These fragments, torn bodily from the section headed Arles , read rather like specimens of the early soi-disant Imagist poets. London, Amsterdam, the Hague, come up in their element, a bridge, a windmill, a peasant trudging by a canal, subdued, cool, mist-swept, with less fervour, less fever, less dangerous cerebralism. A common mistake. Dead, just dead, only just-dead not quite dead, I have watched this sort of paternal undertaker grab from the actual maw of the only just dead a sheaf of letters, a portfolio of unfinished sketches, an old passport, a pair of boots, a fountain pen, not yet dead of its ink.
Carrion crows, vultures.
I should be positively afraid to die if my unpublished papers were worth snatching. In fact, people would keep alive in order to do their own editing. A quarrel I have with the late aforementioned D.H. Lawrence. This is no personal quarrel. The trouble was, I think, with Vincent, he was not lonely enough.