Cotmania. Vol. I. 1926-7

Cotman in Normandy.
Further Gleanings.
(by Arthur Batchelor.)
Some of my readers may recall a former occasion on which I gave extracts from the letters in which he describes, for the benefit of his wife, or Dawson Turner, his patron, his trips in 1817,1818, and 1820. The two portraits from drawings by H. B. Love are in the possession of a member of the family, and are now reproduced for the first time. They show the couple at or about the date of the first of the three journeys. They had been married seven years and the letters reveal a genuine mutual devotion.
In 1820 he crossed home from Caen to Southampton heavily laden with masses of material for his future work, and a month ago I crossed from Southampton to Caen carrying with me, in the form of the letters, his account of his stewardship. My especial object was, if possible, to identify the actual scenes described by him either by pen or pencil, and I purpose to record with what measure of success it was accomplished. Caen I had visited , but never before as he did, from the sea, so the day after our arrival I set out by steam tram to Oyestreham, the little port that now marks the mouth of the canalized Orne. It may be remembered that, in a letter from Caen, dated 6th August, 1820, he tells his wife how he sailed with Colonel Heyland the British Consul, from Havre to Dives in a boat that missed stays no less than four times, how they started at 3 a.m. and arrived at 5 p.m., with no further sustenance on board than a small chicken and a bottle of wine; how they waded across three branches of the River Orne and found themselves forced to walk on a newly-made wall along two sides of a square; and how passing Oyestreham, "not a little mobbed for their muddy appearance," they eventually reached the comforts of Colonel Heyland's house of Lions.
In the present year of grace the steam tram branches off at Oyestreham for Lions, now a fashionable bathing-place. The church of which Cotman made a lovely drawing has been restored out of all recognition, so I hastened back to Oyestreham and, after a long and very hot tramp. I eventually found what was undoubtedly the scene of Cotman's landing. He likens it to the Blakeney and Cley country, and I made a drawing of the mouth of the river with a wreck in the foreground., from the shade of which after a time there emerged a newly married couple of bathers in puris naturalibis, whom I, unconscious of the propinquity of any human being, had prevented from regaining their apparel.
Oyestreham Church remains very much as Cotman shows it in his book on Normandy. The Caen of his time is also little changed. They are repairing the tower of the "elegant St. Pierre," just opposite our hotel, and his "vile Espange" still stands in the noisy Rue St Jeaen. Without knowing it I happened to make a drawing of the Abbaye aux Danes from precisely the same spot as he did.
The next stage on our journey was through Bayeux, St Lo, to Coutances, where, as Cotman did at St. Lo, we " went to our beds through every stench in nature. Our visit, unfortunately, coincided with a "changement de proprietaire" at our hotel. As in duty bound, I wrote to the publishers of the Guide Bleu, that we also found an absence de proprete, but, like Cotman, we found the Cathedral both "dignified and elegant." I was able to locate the very window of the very house from which he did the marvellous drawing of the West front. In fact we had tea in one of the rooms and brought home picture postcards to confound the philistines who talk about his artistic licence. The postcard showed that his exquisite line has altered nothing and included everything with the exception of a large modern shop on the left and a statue on the right which have been added since his time. The weather was unkind to us at Coutances, and I located, but did not draw, his distant view from the North.