2. The reference is to Kee’s brother Johannes (Jan) Andries Stricker. Van Gogh mentioned earlier that he had spoken to his ‘learned professorial cousin Jan’ during the visit in question; see letter 193.

3. A rijksdaalder is 2.50 guilders.

4. Ps. 22:2; Matt. 27:46 and Mark 15:34.

5. Last line of Het gebed van den onwetende by Multatuli, quoted earlier in letter 193, n. 22.

a. Variant of ‘markt’.

7. For this meeting, cf. letter 200 of on or about 14 January: ‘I’m negotiating with a mother with a little child’.

8. Biblical; see Deut. 25:18; Isa. 40:28 and Isa. 40:30.

9. Biblical; cf. 2 Pet. 2:15.

10. Here a ‘common fellow’ means someone of bad character. Van Gogh referred earlier to a similar denigrating remark by Uncle Cor about Charles Degroux, and would do so again shortly afterwards: see letters 211, 236 and 388.

11. Cf. the drawing Study of a tree (F 933r / JH 142

12. For Millet’s The two diggers

, see letter 142, n. 18.

13. For Charles Degroux’s The paupers’ pew

, see letter 148, n. 12.

14. The expression ‘picking strawberries in the spring’ comes from Theo: see letter 182.

15. ‘I will rise again’. Taken from the Vulgate, Matt. 27:63.

17. Van Gogh was not 30; two months before he had turned 29.

18. Maria Wilhelmina Hoornik-Pellers and Pieter Hoornik had a total of ten children. Sien was the oldest child in this Catholic family. After her father’s death in 1875, ‘the chairmaking business of Pieter Anthonie, the oldest son, supplemented what Sien and her mother could earn as seamstresses and charwomen, but in general the Hoorniks were poor and depended on public assistance or church charity ... For a time Sien and three of her brothers lived in the Catholic Orphanage as there was no adequate way to provide for them at home.’ Sien ‘relied on prostitution to survive’. See Zemel 1987, p. 353.

19. Despite Van Gogh’s remark, the handwriting is not especially untidy.

20. For the ‘Geel affair’, see letter 185.

b. Means: ‘opbergen, wegstoppen’ (put away, hide away).

21. For Mauve not speaking to Van Gogh for two months and for the smashing of the plaster casts, see letter 219.

22. Van Gogh wrote the words in damned earnest in extremely large letters and underlined them with a brush dipped in ink. The same words also occur in letter 403.

23. ‘With the thumb turned down’ – in antiquity a sign from the emperor that the defeated gladiator should be killed (cf. Juvenal, Saturae 3, 36).

24. ‘Those who are about to die salute you.’ According to Suetonius (Claudius, 21), these were the words spoken by the gladiators to the emperor Caesar before they entered into combat. Also quoted in letter 234.