Notes

Context:
BVG 345a, 12/7/1883-12/8/1883: "And that Father was too much in the habit of omitting to do so, and of flying into a violent passion, in my opinion very unjustly and very arbitrarily -- very reprehensibly -- not as regards his "conviction" but as regards his conscience."
JLB 411, 12/8/1883: "And that Pa was all too much in the habit of failing to do this and going on hot-headedly -- in my view very unjustly, very arbitrarily, very reprehensibly -- according to his 'opinion' -- not -- according to his conscience." (Emphasis in original.)

Context:
BVG 82a, 9/1/1876-9/15/1876: "Strengthen thine heart. Because ye are sons, God hath sent forth the Spirit of His Son into your hearts, crying: Abba, Father."
JLB 89, 8/26/1876: "'Stablish your heart.' 'Because ye are sons, God hath sent forth the Spirit of His Son into our hearts, crying in us, 'Abba, Father.'"

Context:
JLB 351, 6/7/1883: "It seems to me that Pa's a little melancholy, though, and is perhaps fretting a little about you and imagining gloomy things -- but again Pa writes not a syllable about it directly, and said not a word about it at the time of his visit. But not talking about it is in fact also rather abnormal." (Emphasis in original.)

Context:
BVG 110, 9/18/1877: " Oh, boy, how glorious it must be to have a life behind one like Pa's; may God grant us to be, and to become increasingly, sons after the spirit and his heart."
JLB 131, 9/18/1877: " Old boy, how wonderful it must be to have a life behind one like Pa has, God grant that we be and that we may become more and more sons after His spirit and heart ... "

Context:
BVG 91a, 4/8/1877: "You did well to write to us. Bear up, my dear fellow, and always take an interest in life, also for our sakes."

Between 1862, when Cent moved to Paris, and 1867, the frequency of his visits dropped off, with only one visit recorded in 1866 (“The Name Van Gogh,” p. 363). In 1867, the frequency picks up again, especially after 1870 when he began work on a house in Princenhage, near Breda. By the time Cent moved into that house, however, Dorus’s family had moved to Helvoirt.

Mak relates the example of a plan to rebuild the town hall in Amsterdam (Mak, p. 100). The plan ran into objections from the clergy because the new building would be taller than the neighboring church. The clergy only relented when the city agreed to build the church a new tower that would be even taller. In a typical Dutch resolution, the church tower was never built.

Three hundred years later, in 1877, Vincent van Gogh recalled a favorite family prayer from his childhood which embodied the unresolved contradiction still at the core of the Dutch psyche: "Father, we pray not that Thou shouldest take us out of the world, but [just] that Thou shouldest keep us from the evil" (JLB 114, 5/19/1877). (See also Schuchart, pp. 66-67.)

The tailor Gerrit van Gogh (see Ch. 4, n. 101) described himself first and foremost as a soldier (as his grandson Vincent would do [Sanders, pp. 3, 6]). He could have been a mercenary, but his evident skill with the needle suggests that he was a militant artisan rather than a professional soldier with clever fingers. The additional possibility that he was "impressed" -- common at the time -- is belied by his proud insistence on the title long after hostilities ended. Either way, Gerrit apparently found temporal as well as spiritual rewards in his military career: Mary Stuart, the wife of the ruler of the new Dutch Republic, Willem II, retained him as her "bottler and silver keeper," as well as her embroiderer (Sanders, p. 3).

The possibility of a religious connection is supported by Jo Bonger's reference to the roughly contemporaneous Cornelius van Gogh as a "Remonstrant clergyman at Boskoop." The Remonstrants were an especially orthodox Calvinist offshoot of the Dutch Protestant church. Also supporting the inference of a strain of militant religious zeal may be a reference in the record to a "Joh. v. Goch" the "father superior of the monastery in Gouda [who] gave offence due to his preaching."

In her memoir, Jo Bonger reports another Van Gogh ancestor, one "Michel van Gogh -- originally Consul General in Brazil and later treasurer of Zeeland -- [who] was a member of the Embassy that welcomed King Charles II of England on his ascent to the throne in 1660." There is no other record of this Michel who, presumably, would have overlapped and been acquainted with Gerrit, the embroiderer-soldier to Princess Royal, Mary Stuart.

