"330
To Theo van Gogh. The Hague, Sunday, 18 March 1883.
Original text +line endings facsimile translations notes works of art Original text +line endings facsimile translations notes works of art close new tab
1r:1
[sketch A]
My dear Theo,
You've so often shown me a glimpse of Paris through your descriptions, this time I'm letting you have a look out of my window at the snow-covered yard.
I'm adding a glimpse of a corner of the house;1 they're two impressions of the same winter's day.
Poetry surrounds us everywhere, but getting it onto paper is something that unfortunately doesn't go as readily as looking. I did a watercolour of the above after which this scratch is done; however, I don't think it lively or vigorous enough.2 1v:2
I believe I've already written to you that I found a little more natural chalk here in town.3 I'm also working with that.
In my view this has been the most real part of this winter, those cold days we had last week. It was mightily beautiful with the snow - and curious skies. The melting of the snow today was almost more beautiful. But it was typical winter weather, if I may call it that - it was the kind of weather that brings back old memories, when the most ordinary things have a look such that one instinctively associates them with stories from the age of diligences and mail-coaches.
Here's a scratch, for example, that I did in that kind of daydream. It shows a gentleman who has had to spend the night at a village inn due to the late arrival of a diligence or some such reason. Now he has risen early, and while he orders a glass of brandy for the cold he pays the innkeeper's wife (a woman with a peasant's cap). But it's still very early in the morning, 'the crack of dawn', - he must catch the mail-coach - the moon is still shining and the glistening snow can be seen through the window of the taproom - and the objects cast oddly whimsical shadows.4
This story is really nothing at all, and the