Van Gogh (170 page)
Authors: Steven Naifeh
Adeline’s accounts followed the broad outlines of Bernard’s tale, and, like Bernard, she claimed her dead father as her ultimate source. For her versions of events that the innkeeper did not witness—such as the shooting itself—she claimed that Vincent had confided his story to her father in the hours before his death. By this process, events that had been shrouded in mystery for sixty years sprang suddenly into the record in full, rich
detail. Here, for example, is Adeline’s 1956 account—her first—of the day of the shooting:
Vincent had gone toward the wheat field where he had painted before, situated behind the château of Auvers, which then belonged to M. Gosselin, who lived in Paris on the rue de Messine. The château was more than a half kilometer from our house. You reached it by climbing a rather steep slope shaded by big trees. We do not know how far away he stood from the château. During the afternoon, in the deep path that lies along the wall of the
château—as my father understood it—Vincent shot himself and fainted. The coolness of the night revived him. On all fours he looked for the gun to finish himself off, but he could not find it. (Nor was it found the next day either.) Then Vincent got up and climbed down the hillside to return to our house.
101
Adeline Ravoux’s accounts seem unreliable for a number of reasons: (1) By her own telling, they are mostly hearsay:
102
that is, they involve recollections of what her
father told her he saw or heard, not what she actually witnessed or heard. (2) Her multiple accounts are often internally inconsistent as well as inconsistent with one another.
103
(3) Her accounts are distorted by her determination to prove her father’s closeness to the famous artist (a project that became her life’s work).
104
(4) Her later accounts are vastly more detailed than her earlier ones. In particular, she often added dialogue to enhance the drama of her stories,
105
sometimes conjuring whole scenes.
106
(5) She appears to have adjusted her accounts over time to respond to critics or to correct inconsistencies.
107
Perhaps the best example of Adeline’s fitting her account to the requirements of the moment was the startling admission in her last set of interviews (in the 1960s) that the revolver that killed Vincent van Gogh had belonged to her father
108
—a fact that neither she nor her father had volunteered for more than seventy years, despite intense inquiry throughout that time into
where Vincent procured the fatal weapon and why.
109
Adeline’s new account confirmed René Secrétan’s story that the pistol was her father’s, but not René’s alibi that Vincent had stolen the gun from his rucksack. Instead, she told the interviewer (Tralbaut) that Vincent had asked her father for the gun “in order to scare away crows”—a patent falsehood, since Vincent had no fear of birds and thought of crows in particular as good omens.
110
At the time Adeline told this story, however, it was widely believed that Vincent’s last painting was
Wheatfield with
Crows,
111
thus lending both credibility to her story and extra poignancy to the painting. It is now known that
Wheatfield with Crows
was painted around July 10, two weeks before the fatal
shooting.
112
OUR RECONSTRUCTION OF
the events of July 27, 1890, is based on an analysis of all the evidence, both direct and circumstantial, that is in the public record, and a weighing of all the witness testimonies that bear on the events of that day, from the multiple accounts of Adeline Ravoux to the deathbed confessions of René Secrétan.
It is also precisely the story that John Rewald heard when he went to Auvers in the 1930s and interviewed residents of the town who had been living there at the time of Vincent’s death. Rewald, a scholar of unparalleled integrity and thoroughness, went on to become the ultimate authority on both Impressionism and Post-Impressionism, about which he wrote two magisterial surveys and many other books, including volumes on Cézanne and Seurat. The story he
heard was that “young boys shot Vincent accidentally” and that “they were reluctant to speak up for fear of being accused of murder and that Van Gogh decided to protect them and to be a martyr.”
113
Fifty years later (in 1988), Rewald recounted this story to a young scholar named Wilfred Arnold, who included it in his 1992 book,
Vincent van Gogh: Chemicals, Crises, and Creativity
. Arnold openly attributed the story to Rewald, who died two years later. Other than in his conspicuous failure to “correct” Arnold’s report, to our knowledge Rewald never directly confirmed or challenged the alternate version of Van Gogh’s death that he
had heard in Auvers. He did, however, revise his seminal overview of Post-Impressionism by citing Victor Doiteau’s interview with René Secrétan in which it was first revealed that the weapon that killed Van Gogh was the pistol that young René had acquired from Gustave Ravoux.
114
A meticulous scholar, Rewald had to realize that René Secrétan’s guilt-ridden
story of teasing the painter to the point of “torture” and supplying him (willingly or not) with the weapon that killed him confirmed the rumors that he had heard two decades earlier about young boys accidentally causing the death of Vincent van Gogh.
