On the left, Charles Fox, dressed as an Oriental prince, lies on the ground having fallen off an elephant who has the face of Lord North; Fox’s dice and dice box are scattered on the pavement. In the speech bubble above his head: “Perdition, take thee for the chanse is thing.” To his right, William Pitt sits astride the elephant who stands at the entrance to the East India House, his face turned toward the viewer. Pitt offers in his left hand a “New India Bill” and holds three others under his arm and in his pocket: “Stamp […] act”, “Sup … lies”, and “Military Act …”. The building on the left has been extended to as far as Pitt’s back.
- Title: Carlo Khan dethron’d, or, Billy’s triumph [graphic].
- Edition: [State with elephant’s face turned towards viewer].
- Publication: [London] : Publish’d as the act directs March 24th, 1784, by S. Fores, No. 3 Piccadilly, [24 March 1784]
784.03.24.01.1
Acquired December 2019
A crowd of rotund stock brokers sit and stand around a table and against a wall with a clock. The broker centered in the front reads from a copy of the Gazette Extraordinary while some of the others peer over his shoulders looking for news, many where glasses and one uses a glass to read the print on the page. To his left at the table is a broker holding bank stock in his right hand, and another broker knocking over a bottle of Madeira at the table.
Fashionably dressed ladies and gentlemen stand or sit in small groups conversing the elegant saloon at the Marine Pavilion designed by Henry Holland.
A crowd, gathered in the courtyard under the sign of The George Inn on the route to Brighton, examine a horse seemingly under auction; a man in the doorway holds up a hammer. People look out at the scene from the windows of the inn. Two men converse with a woman to the left as her dog looks at the scene; a traveler with a pack and walking stick sits on a stoop to adjust his shoe.
A coach pulling up to the Post Station, the Cock Inn at left, on route to Brighton. The coach is pulling into the court yard, about to pass under a wooden gate bearing the inn’s sign, while another coach stands at the inn door. People look down from the second story windows. A man waits at the mile marker in front of another building at right. In the foreground to left, a man with a wooden leg carries a small child on his back as he leads a donkey that carries a woman and two children, one of whom appears to be nursing, the other in a basket that hangs over the donkey. Their dog follows behind.
“The object of this engraving is to enumerate the many evils inflicted on England by its connection with Hanover. A great number of persons are crowded in groups in a place of public resort, and conversing on public affairs … The general discontent at the injurious influence of German politics broke out very strongly at this time in reference to the expenses entailed on England to “secure the succession of the imperial dignity to the Archduke Joseph, eldest son and heir to the reigning emperor”.”–British Museum catalogue.
The Coalition ministers are gathered around the table placed in the mouth of a cave. On the left sits Lord North wearing armor under his cloak, a goblet in his left hand. Opposite him on the right is Charles Fox, dressed as a centurion and sitting on a fox. He leans on the table keeping his right hand on three dice signed, “Madras,” “Bombay,” and “Bengal,” and clutching a dice box in his left. Behind him Admiral Keppel, the date of the battle of Ushant (1778) on his helmet, raises his goblet in a toast. Behind him Sheridan, with ass’s ears and “School for Scandal” written across his head cover, watches the Duke of Portland count out money to Lord Carlisle. On Portland’s shoulder leans Lord Cavendish in a centurion’s armor under his cloak. Between him and North sits Burke in a Jesuit’s outfit reading his own “Plan of oeconomy [sic].” Under the table lie the corpses of Lords Shelburne and Ashburton, ousted by the Coalition.
A copy of the caricature of the British Statesman and High Lord Chancellor Henry Peter Brougham, 1st Baron Brougham and Vaux (1778-1868), that appeared in the center of an print that was published on 1 October 1834 in Every body’s album & caricature magazine, no. 19. He is depicted as a very thin traveller wearing a Scottish tam over his wig and using a broom as a walking stick; his shoe is worn through. He carries a wooden post labelled “Scratching post”, a box stamped “Containing the freedoms of all the Scotch towns” and a bag with the words “Broken victuals the leavings of the Edinburgh blow out”. Around his waist is another bag, “Oat meal”. Above the image framed in lines in gold ink: “I flatter myself I’ve made a tolerable good job by my “Starring it” with Old Grey in the North! Sold all my numbers of the Penny Magazine, and well puff’d it through every town I went. Made little less than one hundred speeches about, I forget now, Received some score of Burgesses, Freedoms, and Invitations to as many dinners, where I blew my own trumpet & obtained plenty of orders from our Usefull Knowledge Society! Now, woe to the unstamn’d when I get home! I must have a good scrub at my skin presently; I reckon I have got a taste of the fiddle through my itch for travelling!
A copy in reverse of William Hogarth’s Plate 6 of A harlot’s progress: A dilapidated room with Moll Hackabout’s friends, mostly prostitutes, gathered around her open coffin, several of them weeping; one young woman stands with her back to the scene as she gazes at herself in the mirror. On the right, a clergyman spills his brandy as he surreptitiously gropes beneath a woman’s skirt; Moll’s serving woman, standing at the coffin with a wine bottle and glass in hand scowls at the pair. Under the window and to the left, the undertaker flirts with a pretty young prostitute who picks a handkerchief from his pocket. In the foreground Moll’s small son plays with a spinning top. Sprigs of yew (rosemary?) decorate her coffin; a plate of yew rests on the floor at the parson’s feet, another spring at her son’s feet.
A copy in reverse of William Hogarth’s Plate 5 of A harlot’s progress: In a squalid room Moll Hackabout, wrapped in a sheet, is dying while two doctors (Richard Rock and Jean Misaubin) argue over their remedies. Her serving-woman reaches out to them in alarm to get their attention for the invalid, while another woman rifles through Moll’s portmanteau (with her initials as in Plate 1). A small boy knelling next to Moll’s chair scratches his head as he turns a joint of meat roasting in front of the fire while a pot overflows on the grate. An over-turned table with an advertisement “Practical scheme … ‘Anodyne” litters the floor in the foreground.