Chapter 18
Claire
The attic is a lake. Filthy water gushes down the stairs to the second floor. Soaked through to the bone, Jo throws buckets of liquid out the window as quickly as she can while I transport Vincent’s paintings to the dry side of the room. Thank the heavens for these uneven Dutch floors.
“Is there any hot porridge?” Mr. Pietersen, by far our neediest lodger, shouts up from the breakfast room, where he’s puffing away on his smelly pipe.
“Only cold for now, a bit busy up here,” Jo replies through gritted teeth before looking back at the paintings. “The world could stop spinning and a man will still want a woman to serve him his hot porridge. Are the canvases dry?”
“For now,” I say. “Pray this storm stops soon or we will be in trouble.” Our old roof couldn’t withstand our wet and windy winter, but thankfully we made it to the top floor just as the hole opened up to the elements, and we were able to save the paintings.
Jo stares up through the gap at the clouds. “It seems to have stopped for now.” She calls down the stairs, “Millie, how is the hallway?”
“I’ve taken care of most of it, but it will take ages for these sheets to dry, madame.” Our laundry girl, Millie, happened to be at the house as the water came pouring in, and she leapt into action, stripping the beds to soak up the water before it seeped onto the main floor.
“About that porridge, Mrs. Van Gogh,” Pietersen bellows again.
“If only we did have steaming-hot porridge, I would pour it directly over his big bald head,” Jo says.
“That is something I would like to see. Come now. Let’s attend to those sheets.” I take her arm and guide her down the stairs. Her teeth are chattering, and she is the one who needs something warm. Millie drapes a dry quilt over her shoulders as we reach the second floor.
Jo thanks her and then squints and looks more closely at her face. “Dear child, what happened to your eye?” When I lean toward Millie, the purple and blue bruises are obvious. I know where they came from. Her father is a violent man and prone to drink.
“Do not worry yourself about it, ma’am. He was right to beat me, I never should have gone.”
“Gone where?”
“To the meeting.”
“He hit you for attending a meeting?” Jo asks.
“He had told me not to go. He told me no good would come of it. I only went because Louisa wanted someone to keep her company, or rather that is why I went the first time, but it was interesting, the things the women were saying.”
“It was a meeting of the suffragists?” I ask. There are many of these meetings happening in homes around Bussum and in Amsterdam. I have been invited to several, but the work of running the boardinghouse and helping Jo with Vincent’s art has kept me too busy.
She nods and finally meets my eyes. “My father doesn’t understand anything about it.
He thinks it is a sin that I even work outside of the home, but we have no other way to make enough money to feed my small siblings.
Mother is dead and he is a drunk.” She clasps her hand over her mouth as though she can’t believe she has let the words slip out.
“It is all right, Millie. You are safe to say whatever you like to us. I am sorry this happened to you,” Jo says.
We see too many young girls like Millie mistreated by the men in their lives, and I count myself lucky every day that I am not under the thumb of an abusive father or a husband.
In fact, I believe I’ve had quite enough of men for an entire lifetime.
I watch Jo’s turbulent relationship with Isaac and feel only relief to have no longing for any sort of romantic partnership.
“How did your father find out where you were?” Jo asks.
“I was careless. I went to a session on a Sunday afternoon when I had no need to be out of the house, and he followed me.”
“You work with us most Tuesdays, yes?” Jo asks.
“I do.”
“Is there a meeting then?”
Millie thinks about it for a second and nods.
“Maybe you could hasten your visit to us and we could all of us go to one of these meetings together. Then you have the excuse that I kept you here for an extra hour.”
“Really? You would want to come?”
“I would,” Jo says, taking both of us completely by surprise. “I’d like to hear more about what it is all about.”
Once Millie has taken care of the soiled linens and Mr. Pietersen has been fed a lukewarm porridge that he never thanked us for, I brew Jo a cup of tea. “Why do you want to attend that suffragist meeting?” I ask her.
