My Father, Paul Gauguin

MY FATHER PAUL GAUGUIN by POLA GAUGUIN Translated from the Norwegian by Arthur G. Chafer NEW YORK ALFRED A KNOPF 1 9 3 7 Copyright 1937 by Alfred A . Knopf, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without permission in writirtg from the publisher, ex cept by a reviewer w to may quote brief passages or reproduce not more than three illustrations in a r vte w to be printed in a maga zine or nevuspaper. Manufactured in the United States of America FIRST AMERICAN EDITION PHOTO, frAW, ROSENBERG, PARIS PORTRAIT OF HIMSELF ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Certain of the material contained in this volume ori ginally appeared in The Intimate Letters of Paul Gauguin, translated by Van Wyck Brooks, and is sued by the Liveright Publishing Corporation and in Letters of Paul Gauguin to Georges Daniel de Monfreid, translated by Ruth Pielkovo, published by Dodd, Mead Company, to both of which pub lishers acknowledgment is made. PREFACE I AM the son of Paul Gauguin and a mother brought up in good bourgeois surroundings. In her home I grew up and predictions as to my future were many and various, ranging from solicitous doubts of how I might turn out, being the son of my father, to the somewhat too facile but dubious renown his name brought me later. A purely external resemblance in appearance and manner intensified the opinions people formed about me. The mystery which sur rounded fathers existence during my childhood and even in my adolescence was of great significance a mystery which was deepened every time a letter came from him to mother missives from far away, which for a little while rendered the strong and ever active woman silent and reflective. We children, without beingtold what was in these letters, instinc tively felt the weight and significance of the…