The Cotman Letters 1804-1833

To Rev. William Gunn Smallburgh.
June 26. 1829 Norwich.

Dear Sir,
When I had the pleasure of seeing you on Thursday I was well aware it was impossible to accept your kind invitation to myself and daughter. I know the value, and I hope, how to estimate such an invitation. Sir, it was kind, very kind. But it is impossible that it can be accepted by us. Therefore all that remain of what in happier circumstances would have given us so much pleasure, is most respectfully & sincerely to thank you & the miss Gunns, for your intended kindness to us, which circumstances oblige us to decline. My views in life are so completely blasted, that I sink under the repeated & constant exertion of body & mind. Every effort has been tried, even without the hope of success: hence that loss of spirits amounting almost to despair.

My eldest son, who is following the same miserable profession with myself, feels the same hopelessness; & his powers once so promising, are evidently paralized (sic), and his health & spirits gone. My amiable & deserving wife bears her part with fortitude. But the worm is there. My children cannot but feel the contagion. As a husband & a father, bound by every tie human & divine to cherish & protect them, I leave you to suppose how impossible it must be for me to feel on joy divided from them.

I watch them: and they me, narrowly; and I see enough to make me broken hearted.
I am, dear Sir, with great respect, Your obliged & faithful Servant
J.S. Cotman

(pencil note:) [Printed in full in Jmes Reeve's introduction to Catalogue of Cotman Exhibition, Norwich, 1888.]
Harriet Turner married Rev. John Gunn in 1830.
(in left margin pencil note to date in brackets, then note in pen:) The original of this letter belongs to the W.
Aberdeenshire (July 1931) Now (1935) in library of Edinburgh University.