1.
For all the reports on Vincent’s wound, see
chapter 43
.
2.
Sjraar van Heugten, “Vincent van Gogh as a Hero of Fiction,” in
The Mythology of Vincent van Gogh
, edited by Tsukasa Kôdera and Yvette Rosenberg (Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 1993), p. 162.
3.
Much of the material in this note appears elsewhere in the text (primarily in
chapter 43
, “Illusions Fade; the Sublime Remains”), at those points where it is relevant to the narrative. We have brought it together here in order to present it as clearly and cogently as possible.
4.
René Secrétan was born in January 1874. Victor Doiteau, “Deux ‘copains’ de Van Gogh, inconnus: Les frères Gaston et René Secrétan, Vincent, tel qu’ils l’ont vu” [“Two Unknown Pals of Van Gogh: The Brothers Gaston and René Secrétan, Vincent as They Saw Him”],
Aesculape
40, March 1957, p. 57.
5.
Doiteau, p. 39.
6.
Paul Gachet, “Les Médecins de Théodore and de Vincent van Gogh” [“The Doctors of Theodorus and Vincent van Gogh”],
Aesculape
40, March 1957, p. 38.
7.
Gaston was born on December 18, 1871. Doiteau, p. 57.
8.
Quoted in Doiteau, p. 40.
9.
Doiteau, p. 40.
10.
Quoted in Doiteau, p. 55.
11.
Doiteau, pp. 55–56.
12.
“He always spoke French with the indefinable accent I have already mentioned of those who’ve moved around a lot.” Quoted in Doiteau, p. 56.
13.
Specifically, 72° Pernod. Doiteau, p. 41.
14.
Quoted in Doiteau, p. 40.
15.
Doiteau, p. 42.
16.
Quoted in Doiteau, p. 39.
17.
According to René, Buffalo Bill was all the fashion among young people at the time. Doiteau, p. 45.
18.
Quoted in Doiteau, p. 45.
19.
Doiteau, p. 46.
20.
Doiteau, p. 46.
21.
Doiteau, p. 56.
22.
Quoted in Doiteau, p. 42.
23.
Quoted in Doiteau, p. 45.
24.
Quoted in Doiteau, p. 41.
25.
Quoted in Doiteau, p. 41.
26.
Doiteau, p. 56.
27.
Ibid.
28.
See
chapter 43
.
29.
Doiteau, p. 44.
30.
Quoted in Doiteau, p. 42.
31.
Quoted in Doiteau, p. 47.
32.
Doiteau, p. 44.
33.
Quoted in Doiteau, p. 42.
34.
Doiteau, p. 42.
35.
Quoted in Doiteau, p. 44.
36.
Quoted in Doiteau, p. 42.
37.
Quoted in Doiteau, p. 41.
38.
See
chapter 43
.
39.
Marc Edo Tralbaut,
Vincent van Gogh
(New York: Viking, 1969), p. 326. Tralbaut says
that Madame Liberge was “about Marguerite Gachet’s age,” which was twenty at the time of Vincent’s death.
40.
Quoted in Tralbaut, p. 326.
41.
Quoted in Tralbaut, p. 326. Tralbaut comments: “The puzzle remains: why has this account, which is more than ninety years old, never appeared in any biography of Vincent?” (p. 326).
42.
Quoted in Ken Wilkie,
In Search of Van Gogh
(Rocklin, Calif.: Prima, 1991), p. 124.
43.
In his 1911 letter to Plasschaert, Hirschig reports accompanying Vincent on one such trip to Pontoise (b3023V/1983, “Hirschig, A. M.” to “Plasschaert, A.,” 9/8/1911, partly published in Jan van Crimpen, “Friends Remember Vincent in 1912,” International Symposium (Tokyo 1988), p. 86.
44.
Doiteau, pp. 42–43.
45.
Doiteau, p. 41.
46.
Vincent knew that René kept the revolver in his rucksack. He had seen it there often. Doiteau, p. 46.
47.
Doiteau and Edgar Leroy, “Vincent van Gogh et le drame de l’oreille coupée” [“Vincent van Gogh and the Drama of the Severed Ear”],
Aesculape
, 1936, p. 280. See
chapter 43
.
48.
“Hirschig, A. M.” to “Bredius, A.” (published in
Oud-Holland
, 1934). Quoted in Tralbaut, p. 328. See
chapter 43
.
