Cassirer Anecdote Booklet
Appendix
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After editing, various sketches were passed on to me, which I reproduce here unaltered.
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Toulon
Sept 1937
My good little Sister,
You wrote that you want to give Uncle Max something “literary” for this 80th birthday, and that I, along with other family members, should contribute something. Later you wrote me that most of your collaborators had left you in the lurch and were very critical of them. You’re wrong. I’m convinced that everyone would have been very happy to contribute to Uncle Max, whom we all love and honor, an intellectual fruit to lay on his birthday table, but firstly, such fruit doesn’t fall from everyone with the facility it does from you, then they don’t happen to fall at the moment they’re required, and finally, many are surely afraid of our good uncle’s rigorous critique, which he has never held back – for in regard to which – although in part already advanced in age – we all are the dumb boys and girls we used to be.
From these and many other reasons, many were probably scared off a literary effort, and left you, in spite of pangs of conscience, in the lurch. I’m firmly convinced that everyone you approached made an attempt – perhaps even without tell you about it – but that only a small fraction succeeded to their standards, so that their fruits, instead of taking the known pathways, ended in the trash can. The main reason that your well-meant and brilliant plan did not grow to an anthology of Cassirer intellect was not in a lack of good intentions or even talent, but that this family
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Is uniquely self-critical.
Although I am not a Cassirer in the narrowest sense, I must admit that I have gotten a bit of the self-critique which hinders naïve production. This self-critique has always kept me from representing the modest products of my spirit with the verve necessary to fight my way through to the end. Therefore my pictures – at least that’s what I imagine – mostly sit around in attics, and my literary efforts yellow in drawers and briefcases. However, as I believe that most things of this sort have missed their calling, if they’re found elsewhere, and furthermore I think that it’s more important to have certain thoughts and write them down than to have them read, I’m not going to excite myself any further about the situation. I’ve even developed the habit of not sending long letters, and all I need to cool off is to write them. I’ve only sent of one letter such letter in the last decades; it read:
Mr. Art Dealer X
Berlin
Dear Sir,
Today you telephoned me and used the most insulting language. I recommend to you to avoid such excitement in future, as with your apoplectic tendencies it could lead to results which have long been wished for by
Your humble
Walter Bondy
The lack of success of this letter – the man is not only still alive, he’s beaten all his colleagues from the field – further reinforced the resolve in me, never to send another coarse letter, but to leave it to my biographer whether he wants to include them in
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my legacy.
In addition, it’s my firm conviction that everyone who’s ever done me wrong will experience a disaster. I’ve taken over this idea from my former friend Kober, who was absolutely convinced that there was no point to seeking revenge one’s self, as it would, so to say, follow automatically. I’ve adopted this approach, as it’s not only very practical, but also far less dangerous than that practiced by most people. To now, it hasn’t served me ill. Almost everyone who’s done me wrong has died, albeit generally at an advanced age, and the rest are even worse off… they’re still alive! Mr. Kober, on the other hand, fell victim to his own principle. He, albeit involuntarily, ceded me his wife, a circumstance which cost me a great deal of money and even more time and nerves. The punishment for this has already been meted out. I’m told he sits in America and is not doing well at all. By the way, it was the fault of this woman, that I had to sell the one of the two pictures by van Gogh, about which I’ll tell you more later. Her husband had, after he had discovered – not difficult, they were on top – my tender letters in the suitcase sent ahead from Kaernten (she was there on a summer holiday) – sent me a short friendly letter in which he politely requested me to pick Mrs. Kober up at the Gare du Nord, and to take care of all her future requirements.
You can imagine what that meant to a 27-year-old man, who would have preferred anything to an extended relationship with a self-absorbed flirt. But to be forced to it, that I wasn’t going to accept! I therefore decided to take care of the situation with money; in the course of which
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decision the Kober family did not hinder me further. Mrs. Kober planned to open an antiques shop, and first relieved me of all the objects in my gallery (a loan, she said) and out of politeness carried off a number of my pictures as well. – Some of these, a friend found in a Paris furnished flat, and these are the only ones of my pieces which were ever sold on the Paris art market. – My few chunks naturally were insufficient for an art dealership; she needed money, too; quite a lot, in fact. In and of itself, nothing seemed more obvious than to sell one of the van Goghs. But, as I was convinced that eventually their value would rise dramatically, I decided to borrow some money against one of them instead.
