1. An attestation – declaring one’s religious faith and character to be sound and honourable – issued by a church council when one of its members moved to another community.

2. In 1877, Whit Sunday and Monday fell on 20-21 May.

3. Two early services were held on Whit Sunday at 7 a.m.: the Rev. Theodorus Matthijs Looman, an adherent of the Réveil, took the service in the Noorderkerk, and the Rev. Lieuwe Steinfort, an opponent of the independent principles advocated by Abraham Kuyper, conducted the service in the Zuiderkerk (NNBW).

4. Gen. 6:3; cf. also Isa. 57:16.

5. J.P. Stricker preached at 10 a.m. in the Zuiderkerk.

6. Read: ‘I took a long walk’. Regarding this walk, see Groot and De Vries 1990, pp. 21-23.

7. The Noorderkerk is located on the Noordermarkt.

8. The Schreijerstoren is located at the corner of Prins Hendrikkade (in those days the Kamper Hoofd) and the Gelderse Kade.

9. Van Gogh could have been thinking of Jacob Maris’s painting The Buitenkant with the Schreierstoren, Amsterdam (Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum). Ill. 1823 . See also letter 31, n. 4.

10. At that time the Zuiderzee was still connected to the sea; it is now called the IJsselmeer (Lake IJssel).

11. The modern-day Zeeburgerdijk, called at that time the Sint Anthoniesdijk.

12. The Jewish cemetery (the ‘Hoogduitsche Joden-Kerkhof’, or High German Jewish Cemetery) near Zeeburgerdijk (now called Flevoweg).

13. The journey on Whit Sunday to Baarn, a town around 35 km south-east of Amsterdam, was undertaken to visit Uncle Cor van Gogh, who lived in a villa there (cf. FR b2727 and letter 158, n. 11).

14. A label put on samples sent by post, which were charged lower postage rates.

15. Taken from the last verse of the poem ‘Mortality’ (1859) by Dinah Maria Mulock Craik:

Published in Poems. Leipzig 1868, pp. 44-45.

16. Christoffel Martinus Vos married Cornelia Adriana Stricker (referred to as Kee Vos) in 1872; Kee was a daughter of J.P. Stricker and W.C.G. Carbentus, referred to as ‘Uncle Stricker’ (or ‘J.P.S.’) and ‘Aunt Mina’. Christoffel Vos suffered from tuberculosis.

17. Margaretha A.S. Meyboom was engaged to Johannes Paulus (Paul) Stricker. Margreet later wrote about Vincent: ‘I remember him so well. I met him at the Geldersche Kade [where the Stricker family lived]. It was the tenderness in him that appealed to me. You got the feeling that you couldn’t speak to him other than in a tender, friendly way. That, and his wanting resolutely to go his own way was a combination that attracted me.’ Letter to Willemien van Gogh, The Hague, 13 January 1889 (private collection).

18. It is not clear which depiction of The vicar’s daughter this refers to. It could be the print published at the front of the book Procrastination; or, The vicar’s daughter. A tale. London 1824 (London, British Library). This anonymous engraving was made in the style of Thomas Stotthard. Another possibility is The vicar’s daughter by George Dunlop Leslie, after which a woodcut was published in the Christmas number of The Illustrated London News in 1878 (p. 24). There are steel-plate engravings after Leslie’s work, such as News from the war (1877); perhaps there was also one of The vicar’s daughter.

19. There are at least 60 nineteenth-century songs that have the word Abendglocke(n) or Abendglöcklein (Evening bell) in the title or in the first line. Eleven of them became known through popular literature or were passed on by word of mouth. The one most likely intended here is the folk song Die Abendglocke (also Die Abendglöcklein), known from 1825 and set to music by Friedrich Silcher. Not only is it included in a number of songbooks and pamphlets (by 1877 it had appeared in around 12 collections), but it also occurs most frequently in the oral tradition. The song has three couplets and begins as follows:

See Großer Schulliederschatz oder 1000 Jugend- und Volkslieder ... Ein Buch für evangelische Lehrer sowie für alle Freunde gesunden Volksgesanges. Gütersloh 1868, p. 326, no. 706 and Franz Magnus Böhme, Volksthümliche Lieder der Deutschen im 18. und 19. Jahrhundert. Leipzig 1895, p. 180, no. 228.

20. For the print after Ary Scheffer, Christus Consolator , see letter 85, n. 7.

21. Regarding the Ecce Homo print which Vincent sent to Theo, see letter 105, n. 4.

22. This woman’s job was to set out the foot-stoves in the church.

23. Rembrandt, Sleeping old woman, c. 1635-1637 (B350) (Amsterdam, Rijksprentenkabinet). Ill. 1824 .

24. In L’Oeuvre complet de Rembrandt, Charles Blanc was lyrical about the etching. In his opinion it was difficult to find a work in Rembrandt’s oeuvre that was ‘more sincere, more convincing in life and truth, more charming in its chiaroscuro. The abandonment to sleep and the fatigues of old age are expressed in it in the most endearing way.’ The old woman dozing had to be approached in stockinged feet: ‘I think one has to look at this print in silence, or at least one mustn’t speak loudly, for fear of disturbing a sleep so deserved and so sweet.’ See Blanc 1859-1861, vol. 2, pp. 205-207, no. 244.

25. ‘Il n’y a point de vieille femme’ (There is no such thing as an old woman) is the title of a chapter in Michelet’s book L’amour; see letter 27, n. 2. Michelet remarked in this book: ‘Titian prefers to paint beautiful ladies of 30 years old. Rubens goes without difficulty to 40 and above. Van Dyck knows no age; in his work, art is emancipated! He has spurned time. The powerful magician Rembrandt does more: with a gesture, a glance, a ray of light, he dispels it all. Life, goodness, light – that is enough to delight us.’ Ed. Paris n.d., p. 382. See also Pabst 1988, p. 30.

26. ‘Haar pad in ’t leven loopt eenzaam af’ (Her path in life comes to a lonely end) are the opening lines of the poem ‘Naar ’t beloofde land’ by P.A. de Génestet which accompany the print ‘Preparing for the Promised Land’. See De Génestet 1869, vol. 2, pp. 298-299.

27. Old age; cf. hymn 180:5.

28. For ‘L’Homme... mène’, see letter 35, n. 2.

29. Johannes (Jan) Andries Stricker, Kee and Paul’s brother.

30. Cf. Rom. 8:28.

31. Van Gogh is referring to the journey he made on foot from Oudenbosch to Zundert on 7 April; see letter 110.

b. Read: ‘Through (the rooms of the museum)’.

32. The Trippenhuis was the forerunner of the Rijksmuseum; see letter 4, n. 3.