Whether or not Parson Vincent married Elizabeth Vrijdag because of her family’s wealth (“they had carriages,” boasts the family chronicler, “and a country house”) (b3259 V/1962, “Gogh, Maria Johanna van”, 1899), he did not hesitate to accept money from his in-laws (“The Name Van Gogh,” p. 354). Or from his childless great uncle Vincent, whose inheritance helped pay for his education (b3259 V/1962, “Gogh, Maria Johanna van”, 1899). The family chronicler’s language suggests that this legacy was substantial: “Young Vincent was named after a great-uncle V[incent] from whom he inherited so much that he could study” (ibid.). Meyers tell us that the young Vincent occasionally ate at his grandfather’s house or took walks with him (Meyers, p. 27). Parson Vincent also accepted money from his own father (“The Name Van Gogh,” p. 354). According to Aunt Mietje: “... both grandfathers helped out.”

Such worldly pragmatism faced the supreme test in 1830 when rioters in Brussels demanded independence for the Catholic south, touching off the Belgian Revolt (Blom and Lamberts, eds., p. 309). Fearing a sympathetic uprising in Breda (and, with it, all of Catholic Brabant), authorities shuttered the military academy, occupied the city with troops, and closed the gates after dark ("The Name Van Gogh," p. 354). When it came to light that Catholics were circulating a list of "houses to be plundered," (b3259 V/1962, "Gogh, Maria Johanna van", 1899) Protestants began abandoning the city. Vincent, whose grand house on Catharinastraat topped the list, sent his family to stay with relatives in The Hague. (At first, the two oldest sons, Hein (age sixteen) and Jan (thirteen) stayed on with their father in Breda. In November, Jan, too, was sent away (Hein had started his first job with a bookseller the previous May) (b3259 V/1962, "Gogh, Maria Johanna van", 1899). Vincent (twelve) and Willem (ten) stayed with grandfather Johannes Van Gogh in The Hague. Daughters Geertruida (three) and Bertha (seven) stayed with an aunt in The Hague. The rest -- Johanna (eighteen), Dorothea (fifteen), Cor (six), and Dorus (eight) -- stayed with their mother at her brother's home in Rotterdam. Most of the family returned to Breda on December 17 (b3259 V/1962, "Gogh, Maria Johanna van", 1899). But Parson Vincent himself bravely stayed in Breda the whole time, ministering to the needs of his increasingly nervous flock even as other ministers fled ("The Name Van Gogh," pp. 354-355). Nevertheless, just in case, he shipped his mahogany furniture downriver for safekeeping.

Pastor Vincent shepherded his large family through these trials employing a combination of earnest piety and self-righteous authoritarianism. The family chronicler, Aunt Mietje, describes her father as a "firmly just man" (b3259 V/1962, "Gogh, Maria Johanna van", 1899).  Elsewhere she implies that the pastor's children feared him: "There would also be grumbling or reprimanding, but it rarely, if ever, came to hitting or punishing. For there was ... such great respect for father that, for him, everyone kept quiet." (Van Gogh, Maria Johanna, "Aantekeningen over de familie van Gogh door Tante Mietje 1859 tot 1883," p.1)

There is also a strong suggestion in the record that Pastor Vincent's sermons had a harder edge than his son Dorus's. For example, in April 1850, he preached on the Psalms 65:3: "Iniquities prevail against me; as for our transgressions, thou shalt purge them away" (b3259 V/1962, "Gogh, Maria Johanna van", 1899). Also see Van Crimpen, "The Van Gogh Family in Brabant, pp. 72-73: "Parson van Gogh accepted the [appointment in Benschop] on 29 July, 1816, 'in the fear of the Lord'". This stern, judgmental authoritarianism would be mimicked by the Reverend's son Theodorus (Dorus) and would ultimately frustrate and infuriate his grandson Vincent, the painter, who described his grand-father as "gloomy, dull, stale, so much that it makes one sick" (JLB 461, 9/22/1884-9/28/1884). "There's something lugubrious, dull, even feeble about [him], to such a degree that [he] make[s] one sick" (ibid.).