Toward this purpose, I wrote an long, detailed letter to our father, explaining the Kober affair in broad strokes, as well as the way I proposed to settle it, and asked him to loan me 5000 Marks against the pictures.
Our father wrote me a letter stating he was prepared to comply with my request, but that as he could see that in Paris I was about to succumb to moral decay, he felt he had to make my immediate return home to Vienna a condition of the loan.
I made no reply to this letter, but immediately sold one of the pictures our cousin Paul Cassirer, who by chance happened to be in Paris at the time, for 6000 Francs. This landscape, a famous one, and van Gogh’s last painting, was a few years later sold to Lotte Mendelssohn for 60,000 Mark, and was surely worth 600,000 in 1925. (That is, a thousand times more than my current bank balance, but that just in passing).
From these 6000 Francs, I gave Fr. Kober 5000. Then I bought a ticket and went to Vienna.
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A few weeks later, I received, via dispatch, a few words from my friend R. L. “Kober sits in a store and sells antiques”.
As appendix to this affair, I’d like to tell this story:
First, a few more words about Fr. Kober. Her antique business went very well, as long as she had wares. As she had, presumably, collected the sum she wanted, she closed the store as soon as she’d sold all her stock. Then I lost sight of her.
In 1926, that is, nearly twenty years later, I participated in a picture exhibition of foreign artists living in Paris in aid of the Franc, very unstable at the time. This was an act of courtesy, as these paintings were to be sold to the highest bidder to support the Franc. To render a courtesy in turn for this one, the French government bought one painting from among those contributed from each country. As very few Austrians had exhibited, the choice fell on one of works. Therefore I received, to my not small surprise, the following letter:
Salon du Franc 10 Dec. 1926
Mr. And Dear Master,
We have the pleasure of informing you that the your work of art, entered Oct. 29 at the Musee Caliera[?] was purchased by the government.
Marshall Joffre has written you a letter in recognition of this fact, which is enclosed.Accept, Sir and Dear Master, the homage of our admiration .
Salon du Franc
The President
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That was my only contact with the French army; but you’ll admit I didn’t start at seargent.
Naturally I never saw the 10.000 Francs my picture brought - they went to the French treasury [In a somewhat circular way!] (which, by the way, did nothing to save the Franc) but my masterpiece presumably gathers dust in the cellars of some French provincial museum, providing that perhaps the concierge isn’t using it to decorate his office. (Due to its beguiling subject – it’s called “Love Letter” – I think this entirely possible).
Again, a few weeks passed, I received another letter in the mail, in French, which runs approximately thusly in German: [English, now]:
Dear Sir,
I admired your wonderful picture at the “Salon du Franc” and would be pleased to own one by our own hand. Would you give me the pleasure of taking a cup of tea with me next Wednesday at 4.
Comtesse
Korsakoff
You can imagine my excitement and pleasure. First the prospect of a Paris sale, and then the acquaintance of a real comtesse and presumable future patron. I already imagined myself as fashionable artist, swamped in commissions.
In my nicest suit and with pounding heart I stood in front of 243 Faubourg St. Honore at 4 on Wednesday, the address the Comtesse had given me. To my astonishment, the building consisted of many shops. But I managed to find a tiny entrance and the
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porter going with it, whom I asked for Comtesse Korsakoff. “In the fur shop in front”, he told me.
That cooled me down considerably. A comtesse in a fur shop couldn’t be anything particularly grand. – Thus I went, heart beating significantly less hard, into that every elegant shop, in whose window hung the sable, ermine, and chinchilla coats, as if that sort of thing were cheap. – From the perfumed darkness, an elegant figure wafted toward me already. “Comtesse Korsakoff?” I asked. “That’s me”, she answered laughing ----- and it was Fr. Kober!