“I have been so exposed to the ways in which women are kept from power and from financial gain,” she says slowly.
I know she must have spent some time thinking on this already because Jo never goes along with anyone’s opinions before she makes up her own mind.
She’s often contradictory about new things at first, until she’s done her own research.
“Powerful men within the world of art would love to take Vincent’s paintings from me.
Just the other day I received yet another letter from that Henrik Swanson, the art dealer in Germany.
He offered a painfully low price for Vincent’s entire collection; told me he couldn’t imagine I would want to be worrying over them when I could be keeping house and caring for my son.
It was belittling. Women should be able to choose both education and occupation if that is what they desire. It feels completely rational to me.”
“The only time I’ve ever felt like a man’s equal, or even his superior, is when our clothes are off,” I reply. I love shocking Jo. But my words don’t startle her at all this time.
“Isn’t that the truth.” I know she is thinking about Isaac and I try to keep her focus away from him.
“What bothers you the most about Henrik Swanson? Besides his condescension.”
“He’s buying up as many of Vincent’s paintings as he can.
His strategy is for pure gain. He will store all the work, hide them away for years, hope they appreciate because of my labor, and then resell the lot of them at a profit for his own family.
He’s done it with others. He won’t make sure that Vincent’s art is shown around the world, or that students can gaze on it for free and learn his methods.
He cares only about Vincent as a potential investment. ”
“You have never shied away from making money, though,” I remind her.
“But I also want the value of Vincent’s work to increase because it makes people pay attention. And when a painting sells for more than the last one, the right people come to the next show. That’s what Theo wanted. For Vincent to be remembered.”
“But what do you want?” This is a dangerous line of questioning.
I’m asking about the art, but I could just as easily be asking about her personal life.
Isaac and Jo quickly fell into their old routines after the incident at the show when he told her to forget about him, though he made it even more clear that he has absolutely no intention of marrying her.
Some days she seems to accept that. Others I see her work herself into a fury after being with him.
She tells me she ended things and that she will never return.
But she always does. The leak in the roof is the only thing besides caring for her child that has gotten her out of bed this week, due to yet another passionate argument between the two of them.
And that hole in the roof never would have grown so large had Jo been able to muster the strength to help me patch it earlier.
Jo releases a long sigh as she mops up the last of the puddles in the hallway. “Every time I want something of my own, it ends badly. It’s easier to want a thing for someone else.”
“It is acceptable for you to have your own desires.”
“I don’t disagree,” she murmurs. “But everything I tend to desire ends up shattering me.”
Our first suffragist meeting is several weeks later, on a Tuesday at lunchtime.
It is clear that anyone is welcome—middle-class women like Jo, lower-born women like Millie.
And then there is me, who no one knows how to put into a category.
But it is also evident that we are all curious about our place in the world—that we want to know more about choosing to be “new women,” the ones who crave a purpose in life beyond the home and desire to work serving men.
I am inspired by all of it, and once again, grateful to Jo for giving me this life, for seeing that I deserved something more.
Jo is in good spirits at the meeting. “Thank you for coming with me,” she whispers as we walk in. “I needed this. I know I have been quite unpleasant as of late. We can’t have the wind in our sails all the time, but I have truly been pushing the limits.”
At the end of the gathering, one of the organizers pulls the two of us aside. She’s dignified, composed, with modest manners and language—a typical, respectable Hague lady.
“Mrs. Van Gogh,” she addresses Jo, but also smiles warmly at me to let me know I am welcome in the conversation. “I was so pleased to see you here. I have read many of the pieces you have written about your late brother-in-law and I attended a recent show. It was wonderful.”
“Oh, thank you,” Jo replies, a blush creeping up her neck. “It turned out to be quite a success.”
“I do enjoy your style of writing very much and I was wondering if you might be interested in penning some things for us.”
“Writing what exactly?”
“Pieces for periodicals and pamphlets. We are hoping to get more of our information to a wider audience, and you seem to have an expertise in doing that with your brother-in-law’s work.”