The Gold of their Bodies: A Novel about Gaugain

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THE GOLD OF THEIR BODIES

A novel about Gauguin

By

CHARLES GORHAM

The Gold of Their Bodies was originally published in 1955 by The Dial Press, New York.

* * *

To GEORGE W. JOEL

* * *

"You have known for a long time

what it is I wish to establish:

the right to dare everything."

Gauguin to de Monfried

October, 1902

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Contents

TABLE OF CONTENTS 4

BOOK ONE 5

Chapter I 5

Chapter II 13

Chapter III 25

Chapter IV 37

BOOK TWO 50

Chapter V 51

Chapter VI 64

Chapter VII 73

Chapter VIII 93

Chapter IX 100

BOOK THREE 114

Chapter X 115

Chapter XI 130

Chapter XII 148

Chapter XIII 159

BOOK FOUR 170

Chapter XIV 170

Chapter XV 184

BOOK FIVE 193

Chapter XVI 194

Chapter XVII 205

Chapter XVIII 219

Chapter XIX 233

REQUEST FROM THE PUBLISHER 251

BOOK ONE

"Those who condemn me do not know all there is in an artist’s nature; and why do they impose on us obligations similar to theirs? We do not impose ours on them."

Gauguin to his wife.

Chapter I

THE ART DEALER, Pierre Marchand, smiled at his former client. Of course I said you had talent, he conceded. For an amateur, I thought your work was astonishing. But to ask me to sell your pictures! My dear Gauguin, that is another matter altogether.

Since you deal in art, I don’t think it’s unreasonable to ask you to sell pictures, said Paul Gauguin.

He was a big, dark man with a powerful, Spanish looking head, not handsome, but vital, with a warm animal appeal. He wore a rumpled corduroy suit that was smeared with paint. Marchand looked at him and smiled, remembering the way he had looked in striped trousers and a cutaway.

Tell me, Gauguin, how long is it since you left the Stock Exchange? he asked.

Nearly two years, Gauguin said. And I have worked every day. Here in Paris for a year, then in Normandy, in Rouen. He took up one of his pictures and placed it on Marchand’s felt covered easel. It was a landscape painted in Rouen, in August, four months ago. Gauguin stood away from the easel, looking at the picture, then shrugged his shoulders.

I suggest that this landscape betrays a certain amount of talent, he said bluntly.

It is a pleasant picture, the dealer agreed. Quite as good as a number of Pissarros I have in my cellar, in fact. Of course, Pissarro doesn’t sell.

Pissarro had been Gauguin’s first teacher, when Gauguin had been a banker who painted only on Sundays. There was too much Pissarro in this picture, but Gauguin hated to admit it. He opened his mouth to protest, but before he could speak the gallery door opened, causing a warning bell to tinkle.

Excuse me, Gauguin, the dealer said.

He turned to greet a haggard woman wearing a fortune in Russian sable, escorted by a pale young man twenty years her junior.

"Madame la Contesse, Marchand said. Monsieur."

Gauguin smiled. It was 1884. French titles had been out of date for fifteen years, but they were still used in places like this, if you had the money to go with them.

Gauguin watched the dealer waiting on trade. Marchand was showing a glistening canvas, mounted in a gold leaf frame that must have cost three hundred francs. The painting was vaguely pornographic—three mountainous pink nudes reclining in fake shrubbery, admired by a group of cherubs who looked like ornaments from a wedding cake.

Gauguin turned to the painting he had brought with him from Rouen. Between his picture and that pink trash, there was no relationship. Gauguin belonged to the modern school, painters who hated the studio slickness and went into the open air to work. He and his friends were pioneers and suffered the ridicule people offer men who try something new.

When Marchand had sold the pink picture and the Countess had been bowed out, Gauguin said, Tell me, Marchand, do you sell it by the metre, that garbage, or does it go by the kilo weight, complete with frame?

It is difficult to spoil the temper of a man who has just made some money. Marchand laughed and rubbed his hands together.

By the yard or by the kilo, it does sell, Gauguin, he said. I am all for modern art, you know, but if I want to eat, I must give the public what it wants.