Years later, Dorus made the same point, using the same image. "Do not worry about or get caught up in the finer details of abstract ideas," he wrote to his son Theo in 1874. "Instead, do like I do and enjoy the light and the warmth of the sun, even though I can't scientifically describe or determine all the existing theories concerning sunlight and sunspots and all those particulars." (b2728 V/1982, "Gogh, Theodorus van" to "Gogh, Theo van", 10/28/1874.) Another example of Dorus's Groninger un-concern with doctrinal differences comes from an 1875 letter in which he advised Theo, who was in The Hague, to sample different churches: "Would you see what you would think of the Remonstrant church or the French church? You should really investigate all of them. And it is true that man needs food for his religious life." (b2324 V/1982, "Gogh, Theodorus en Anna C. van" to "Gogh, Theo van", 2/25/1875.)

Doctrinal feuds also handicapped Dorus's job search. His sympathies apparently favored the Groninger Richting, but Aunt Mietje's oft-cited commentary on Dorus's relationship with the Groningers is confusing (b3259 V/1962, "Gogh, Maria Johanna van", 1899; see also Wagener, pp. 196-197). She says that Dorus is "not from an extreme party" but then clearly suggests that she considers the Groningers one of those extreme parties: "The party of Groningen and the Awakening made themselves heard. While luckily there remained also a moderate persuasion" (b3260 V/1962, "Gogh, Maria Johanna van", 1899). The strongest arguments for Dorus's Groninger sympathies, we believe, lie in his letters and in his disposition as it emerges in those letters and as it was reported. In any event, the Groningers had little sympathy for anyone with the last name Van Gogh. Throughout Dorus's years at university, the Groningers had waged a battle with the Society for Prosperity, led by Dorus's father, Pastor Vincent, over the Society's accommodationist attitude toward the Brabant Catholics (anti-Catholicism being the one dogma the Groningers had not rejected). The Groningers also objected to the Society's emphasis on agriculture, arguing that it should focus more on crafts and trades (Kools, p. 11).

In 1844, frustrated with "the Breda autocracy," the Groningers had set up a rival organization to focus more on evangelical works and proceeded to plunder the Society's membership (ibid.). Against that background of antagonism, the fact that Dorus Van Gogh was enrolled at Utrecht during a student rebellion against the Groningers could only have sealed their enmity towards him, whether or not he participated (see Tralbaut, pp. 12, 14). According to a document in the Van Gogh Foundation Archives, Dorus's relationship to the Society for Prosperity had come to the attention of the Groningers in Utrecht early in Dorus's stay there: "[Dorus] met people in higher circles [at the university] through his father's connection with the 'Maatschappij van Welstand.'" ("Rond Vincent's Leven en Werk: Over de vader van Vincent van Gogh," n.p.).

Two months later, Dorus preached his first sermon as a candidate for the ministry in the church at Ginneken (“Rond Vincent’s Leven en Werk: Over de vader van Vincent van Gogh,” n.p.), near Breda (b3259 V/1962, “Gogh, Maria Johanna van”, 1899). Thereafter, he gave “guest sermons in many places,” according to the family chronicler (Brielle and Bath are mentioned), and was received “courteously,” no doubt because of his distinguished father. But nobody invited him back for a permanent position (ibid.). They dismissed him -- with a mix of appreciation and disparagement, perhaps -- as “the handsome dominie.” Dorus’s only hope was a position with one of the churches within his father’s area of influence around Breda. Driven by the example of his father, who had found his first position at twenty-one (only six months after becoming a candidate), and no doubt by the business successes of his older brothers, he plodded on through three years of rejections and celebrated his twenty-sixth birthday still living with his parents in Breda (Kools, p. 13).