49.
Doiteau and Leroy, p. 280. See
chapter 43
.
50.
In a late addendum to her account, Adeline Ravoux maintained that after he awoke from his faint, Vincent
did
try to shoot himself again, but he could not find the gun. Adeline Carrié-Ravoux, “Recollections on Vincent van Gogh’s Stay in Auvers-sur-Oise,” in
Les Cahiers de Van Gogh
in 1956, in
Van Gogh: A Retrospective
, edited
by Susan Alyson Stein (New York: Hugh Lauter Associates and Macmillan, 1986), p. 214. That could be true; the Secrétans could already have taken it.
51.
Quoted in Ronald Pickvance,
Van Gogh in Saint-Rémy and Auvers
(New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1986), p. 216.
52.
Eugen Weber,
Peasants into Frenchmen: The Modernization of Rural France, 1870–1914
(Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1976), p. 40.
53.
Quoted in Carrié-Ravoux, in Stein, p. 215.
54.
Ibid.
55.
Interestingly, when the gendarmes continued to press Vincent on the issue of the possible involvement of others in the shooting, it was Gustave Ravoux who intervened to stop that line of questioning. According to his daughter’s account, after Vincent told them “Do not accuse anyone; it is I who wanted to kill myself,” her father “begged the officers,
somewhat harshly, not to insist any further.” Quoted in Carrié-Ravoux, in Stein, p. 215. This intervention can be seen, as Adeline intended it, as an example of her father’s solicitude toward Vincent—or as an effort to ensure that Vincent, in his unguarded delirium, did not implicate the Secrétan brothers in the shooting.
56.
b2066 V/1982, “Gogh, Theo van” to “Gogh-Bonger, Jo van,” 7/28/1890.
57.
b6918 V/1996, “Bernard, Émile” to “Aurier, Albert,” quoted in Bernard, “On Vincent’s Burial,” in Stein, p. 220.
58.
b3266 V/1966, “Gachet, Paul-Ferdinand” to “Gogh, Theo van,” c. 8/15/1890.
59.
Johanna van Gogh–Bonger,
The Complete Letters of Vincent van Gogh
(Boston: Little, Brown, 1978), letter 355a, January 1885 (hereafter, BVG). Leo Jansen, Hans Luijten, and Nienke Bakker,
Vincent van Gogh: The Letters; The Complete Illustrated and Annotated Edition
(London: Thames and Hudson, 2009), letter 474, 12/10/1884 (hereafter, JLB): “If I were
to drop dead—
which I shan’t refuse if it comes but won’t expressly seek
—you’d be standing on a skeleton—and—that would be a mightily insecure standpoint” (emphasis in original).
60.
In a letter to Theo in 1882, from The Hague, Vincent quoted a maxim from his hero Millet: “
Il m’a toujours semblé que le suicide était une action de malhonnête homme.”
(It
has always seemed to me that suicide was the deed of a dishonest man.) BVG 212, 7/6/1882 (JLB 244, 7/6/1882). See
chapter 15
.
61.
Doiteau, p. 57.
62.
Gaston Secrétan died in 1943.
63.
“Vitus en vitesse” from the
Lune Rousse
of 1927,
http://100ansderadio.free.fr/HistoiredelaRadio/Radio-Vitus/RadioVitus-20.html
.
64.
“Il est charmant” (1932), “Avec le sourire” (1936), “L’habit vert” (1937), and “La fin du jour” (1939),
http://www.omdb.si/index.php/ooseba/?i=636527
.
65.
Doiteau, pp. 57–58. p. 22. See
chapter 42
.
66.
Doiteau, p. 57.
67.
Quoted in Doiteau, p. 57.
68.
Doiteau, p. 47.
69.
Referring apparently to a swim in the river, René told Doiteau: “We left [the gun] on the spot with all our fishing stuff, haversacks … and even our trousers … as fate would have it, the day Van Gogh used it, it worked” (p. 46).
70.
Dr. Paul Gachet to Theo, 7/27/1890, quoted in Distel and Stein,
Cézanne to Van Gogh
(New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1999):
The Collection of Doctor Gachet
, p. 265. Also see Bonger,
Memoir
, p. lii, in BVG. See
chapter 43
.
71.
“With the greatest regret I must disturb your repose. Yet I think it my duty to write to you immediately … I was sent for by your brother Vincent, who wanted to see me at once. I went there [to the Ravoux Inn] and found him very ill. He has wounded himself.” Quoted in BVG, p. lii.
