Cotmania. Vol. IV. 1929-30

drawings which would not interest you. Lupton & I were led to an anonymous collector near Bath who turned out to be Gerald Robinson. We found him amiably crazy on the subjects of Raphael, Verneer & Gainsborough. Volumes or rather packets of Blake drawings turned out to be anything from Roman School to Barry & Fuseli. There was one soi-disant Cotman ; really Howell or delaMotte & a charming delaMotte in oil, curiously enough not masquerading as Gainsborough. We had to go on before exhausting all the eolithic instruments found in limestone quarries.
Sir H B is still buying modern works & mercifully leaving them on the walls of the Lincoln Museum.
This, you see, is merely a record of some of the things that I did with Lupton at Easter. He behaved admirably on the road. Not even a baby Austin steering itself into the middle of the road as he approached it from behind & accelerating in response to his toot produced much more than a stifled yawn. It is true that drainage works in floods of rain on Good Friday deprived him of voice for over a week.
I think that I have mainly written to remove all fears lest your journey should have deprived you of Cotman revelations. I don't think that it has.
My wife sends greeting to Mrs Kitson & doesn't know why she didn't make her presence felt at the Matthew Passion a month ago.
Yours ever
Paul Oppé.