3. After some delay, Anna entered the service of the Van Houten family in Hengelo as a governess (cf. letter 107). She left Etten on 6 April (FR b2519).

4. Mary (the mother of James), Mary Magdalene and the mother of Zebedee’s children (Matt. 27:55).

5. Taken from Pierre Jean de Béranger, ‘Les deux soeurs de charité’ (The two sisters of charity). All of the editions consulted differ from Van Gogh’s transcription in the same two places:

l. 21 Dit la vierge [ Moi, dit la soeur

l. 22 Préparé ... Pour [ Distillé ... Sur

P.-J. de Béranger, Chansons. Anciennes et posthumes. Paris 1866 (Songs. Old and posthumous), pp. 121-122. Van Gogh alludes to this poem again in letter 388.

6. In Welwyn, Anna had lived with Mrs Catherine Stothard, her employer’s sister; Catherine’s son Ernest died of diphtheria on 9 April 1875. See Bailey 1990, pp. 54, 82 (cf. also FR b2331 and b2333).

7. Compare, among others, rhy. ps. 28:1 and rhy. ps. 35:15.

9. It is c. 16 km from Oudenbosch to Zundert. Van Gogh borrowed the railway fare from his roommate Görlitz. See Verzamelde brieven 1973, vol. 4, pp. 331-332.

10. This could be the Bodmer print that Van Gogh may have sent to his father in January 1876 (see letter 66). Its description suggests that it was the lithograph after Bodmer's painting Fontainebleau in the autumn

(Interior of the forest in winter); see also letter 55, n. 11.

11. One of these ‘old places’ was the grave of Van Gogh’s deceased brother Vincent: see letter 124.

12. The resurrection of Christ; see Matt. 28, Mark 16, Luke 24 and John 20.

13. The farmer Serfaas Aertsen, third son of Jan Aertsen, and his wife Jacomijna (Mientje) Honcoop. Mientje was formerly a servant in the Van Gogh household. As sextoness she lived near the Zundert church and cemetery (RAW and Kools 1990, pp. 18, 28-29, 139).

14. Hendrik (Hein) Aertsen, likewise a son of the late Jan Aertsen. Cf. Kools 1990, pp. 139-140.

15. P.C. Görlitz recalled the words Van Gogh had used to describe that evening: ‘I did not go in vain, I sat and prayed with the members of the old man’s household. I’ll tell you what I tried to impress upon them: Jesus and his teachings must be for you a light unto your path and a lamp unto your feet, then you will learn to resign yourself’. See Verzamelde brieven 1973, vol. 4, p. 332. The first part of the text quoted was taken from Ps. 119:105.

16. This was how the members of the Van Gogh family referred to the unmarried daughters of Zundert’s former minister: Elisabeth Petronella and Louisa Christina van der Burg.

17. The farmer Johannes (Jan) Doomen lived with a working-woman, Johanna Belet, who was seven years his junior, at Katerstraat A 186 (later 190) in Zundert. Their son, Cornelis Maria, was born on 20 September 1866. In the past Doomen had taken care of the Van Gogh family’s garden and had also tended the vegetable garden of the Van der Burg sisters (FR b2506; RAW and Kools 1990, p. 21).

18. Johannes Aertsen’s farm was in Rijsbergen.

19. Wouterina (Woutje) Prins had been a maidservant in the Van Gogh family when they were living in Zundert.