1. On 2 October 1884 Mr van Gogh wrote to Theo at length about what had been going on. His account contains some interesting information: ‘We have had difficult days with Vincent again. Apparently he wanted to arrange a marriage with Margot, who proved not entirely averse, but it came up against insuperable objections, on the part of her family too. After news of the business started to leak out, Margot went to Utrecht, where she still is.

It’s said that the relationship has been broken off, but the friendship will continue. They still correspond constantly. The Dr she’s staying with also appears to have told V. that there are physical obstacles that make the affair impossible. At first V. seemed to be taking it calmly and I therefore ventured to be away from home for some days, while Wil was home. But this calm gave way to aggression and Wil was very worried by the feeling that he sometimes seemed to have been drinking.

She found drink in a field flask of his and this agitated her greatly and she wrote to Anna about it so that she could tell you. Still it turned out on investigation that it was more appearances than fact. But it gave Ma and me a reason to talk to him about it. You know that there’s really no talking to him because of the unpleasant tone he adopts. That was the case this time, too, but in the main that last objection was not, in our view, so serious.

Apparently he gives his models a drink when he’s out in the fields with them, and he said himself that he therefore occasionally has one too. That could be the case. According to what V. says, he sometimes takes a drink in the evening on the Dr’s advice because he has such sleepless nights. That remedy seems very unsuitable to us.

But the business with Margot continues to occupy him very much and he is rather depressed at the moment. We are doing our best to restore him to calm, which is the most important thing. But his outlook on life and his ways are so different from ours, that it’s questionable whether living together in the same place can continue in the long run. However we don’t want a real separation and are willing to tolerate and attempt everything to the utmost, if only he could become a bit normal. We do expect something to come of that in time.

There is also a plan that Van Rappard should come to see him and stay with us. We have even urged this; it could provide him with a distraction.

V. just received your registered letter. He told us that you advised him to do everything he could not to make our staying here impossible. We are hoping for the best.

Meanwhile he has noticed that we could leave here if we want to; the day before yesterday I received a call to go to Baardwijk, a village in the Langstraat, close to Waalwijk ... We have so much that is good here that it would be difficult for us to leave. Only if our relations with people were to become difficult because of circumstances, then it could come to it. There’s risk enough of that at the moment’ (FR b2257).

Mr van Gogh intended to discuss this call to the village of Baardwijk (North Brabant), on Tuesday, 8 October.

2. Octave Mouret is a character in Zola’s novels Pot-bouille (1882) and Au bonheur des dames (1883), which Van Gogh described as ‘the second volume’ (cf. letters 283 ff.). Van Gogh repeatedly refers to this owner of the department store ‘Au bonheur des dames’. Mouret is ambitious and competitive, and forces the small draper’s shops in his neighbourhood out of business so that he can build a large department store. Van Gogh values his modern and single-minded approach, which responds to the demand and focuses on expanding the clientele.

3. Bourdoncle is one of the managers in the department store ‘Au bonheur des dames’; he has a narrow, mediocre mind. When there is a temporary minor downturn, he fires staff for the smallest thing.

4. This passage was added later; the italics and emphasis are not in Zola. Unlike Bourdoncle, Mouret has a sensual nature and seeks as far as possible to meet the needs of Parisian women in the stock he sells in the store. At the end of Au bonheur des dames he marries one of his former shop assistants, Denise. Bourdoncle represents the businesslike, impersonal side, whereas Mouret is much more likely to be led by what his heart tells him. See for the quotation (originally with ‘les clientes’ rather than ‘la clientèle’): Zola 1960-1967, vol. 3, chapter 11, p. 699.

5. This term ‘cooled’ does not occur in the letters; Theo probably said it during his visit to Nuenen in August.

6. Van Gogh is referring to the description of a gathering in the salon of Octave Mouret’s mistress Henriette Desforges (Au bonheur des dames, chapter 3). Cf. Sund 1992, p. 278 (n. 20).

8. See for Jules Breton, Evening : letter 34, n. 11; and cf. Sund 1992 p. 278 (n. 19).

9. Jules Breton, La source (The spring) (present whereabouts unknown). Known as a photograph in the series ‘Musée Goupil’, no. 1000 (Paris, BNF, Cabinet des Estampes). Ill. 30

10. Taken from the quotation from Zola written out later in the letter. See l. 121.

11. It had previously been suggested that Margot might suffer from religious mania (letter 457). Margot’s involvement with the church must have been very considerable: she left the churchwardens 750 guilders so that the interest on it could be used to supplement the minister’s stipend. See Tralbaut 1974, p. 82.

12. The passages Van Gogh quotes are taken from a conversation between Octave Mouret and Paul de Vallagnosc in Au bonheur des dames. See Zola 1960-1967, vol. 3, chapter 11, pp. 696-699.

13. Van Gogh had already alluded to these sentences at the end of letter 458.

14. In Alphonse Daudet, L’évangéliste – Roman parisien (1883) the simple crochet worker Mme Ebsen seeks help from the Protestant community after her mother’s death. She is given moral and financial support by Mme d’Autheman who, however, holds extreme religious convictions. She abuses her position and embroils Eline, Mme Ebsen’s daughter, in her fanaticism. Through hypocrisy and deceit, Mme d’Autheman succeeds in taking Eline away from her mother.

15. Instead of ‘which I sent’, Van Gogh originally said: ‘which appeared to be satisfactory’ (die naar genoegen scheen te wezen). Drawings known to have once belonged to Margot Begemann are the watercolours Scheveningen woman sewing (F 869 / JH 83

) and Bleaching ground (F 946r / JH 158

) with Scheveningen woman (F 946v / JH 95

) on the verso. However, these are drawings that Van Gogh made in The Hague.

16. A reference back to the quotation from Zola (ll. 125-127).