1. Theo was depressed. Willem Laurens Kiehl – who, like Theo, boarded with the Rooses – had died on 22 September. Mr van Gogh wrote to Theo on 25 September: ‘We are hard hit by the news of Kiehl’s death. I can imagine that you’re very conscious of it and feel it deeply. You lived with him for a fairly long time. How that Miss Roos will have taken care of him faithfully. Dying pathetically. So young. With a life behind him that was not easy, missing much of what others experience of love from their close relations’ (FR b2363).

2. Cf. Num. 20:17, Deut. 28:14 and Isa. 30:21.