My mother is now so much better that she sits in an easy chair in the living room — goes out in a bath chair, is starting to walk &c. &c.

So it has turned out better than one dared to count on at the outset.

Outdoors — the trees are in blossom — and it’s precisely the time when it isn’t yet too hot for long trips.

Sent you another 3 pen drawings the other day, Ditch1 — Pine trees in the fen2 — Thatched roofs3 — whose subjects I thought you would like. As far as the execution is concerned, of course I would wish right heartily that the direction of the pen strokes had followed the forms more expressively, and the forces that establish the tone of the masses also expressed their shape better.  1v:2 I think you’ll grant me that the way things fit together — the shape of them — hasn’t been systematically or deliberately neglected — but I had to make a rough stab at it in order somehow to render the effect of light and shade — nature’s mood at that moment — the overall aspect — in a relatively short time. For all three are specific moments that one can see these days.

I hope that you’ll come. Of course you’ll bring your tools with you, and the more of your work you bring the better — I’d like to see the sketches of the old women of Terschelling4 and the little weaver5 again.

Regards — from my parents too.

It’s always good to let the work circulate a bit — and if people don’t take it, it doesn’t matter — show it again anyway.  1v:3

If you’ve now shown these to a few people perhaps, and they’ve rejected them or laughed at them or said what they want about them — if they constantly go on seeing more of them, they’ll change — not all — but some.