1. This is letter 289.
2. For the British Workman, see letter 273, n. 28.
3. For the expression ‘How (not) to do it’, which Van Gogh borrowed from Charles Dickens’s Little Dorrit, see letter 179, n. 3.
4. When the mechanical engineer Daniel Doyce in Little Dorrit wants to apply for a patent on his invention, he ends up in the slowly grinding wheels of the Circumlocution Office and is labelled a ‘public offender’. Asked by Arthur Clenham whether it is regrettable that he ever started on it, he replies: ‘But what is a man to do? If he has the misfortune to strike out something serviceable to the nation, he must follow where it leads him.’ He is not discouraged: ‘I have no right to be, if I am ... The thing is as true as it ever was’.
Doyce then starts up a business with Clenham, but he cannot forget his invention. Clenham sees that ‘the thing was as true as it ever was’ and in the name of Doyce he resumes the battle – unsuccessfully – with the Circumlocution Office. Clenham makes a bad investment with their joint capital and ends up in jail. On Clenham’s release, Doyce forgives him for everything that has happened: ‘First, not a word more from you about the past ... I have done a similar thing myself, in construction, often. Every failure teaches a man something, if he will learn’ (See Dickens 1979, book 1, chapter 10, p. 114; book 1, chapter 16, p. 185; book 2, chapter 8, p. 500; book 2, chapter 34, p. 797). Van Gogh says that Doyce speaks these words on his departure from England, but that does not fit with the course of the story.
5. Van Gogh based this expression on Dickens’s Little Dorrit (see n. 4).
6. It is not known which drawing of a sower this is. It may be a variant of Two sowers (F 853 / JH 274). See cat. Amsterdam 1996, pp. 173-175, cat. no. 46.
[441]
7. For the comparison of the appearance of sowers with animals, such as a cockerel and an ox, cf. Sensier’s remark in his biography of Millet about his attempts to give the farm workers ‘an expression that seems to admit that the human being is not always extraordinarily far above the animal’ (une expression qui semble avouer que l’être humain n’est pas toujours prodigieusement au-dessus de l’animal). Sensier 1881, p. 355. Van Gogh knew the theories of Lavater and Gall about physiognomy via Alexandre Ysabeau, Lavater et Gall. Physiognomonie et phrénologie rendues intelligibles pour tout le monde (Paris 1862). They also deal at length with the comparison of human heads with those of animals (‘Analogie de figures humaines avec divers animaux’, pp. 108 ff). Cf. also letter 160, n. 8.
8. This is probably Sower (F 852 / JH 275 [2420]).
[2420]
9. Ysabeau (see n. 7 above) also mentions the Eskimo race on p. 100.
10. This drawing of a reaper is not known.
a. Means: ‘tekent zich af’ (stands out).
11. Man carrying peat (F 964 / JH 273 [2419]).
[2419]
12. ‘Worn out’ (F 997 / JH 267 [2416]).
[2416]
b. Means: ‘doorgaat met’ (continues).
13. A reference to Herkomer’s observation: ‘Accepting the engraver as an interpreter, we have only to look back in order to see that all interpreters, no matter what their art, have at times allowed their cleverness to mar the dignity of their mission.’ See Herkomer 1882, p. 167, col. 2.
14. John Crome came to know the seventeenth-century landscape art of Aelbert Cuyp, Jan van Goyen, Jacob van Ruisdael and Meindert Hobbema among others. Inspired by Van Goyen, Crome painted like Michel (one of the forerunners of the Barbizon School who was also influenced by Dutch landscape painting) with an almost monochrome palette made up of neutral colours. Cf. Josephine Walpole, Art and artists of the Norwich School. Woodbridge and Aberdeen 1997, pp. 15-22 and DoA. Van Gogh may have linked Old Crome to Michel here because of his visit to Burlington House in 1875 (see letter 29). Cf. exhib. cat. Nottingham 1974, p. 14.
15. Theo worked for Goupil in Brussels from January to the beginning of November 1873.
16. In view of the rest of the sentence, in which he lists several stories adapted by Ten Kate, Van Gogh may be referring to the book Eerlijk duurt het langst (Honesty is the best policy) from the series Vertellingen voor de jeugd after César Malan, by J.J.L. ten Kate. It was published by J.J. van Brederode of Haarlem [1880].
17. ‘The fable of the hare and the tortoise’ in De fabelen van La Fontaine nagevolgd door J.J.L. ten Kate (The fables of La Fontaine imitated by J.J.L. ten Kate). Illustrated with plates and vignettes by Gustave Doré. Amsterdam 1875, pp. 359-361. Originally ‘Le lièvre et la tortue’ (Fables, vi, 10). See Fontaine 1974, vol. 1, pp. 196-197; in this fable an overconfident hare loses a race against a tortoise, who does what he must and does not fail in his duty.
18. ‘Het lelijke jonge eendtjen’ (The ugly duckling) in Sprookjens en verhalen van H.C. Andersen. Ed. J.J.L. ten Kate. Leiden 1868, pp. 3-24. In this fairy tale a duckling that is late in hatching from its egg is humiliated, teased and chased by those around him, until he turns out to have grown into a beautiful, happy swan
19. For Camille Bernier, Winter labours [1749], see letter 55, n. 8.
[1749]
20. ‘Winter night’ may refer to the print Crépuscule en hiver, à Arsy (Oise) (Dusk in Winter, Arsy (Oise)), after the painting by Eugène Antoine Samuel Lavieille that was exhibited at the Salon of 1873. The wood engraving by Léon Louis Chapon was in Gazette des Beaux-Arts 15 (1873), 2nd series, vol. 8, p. 55. Ill. 1037 [1037]. Van Gogh may have been thinking, however, of a work by Adrien Lavieille.
[1037]
21. It is not known which painting by Marie Collart is meant.
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