The whole Faubourg Honore didn’t have enough walls to contain the laughter about this. I’d be lying if I tried to tell you that at this point I had a poker face. But I composed myself rapidly, particularly since she was still pretty, and still had her very white teeth and coal-black eyes. She’d also kept her dialect and manner of speech. ---
When one encounters a former lover after almost 20 years, one assumes, naturally, that one will find a ruin. But as this was far from the case, probably due to her improved economic circumstances and recently discovered beauty aids, I quickly buried my artistic aspirations, at least in regard to Comtesse Korsakoff, and seated myself on one of the soft sofas which stood around the shop and let her tell me her more or less recent history.
This I would naturally like to give you in the short version, that one of her “patrons” once
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laid her on Comte Korsakoff’s Christmas table, and that the latter, already advanced in age and suffering ill health, died shortly thereafter. She’d earned the store in that she’d been, for years, selling the furs of Russian émigré aristocrats, which she was still doing. She had another store and a large coffee house. Her daughter Suserl, in my day a pale, white blonde, stunted child of six – which I was supposed to take on at that time as well – had by then grown up to more than a young lady and already owned her own cottage in the “Bois”, a Packard car, and even greater expectations. Suserl, who showed up later, naturally paid me scant attention, as she realized at first glance that my net worth was insufficient. (In spite of my best suit).
Fr. Kober – excuse me – Comtesse Korsakoff, wanted to go into art business with me. She’d learned about this sideline of mine. Since I didn’t need her for it, I only saw her once or twice more. My letter, suggesting that she pay me back the 5000 Marks, at least in debased currency, remained unanswered.
I can imagine that one could give Uncle Max greater pleasure for his birthday than giving him such boring old stories to read. However, I fear that he wouldn’t be reading them himself, but that some secretary will have to read them to him, who might possibly mis-speak at my few pointed spots, thereby taking from my work the least effect. Therefore, it would probably be better not to send you this at all, but, like the others, to take a piece of nice stationery and write on it:
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Dear Uncle Max,
I genuinely need to sit down and write you a few words for your birthday.
It would be nicer if we could be together on that day, but we might talk of indifferent things, and – even if one could – I’d surely not get around to telling you what I really feel.
In recent years, our correspondence has brought us closer than we’ve ever been. That’s actually been how we’ve gotten to know each other, and our relationship. If in the course of our dealings, I have not always been as you deserved, don’t for a minute think that I mistook, for the tiniest instant, the endless good that directs all your acts. Even when you seem very cross with me, I never thought that your remarks on the occasion were more than a transient expression of ill humor occasioned by your tremendous work load and my Gypsy-like actions, and therefore fully justified.
I can do nothing other for all the things you’ve done for me, than thank you. To thank you for the great, hard work you’ve done on my behalf, without having even the shadow of an obligation to do so. That’s not much – no? – and it has to console me that sacrifice carries in itself its reward.
Today you’re 80. You’re the oldest of us – and the youngest. In any case, you’re the best. There’s on one in the family whom you have not helped, you doesn’t owe you gratitude.
And even though we’re scattered over the whole world,
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There won’t be anyone in the family who doesn’t think of you with love, no one who doesn’t wish with all his or her heart that you will be preserved to us forever as symbol of friendship and our connection to each other.
Your grateful nephew,
Walter Bondy
My good Tonchen,
If I had not already promised to provide a contribution for your Festschrift, I’d make it easier on Uncle Max and sent him a letter, which, even if it can not show everything I feel about him, would at least give him the concept that not all of his good fruit had fallen on barren ground. But I did promise you, and I did not want, like some others, to become the target of your anger and disdain. Thus I’d like to report a few of the incidents framing the sale of the van Gogh:
When I bought both paintings for the enormous sum of 140 Francs, one of them (the one later sold to P.C.) found itself in desolate circumstances. It was barely connected to its wood frame, the canvas was in sad shape from the damp. Therefore I took both pictures to one Mr. Chapuis, a picture restorer, and asked him to repair the situation.
Mr. Chapuis, a man with a slouch hat, gray goatee and Lavalliere collar, told me that he only “rentoiliere” the pictures [not one hit on google]; but that his wife did all the restoration. I told him that only he’d been recommended me, and asked modestly if his wife had experience with modern painting. (the entire shop was hung about with aged hams). [This is either a sarcastic comment on the display being of old works of inferior quality, or it was meant literally – that many of the works being restored were of the genre of a table with a still life of dead game & meat]. “My wife”, retorted Chapuis, looking me up and down, “can paint you a piece of cr** like that in one morning!”
