1. This ‘Seldom-at-Home Secretary’ has been identified as Sir William Vernon Harcourt. He was a barrister who served in five British governments, and was Home Secretary under Gladstone from 1880 to 1885. He is referred to as the ‘Seldom-at-Home Secretary’ in satirical pieces in Punch. See e.g. Punch 79 (6 November 1880), p. 207, and Punch 81 (9 July 1881), p. 6.

2. The Circumlocution Office features repeatedly in Little Dorrit (particularly vol. 1, chapter 10). It is a highly bureaucratic ministry and the most proficient of all departments in the art of How not to do it, that is, the avoidance and even obstruction of any action at all. See Dickens 1979, p. 500. See also letters 155, 179 and 291.

a. Van Gogh wrote this in both Dutch and English.

3. The ‘Bridge of Sighs’ in Venice.

4. Diggers in Schenkweg (F 927 / JH 161 ). For the identification of this watercolour, see exhib. cat. The Hague 1990, pp. 33-34.

5. These figures drawn in conté cannot be identified.

6. Fritz Reuter was a much-loved popular writer in the tradition of Washington Irving and Charles Dickens. Ut mine Festungstid (1862), which is part of the autobiographical series Olle Kamellen, is about the last four years of Reuter’s captivity in the prison of Mecklenburg among other places. His account is written with calm objectivity and is sometimes humorous, without glossing over the moments of despair and disappointment. The original version was in broad Mecklenburg dialect; Van Gogh would have read a Dutch translation which appeared under the general title Gedroogde kruiden. In this Ut mine Festungstid became Herinneringen uit mijne gevangenissen (printed in 1867, 1868, 1879 and 1883).

7. Herkomer, Carnival time in the Bavarian Alps : see letter 304, n. 25.

8. Pieter Bruegel the Elder.

9. The short, anonymous biography ‘Hubert Herkomer’, The Graphic 18 (26 October 1878), p. 438, from which Van Gogh borrowed the anecdote that follows.

10. Since Van Gogh compares Herkomer’s engraving with The sewing school at Katwijk by Jozef Israëls (see letter 295, n. 6), he must have in mind Old age – A study at the Westminster Union (see letter 303, n. 5). Cf. for The last muster : letter 199, n. 12.

11. Mr van Gogh would be 61 on 8 February.

12. The first lithograph Vincent sent to Theo was Old man (F 1658 / JH 256 ); after that Theo got Old man drinking coffee (F 1657 / JH 266 ) and ‘At eternity’s gate’ (F 1662 / JH 268 ), which Vincent often referred to as ‘little old man’. Which drawing he sent to his father as a follow-up to the lithograph cannot be determined.