Letter 258 The Hague, 5 or 6 January 1883
Dear brother,
I am sending you some more studies by the same mail. And this is a thought which came to me recently: If you don’t get tired of seeing such sketches, I think it would be a good thing to send you, for instance,
about sixty sketches in a small portfolio. You could look them over in your room at your ease, and the advantage would be that against the time of your coming here, sooner or later, you would have seen some of the things I did last year. Otherwise we should have to look them over in such a hurry if you were only here for a short time. But if you approve of looking them over beforehand, and if I send them now, then I hope I may count on your bringing them back with you this summer, for instance, for I shall have to work from those studies later on.
My next work partly depends on keeping the studies together. Well, maybe they will amuse you �for instance, perhaps some of those old almshouse men are very typical. Well, let me know what you think of them.
As I had to pay some bills after the New Year, I am practically already without money now �at least, very little is left. You will greatly oblige me if you try to send rather before than after the tenth.
Adieu, boy, I hope the sketches will be more or less to your liking.
Yours sincerely, Vincent
The drawings I should like to send you are like the figures of the lithographs, all kinds of types �men,
women, children.