1r:1
Paris 10 May 1890
My dear Vincent,
Thanks very much for your two letters;
1 I’m very happy that the improvement continues, and it would give me great pleasure if you could make the journey, without danger. Does it also seem to you that it’s such a long time since we saw each other? Since you find it such an annoyance to travel with someone from the asylum, for heaven’s sake,
1v:2 you must risk it, although I’m not like you and wouldn’t do it, to avoid, should the crisis seize hold of you again, all the miseries that would emerge should you, at an unknown station, have to deal with people you don’t know and who would treat you who knows how. Now if you leave, send me a telegram without fail so that I know what time you’ll be arriving at the Gare de Lyon so that I can come and fetch you. Of course you must come to our place, if you don’t mind making do with the little bedroom where we’ve put up
Wil and several others. I wrote to
Dr Gachet yesterday
1v:3 to ask him when he’s coming to Paris, for he gives consultations then. And at the same time I asked him to find out about lodgings for you.
2Yes, the change of region might do you good, but towards winter it’s perhaps better that you should be in a warmer climate. But we’ll have time to talk about all that. I’ve written to
Dr Peyron to tell him that if there isn’t a definite danger, he should do as you wish and let you go. As he’s been kind to you, try not to hurt him. I had ordered the colours you asked for from
Tanguy and
Tasset, telling myself that anyway it wouldn’t be lost. If the colours hadn’t
1r:4 yet arrived, leave orders for them to be sent on. Will you at last be able to find a place where you can have a little tranquillity without having people and things around you that annoy you? I hope so with all my heart, and it’s possible that in any event this might be an improvement, but people are more or less the same everywhere, and when artistic things preoccupy you, you find very few people who understand you. It’s Latin to them, and they regard it only as a pastime that isn’t to be taken seriously.
I haven’t yet been to the Salon,
3 which is apparently very mediocre, so they say, but there’s an exhibition of Japanese drawings and prints which you’ll see when you come, which is superb.
4 I’d like you to be here already, don’t forget to telegraph me. Warm regards from
Jo and the
little one, they’re both well.
Good handshake, and au revoir.
Theo
I’m enclosing 150 francs for the journey, telegraph me if by chance it isn’t enough.
