The Cotman Collection | 104

The Cotman Letters 1804-1833

Archive: SDK Sydney Decimus Kitson Archive
Reference Number: SDK/1/3/1/2
Page: 104


  • Description

    Turner assures there is no cause for despondency. 22 June 1826.

    Letter from Dawson Turner, to J. S. Cotman, 22 June 1826

    Date: 22 Jun1826

  • Transcription

    87
    To J. S. Cotman Esq, St Martin at Palace, Norwich. Yarmouth.
    June 22. 1826.

    My dear Sir,
    Different as is your situation from what your talents ought to command, or your former prospects might have led you to expect, there really does not appear to me to be anything in it, if I know the whole, to justify this dreadful gloomy view of it that you have taken. You have raised yourself a phantom, while your tender regard towards your family and apprehension for the consequences prevent from examining close; and like all other creatures of the imagination it grows and grows upon you, and armed with terror not its own, is actually more prospect & more imperious than if it had a real existence. But my friend, the only way to combat our evils is to look them in the face; & he who has once done that has already gained half the battle.
    Your present income from teaching you state to be about £200 a year & you have £40 in the Bond, exclusive of Barnes' bill to meet present demands. Are you right in this statement? If you are, there may be much cause for regret, but there is certainly none for despondency. The times are wretchedly bad. They are unfavourable to everything; but particularly to the luxuries of life, with which retrenchment naturally first begins. But they will rally again, as we have often known them do before, and with your sense & experience, this lesson was forced upon you will not be lost.
    In your own drawings too, and in Edmund's I cannot doubt but that you will find a [resolence]. You have lived long enough to learn that you present style will not succeed, and you have talent enough to adopt any others. The public is a body that cannot be forced. Some extraordinary geniuses may have succeeded in guiding it; but they are few, and the great part of them who have made the experiment have failed. Such among us who have to live by it must be content to follow its taste.
    What seems to me in your case particularly important , is to do nothing hastily or rashly. Put down on paper your certain income, by which I mean from your pupils, and having done this, put down your last year's expenses and see how those of the coming year can be made to meet your probable means. The actual wants of nature are very small. You have done very wisely in having given notice to quit your house; before you fix upon another, wheresover it may be, see carefully what you can appropriate to this purpose. There is no need for hurry in anything. Your South Town house being sold, this source of anxiety & dis- quietude, at least, is removed from your mind. Above all, do not fear that by altering your residence or mode of life, you

Turner assures there is no cause for despondency. 22 June 1826.