The Cotman Letters 1835-1837

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(Postmark Fe.11.1836).

Addressed to Mr. John Joseph Cotman London Street Norwich.

Marked “Private to all but Mrs.E.Cotman”

My dear John
Feby 10 1836

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PRIVATE

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I have an enormous quantity of stuff to tell you but have no time to tell it you in, I and we are all to busy. College full of pupils, full of work. Edmund has painted a very fine picture in oil, very chaste in its color and very like VanderVelde!!! perfectly true I assure you. – And Bottle. Bottle is as full of work as the best, quite up and running over, or rather flying up, a perfect and fine Bottle of Champayne does not come up to him or anything like it, he is almost mad with anxiety, hope and his success. “Now what do you think it was” a Glass Eye? no such thing. But something very humorous and more brilliant than every Glass Eye was or can be – Now “What do you think it was” Why after all nothing but an old Lamp, Alladin’s Lamp is a fool to it. – Why he has invented such an improvement on the assaid Lamp that the Boy stands a fair chance of realizing £200 a year by it if not more he talks of selling the invention in the height of his favour for 10 or 12 thousand Pounds, but this is between ourselves and not to be thought of, of course, for tis nothing but the height of his fever and the sanguine feelings he must have at this moment upon it. Time, and the coming in contact with the intended purchaser will lower this to its proper level. It is burning away at this time and answers gloriously. He will put in for his patent tomorrow, you are to have one directly and I am to have the first one that is made which is as you know sooner than directly. The Black Cat has done this!!!!!! of course. Make a Black Cat come to you of her own accord, a good tempered one, or your luck is in the fire. Ann has got her