1. Regarding this telegram, see letter 75.

2. Van Gogh left on Good Friday, 14 April, taking the 16.00 train to Rotterdam, where he was to take the boat on Saturday morning to Harwich. Cf. also letter 78.

3. Cornelis (Cor) Vincent van Gogh, Vincent’s youngest brother.

4. From 1 October 1864 to 31 August 1866 Van Gogh was registered as a pupil at the boys’ boarding school for primary and secondary education run by Jan Provily at Zandweg A40 (now Stationstraat 16) in Zevenbergen, a village c. 20 km north of Zundert. Cf. Meyers 1989, pp. 64-70, and Stokvis 1926, p. 14. Van Gogh repeats this recollection of taking leave of his parents in letter 90.

5. The trip in July 1874; cf. letter 25 and 26.

6. The River Maas (Meuse) flows past Rotterdam to the sea.

a. Meaning: ‘een streep’ (a strip).

7. This should be 3½ hours. Brown assumes that Van Gogh left London at 9.00, taking the train from Victoria Station and arriving in Ramsgate at 12.30. Meyers thinks that he took the alternative connection (which Brown thinks less likely), leaving London from Charing Cross Station at 7.50 and arriving at Ramsgate at 11.35. See Ruth Brown, Happy days here in Ramsgate for Vincent van Gogh. Unpublished undergraduate thesis. Ramsgate 1982, and Meyers 1989, pp. 195, 244 (n. 5).

8. William Stokes and Lydia Ann Stokes-Blyth had a son named William Port Stokes, born in October 1855, and baptized 15 November 1855. He was aged 21 rather than 23, as Van Gogh assumed.

9. Lydia Ann Stokes-Blyth had married William Port Stokes on 25 January 1855 in Isleworth (International Genealogical Index).

10. Matt. 28:20, in English of course; the King James version reads: ‘and, lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world.’

11. The identity of this assistant teacher is not known.

12. Van Gogh’s address was 11 Spencer Square in Ramsgate; he had an attic room. For photographs of the school and the house where Van Gogh lived, see exhib. cat. London 1992, p. 12.

13. Albertina Ludovica Brugsma, a friend of Lies, who was staying with the Van Goghs in Etten.