1. Willem Jacob van Stockum and Carolina Adolphina van Stockum-Haanebeek; Caroline was a distant relative of Vincent on his mother’s side and he had been in contact with her family in The Hague.

2. Willem and Caroline were married on 30 April 1873 and lived at Varkenmarkt 11a in The Hague.

3. Mrs van Gogh wrote to Theo: ‘When I last wrote to you, had we received Vincent’s letter in which he said that his salary is 1,080 guilders and that he has such a nice room, where he’s hung up his prints from The Hague and with which he’s very pleased?’ (FR b2638, 2 July 1873).

4. Lange Poten 10 in The Hague, Caroline’s parental home.

5. Jan van Beers, ‘The evening hour’. See the end of the letter.

6. Elisabeth (Lies) Huberta van Gogh, sister of Van Gogh. She informed Theo that she was copying out a poem for Vincent to take along with him when he left Helvoirt (FR b2622).

7. Van Gogh’s last evening at home was Sunday, 11 May 1873.

8. The province of North Brabant in the south of the Netherlands, where Van Gogh grew up.

9. On 9 July 1873, Maria Louisa van Stockum, Willem’s sister, married the merchant and broker Jan Bakker.

10. The poem as cited here was originally the first of four parts comprising the romantic poem ‘De bestedeling’ (The boarder). See Levensbeelden. Poezij van Jan van Beers. Amsterdam and Antwerp 1858, pp. 98-104. Vincent probably copied the text from the transcript Lies made for him (which has not survived). This presumably explains several slight differences between the original text and the version in the letter; ‘The evening hour’ is not Van Beers’s title. Vincent also sent a version to Theo; see letter 11.