That same year, 1848, a year of continent-wide upheaval, his father finally found him employment at a church in Middelburg, at the far western edge of the country, although not as a minister. (Kools is circumspect about the father’s role in securing this position but it is noteworthy that, in 1844, Reverend Vincent helped his son Willem secure a position at a boarding school in Engelen.) Aunt Mietje records Dorus’s new position as “assistant minister” (b3259 V/1962, “Gogh, Maria Johanna van”, 1899). Stolwijk refers to it as “curate” (Stolwijk and Thomson, p. 17). Not until later that year did the father’s long search for a permanent position for his earnest but laggard son finally bear fruit (b3259 V/1962, “Gogh, Maria Johanna van”, 1899). An old and ailing preacher in Zundert, Abraham van der Burg, a colleague of Pastor Vincent’s, was looking for a replacement. Aunt Mietje admiringly reports that Van der Burg “remained at his station” during the Belgian Revolt in 1830, which surely sealed his friendship with Dorus’s father. Also, Jacobus van Gogh, a collateral descendant of the Pastor’s seventeenth-century ancestor Gerrit van Gogh, married Cornelia van der Burg from The Hague in 1761, suggesting the possibility of a distant family tie of which both men might have been aware (Sanders, p. 19).

At first, the Zundert congregation resisted replacing the seventy-six-year-old Van der Burg with a novice preacher -- especially an unmarried one. Kools quotes a church report from a few years earlier: “Don’t ever take a novice. Ambition goads the young gentlemen -- and the congregation is too small, and immediately he will start praying and begging to leave.” (Quoted in Kools, p. 14.) But finally, with their preacher virtually on his deathbed (according to Aunt Miejte, Van der Burg survived Dorus’s confirmation by only six weeks (b3259 V/1962, “Gogh, Maria Johanna van”, 1899), the congregation bowed to Pastor Vincent’s entreaties and offered the position to Dorus (see Kools, p. 13). On April 1, with his father officiating and his family witnessing (b0973 V/1962, “Gogh, Theodorus van” to “Gogh, Theo van”, 4/1/1878; “The Name Van Gogh,” p. 359), Dorus van Gogh assumed his first ministry in the little church at Zundert to the strains of Nut en Vermaak (Usefulness and Pleasure) (Kools, p. 3).

Kools makes the point that in 1849 the Zundert congregation was in better shape than it had been in a long time (with fifty-eight nonmember “souls” in addition to its 56 members). But this also means that only half of the handful of Protestants in Zundert were church members (ibid., p. 46). Administrative positions like warden and deacon were almost impossible to fill from the ranks of “peat folk” (ibid., p. 42) and sand farmers that dotted the pews of a Sunday morning, most of whom represented net drains on limited church resources (ibid., p. 46). Poor management of the congregation’s possessions and accounts had brought repeated official rebukes. So serious was the disarray that the new pastor soon found himself accused of embezzling church welfare funds. Kools gives this “scandal” exhaustive treatment: the deacons assigned to look into the accusation fully exonerated their new pastor. The accuser, although he never retracted the accusation, eventually left the congregation (ibid., pp. 49-50).

Dorus’s duties ranged over a vast area. Aunt Mietje reports that the two farthest villages that belonged to the congregation, Rijsbergen to the north and Werndorp to the south, were both “one hour’s walk away” from Groot-Zundert (b3259 V/1962, “Gogh, Maria Johanna van”, 1899). But this understates the extent of Dorus’s range, which included hamlets and farmsteads both farther from the parsonage and lying in all quadrants. Anna wrote to Theo in 1875, when Dorus was considerably older: “You know how Dad is when the weather is so cold; he will visit everyone, even those who live quite a long way out.” Dorus’s enthusiasm for visiting the sick was soon put to the test by a raging typhoid epidemic in which eight church members died (see Ch. 4, n. 445). Protestants throughout the vast township were astonished to look up from their labors and see the new minister approaching their remote hamlets and farmsteads. And he brought not just the usual sympathy and consolation, but also a strange new fascination -- a frustrated physician’s fascination -- with the mechanics of sickness and dying. “At the end, the lungs were compromised as well,” he wrote about one deathbed vigil in 1875, “which only added to the shortness of breath that is specific to that kind of affliction” (b2366 V/1982, “Gogh, Theodorus van” to “Gogh, Theo van”, 10/7/1875).

Context:
JLB 780, 6/16/1889: "This seems most deplorable to me, all the more so since nature isn't ungenerous and the air is so pure and so healthy."

