The Cotman Collection | 26

The Cotman Letters 1834

Archive: SDK Sydney Decimus Kitson Archive
Reference Number: SDK/1/3/1/3
Page: 39.1

  • Description

    Copy of letter from John Sell Cotman to Dawson Turner, 1 February 1834; autograph undated letter of Cotman to an unnamed recipient

    (1) Letter of JSC to Dawson Turner. Mrs Beckwith, headmistress of a Norwich girls’ school, has passed teaching in her school on to Miles Edmund Cotman. (2) Insert: autograph letter of JSC, undated, forwarding a volume with apologies for delay.

    Date: 1834

  • Transcription

    To
    Dawson Turner Esq
    Yarmouth.
    Feb[ruar]y 1, [1834]
    [note in pencil:] [Norwich]

    My dear Sir,
    More last words. I have just received a most flattering & delightful letter from Mrs Beckwith, who gives her school & interest to my Son.
    He has now all my connections, and much more. As a parting present I have given my ‘Norfolk Antiq[uitie]s’ to my Employer, with my autograph and a complimentary address. In Mrs Beckwith’s volume I said, ‘the flower she gave me, even at parting, appeared to bloom when everything else beside it appeared a barren waste[‘]. This she acknowledges as a thing to be observed only by a delicate mind.
    Yrs truly J. S. Cotman.
    Pray excuse all this delightful vanity.
    [in pencil:]

    [Letter pasted in:]
    Dear Sir
    A sick House, and a more than usual press of business, in consequence of my long stay in London, must be my apology for not having forward to you before this date the enclosed Volume.
    Dear Sir
    Your [obedient servant]
    J. S. Cotman

Copy of letter from John Sell Cotman to Dawson Turner, 1 February 1834; autograph undated letter of Cotman to an unnamed recipient