1. Mr van Gogh travelled on Monday, 4 February 1878, to Amsterdam ‘to put my mind at ease a little about Vincent’s future’ (FR b965 to Theo, 2 February 1878). Before returning to Etten on Thursday, 7 February, he stopped at The Hague (FR b967). A short while later he admitted to Theo that he was not easy about Vincent’s future: ‘We can’t stop worrying about him; there is and always will be something strange about him’ (FR b967, 20 February 1878). Mrs van Gogh wrote about Vincent’s progress to Theo: ‘You wrote that when he visited you [on Monday, 7 January] he was really very good, certainly he is, perhaps that will come out more when he finally has to act independently, but he is so awfully impractical, but we will hope for the best’ (FR b966, 2 February 1878).

2. La Sainte Bible selon la Vulgate. Traduction nouvelle avec les dessins de Gustave Doré. Tours 1866. This work was available in all kinds of editions, including popular ones. A Dutch edition containing 200 plates, produced under the editorial supervision of N. Beets, had appeared in 1870. See Doré, Catalogue, pp. 148-149.

3. Alexandre Bida, Le livre de Ruth. Translated from the Holy Bible by [L.I.] Lemaistre de Sacy. Paris 1876 and L’histoire de Joseph. Translated from the Holy Bible by [L.I.] Lemaistre de Sacy. Paris 1878. Both works were illustrated by Bida.

4. On 10 February the Rev. William Macfarlane conducted the service in the English Reformed Church on the Begijnhof.

5. Jan Willem Wierda lived at Weteringstraat 26, above Arend Jan Rolff’s grocer’s shop.

6. Bolsward is a village in the province of Friesland in the north of the Netherlands.

7. Most likely Julius Caesar’s De bello gallico (51 bc), an account of the campaigns to Northern Europe, which was and still is used extensively in the instruction of Latin.

8. Uncle Jan van Gogh.

9. Mr van Gogh turned 56 on 8 February.

10. Anna, who by now had been staying for some time with the Van Houten family in Hengelo, was ill and under a doctor’s supervision. All the same, she travelled to Etten for her father’s birthday (FR b966).

11. As the wife of a minister, Mrs van Gogh visited the sick in her husband’s parish. The novel Adam Bede by George Eliot features the preacher Dinah Morris, who visits the sick. Her visits are described in an idealized manner, and she herself is ideally characterized as a person full of loving kindness.

12. For Vincent’s initial request for one of Breton’s poems, see letter 139, n. 13.

13. The sales trip undertaken for Goupil & Cie to interest booksellers and print dealers in the firm’s publications.

14. Two months later Mrs van Gogh wrote to Theo: ‘Pa will write to you about Vincent, how much it will cost him to make the sacrifice, and yet Pa wrote to him so faithfully, it seems to me he must lend an ear to it. If only he passed his exam when the time comes, how it would encourage him’ (FR b993, 21 April 1878).

15. It is unclear which work by Maris this refers to.

16. Jan van Goyen’s View of the river before Dordrecht was part of the Dupper Collection in the Trippenhuis. See cat. Rijksmuseum 1885, p. 15, cat. no. 101, with a woodcut. The painting is now considered to be in the ‘manner of Jan van Goyen’ and bears the title View of the Merwede before Dordrecht (Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum). Ill. 1868

17. Numerous prints by Dürer were preserved in the Trippenhuis.

18. For Theo’s visits to Amsterdam, see letter 132, n. 10

19. The lithograph Strandgezicht (Beach view) by Adolf Carel Nunnink after Jacob van Ruisdael appeared in Kunstkronijk 14 (1873), NS, between pp. 96-97. Ill. 1869

. The painting Beach view (The Hague, Royal Cabinet of Paintings Mauritshuis) is now considered to be a copy. Ill. 406

a. Read: ‘in a long time’ (Was it long ago that ...).

20. J.P. Stricker, who had taken upon himself the supervision of Vincent’s study, no doubt instructed him in the principles of theology and Christianity, as well as in history; Mendes tutored him in classical languages, Teixeira de Mattos in algebra and geometry.