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Regarding Fr. Chapuis, I had great illusions. The restoration was even worse than I had feared, and I intended, in future, to have it undone and done over, better. In the meantime, as I told you, I sold the picture and saved myself the effort.
The second van Gogh was a picture of the daughter of the landlord from whom I bought it. A delicate child with yellow hair, a blue dress, and a dark background. The picture had hung since its creation in the bedroom of this girl, who in the meantime was 25 years old. I bought it for 90 Francs cash. At the right bottom, it had the rare van Gogh signature VINCENT in cinnabar paint.
The sale of this portrait – why I sold it, is a mystery to me to this day – was brokered by a Mr. Wilhelm Uhde, an author of art books who rested 30 years on the laurels of a youthful work and later earned his living by discovering, about once a month, a “maronibrater” – [some sort of “frier” – a disparaging term, I’m sure] or painting porter whose works he subsequently promoted. As one was doing business with just about anything in those days – I refer to the time between 1920 and 1930 – Uhde lived very modestly from these discoveries. At the time of my van Goghs, he’d already tried dealing in art, and through his brokerage, the portrait of the little girl came to the dealer Rosenberg in Paris, who sold it the same day to the dealer and collector Alphonse Kann for more than double the price. I myself got 7500 Francs, Uhde 9500, and Rosenberg 19,000. Paul Cassirer’s letters had so discouraged me, that I had been happy to get that price.
But the most interesting part comes now:
A few weeks after the sale, Uhde came
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to see me in great excitement, and told me, “Something very unpleasant has happened, the signature on your van Gogh is faked!” “Faked?” I asked, “what idiot says so?” The following had happened: an art dealer saw it at Kann’s and claimed to have recognized it. He swore up and down that it hadn’t had a signature before. Two experts were consulted immediately, and they both concluded the signature had been faked, and who declared themselves ready to remove it, for a mere 200 Francs. In this manner, under the eyes of 3 art dealers and 2 experts, one of the few signatures of van Gogh was scraped off the painting.
Later, the light dawned for me in this matter. I saw another portrait of this same girl, unsigned, but with a yellow background. The dealer had mixed the two of them up!
This event forms one stone of the wobbly construction, which the entire wisdom of so-called art connoisseurs and experts appears to me to be. These are just as dumb as any other expert – as lawyers, doctors or bankers, and it would be well to disbelieve them equally. For 200 Francs, an illness is attributed to one, and as this sort of illness is the easiest to cure, one is cured for another miraculous 200 Francs. Who his entire life deals more with matters than about which most people understand even less than he does, is too easily seduced into exploiting his superiority on behalf of his pocketbook.
Art experts hold themselves toward art like doctors toward medicine, like bankers toward finance, like attorneys toward law. Even if they wanted to remain honest, they couldn’t, because if one of them doesn’t
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remove a genuine signature, another one will, and he’s the one who gets the 200 Francs.
But I just noticed with horror that I’m up to page 13, without having said a single word about the purchase of the two van Goghs. And I’d promised to write you about that! That’s the way my life goes. I do just the opposite of what I’m supposed to do, because that’s the thing I enjoy. That’s why I’ve not been much of a success. But maybe there’s another reason for that. I just read in Kretschmer “Geniale Menschen” [Resourceful People] that I presumably haven’t reached that level of mental disturbance required for attaining genius. I lack the necessary determination, this consistency within inconsistency, in short, fruitful psychosis. – You always said that I was crazy enough, but now you see, my child, that wasn’t enough!
In leafing through my journals, I find the following – long before Kretschmer – Talent is superior judgment in a specialized area. (That’s why so many gifted people are also so dumb).
A genius’ specialty is overflow pipe for highest personal level of the whole.
Talent is an ability, genius a characteristic.
But I believe I must finally decide to commence with my van Gogh story. If I, as you see, tied my horse to the rail tail first, I did so not out of lack of weighty reasons. By starting with the consequences that such a fortunate purchase had for me, I wanted to suppress any budding feelings of envy in the reader. He was first to learn that this “luck” was no luck for me at all.
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That what happened to me afterwards was what happens to any poor person who wins a lottery.
