Vincent's Women

Book summary

Donna Russo's 'Vincent's Women' delves into the enigmatic world of Vincent van Gogh's loves, challenging the prevailing myths surrounding his life. Guided by Johanna van Gogh Bonger, Vincent's sister-in-law, the novel unravels the truth through the eyes of women who shaped his existence. Drawing from Vincent's extensive correspondence with his brother Theo, the narrative brings pivotal moments to life while questioning his sexuality, the mystery of his lost ear, and the circumstances of his death. This captivating exploration prompts readers to reconsider the conventional narrative and contemplate the profound role of love in Vincent's tumultuous life.

---

“Vincent’s Women: The Untold story of the Loves of Vincent van Gogh represents historical fiction at its best…astute, thought-provoking, and revealing.”

— Midwest Book Review

“A powerful and satisfying read.”

— Lynn Cullen, Bestselling Author of The Woman with the Cure and Mrs. Poe

“The writing and dialogue are all so well done, and the use of a fictional narrative makes it all feel authentic. Very highly recommended.”

— Readers' Favorite

Excerpt from Vincent's Women

“You think you know him. You don’t. You think you know what happened to him. You do not.”

“Mother!”

My son sputters. Tea spills as he drops his cup and saucer on the curly-legged table beside him.

He rises to his feet and kneels before me.

His father’s greenish-blue eyes bore into me. I sigh from the comfort of them.

I cup his face in my veiny hand. His face, long like his father’s as well. But capped by the startling red hair of his Uncle Vincent.

“I am not long for this world. I feel it, my son,” I say. I know. Of that, there is no fear. Only of what I leave behind. “And when I am gone you will learn the truth. I’d rather you learned it from me.”

It’s not well done of me. To dive into it. My son and I were speaking of his work and mine. In mine, it is there. The string, the true thread of such surprising colors. The colors of women, of love, and of lust.

“Now, Mother …” That long head shakes.

I can’t stop my grin from forming as his shaggy hair shakes. He’s in need of a barber. I look at this young man as a child, I know. But he is that. My child. My only child.

“It is all right,” I assure him. Trying desperately to, for it is my truth. “I am almost ready. I will be with your father, with both of them, again.”

I may be the widow of Theo van Gogh, but the two of us were never truly alone. Vincent was always a part of us.

I rise. Old bones creak. I groan.

My son, Willem, as he likes to be called, rises, and takes my arm. I lead him into my study.

Vincent’s art covers my walls, piles in corners. The Van Gogh family letters—some I’ve translated for I speak many languages; some I’ve read but not yet translated—stalagmites of varying sizes at various places. The odd pairing of my husband’s old carved desk with the straightly cut modern chair behind it can barely be seen.

“This will all be—”

“You know I have little interest in all this,” Willem says, sounding like a child.

“Yes, yes,” I tut. “I know your mind bursts only when it sees numbers … your engineering.”

Now I hear Willem chuckle softly. He knows the true depth of my pride.

He helps me sit on one side of the beige brocade settee. I pat the other with an expectant look.

The time is drawing closer. I find it harder to swallow. I have no time for preamble. There is no time. I tire so easily these days.

“You will read my diary.” Once more I startle him. Unintentionally so. If there is a proper way to do this, to confess others’ sins as well as my own, I do not know it.

“Your diary?” He turns to face me. “I never knew you kept one.”

He is curious now. I’ve presented him with a puzzle. Perhaps it will help.

“I’ve kept one almost the whole of my life.” My gaze drops into my lap. “Save for the time I was married to your father.” A marriage that lasted not even two years.

Would he ask why I didn’t write during those years? I hope not. The answer is a tangle of love and despair.

No, it is better I tell him. Tell him all of it. No matter how it will test me. How it may hurt. I will tell him the truth. I will pray he loves me still.

“There is the story of your uncle, of Vincent van Gogh, the story that the world has taken as truth.”

Willem has always worshipped the uncle—the man he was named for—that he knows only from my memories. The ones I’ve shown him.

