The Cotman Collection | 78

Arthur Dixon letters

Archive: SDK Sydney Decimus Kitson Archive
Reference Number: SDK/1/3/1/1
Page: 40 recto


  • Description

    Letter of Arthur Dixon to John Joseph Cotman, 26 July 1835

    Dixon is anxious because it is a week since he has had news of JJC, who is visiting London, and he is lonely without his company. A walk to see 'JJC''s trees at Keswick (south of Norwich) fatigued him. Torrential rain ruined the recent Horticultural Day. Four young men have been drowned in two accidents near or in the city. Dixon cites the opening lines of a poem by the Irishman Thomas Moore. He states again how lonely he feels in his empty house without JJC. His sister tries to make him happy. He hopes to go to Ipswich with JJC.

    Date: 1835

  • Transcription

    [Note in pencil by Kitson:
    19
    18]
    Norwich Friday [note added in pencil by Kitson: July 26, 1835]

    A week my dear John has now swung heavily by, and no tidings of your safety have come to quiet the anxiety which your silence has excited. – I am quite sorry I extorted a promise from you to write to me early after your arrival, as it appears quite more than you could possibly do, & I know it is quite [as - crossed out] disagreeable to you to be in debt, particularly when not voluntarily incurred but constrained to it by the folly of a friend.
    I should have written & sent you a leaf to return me ere this, but each day I gave you, by compulsion and most unwillingly, another day, until it has come to this. – So I have passed a week. – I am entirely alone in this most lonely place – there is not one soul to whom I care to go or can go to exchange a word ot a thought. I have not therefore seen the sky or the daylight since you went away. – Having nothing to draw me from bed, I am, though not insensible to the charms of early morning when enjoyed as we have enjoyed them together, quite insensible to blue sky & sunshine which peek[?] in vain at my window, only seeming to tell me as soon as I awake, my companion is away. The only excitement which bears the cast of pleasure has been the hope, cherished from day to day & disappointed to be again renewed, the pleasing anticipation of a certainty tomorrow, & which now I desire to realize though at the expense of troubling, by a reiteration of my appeal to your charity.

Letter of Arthur Dixon to John Joseph Cotman, 26 July 1835