1. This is probably W.A. van Berkel, who was priest of the Hague ‘Boschkant’ from 1875 to 1890 and died in 1899. See Visser 1973, p. 39.

2. Most likely Willem Kiesenberg: see letters 241 (in which there is mention of a carpenter who is the house-owner’s foreman) and 315.

3. Van Gogh had stored his things in The Hague, in the attic of the house where he had been living; see letter 382.

4. Variant of the closing lines of the poem ‘The rainy day’ from Longfellow’s collection Ballads and other poems: ‘Into each life some rain must fall, / some days must be dark and dreary’. See Longfellow 1886-1891, vol. 1, p. 69.

5. These studies were sent on 24 September: see letter 389.