many of them to demonstrate the lessons of modeling and perspective to Paul. My pretty Guillaumin nude was lying flat on the floor, and Vincent picked it up. “This should have a frame, don’t you think?” he said, examining it closely. “Look, the stretcher is none too sturdy.”

“You are quite right, I will order one this week. Here,” I said, passing over a folding ruler. “Would you mind telling me the measurements?”

“Forty-nine centimeters by …” He paused, measuring the width. “Sixty-five. I admire the way the curtains frame her, and the delicacy of her skin.”

I agreed with him. The model in the painting had that kind of skin that is often described as “pearly,” with blue and pink lights swimming beneath the pale surface. Vincent went on, “If Mademoiselle Marguerite can spare me another hour or so, I believe I can finish the picture.”

“Of course,” I said. “Let me call her. You would like her in the pink dress again?”

“Yes, Doctor, that would be best. Just to retouch the color a little if it’s needed.”

So Marguerite was summoned, and she resumed her pose with her hands on the keys. I stood behind Vincent, admiring the painting. “Yes, excellent. The arms are perfect,” he said. “But the angle of your head—could you look down a little bit more?” Vincent stepped to her and corrected her position. He put a hand on the top of my daughter’s head, and gently tipped her chin with two fingers of the other hand. Marguerite barely breathed. He came back to the canvas, concentrating this time on the knot of hair. He picked up a brush to add a few flecks of citron. Then he moved back to her and said, “If I may—your hair is not exactly as it was yesterday. May I …?” Marguerite only nodded. She must have felt too shy to speak at that moment. Vincent loosened a few locks at the back of her neck, then pulled forward the little curl that, in the painting, hangs above her forehead. It seemed to me to be an immensely intimate moment. I imagined Marguerite must have felt that as well. Of course he was simply adjusting the pose of the model. Marguerite as a person—whom he had acknowledged that morning with the little nosegay—was again merely a subject. I only hoped that my daughter would grasp this.

An hour later, Paul knocked on the door of the salon where I worked. “He’s finished, Papa. Come and see.”

In the music room Vincent was crouched by his paint box, attempting to tidy up. His palette lay next to him, having been wiped in a cursory fashion with a rag that left tiny smears of orange and green on our floor. They are there to this day. He glanced from time to time at the easel, where Marguerite in her pink dress played the piano. Captured. Just like that, a twenty-one-year-old girl in all the freshness of her youth, sharing her accomplishments. The girl herself stood to one side, barely able to look fully at the painting. She would cast a glance at it, then her eyes would dart away. Madame Chevalier was planted before the picture with her feet apart, arms folded, beaming.

“Congratulations, Van Gogh,” I said. “It is very beautiful.”

He stood up. “Thank you. I am very happy with it. Perhaps someday soon we could do a companion piece with Mademoiselle at the parlor organ; a kind of musical diptych. You can see how the vertical canvas would lend itself to such a format—two of them side by side?”

“Indeed,” I agreed. “But for now I am content to admire this painting.”

“With your permission, Doctor, I would like to give the canvas to Mademoiselle Gachet,” Van Gogh said.

Marguerite gasped, and her hands flew to her face. Her blue eyes met mine.

“That would be more than kind, if you think Monsieur Theo would agree,” I said. “More than generous. I certainly cannot stand between Marguerite and such a kind gesture.”

Then Vincent gingerly lifted the canvas from the easel, hooking his fingers beneath the stretcher at the top. “Here it is,” he addressed my daughter. “Mademoiselle Gachet au piano.” He turned to me. “Shall I take it up to the studio to dry?”

“Could it not dry in my bedroom?” Marguerite asked, as loudly as I had ever heard her speak.

“It could,” Vincent conceded. “But the odor of the paint may trouble you.”

She shook her head, eyes shining.

“Is there a hook in the wall?” Vincent asked.

“I’ll go check,” Paul offered and was out of the room in a moment.

“Doctor, you have wire upstairs? And the eyes to thread it through?”

“Of course,” I said, feeling that the situation had somehow moved beyond my control.

He replaced the canvas on the easel. “Might I find them in the studio?”

I could only nod. “In the drawer nearest the window. The wire cutters are there as well.” I wondered what the drawer would look like when I saw it next.

It was a delicate operation, and foolhardy. If the face of the canvas touched anything, it would smear disastrously. Paul held it, with his arms rigid, while Vincent screwed the hooks into the stretcher and strung wire through them. Then, strangest of all, we all trooped up into Marguerite’s bedroom.

Perhaps some fathers frequent their daughters’ bedrooms. That was not our way. Marguerite was always a reserved child, and her bedroom somehow seemed to be protected by her natural requirement for privacy. Yet here we were, Paul and Madame Chevalier and Marguerite and I and Vincent van Gogh. We crowded into the small, austere chamber on the second floor. Marguerite, who always closed the door of the room as she left it, did not seem at all perturbed. In fact, there was no reason why she should be. The room was orderly and immaculate.

Paul and Vincent argued a little bit about where the painting should go. The hook was here, the picture should hang there, could we hammer in another hook, could the wire be tightened, did Mademoiselle like the arrangement? Marguerite was speechless, hands clasped at her chest, alight with excitement. At last the painting was hung on the wall opposite her bed, displacing an admittedly banal engraving after Fragonard. As I had seen so often with Vincent’s pictures, it brought air and light into the small room, making everything else look faded or shabby. Except, perhaps, for Vincent’s bright nosegay, carefully placed in the center of Marguerite’s dressing table.

“Now you must be very, very careful, mademoiselle,” Vincent said, standing in the doorway. “The surface will not be dry for several weeks. Even the lightest touch will disturb it. And after that, the impasto, in the skirt for instance, will be malleable for months. Eventually the doctor should have it framed.”

“I will be careful,” Marguerite promised. In time I did have it framed, and the picture hangs there to this day.