For several decades I’ve had the habit of picking up a volume from the Travellers’ Library bookshelves in my bedroom whenever I haven’t had an unfinished book already available to accompany me to bed.

Picture shows my home-made bookcase built during a DIY phase many years ago

The Travellers’ Library (for those of you who do not know) is a wonderful series of (mainly dark blue) hardback, pocketbook-sized, books published during the 1920s and the 1930s as a joint venture by the two publishers Jonathan Cape and William Heinemann. A total of 218 volumes were published, beginning with Can Such Things Be? by Ambrose Bierce in 1926, and concluding with All The Conspirators by Christopher Isherwood in 1939.  In 1950 there was an attempt to resuscitate the series as The New Travellers’ Library, but this only succeeded in producing eight titles.  The final book, number 226 overall, was Selected Stories by Ernest Hemingway.  On my bookshelves I have displayed them in alphabetical order by author, starting with Horses and Men by Sherwood Anderson and concluding with The King of the Schnorrers by Israel Zangwill.

I recently pulled out, at random, The Intimate Journals of Paul Gauguin. I took this to bed and opened it, also randomly, and was astounded by a reference to Vincent Van Gogh.  This, it should be noted, was the eve of the same day I had corresponded with the publishers of the graphic novel Vincent.  It also followed closely on my choice of Vincent Van Gogh for the cover picture on the last issue of New Nurturing Potential.   I quote from the page that I had serendipitously opened:

“I had almost crossed the Place Victor Hugo when I heard behind me a well-known step, short, quick, irregular.  I turned about on the instant as Vincent rushed toward me, an open razor in his hand.  My look at that moment must have had great power in it, for he stopped and, lowering his head, set off running towards home.

“Was I negligent on this occasion?  Should I have disarmed him and tried to calm him?  I have often questioned my conscience about this, but I have never found anything to reproach myself with. . . “

. . . [The next day]  “I saw a great crowd collected.  Near our house there were some gendarmes and a little gentleman in a melon-shaped hat, who was the superintendent of police.

“This is what had happened.

“Van Gogh had gone back to the house and had immediately cut off his ear close to the head.  He must have taken some time to stop the flow of blood, for the day after there were a lot of wet towels . . . [later] . . . he went straight to a certain house where for want of a fellow-countryman one can pick up an acquaintance, and gave the manager his ear, carefully washed and placed in an envelope.  ‘Here is a souvenir of me,’ he said.  Then he ran off home, where he went to bed and to sleep . . .”

[Later at my front door] “. . . the gentleman in the melon-shaped hat said to me abruptly . . . “What have you done to your comrade, Monsieur? . . . He is dead.’ . . . [However, although he gave the appearance of one dead, Gauguin ascertained that he was, in fact, merely asleep, and he instructed the superintendent of police] . . . “Be kind enough, Monsieur, to awaken this man with great care; and if he asks for me, tell him I have left Paris; the sight of me might prove fatal to him.”

“Vincent was taken to a hospital where, as soon as he had arrived, his brain began to rave again.

“All the rest everyone knows who has any interest in knowing it, and it would be useless to talk about it were it not for that great suffering of a man who, confined in a madhouse, at monthly intervals recovered his reason enough to understand his condition and furiously paint the admirable pictures we know.”

The book is a wonderful, witty narrative of a man whose own life was quite incredible and includes pen portraits of many famous figures such as Degas, Monet, Manet, Henrik Ibsen, and Victor Hugo.  It was indeed a happy piece of serendipity that caused my fingers to pluck it from my bookcase.

A replica of Van Gogh's ear went on display at a German gallery in June 2014. 

See Caroline Jenner's article in the summer 2014 Issue of New Nurturing Potential  http://www.nurturingpotential.net/Art06.htm