“You started too late”

When I asked Tersteeg some days ago for 10 guilders, he gave them to me, but accompanied by so many reproaches - I might almost say insults - that I could hardly control myself, though I did. I would have thrown the 10 guilders in his face if the money had been for myself, but I had to pay the model, a poor sick woman whom I cannot keep waiting. So I kept quiet. . . .

He would have the right to reproach me if I did not work, but it is unjust to someone who toils patiently, hard, and continuously on a difficult work, to make reproaches like this:

“Of one thing I am sure, you are no artist.”

“One objection which has great weight with me is that you started too late.”

“You must earn your own living.” . . .

To Theo van Gogh, from The Hague, 5-9 March 1882, Letter 179
Translation courtesy of Robert Harrison.
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