After all, a man has a heart in his body

At any rate I told the woman, “When you have recovered, come to me; whatever I can do for you I shall do.” Well, my dear friend, that woman had another child, a sickly, neglected chit of a girl. It was an undertaking which exceeded my means rather more seriously than buying an issue of the Graphic, for instance - but what was I to do? After all, a man has a heart in his body, and if we did not take a chance now and then we should not deserve to be alive. So she came to me - I moved into a house that was not yet quite finished at the time, and that I could get at a relatively low rent; I am still living there, two doors down from my old studio; the number is 138. So here we are, the only difference being that the baby from the hospital cradle no longer sleeps as much as he did those first days.

He is now about seven or eight months old and has become a charming little fellow, very much alive and kicking. When they moved in, I carried his cradle home from the secondhand shop on my shoulders, and all through the dark winter this little child has been like a light in the house. And though the woman does not have a strong constitution, and though notwithstanding this she has to work hard to keep the house clean, yet she has become stronger. So you see, while I'm trying to penetrate more deeply into art, I'm doing the same with respect to life itself - and the two things go together.

To Anton von Rappard, from The Hague, 4 February 1883, Letter R20
Translation courtesy of Robert Harrison.
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