The Yellow House
Van Gogh, Gauguin, and Nine Turbulent Weeks in Arles
Chapter One
The Arrival
October 23, 1888
While it was still dark, shortly after five o'clock in the morning, a
train clanked into the station at Arles and a solitary, exhausted passenger got
out. He had been traveling for nearly two days. His journey had begun the
previous Sunday in Pont-Aven, near the Atlantic coast of Brittany, almost seven
hundred miles away. Since then he had moved by stages from a damp, green region
on the Atlantic coast to a flat plain near the point where the Rhone River met
the Mediterranean.
The route had taken him right across France, via Nantes and
Tours, Clermont Ferrand and Lyon. Although he was now in the
sunny south, the night air was chilly-only 40ºF. He stepped out
of the station, turned left and walked under the railway bridge,
then along the street until he came to a large open square. On his
right was the embankment of a wide river-the Rhone. To the
left was the house he was heading for, its shutters still closed. But
just at the ... read full excerpt from: The Yellow House: Van Gogh, Gauguin, and Nine Turbulent Weeks in Arles ebook