Gauguin looked at the dealer, who was dressed in striped trousers and a black frock coat.

The public, he said contemptuously. If that’s the public, then God help France.

He walked to the back of Marchand’s shop and stared at the pink picture. It was by Bougereau, one of the most successful money painters in France.

Some day they will hang in bordellos, these Bougereaus, he said. Do me a favor, will you Marchand? Turn it to the wall.

Marchand laughed and turned the picture.

As a matter of fact, he said, this one is going to hang in an establishment that resembles its ultimate destination, if your prediction is accurate.

Gauguin shook his head.

Whores are honest, by and large, he said. With a woman like that one you’d never get full value for your money.

He stared at his own painting again, disappointed with it now. Yet there was talent in it. Even a fool should see the talent.

Look here, Marchand, I’ve got to sell something, he said. I am in a bad way for money. Mette has had another child. Now there are seven of us to be fed. I am broke, flat broke. I need money for tomorrow’s dinner.

Marchand was astonished. He had known Gauguin as an art collector, a fencer of some importance, a stock broker who was also a well known Sunday painter. He had taken the corduroy suit as artistic affectation.

You can’t be serious, he said. I don’t mean to be personal, Gauguin, but you were a successful man. You must have had something put by.

I was successful, Gauguin said wearily. I made forty thousand francs a year, as my wife and my sister enjoy reminding me. And I had something put by. But it’s gone. All of it. Every stinking sou.

But how? Marchand asked.

He could remember Gauguin, two years ago, dressed by the best tailor in Paris, buying Manets and Cézannes, giving expensive luncheon parties in the Stock Exchange Café.

Easily, said Gauguin. The first year, we stayed here in Paris, living the way we always had, with two maids and damn the expense. Then when things got tight, I moved the family to Rouen, where things are a little cheaper.

Incredible, Marchand murmured.

I tell you, I’m desperate, Gauguin said. I’ve got to sell something.

You won’t sell these, Marchand said frankly, pointing at the batch of pictures Gauguin had brought from Rouen. I tell you, Gauguin, modern art is a drug on the market. Even the big names aren’t selling, let alone the others.

People do buy pictures, Gauguin said stubbornly. It can’t be that everyone wants those dirty Bougereaus.

People with money want pleasant pictures, Marchand said. Right now, they want things to go with the Louis XV furniture that is in style. If you must sell something, I’ll give you a tip. Go to the Louvre and copy something. A Raphael or a Boucher. Do a good slick job and maybe I’ll find a buyer for you.

I am a painter, Gauguin said. I am not in the business of raising the dead.

He persuaded Marchand to store his pictures for a few weeks and went out of the shop into the rue Lafitte, a narrow street of art galleries and private banking houses. A few doors from Marchand’s was the house of Bertin & Cie., where Gauguin had worked as a broker. He paused for a moment, looking at Bertin’s brass plate, then walked on.

Marchand had been his last resort. The other dealers—Lévy, Durand-Ruel, Goupil and the rest—all sang the same tune.

I’ve got a cellar full of Cézannes, Durand had told him. I couldn’t sell them for old canvas.

I’ve got a cellar full of Pissarro, Lévy had said. I couldn’t sell them to wrap fish in.

People simply do not want modern art, they had told him at Goupil’s.

They are wrong, Gauguin thought. In the end, modern art would sweep the pink nudes out of sight. That, however, was in the future. In the meantime, he must get some money, to take the frown off his wife’s face. Who will be good for a touch? he thought. Last month, he had begged a hundred francs from his sister Marie, who gave it, as she explained, for the sake of his innocent wife and children. Marie had plenty of money. If he begged, she would give him more. But the idea of being humble to her made no appeal to his present mood. He decided to go to Montmartre, where most of his friends lived and worked, on the chance that someone might have sold a picture and wouldn’t mind parting with fifty francs.

2

He went to the Café de la Nouvelle Athènes, where the modern artists did their drinking and arguing. The Nouvelle was almost a club, where what counted was not money, but how much a man cared about art.

It was December and quite cold. The Nouvelle smelled of a charcoal fire and of vin chaud. The windows were fogged with steam. At a table reserved for the modern painters, sat Camille Pissarro, with Degas and young Toulouse-Lautrec. Gauguin threaded his way between the tables and took a chair beside Pissarro.