When the money’s gone, they notice for the first time, just how poor they are.
With the sale of the second picture, I had hardly any better luck than with the first. I bought a dog which wasn’t pure bred, a boat which I used twice, clothes for my wife, paid off nearly all my debts at once, and a few other equally useless things. In short, in a few weeks I had neither van Goghs nor money, but a dog without a breed, a row boat that others used, and an indescribable hangover.
I believe that those envious of me will have calmed down completely by now, and can therefore, but only in condensed form, because my manuscript is 75 pages long, begin the first chapters on my van Goghs, and it’s called:
How I bought two van Goghs
First there was general prattle. After that it went, verbatim:
I was at the time of this story about 20 and seemed to me to be a very promising young lad. I spent the summer of 1918 in a small hotel in the small town of Maulan on the Seine. I was painting assiduously, and when I had finished painting, I went fishing. Also, I was in love with a woman, who happened to be on summer holiday in Kaernten, and to whom I wrote daily long, tender letters (see above).
Now I’ll describe the people who were resident in the hotel: first the Dutch man Ludwig (Lulu) Schelfhout, a man with a very disagreeable laugh, red-brown hair and unusually little money. He was also rather conceited about the fact that he represented the third consecutive generation of bad artists in his family. In addition, he spoke four languages incorrectly.
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In addition 5 or 6 American artists, typical of their kind: noisy, drunken, amiable, naïve and totally lacking in talent. An exception was a little Jewish one; he was not a drunk -- but otherwise exactly the same as the rest.
Now I go at length and in a boring way about my friend Schelfhout and the Americans. I quote from it:
Schelfhout was not really my friend, in the way that artists or other artist in other media are never really friends. In addition, he was envious, grudging (like all painters), and a gossip. But I needed him in boring Maulan. Thus, in the time we were thrown together, we got along pretty well --- Conversation with the Americans, on the other hand, was limited to the occasional “how do you do?” the entire three months we sat at adjacent tables.
Only a few times – it says next – did we have a sort of conversation. One of the group mentioned that the landlord kitty-corner from our hotel had two pictures by van Gogh. I listened with interest and asked him, “How do you know that?” to which he replied that the landlord’s daughters had told him so.
I acknowledged this information, but did not continue the conversation.
There followed a string of lovely autumn days. I had decided to look at the pictures some time, but naturally I had no great confidence in the matter, because how on earth did van Goghs get lost in the possession of the dull landlord of a pub, and hadn’t yet been discovered? ---
Now I’ll describe the neighborhood of Paris in late autumn:
We were getting ready for the return trip to Paris. We hadn’t finished our paintings yet, but artists
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never finish their paintings. (By the way, they’re the only ones who notice this; no one else is interested). We were in a pretty bad mood, partly for this reason, partly because a provincial hamlet like this gets rather bleak in fall. The bare branches, on which a few little yellow leaves still hang, free up the stark architecture of the farm houses, stores have taken their wares inside, there’s no comfortable little pub here or anywhere else – the stark materialism of the provincial French is nowhere more evident than in their pubs. The few summer guests had flown off like the swallows.
We were therefore condemned to spend ours at the bar in our hotel, along with the Americans, who loitered in the corners, sometimes playing poker, sometimes being drunk. We were forced, like them, to wait until the end of the month, as we were expecting money, and hadn’t pay our bills. You can imagine our mood. We were of course dissatisfied with our work, we had no money, and we cursed Meulan, the rain, and especially art.
One of the last days of September, as we once again sat together dejectedly, I had the desperate idea to go see the van Goghs’ belonging to the landlord across the street. The others seized on it joyfully, and the little Jew, the one who’d spoken of them first, offered himself as Mentor. The offer seemed a bit forward to me, but what could I do? I’d gotten the information from “America”.
A few minutes later, we entered the gloomy pub. It was a sad example of its kind. A large, poorly illuminated room with dirty wall paper and curtains, thickly populated with spotty, sticky marble
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tables, in the background the unavoidably enormous bar, and above it, organized in row above row, the familiar schnaps and sirop bottles with their colorful labels, filled with the chemical products of this sad industry, which every Frenchman knows by heart far better than the Ten Commandments. On the spotty wallpaper hung the most famous advertising prints of the above liquor companies, in gold-gleaming cardboard frames, and down from the smoke-stained ceiling, over-populated, unappetizing flypapers, which had not been changed the entire summer.
