After a brief sojourn in Gerrard Street, Soho--a mere preparatory time--Hunter Street, Brunswick Square, was the spot fixed upon by Cotman for his London home. But he went down to Norwich still, now and then, in the autumn. His son, ‘J. J.,’ already gifted, and afterwards eccentric, was settled there. Cotman wrote letters to him, in many moods, now bright and fanciful, now depressed and forlorn. He was fond of the Thames before the Thames was popular--witness Mr. Reeve’s early ‘Twickenham,’ and Mr. Pyke Thompson’s later ‘Twickenham,’ the ‘Golden Twickenham’ of the Turner house at Penarth--and in one of those letters to the son ‘J. J.,’ there is ‘the log’ that records the adventures of Mr. Cotman’s ‘voyage’ with others of the ship’s company to Windsor, where they were ‘not victualled from hence’--from London, that is to say--and so might be expected to put in at Datchet. Then later, the brightness was all gone, and illness was upon him. ‘It was my duty, it was my wish, and I threatened to paint for your sake when you were here, but I could not; I was ill in body, and spiritless.’ Again, still later, ‘I am not quite well, but better. I am painting.’[5] And then he could paint no more. He died, in Hunter Street, in July 1842, and was buried on the 30th of that month, in what is now the dull suburban cemetery behind St. John’s Wood Chapel, within sound of the cheers from ‘Lord’s’ and the screech of the Metropolitan Railway. [5] These letters, some of which belong to Mr. Reeve, and others to the British Museum, have been quoted from more amply in my _Studies in English Art_.