Absinthe, he said to the waiter. He glanced across the table at Lautrec, beside whose elbow rose a tower of saucers, each recording a drink consumed. Unless our young friend has drunk it all, he said.

When his drink arrived, Gauguin sipped it slowly. He was fond of absinthe, but he felt guilty because it was expensive compared with the cheap red wine that satisfied Pissarro. He had exaggerated when he told Marchand that he hadn’t the price of tomorrow’s dinner, but he had not exaggerated much. Only a little remained of the hundred francs he had borrowed from Marie. He shouldn’t be spending the price of an absinthe, or sitting in the Nouvelle at all. He should be on the train to Rouen, going home to tell his wife that he had failed to sell a picture.

He finished his drink and ordered another, staring moodily at the oil lamp which hung from a bracket beside the table.

You are quiet, Gauguin, said Toulouse-Lautrec. Are you drunk or depressed? Silence is not what we’re used to from our Gauguin. Are you ill? Perhaps in love? Constipated?

Be quiet, clown, Gauguin said. You do not amuse me this evening.

Lautrec’s crippled legs were hidden by the table, but they were never out of his mind. For a moment, the hurt showed on his face. Then he smiled brightly.

As you wish, he said. But if you are in the mood for a purge, I can recommend....

Henri, leave him alone, advised Pissarro gently. You will make him angry and he will relieve himself by destroying furniture. Pissarro was a gentle man with a patriarchal beard. He put a hand on Gauguin’s arm and said, What’s wrong, Paul? You look ready to smash something.

I’ve just come from a dealer, Gauguin said. You must excuse my disposition.

Dealers, Pissarro said, shaking his head. What they would like is to buy us cheap, then help us starve to death, so that our prices will go up.

For myself, I don’t mind, Gauguin said moodily, lighting a cigarette. It’s Mette and the children. They aren’t used to being poor.

Women and children don’t like it when the candy is taken away, Degas said, blinking behind the blue lenses he used to protect his weak eyes. But you were warned, Gauguin, when you quit the bank, a couple of years ago.

I have been painting all my life, and I have never been out of debt, Pissarro said.

I suppose you’re trying to tell me I was wrong to quit the Bourse. Well, I wasn’t wrong. After all, I am an artist. I’ve shown with the Salon, with the Independents. It was only an accident that put me into the bank in the first place, when I came out of the Navy.

No one questions your talent, Degas said acidly. Only your good sense. Success wants time, Gauguin, and you are not a patient man. Also, you are not a boy.

I am thirty-seven, Gauguin said. I do not have a long white beard and no one finds it necessary to help me in or out of bed.

He finished his absinthe and ordered another. When the third drink was gone, Gauguin began to relax. The sting of the day’s failure blurred. He forgot Marchand and the others, and he forgot his wife and children, waiting for him in Rouen, a long way from Paris. He leaned forward like a conspirator, talking about art. He had power. The others felt it. They drew in to the table and listened. When Gauguin was going well, even Lautrec kept quiet.

During the evening, others came: Seurat, who painted in dots, Manet, in a top hat, Schuffenecker, who had once been a banker like himself. Gauguin lost track of the time, sitting in the café until after the last train had gone.

Come home with me for the night, Paul, Schuffenecker said. There’s a couch in the studio that you’re welcome to use.

Schuff was a little fellow, with glasses and a thin-faced wife. He rented a house in Montrouge, just outside of Paris.

"You are a good copain, Schuff, Gauguin said, his voice blurred by the absinthe. And you are smarter than I am. At least you had sense enough to sink your money in bonds, so your wife can’t complain all the time."

Schuffenecker shrugged. He spoke with a flat Alsatian accent. If I had your talent, I might take your chances, Paul, he said. He took a hundred francs from his pocket and put them in Gauguin’s hand. Don’t worry about the money, he said gently. I haven’t got much, but whatever I can spare, you can have.