72.
“[Vincent] is indeed very ill. I shan’t go into detail, it’s all too distressing, but I should warn you, dearest, that his life could be in danger.” b2066 V/1982, “Gogh, Theo van” to “Gogh-Bonger, Jo van,” 7/28/1890, in
A Brief Happiness
, edited by Leo Jansen and Jan Robert (Zwolle: Waanders, 1999), p. 269.
73.
b2066 V/1982, “Gogh, Theo van” to “Gogh-Bonger, Jo van,” 7/28/1890, in Jansen and Robert, p. 269. This may have been Theo trying to protect the young mother Jo from the traumatic truth—or the family name from yet another embarrassment. But his report of Vincent’s state is more convincing (and sounds more like Vincent) than the
cliché of a bungled suicide already circulating on the streets of Auvers.
74.
Vincent had left discarded drafts and torn fragments of letters that he clearly never intended Theo to read among the papers on his desk. See
chapter 42
.
75.
See
chapter 42
.
76.
Tralbaut, pp. 337–40.
77.
“Ought I to have despaired then, jumped into the water or something? God forbid—I should have if I had been a wicked man” (BVG 193). See
chapter 43
.
78.
Ibid. See
chapter 43
.
79.
BVG 212 (7/6/1882). See note 60 above. See
chapter 15
.
80.
Ibid. See
chapter 15
.
81.
BVG 337 (10/31/1883). See
Chapter 43
.
82.
Despite several posthumous efforts to put a gun in Vincent’s hands prior to his death—by A. S. A. Hartrick in
A Painter’s Pilgrimage Through Fifty Years
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1939), p. 42, and Paul Gauguin in
Intimate Journals
(
Avant et après
), translated by Van Wyck Brooks (Bloomington: University of
Indiana Press, 1963), pp. 126–27, as well as by the Gachets (see n. 93 below)—Vincent made his ignorance of (and disdain for) firearms clear in a letter from Saint-Rémy: “I ought to have defended my studio better,…Others would have used a revolver in my place” (BVG 605; c. Sept. 1889). See
chapter 43
.
83.
See note 48 above.
84.
See
chapter 43
.
85.
In Arles, Vincent defied the neighbors’ petition to commit him to an asylum by telling the city’s mayor that he was “quite prepared to chuck myself into the water if that would please these good folk once and for all.” See
chapter 38
.
86.
See
chapter 41
.
87.
Quoted in Pickvance, p. 216. Inevitably, Bernard’s story to Aurier heavily plays up the drama of the suicide. Before he died, Bernard wrote, Vincent had said that “his suicide was absolutely calculated and lucid” and had expressed “his desire to die.” Indeed, in an especially dramatic gesture, Vincent had threatened to
“do it over again” if he recovered from his wound, according to Bernard. In Bernard, in Stein, pp. 219–20. This irresistible red herring was picked up by subsequent chroniclers such as Tralbaut (p. 328): “Gachet told [Vincent] that he still hoped to cure him. Vincent at once replied:
I will do it all over again”
(emphasis in original).
88.
In his account to Aurier, Bernard gave his version of the incident a twist of Christian martyrdom: “From the violence of the impact (the bullet passed under the heart) [Van Gogh] fell, but he got up and fell again three times and then returned to the inn where he lived … without saying anything to anyone about his injury.” Bernard, in Stein, p.
220. See
chapter 43
. For Bernard’s similarly bogus Christian gloss on the story of the ear incident in Arles, see
chapter 41
.
89.
R. R. Ross and H. B. McKay,
Self-Mutilation
(Lexington, Mass.: Lexington Books, 1979). According to Ross and McKay, “There is in the action of the self-mutilator seldom an intent to die and often very little risk of dying. Although a self-mutilator could engender his own death by his behavior, in the vast majority of cases, this does not happen. His behavior is
actually counter-intentional to suicide rather than suicidal” (p. 15). See also the important discussion of the issue in Barent W. Walsh and Paul M. Rosen,
Self-Mutilation: Theory, Research, and Treatment
(New York and London: Guilford Press, 1988), pp. 3–53. Walsh and Rosen argue, “The similarities between suicide and self-mutilation can be deceiving. Both forms of behavior are self-directed, and both result in concrete physical harm. Nonetheless,
when the behaviors are analyzed using the framework of Shneidman’s 10 commonalities, it is evident that the behaviors are different in many facets, and in several ways are even opposites” (p. 51).
