To Mrs. Edmund Gosse

Hôtel Westminster, Paris.
March 21st [1893].

Dear Mrs. Gosse,

Many thanks for your better news—and especially for the good news that Gosse is coming to Paris. I shall be very glad to see him and shall rejoice to take him gently by that injured—but I trust soon to be reanimated—member. Please express this to him, with all my sympathy and impatience. Won't he—or won't you (though indeed I shall cull the precious date from Harland,) give me a hint, in advance of the particular moment at which one may look for him? Please tell him confidently to expect that Paris will create within him afresh all the finest pulses of life. It is mild, sunny, splendid—blond and fair, all in order for his approach. I allude of course to the specious allurements of its exterior. The state is odorously rotten—but everything else is charming. And then it's such a blessing, after long grief and pain, to find the arms of a climate around us once again! Hasten, my dear Edmund, to be healed.

Thank heaven, my allusion to my own manual distress was mainly a florid figure. My hand is infirm—but I am not yet thinking of the knife. Mille choses to the Terrace.

Yours and Gosse's always,
HENRY JAMES.