When Schuff had turned out the light and gone up to bed with his wife, Gauguin tossed restlessly on the narrow studio couch. His life had not prepared him for failure. Until two years ago, things had always come easily to him, in business, love, war. He had had a gift for success, and now he was ashamed of his poverty, ashamed of having to cadge from his friends; and he was ashamed to go home tomorrow to tell his wife he had failed, to face whatever ultimatum this failure would produce.

3

The next day, in the afternoon, Gauguin got down from the train at Rouen and regarded the town with distaste. A year ago he had come here with hope; now he detested the place. It seemed to sum up the bourgeois world he hated.

He had the humiliating guilt that goes with a hangover, so he walked home from the railway station to save the price of a fiacre. In front of his little rented house, he found his daughter Aline playing with jacks, alone in the cold. She was dressed in a blue reefer, made to do for a third winter, too tight across the shoulders. She would be eight in a few weeks, on Christmas day.

"You will freeze out here, petite, he said, lifting the child and kissing her cheek. Why aren’t you in the kitchen with the others?"

Probably driven out, he thought, by one of Mette’s black moods. Mette seemed to be harder on Aline than on the boys, perhaps because she realized that Aline was his favorite.

They went into the kitchen together, Aline holding his hand. The other children sat at the table, Emil, the oldest reading a book, Clovis and Jean amusing themselves with the remains of a chess set. The younger boys got up when Gauguin entered the house and he bent to kiss them on the cheek. Emil remained seated.

Where is your mother? Gauguin said, speaking directly to the older boy.

Upstairs with the baby, Emil answered sullenly. He’s sick again, as usual.

Emil returned to his book. For a moment, Gauguin was prompted to remind him of his manners, then he decided against it. Emil was ten, old enough to blame his father for the change in family fortunes that took his pocket money from him and brought him to this rotten town, where he had no fun of the kind he’d had in Paris. Gauguin shook his head, going up the narrow stairs. He and Emil had been friends. He had taught the boy to fence and box, taught him to sail a model boat. Now Emil seemed to hate him.

He opened the nursery door gently, finding his wife with the baby, Paul. She sat beside the crib, her head outlined in the light. They had been married for eleven years, but even now her beauty stirred him as it had when he fell in love, at first sight, across a room.

Mette, he called softly. How is he?

She turned, a finger raised to her lips, then tip-toed away from the crib. He’s just dropped off to sleep, she whispered. When he wakes up, I think he’ll be better. But he’s not strong, Paul, and this drafty old house is bad for him.

They went into their bedroom and Gauguin sat down wearily. He was tired and the stale absinthe made his head throb. The next half hour would not be pleasant.

There’s no point in a prelude, he said. They turned me down, all of them. Lévy, Durand, Marchand. As far as the dealers are concerned, we can starve and be damned to us.

Mette sat down on a straight chair. She was a beautiful woman, but the strain was beginning to show. Blondes are fragile, he thought. Hot house plants. They don’t thrive under rough treatment.

You sold nothing? she said. Out of a whole year’s work?

Nothing, he said. Not a scrap.

What do you propose to do?

I don’t know, he said. I’ve got to have time to think.

They promised to hold your place at the bank, she reminded him, as she had done a year ago when they had given up their house in Paris and moved to Rouen. They won’t hold it forever.

I can’t go back to the bank, he said. I am a painter now, Mette, for better or worse, an artist.

We can’t live on nothing, she said, her voice thin with impatience. If you won’t earn a living, then you must borrow.

There’s no one to borrow from, he said. Marie will give me a hand-out, nothing more. I don’t want to go to my uncle. It might put him off, and I know that he’s going to leave me everything he’s got when he dies.

We can’t sit here and wait for your Uncle Zizi to die, she said. Paul, we must eat.

I borrowed a hundred francs from Schuff. It will feed us for a bit, he said.

A hundred francs! Mette said. She went to her writing desk in a corner of the room and took a sheaf of bills from the drawer. Paul, look at these, she said. A quarter’s rent. The children’s clothes. The grocer. The butcher. The baker. The dairy. I tell you, we can’t go on this way. When you quit your job, you promised me we wouldn’t live as Schuff does, or Pissarro and the others. ‘Things will be just the same,’ you said. ‘Only better.’ Now we are worse off than Schuff, worse even than Pissarro. We are beggars, Paul. Paupers.

