1. Laurillard preached on Sunday, 3 March 1878 at 10 a.m. in the Oudezijdskapel.

2. The canals encircling what was then the old part of Amsterdam (now Nassaukade, Stadhouderskade and Mauritskade).

3. Charles-François Daubigny died on 19 February 1878 in Paris.

4. For the death of Brion, see letter 135, n. 32.

5. An engraving Le bénédicité by Joel Ballin after Gustave Brion’s Saying grace was published in 1862 by Goupil & Cie in the ‘Musée Goupil’ series (Bordeaux, Musée Goupil). Ill. 643 .

6. Biblical; cf. Eph. 4:28.

7. Van Gogh must mean that he had a translation, published in Flanders, of Thomas a Kempis’s De imitatione Christi for Theo; it cannot be ascertained which one, since various versions were available.

8. For Daubigny’s print after Ruisdael’s The bush , see letter 35, n. 5. This print and his Le coup de soleil (d’après Ruysdael) (The ray of sunlight (after Ruisdael)) were published by the Printroom of the Louvre (Paris, BNF, Cabinet des Estampes). Ill. 41 . Cf. also letter 156. See Henriet 1875, pp. 128-129 (no. 79), 175; and Chalcographie 1954, p. 29, no. 849.

9. The Rev. Gagnebin was married to Charlotte-Henriette Junod. They had one daughter, Marie Madeleine.

10. The battle near the now Belgian town of Waterloo that took place on 18 June 1815, at which Napoleon Bonaparte was defeated by the allied English and Prussian troops.

11. The campaign of the Dutch army against the Belgians, from 2-12 August 1831.

12. Charles Rochussen, The relief of Leiden, 1853 (Amsterdam, Amsterdam Museum). Ill. 1285 .

13. The painting was indeed to be found in the collection of the Amsterdammer Jacob de Vos Jacobszoon, who had installed in his garden pavilion a ‘Historical Gallery’ with works depicting subjects from Dutch history. The gallery, founded in 1850, was not a commercial venture and was not open to the public. See exhib. cat. Rotterdam 1997-2, pp. 48-49, 139 (n. 60).

14. George Eliot, Silas Marner. The weaver of Raveloe (1861), a novel about village life in the English Midlands at the beginning of the nineteenth century. Its protagonist is the humble weaver Silas Marner. In Eliot’s view, the story ‘intended to set in a strong light the remedial influences of pure, natural, human relations’. The historical novel Romola (1862-1863), which takes place in Florence around 1500, is the story of a young woman called Romola, who is disappointed in her love for her husband Tito. Under the influence of the reformer Girolamo Savonarola, ‘she reconstructs upon the wreck of her personal happiness a life of unselfish service to her community’. The rise and fall of Savonarola forms a thread running through the entire fabric of the story. Both Silas Marner and Romola were translated into Dutch: Silas Marner, de wever van Raveloe. Translated by Mrs van Westhreene. Amsterdam 1861 and Romola. Translated by J.C. van Deventer. Haarlem 1864 and Rotterdam 1864. For Eliot’s Adam Bede, see letter 30, n. 1, for Felix Holt, the radical, see letter 66, n. 1 and for Scenes of clerical life, see letter 70, n. 4.

15. For those presents, see letter 101, notes 3 and 4. Van Gogh’s underlining has been rendered here in italics.

16. Harry Gladwell was planning to continue his career as an art dealer in his father’s London firm. He and Vincent evidently stopped writing to each other; this is the last time he is mentioned in the correspondence.

17. Jean-François Millet, Peasant bringing in dung (Man with a wheelbarrow), 1855-1856, etching (Boston, Museum of Fine Arts. Gift of Allan Curtis). Ill. 285 .

18. Jean-François Millet, The two diggers (Two men turning over the soil), 1855-1856, etching (New Haven, Yale University Art Gallery, G. Allen Smith Collection). Ill. 1876 . In letter 160, Van Gogh appears to have borrowed a photograph (isograph) of this from Braun.

19. Luke 13:8.

20. Taken from Dickens; see letter 141, n. 17.

21. The merchant Daniël Joost Vrijdag, a distant cousin of Van Gogh, was married to Clara Cramer. Their shop in timber and fuels, as well as their house, was located at Haarlemmer Houttuinen 25. In 1877 the family had eight children: Diewertje Carolina (18 March 1861); Johanna Clasina (3 July 1863); Derk Jan Alexander (23 June 1865); Gerard Hendrik (17 February 1868); Willem (14 August 1869); Eliza (28 May 1871); Daniël Joost (28 September 1873) and Clara (10 November 1874). Van Gogh mentions seven children, but civil registration records do not show that any of them had moved away or died. See SAAm, Adresboek 1877-1878, and Groot and De Vries 1990, pp. 96-98.