In this milieu – allegedly – I was to find two van Goghs.
The landlord’s daughters, by the way, were not at all bad. Two black-eyed girls of 22 and 27 years, pale-faced, and clad in the badly-brushed national color, black. French women miss no opportunity to wear mourning, as, presumably, that’s cheaper.
To justify this mass visit we naturally ordered something to drink. The Americans appeared to be regulars, and started in on their usual jokes right away, which one apparently cannot understand or enjoy unless one is a third-generation native of that country.
The host, however, sat dourly in a corner, apparently studying if there were any room for new arrivals on his flypaper. He took absolutely no notice of us, the way a French innkeeper places the greatest value on giving his guests no possible hint that their presence affects him in any possible way.
Soon I was getting bored, so I quietly asked the little American if he could please ask about the pictures now. He did so right away, and
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the one young lady immediately vanished through a wallpapered door, on which a gold-rimmed oil print wiggled, and in a few moments appeared with a wooden frame under her arm on which, apparently fastened only with a couple nails, hung a canvas. She set it lightly on the floor, leaned against a wobbly chair, and turned back to her American friends. These remained calmly seated and valued the picture not one whit. Only Schelfhout and I stood before it – I observing the canvas, he waiting for me to say something.
I looked at the picture, the Americans, Schelfhout, the innkeeper, the fly paper. Naturally the innkeeper interested me most of all. That the picture was a genuine van Gogh, I knew instantly, but how the old idiot had accomplished it – owning such a picture, with no clue as to its worth, - one could tell from its condition that he had no clue – that was a true mystery to me.
This incredible man was still sitting there, totally apathetic, and not once turned his head toward us. I, naturally, was not quite clear in my mind as to how I was supposed to behave next, but I knew this much: if I did the slightest thing wrong, the whole deal would be messed up.
Finally the innkeeper did decide to stand up. He stood next to me and stared at the picture like he had the fly paper. – I decided on attack. “Is this for sale?” I asked casually, as if it were a matter of a used oil heater. The host acted as I’d expected. He did nothing. He stood exactly like before, and one could not detect the slightest change in his demeanor. Now as for me, my heart was beating wildly, but apparently I controlled myself so well that no one
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could see any excitement in me (At least that’s what Schelfhout told me later).
I imitated the innkeeper and said not a thing more, and waited patiently to see to see what came next. And something did come. The innkeeper suddenly opened his mouth and said drily, “I’ve been offered 60 Francs for this, but” -- he added a while later “I didn’t take it”.
What should I do next? Should I offer more? That would probably not be right either. So I offered nothing, but took the dirty, crumpled picture in my hands, looked at it with an expert expression, the way flea market dealers look over used suits for stains and moth holes, only in order to take away the poor owner’s last hope of getting a decent price. I had the impression that this made the innkeeper a bit nervous, too.
The truly liberating act, which brought the decision, however, came from elsewhere, namely from the American’s table. The one daughter, who, in spite of the noise in her corner, had been following my conversation with her father, called to him from the distance, “And it was really stupid of you not to have taken it then”. (At the time, 60 Francs were 3 proper pieces of gold, and that for a piece of canvas, painted in such an ugly manner --- you could understand the girl well).
I then did something which was not particularly elegant, but well-grounded in the psychology of art dealers. If one offers a seller who has no idea of the true value of the piece he owns, the slightest bit above his own valuation, then he becomes suspicious, and you won’t get the piece.
So I said, cheekily, “I’ll take it for 50”.
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The innkeeper first looked questioningly at his daughters, then said, “Take it”. ---
[For the story of the end of van Gogh’s life click here. The names of the innkeeper and his daughters are known. The portrait in question can be viewed here, and the Auver town hall on Bastille Day (14 July 1890) here . It is not considered his last painting these days].
The Americans took not the slightest notice of the deal. Van Gogh was an insane Dutch painter to them. They hadn’t “had” him in America yet. Schelfhout seemed visibly shaken by my shamelessness, and perhaps also by my talent for an art deal.