You are right, he said. You are right.

I am right, you say. But what will you do about it? You will lock yourself in your studio and paint pictures that no one wants, while your children go without food. Her voice rose and with her anger, her Danish accent became more pronounced. What is the matter with you, Paul? When we were married, you were a responsible man, but now you seem to have lost your reason.

He got up and went to the window, looking out at the winter landscape.

I don’t blame you, Mette, he said, his back toward her. When we were married, you had no reason to suspect that I wouldn’t go on getting richer and richer, the way people get fatter and fatter. But I tell you, it’s not my fault. I am a painter. In order to live, I must paint, the way other people must breathe. Call it a curse if you want to, but it is a fact. Once a man is committed to art, really committed, there is no escape.

There was a long silence, then Mette said quietly, Paul, we must do something. This life is intolerable. If you won’t return to the bank, to Paris, then we must go somewhere else.

Where? he asked, not turning away from the window.

To my family in Copenhagen, she said firmly. At least the children will be fed and kept warm and properly brought up.

Copenhagen, he said. "Tight little Copenhagen. I am a

Frenchman, of the French French. What would I do in Copenhagen?"

Mette’s head came up sharply. She had always been a Dane at heart. Twelve years of life in France had only thawed the surface of her northern morality.

You can paint, as you paint here, she said. Perhaps for the sake of appearances, you can make some business arrangement that won’t disturb your art.

There was a thin edge of contempt in her voice, a new and dangerous note. Gauguin turned away from the window.

You can’t be serious, he said. How can we leave France?

How can we stay in France? she asked. I am deadly serious. With you or without you, I intend to go. I won’t see my children suffer for the sake of your obsession.

I am the head of the family, he said angrily. You have no right to take the children if I say no.

In a court of law, I have no right, she said calmly. But I know you, Paul. You are not a cruel man. You won’t see your family destroyed simply to satisfy your stubbornness.

Gauguin looked out at the dirty snow. She is right, he thought. I won’t see the family destroyed. It would be humiliating, to sponge on her family, but he could not face the alternative, to give up the struggle with art before he had really gotten started, to crawl back to the stock exchange with his hat in his hand.

God help me, Mette, you are right, he said, not willing to look at her. We will go to Denmark, then, all of us together.

Chapter II

GAUGUIN made his way along the Strǿget, Copenhagen’s main street, a heavy sample case in his hand. The high-pitched Danish voices annoyed him. During the first years of his marriage, he had thought it amusing to learn Mette’s language, but he had never taken it seriously. To learn Danish had been a kind of joke, like learning Hottentot. Now, after six months in Denmark, he detested the language. His ears ached for the sounds of French.

He was not a success with the Danes. His painting made no progress here and his business affairs were unprofitable. He was the agent for Dillies & Co., cloth makers of Rouen, and the arrangement was not working out. The one large order he had written was for the Danish Admiralty, and that was because a cousin of Mette’s was the admiral in command of the Navy Yard, not because the Danish Navy had real need of tarpaulins from France.

As a salesman, I’m a flop, Gauguin decided, shifting the heavy bag of cloth from one hand to the other. It was early afternoon but he was fed up. He had no heart to go on with the calls listed in his little black book.

He continued along the Strǿget, then turned into Norregaten. He didn’t want to go home, but there was no place else to go, in this damned town that had no cafés. He turned through an iron gate and crossed the courtyard to the house, going in quietly by the side door, wanting to avoid his mother-in-law.

As he passed the parlor door, he was stopped by the sound of laughter. It was a high, fragrant laugh, like the laugh of a young girl. He put down the bag and went into the parlor, hearing Mette say, as he entered, Now, gentlemen, the joke is over. Let us return to the beautiful language of Moliére.

She was giving a French lesson to three young men from the Diplomatic Corps, elegant young men, turned out in the British style.

In the French language, there are exceptions to every rule, gentlemen, she went on, speaking easily in Danish.

One of the young men smiled and said, I have been told that this is true in the lives of the French as well as their language.