Context:
JLB 780, 6/16/1889: "This seems most deplorable to me, all the more so since nature isn't ungenerous and the air is so pure and so healthy. So one would wish to see a more energetic race of people here. The cases aren't perhaps rare here where doing nothing becomes doing bad."

Context:
BVG W12, 6/16/1889: "Well, the farms here would produce three times as much as they do now if they were well kept, and the whole land too if it were sufficiently manured. And if the country here should produce three times as much, it might feed a lot more people."
JLB 780, 6/16/1889: "Ah well, the farms here could produce three times what they do if they were well-kept, and the whole land if it was manured. By producing three times as much, the land here could thus feed a lot more people."

In any event, the move revealed for the first time a shrewd, innate business sense. In just two years (by 1843), Cent somehow managed to wrest control of his part of the business away from his wastrel cousin, so that when Hendrik went bankrupt, bringing shame and exile on his family, Cent escaped with the business entirely in his own name and his reputation intact. He may have bought whatever remained of his cousin’s business in 1842 -- probably at a fire-sale price -- when Hendrik’s situation became desperate (he was bankrupt by the next year). According to the family chronicle from 1843: “Hendrik [van der Brugh], who had become his own boss too soon after his father’s death, has finally spent everything his mother and he had. ... At first, aunt could remain in The Hague, but in the end she went to live somewhere else, and died after much sorrow. Her fate cast a great shadow over our home, of course.” (“The Name Van Gogh,” p. 357.)

Context:
JLB 658, 8/9/1888: "In that, our uncle was quite right when he said: much work with few staff, and not little work with many."

Context:
BVG 513, 7/22/1888: "But then, as old Prinsenhage would say, "Everything gets sold."
JLB 645, 7/22/1888: "But then again, as our uncle from Princenhage used to say, 'everything sells.'"

As to the unfolding of Cent’s strategy of business relations with Goupil (especially the dating), we have only Aunt Mietje’s frustratingly obscure, even contradictory account. Consequently, the literature is at its most confusing. Following Mietje, the dates 1858, 1859, and 1861 are all used for Cent “partnering” with Goupil. We believe this reflects increasing business ties between the two companies beginning in the late 1850s: some informal, some perhaps formal, but all short of the agreement signed in 1861, which, given the immediate consequences, should probably be seen more as a purchase than a partnership.

Like his mentor Adolphe Goupil, Cent developed a haute-bourgeois preoccupation with how he was housed. After leaving the Goupil apartment on the rue Chaptal, he lived in the Villa Eugénie in the Paris suburbs.

In subsequent chronicle entry (for 1871), Mietje reports that the Paris house "had suffered relatively little" while "in some neighborhoods in the city, also the Bois de Boulogne, much has been destroyed" (Van Gogh, Maria Johanna, "Aantekeningen over de familie van Gogh door Tante Mietje 1859 tot 1883," p. 6).  In the meantime, though, Uncle Cent had made a trip to Breda to tend his mortally ill father. It may have been this trip that triggered the wave of nostalgia that brought him back to residence in Brabant (ibid., p. 5). (In fact, the Pastor Vincent did not die until 1874, at the age of eighty-five, outliving by seventeen years his wife, who died on March 9, 1857.) Although Cent eventually spent more than just summers in the Princenhage house, we believe that summering was his original intention. Aunt Mietje refers to the Breda house as a "pied-a-terre" (ibid., p. 6). He returned to the Paris house after the political turmoil died down there, and he continued to spend the late fall and winter in Switzerland and the Côte d'Azur until the end of his life.

Context:
BVG 10a, 8/7/1873: "But moving is so horrible that I shall stop here as long as possible, although everything is not so beautiful as it seemed to me in the beginning."
JLB 12, 8/7/1873: "But I find moving so terrible that I'll stay here as long as possible, though things aren't as nice here as they seemed at first."

Context:
JLB 235, 6/3/1882: "The only person from whom, in very different circumstances, I might perhaps have inherited something because I share his name, Uncle Cent, is someone with whom I have been on bad terms for many years on account of numerous things, and in such a manner that by the nature of the matter it cannot be resolved as if I were his protégé."