I, however, was already thinking of the second picture. I asked about it, and the daughter was sent upstairs again for it. She reappeared with it immediately, and I soon observed its better state of preservation. It was she herself as a child, in a blue dress, on a dark blue background. On the lower right, it had the signature VINCENT. Van Gogh surely signed it only because he needed this red accent, which functioned like a red seal in a colored wood cut. It had hung since its creation over the bed of the girl, and I was surely the first outsider who’d ever seen it. It was a small miracle, and I had the understandable urge to possess it.
To the question, of whether he’d sell this one, the innkeeper replied, he didn’t really want to, as it was of his daughter, -- and it wasn’t to be had for less than 100 Francs.
I pointed out to him that I’d already bought one picture from him, and asked him to let me have it for 90 Francs. He showed himself not petty, and after some consideration, agreed.
Through this act, I became the legitimate owner of two van Goghs, and that for the sum of 140 Francs. ---
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Epilogue
After this transaction had been concluded, the host grew garrulous and told us of his acquaintance with van Gogh. He thought of him as a mental case – which he was indeed – and could not, as we who understand better the pathology of genius could, given that we’ve read books on the subject and gathered the relevant experiences as well – imagine that a great artist could be anything other than a normal person. If the poor man had had a copy of “Geniale Menschen”, by Kretschmer, then he could have read in it, for example, that “psychopathic inferiority” rests on observations that are just as erroneous as those of so-called “totally normal” people. If he could have read it, he’d have learned that van Gogh was in good company. But what did this man know of Rousseau and Nietzche, of Newton, Galton, and Robert Mayer, the discoverer of conservation of energy, what did he know of old Bluecher, von Tasso, Kleist, Hoelderlin, C. F. Meyer, Lenau, Maupassant, Dostoyevsky, and Strindberg, what of Schumann or Hugo Wolff, Byron, Grillparzer? He knew nothing of any of these! And therefore no one can hold it against him, if he thought that a famous painter of expensive pictures ought to look different from this pathetic guy with his greenish pale face, and his scraggly red beard, from this fellow, who often had only 30 centimes in his pocket to pay for his coffee, who left his daubs lying around in all the corners, because no one would take them even as gifts, that this mad man, who’d once cut off an ear as pastime, only to aggravate a colleague – just as insane as he was, incidentally, all the day long, generally without even a hat, sat in the glaring sun, squeezing entire tubes of paint out on his pictures, who then again
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crouched over a marble table hours and hours on end, writing and writing, without once looking up, who one day wafted, pale as a corpse, into the bar and had only time to order a cup of coffee, and tell the innkeeper, this same innkeeper, “I myself in….” before he collapsed unconscious and had to be buried like the poorest of the poor at the expense of the community of Auvers sur Oise.
But I believe that even if the innkeeper had had Kretschmer, it never would have occurred to him that van Gogh was a genius, because even healthy men smarter than this Philistine have trouble accepting this combination of genius and madness. Are we any different? Don’t we all tend to see primarily the insanity, and only to say yea and amen when he’s already in all the textbooks?
One of my friends, the painter Karo, a man who was absolutely not untalented, was in Paris for twenty years the most intimate friend of Maurice Utrillo, and when Utrillo became famous, Karo had not one single picture of his in his possession. They spent many summers together in the country. Utrillo, who was very poor, sold his pictures himself for a few francs to the local farmers (Karo told me that) but this friend and colleague from an affluent family never hit on the notion to buy a few off him.
For a few hundred francs, he could have had an Utrillo collection, which would be worth millions today, but the mental case Utrillo, the alcoholic Utrillo, had hidden from him the genius Utrillo.
I once visited him (Karo), long after Utrillo became famous, and saw an Utrillo landscape hanging over his sofa. “Where’d you get it?” I asked him. “I got it”,
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he replied, “very cheaply for 12,000 Francs”. To my question, why had he not earlier bought an Utrillo -- he’d had more chances than anyone else – he replied with a melancholy chuckle, “I did not notice, he had talent”.
This observation, that one nearly never notices if a man is a genius, - the simply gifted one recognizes immediately – creates in me, personally, a mistrust of people who have become famous in their lifetime. Truths which are so self-evident to so many rarely turn out be truths after all. Truth is always in a different disguise, and even those who know her long and intimately take a long time to pierce her incognito.