“They say he went mad because of a certain kind of disease.” I try not to blush. I lose the battle. “It is not what caused his madness. They say he cut off his ear for a prostitute. He did not cut it off for her. It may be that he did not cut it off himself.

“And they say he killed himself.” I bang my moist hand on the fabric between us. “He … did … not.”

Willem gasps, flinches. I feel the cushion below me flutter with his jerky movements.

“But how can … why have you not—” He tries to interject.

I pay attention to none of it. I can’t. For once begun, this spewing of truth cannot be stopped. I can only hope he will be my son—that I will live in the same place in his heart—when the telling is done. I am, at last, ready.

##

She held the squalling baby in her arms, one not of this world for more than seconds. Her grasp on him obligatory, loose and low. Its feel like that of the March wind.

“A fine, healthy baby you have there, missus.” The plump midwife wiped her hands of the blood and viscous fluid upon a rag. “What will you be calling him?”

Anna looked down at her second-born son wiggling in her arms. The fuzz upon his head the red clay color of the Carbentus family, her family. She gained no pleasure from it. Disappointment chilled her heart; she wished he resembled his father as their first child had.

“Vincent. It is Vincent.”

“But—”

“Anna, are you sure?” Her husband Dorus stood in the doorway, his first glimpse of wife and son in his eyes. The white collar of his profession encircling his throat. “Is it wise, for you, for our son? This one lives. Should it bear the name of the one that did not?”

“It is Vincent,” Anna said. That and no more.

Months later, the parsonage house echoed a repetitive refrain.

“Missus, the babe needs you.”

“I am needed elsewhere at the moment.”

The first Vincent had only been in the ground three months when Anna asked for the resumption of marital relations. She did not ask for the pleasure of it. She rarely thought of the pleasure. It was her duty. Duty, one of the commandments inculcated into her as a child. One not forgotten.

Dorus had thought it too soon. He’d agreed with the doctor. The midwife. She’d heard them talking but dismissed their words.

She had been lost for a time after she had lost him—days lost in her chair by the window, rarely moving, hardly eating. The maid would place a full plate before her; Anna would send it away, equally as full. She floundered beneath a dark, churning current. Unsure herself if she could rise above it.

Yet Anna never spoke of her pain. The depth of it. Her melancholia, a family trait. One that dared to tremble her stiff upper lip. She could not—should not—speak of it. It was what she had been taught. It was what she would teach; the choking, proper silence that had been engrained in her since birth. She trapped it all within, prodigiously learning the ways of the Carbentus family. But oh, how it churned in her gut, her mind. Her tempest confined, no matter the pain, just as she had been taught.

No one ever taught her how to cope with the death of a child.

In the three months after the birth and death of the first Vincent, Anna paid little attention to visitors. Made few visits. She often sat at the piano for hours, playing the same gloomy tune. Again, and again.

Dorus, a reverend three years her senior, knew. She could see his knowledge of her in his eyes. He knew her want was not of him but what he could give her. Anna thought of another child not only as a panacea to her pain but as a replacement for what she had lost.

If only it had worked.

After the second Vincent’s birth, she stood in the shadows still. Lived in them. And they in her. Much like the parsonage itself.

With buildings two stories taller than the parsonage flanking it, the sun, the light, no matter how bright, struggled to find its way in. One long single hallway lay beyond the front door. In a contiguous line, unbroken by any window, it bound the formal front room to the single dark back room where the family lived, then carried on to the small kitchen at the end. Just beyond lay the washroom and barn. In the barn, the only loo.

Anna would often stand at one end of the hallway, searching its long, dark depths. At times, she thought if she began walking down the gloomy path, it would just continue, on and on, with no end in sight. She’d be lost forever. Anna carried a candle when she traipsed down it, day or night. Just in case.

After Vincent, the children kept coming. Three boys and three girls would be born in twelve years. A strange precision of births. All six born between mid-March and mid-May.

Anna loved all her children. What mother did not? She did not love them all the same. She did not deny it nor apologize for it. She mothered them all, each in their own way, nonetheless.