The Cotman Collection | 40

Arthur Dixon letters

Archive: SDK Sydney Decimus Kitson Archive
Reference Number: SDK/1/3/1/1
Page: 21 recto


  • Description

    Letter of Arthur Dixon to John Joseph Cotman, 28 August 1834

    Dixon was about to take some flowers to St Stephens Terrace [on the Newmarket Road, where Mrs Cotman was lodging with her daughter Ann and three sons: Kitson, The Life of JSC, p. 317], when he received a parcel from JJC at Thorpe. JJC is unwell, apparently suffering from depression, but Dixon urges him to be happy for a few months before he can return to Norwich. He offers to send him some books, or to retrieve anything from the sale of JSC's property at St Martin's [Palace Plain, Norwich, 10-12 September 1934: see Cotmania, vol. V]. He has dined with Geldart. Dixon mentions his own activity in drawing.

    Date: 1834

  • Transcription

    [Note added in pencil by Kitson:
    9
    ]
    Norwich 1834, Aug 28.
    We were thinking of each other much about the same time John, I judge by your note rec[eive]d on Wednesday morn[in]g. I am sorry that it should have appeared a long cessation of writing & that you should have to ask me to do that more frequently which my own inclination led by the great pleasure I have in conversing with you, would incite me to do I had rather feared, [word crossed out] more frequently than would have consisted with not troubling you too often with my gossiping. I was just about to start with a lot of Dahlias to St Stephens Terrace when your parcel arrived at Thorpe & so, rejoicing at the receipt of your note & at the license it gave me to write in reason & out of reason as often (and oftener) than I had liked, with a slight tinge of the regret I have described above, and a deeper one for that which I cannot describe, because it is but an indefinable suspicion of my imagination, through a most delicious & inspiring morning I strode as fast as my legs could carry me with Yours to your sister. – But I will explain as I go on – imagine, suspect, regret, are too "proken" to leave unfinished – so I'll finish

Letter of Arthur Dixon to John Joseph Cotman, 28 August 1834