Mette laughed again and the young men joined her. Gauguin coughed and the young men turned, together, like a file of soldiers. Mette’s laughter died. She disliked being interrupted.

Paul, you are early, she said.

A bit, Gauguin said. Sorry to disturb you.

Mette hesitated, then said, Gentlemen, my husband, Herre Gauguin. Paul, Herre Secretary Olsen, Herre Consul Soderman, Count Erik av Dorvan.

The three young diplomats bowed together, reminding Gauguin of the can-can girls in the Moulin de la Galette.

Herre Gauguin, they said.

Messieurs, Gauguin said. I regret having been so gauche as to have interrupted your lesson.

Not at all, the count said politely. "It is too kind of 16

Madame Gauguin to try to give us a few French graces. When one lives in a small country, he must borrow from his larger neighbors."

They are preposterous, Gauguin thought, these imitation Englishmen, trying to pretend it was all good fun, instead of something Mette did for cash. When they had bowed themselves out, he laughed and said, In this country, everyone seems to have a title. Herre Consul This. Herre Direktor That. Jeg, Herre Garbageman. Jeg, Herre Butcher. It is ridiculous.

Your family is being fed here, Mette said sharply. It is supposed to be bad manners to bite the hand that offers you bread, and you French, after all, are famous for your manners.

I know, Gauguin said. I am a bad, vicious beast and probably should be chained up, outside in the yard. Nevertheless, there are aspects of life in this country that I find absurd. If it is bad manners to say so, I apologize, but the absurdities continue to confront me.

It is my country, Mette said. I won’t deny that I’m happier in it that I was in yours. I don’t want to seem unkind, Paul, but at your age you must have learned that beggars can’t be choosers.

I know, Gauguin said sarcastically. Also, who pays the piper calls the tune. Do you know any more maxims?

They had switched to French after the young Danes had gone. Now Mette said abruptly in Danish, You must excuse me, Paul. I have work to do. After all, someone must earn a few schillings. We cannot expect my mother to provide you with tobacco and paint, as well as with food and the roof over your head. We must keep a shred of dignity.

Oh, yes, Gauguin said. Dignity at all costs.

Don’t pick another quarrel, she said.

She went to the writing desk in a corner of the room. Gauguin followed her. A sheaf of manuscript lay on the blotter, written in Mette’s slanting hand, the 0s crossed angrily, seeming to leap from the page. It is an ugly language, even when written down, he thought. He picked up the French novel Mette was translating for one of the Danish papers.

Zola, he said contemptuously. Chronicles of the gutter. Why don’t you translate Loti? Everybody defecates, only Zola bothers about it.

Zola understands life, Mette said. He is not a foolish romantic. Besides, it is Zola I am paid to translate, not Loti. I don’t do this to amuse myself. I do it for cash, hard cash.

Zola is a philistine, Gauguin said. He turns his back on Cézanne. Cézanne may have his faults, but he is a great artist, a mystic. Zola knows nothing about painting.

Painting, Mette said bitterly. Can’t you understand by now that I hate painting? I hate the word, I hate the product, I hate the smell of paint.

Since you are married to a painter, that is a misfortune, he said.

Mette turned, her fists tightened.

You sneer at Zola, because he makes money, she said angrily. You and your Cézannes, your precious Pissarros, your Manets and Monets and whatever not, that you refuse to sell. Your wife may work, your children may live on charity, but you will continue to make pictures and go on refusing to sell the daubs that your friends have made.

Gauguin sat down on a straight-backed chair. He leaned forward and looked his wife in the eye. When he spoke, the sarcasm was gone from his voice and there was a note of iron in it.

Some day the daubs you make fun of will hang in the Louvre, he said calmly.

I think your mind has been affected by this obsession with art, she said, staring at him. Do you care nothing at all for the children? Do you care nothing for me?

I love you, he said. I love the children. But I want to leave more than children behind me. You say my mind has been affected. You are right. I am twice the man I was, two years ago, in spite of the fact that my pockets are empty, which causes your mother to find me contemptible.

What do you expect her to think of a man of thirty-seven who will not support his family? she asked. "A failure is a failure, in any country, here as in France. Give it up, Paul, I beg you! It is nothing