early age, like all the Van Gogh children except Vincent, he frequently fell ill, suffered terribly from the cold, and was plagued by chronic ailments.
T HEO VAN G OGH, AGE 13 ( Illustration credit 3.2 )
But nowhere did the two brothers differ more than in disposition. While Vincent was dark and suspicious, Theo was bright and gregarious. While Vincent was shy, Theo was “warmhearted,” like his father, according to Lies, “a friendly soul from the moment he was born.” While Vincent brooded, Theo was ever “cheerful and pleased,” even in adversity, according to his father—so cheerful that when he heard birds sing, he was “inclined to whistle along with them.” With his good looks and sunny disposition, Theo fell naturally into company.The same schoolmates who remembered Vincent as moody and aloof remembered his younger brother (Ted, they called him) as playful and garrulous. Vincent was “strange,” recalled the Van Gogh family maid; Theo was “normal.”
At home, in sharp contrast to his brother, Theo embraced the call to Duty. He quickly became his mother’s special helper, whose “faithful hands” assisted both in the kitchen and in the garden. Anna referred to him as “my angelic Theo.” Extraordinarily empathetic and sensitive to the good opinion of others, he played family peacemaker decades before Vincent tested the limits of that role. (“Don’t you agree that we should [try] to please everyone?” said Theo—expressing a most un-Vincent-like sentiment.) Dorus, too, recognized the unique qualities in his namesake and undertook a lavish campaign of instruction that would continue until his death. He would later call Theo “our pride and joy,” and would write to him fondly, “You have been like a spring flower to us.”
The brothers’ special relationship could not survive the contrast. Even as Vincent withdrew further and further into sullen isolation, Theo’s star rose higher and higher within the family. (“Dear Theo,” his mother later wrote, “just know that you are our most prized possession.”) As he felt his brother slipping away, Vincent tried to draw him back into a conspiracy of disaffection against their parents—something he would do repeatedly in the years ahead. But to no avail. They bickered bitterly, setting schoolyard standards for debate that would color all their future arguments. (“I’m not conceited,
you’re
conceited!” “Take it back!”) The rising discord between them caught the attention of their father, who scoldingly compared them to Jacob and Esau, invoking the biblical story of a young brother who usurped his older brother’s birthright.
By the time Vincent reached adolescence, he had begun his solitary trips into the countryside and the relationship between the brothers had changed. Now, whenever Vincent slipped out the garden gate on one of these expeditions, he passed his siblings “without a greeting,” one of them recalled, and not even Theo asked, “May I come, too?” “His brother and sisters were strangers to him,” said Lies. “[He was] a stranger to himself.”
Loneliness defined Vincent van Gogh’s childhood. “My youth was gloomy and cold and sterile,” he later wrote. Increasingly alienated from his parents, his sisters, his schoolmates, and even Theo, he more and more sought the balm of nature, proclaiming by his absences what he would later proclaim in words: “I am going to refresh, to rejuvenate myself in nature.” In this recourse, he found confirmation (as he always did) in literature. He began reading Romantic writers such as Heinrich Heine, Johann Uhland, and especially the Belgian Henri Conscience. “I fell in the abyss of the most bitter discouragement,” wrote Conscience, in a passage that became one of Vincent’s favorites, so “I spent three months on the moors … where the soul in the presence of God’s immaculatecreation throws off the yoke of conventions, forgets society, and loosens its bonds,
T HEO VAN G OGH, AGE 13 ( Illustration credit 3.2 )
But nowhere did the two brothers differ more than in disposition. While Vincent was dark and suspicious, Theo was bright and gregarious. While Vincent was shy, Theo was “warmhearted,” like his father, according to Lies, “a friendly soul from the moment he was born.” While Vincent brooded, Theo was ever “cheerful and pleased,” even in adversity, according to his father—so cheerful that when he heard birds sing, he was “inclined to whistle along with them.” With his good looks and sunny disposition, Theo fell naturally into company.The same schoolmates who remembered Vincent as moody and aloof remembered his younger brother (Ted, they called him) as playful and garrulous. Vincent was “strange,” recalled the Van Gogh family maid; Theo was “normal.”
At home, in sharp contrast to his brother, Theo embraced the call to Duty. He quickly became his mother’s special helper, whose “faithful hands” assisted both in the kitchen and in the garden. Anna referred to him as “my angelic Theo.” Extraordinarily empathetic and sensitive to the good opinion of others, he played family peacemaker decades before Vincent tested the limits of that role. (“Don’t you agree that we should [try] to please everyone?” said Theo—expressing a most un-Vincent-like sentiment.) Dorus, too, recognized the unique qualities in his namesake and undertook a lavish campaign of instruction that would continue until his death. He would later call Theo “our pride and joy,” and would write to him fondly, “You have been like a spring flower to us.”
The brothers’ special relationship could not survive the contrast. Even as Vincent withdrew further and further into sullen isolation, Theo’s star rose higher and higher within the family. (“Dear Theo,” his mother later wrote, “just know that you are our most prized possession.”) As he felt his brother slipping away, Vincent tried to draw him back into a conspiracy of disaffection against their parents—something he would do repeatedly in the years ahead. But to no avail. They bickered bitterly, setting schoolyard standards for debate that would color all their future arguments. (“I’m not conceited,
you’re
conceited!” “Take it back!”) The rising discord between them caught the attention of their father, who scoldingly compared them to Jacob and Esau, invoking the biblical story of a young brother who usurped his older brother’s birthright.
By the time Vincent reached adolescence, he had begun his solitary trips into the countryside and the relationship between the brothers had changed. Now, whenever Vincent slipped out the garden gate on one of these expeditions, he passed his siblings “without a greeting,” one of them recalled, and not even Theo asked, “May I come, too?” “His brother and sisters were strangers to him,” said Lies. “[He was] a stranger to himself.”
Loneliness defined Vincent van Gogh’s childhood. “My youth was gloomy and cold and sterile,” he later wrote. Increasingly alienated from his parents, his sisters, his schoolmates, and even Theo, he more and more sought the balm of nature, proclaiming by his absences what he would later proclaim in words: “I am going to refresh, to rejuvenate myself in nature.” In this recourse, he found confirmation (as he always did) in literature. He began reading Romantic writers such as Heinrich Heine, Johann Uhland, and especially the Belgian Henri Conscience. “I fell in the abyss of the most bitter discouragement,” wrote Conscience, in a passage that became one of Vincent’s favorites, so “I spent three months on the moors … where the soul in the presence of God’s immaculatecreation throws off the yoke of conventions, forgets society, and loosens its bonds,
Similar Books
![The High Queen's Vow [The Mystic Women of The Realm Series Book IV]](/res/dh/book4.jpg)