The innkeeper from Meulan used to have his inn in Auvers sur Oise, and had moved to Meulan later. This is presumably what kept his pictures from the art dealers’ blood hounds. The innkeeper had simply taken them after the artist’s death. Possibly van Gogh owed him a few cups of coffee.
The landscape which I owned showed the town hall of Auvers decorated for Bastille Day. As van Gogh died soon after, it’s presumably his last work.
In addition, the innkeeper brought down van Gogh’s bed spread and his pipe, which he wanted to give me. I was in too much of a hurry to make an impression with my pictures, to worry about this relics. Today I’m sorry that I didn’t accept.
When I went to pay for the pictures, I remembered that
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I only had 20 francs at the moment, but I promised the innkeeper to bring the rest in another 24 hours. He agreed, and I immediately took the van Goghs to my hotel.
There I did something I would surely not do today: but my shield of virtue didn’t have as many rusty spots then as it does now. In consideration of the fact that the little American had led me to these pictures, I offered him one at the price I’d paid. It’s the only decent thing I’ve done in the entire history of these transactions, and I hope, as Hirsch Hyacinth from “The Baths of Locca” said, on account of this honest thing, which happened to me, to be pardoned at God’s Throne for my other sins, at least in this affair.
In a way, I was rewarded immediately, as the little idiot refused – on account of lack of cash. “Well”, I said, as if I’d wanted to do him a favor, (and this was already significantly less decent), “I’ll just have to take them both”. ---
The next day I rode with them to Paris (with Schelfhout), took the pictures to my studio, borrowed 140 Francs from the owner of my regular coffee house, Monsieur Berger, sent Schelfhout to Meulan with them, to pay the innkeeper, and then sat for an hour in the locale of self-same M. Berger, to let my nerves finally settle down and to think about this unexpected event. ---
Thus I’ve reached the end, respectively the beginning of my story. ---
I have found no other explanation for the conspicuously similar fates of so many geniuses than a circumstance, that, even if
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their works are understood and valued during their lifetimes, prevents them from becoming as famous and happy as far less talented mediocrities whose laurels their co-world weaves. It’s the dissonance between their intellect and their bodies which most of their contemporaries find so unpleasant. The biological only stands in the way of the intellect, naturally only in judgment. – People like to eat honey, but fear the bees and their stingers, they fear and loathe the insect, the producer and the method of production, they can only appreciate the product, when its completely divorced from the former.
For geniuses, their bodies become only barriers against their intellects for the people around them. Or, said colloquially, geniuses are generally really gross!
Due to a lack of more interesting authors, I’ll cite myself again, and with an observation on Beethoven. – As long as this disquieting, deaf, poorly groomed, suspicious, unbearable, sick man was alive, a shyness which occasionally graded into revulsion, kept his fellow citizens distant from him. What would you begin with Beethoven’s body? One seldom saw him, it was known he was deaf and half insane, - insane in the eyes of these people – so that he, burdened with much suffering, lived a Bohemian life in dirty rooms, hammering at the piano, barking at his fellow lodgers, a torment for himself and his environs. One could not, even had one wanted 100-fold – honor him the way one can a groomed orchestra conductor, hung with medals,
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or a vain fat tenor.
One had to let his body die and decay – it’s sad to say – before one could pounce with glee on Beethoven’s spirit.
One could give it everything that one had denied the other out of fear and loathing. There was nothing repellent any more. Released from its physical dross, he was now only joy bringer to his time and all eternity.
It’s sad, that it has to be that way, but maybe it’s a good thing, too….”.
Walter Bondy
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List of collaborators & assistants
Susanne v. Bano
Walter Bondy
Bruno Cassirer
Ernst
Georg
Kurt
Lilly
Lisbeth
Martin
Reinhold
Rachel di Domizio
Fritz Falk
Beate Gabel
Ida Goldstein
Franz Gruenfeld
Guenther Hell
Franz Herrmann
Elise Loewenberg
Anne-Marie Loewenberg
Marta Pollak
Georg Schiffer
Das Buero Tillgner u. Co.
Sofie Walzer
Eva Wolff