print;
broadside;
satirical print
- Museum number
- 1868,0808.3595
- Title
- Object: A Monument for Tom K--g.
- Description
-
Satire on Tom King, owner of a notorious coffee-house in Covent Garden, showing a funeral monument (although it is not certain that he was actually already dead). He lounges against an inverted punch bowl holding a ladle in his hand. On the base below him is a relief which shows a brawl in front of the church of St Paul's, Covent Garden, in which a man raises a staff to strike a man who holds out a sword and whose other arm is held by a young woman; a watchman stands to the left, and on the right two chairmen hold a sedan with broken windows; a watchman's lantern lies on the ground together with the men's hats. A black serving woman, named in the verses as "Black Betty", kneels at King's feet raising her arms as she mourns his death.On the left, standing on a barrel of arrack, a drunken rake with a broken sword, his clothes in dissaray and a broken lantern (clearly stolen from a watchman) at his feet, wrings his hands; on the right, on barrel of brandy, a weeping prostitute gestures towards King; from the head of each of these supporters sprouts an artichoke on top of which is, respectively, a steaming coffee pot and chocolate pot. The back of the monument is formed of a stone pyramid on which is an epitaph, "To ye Memory of their kind father T:K[in]g his loving Daughters I D[ougla]s & Molly St[uar]t & Betty C[areless] Erect ye Monument", adorned with lighted candles, somking pipes and tobacco leaves; on top of the pyramid is a steaming punchbowl. An arch extends from the pots on either side, lettered, "Coffe, Tea & Chocolat[e]", below which hangs festoons of glasses and citrus peel. Above the punchbowl is King's coat of arms, a shield with three cats, supported by a semi-naked Bacchus holding a cup and a lantern and a Venus and Cupid, beneath is the motto, "To Kiss & Scratch", and, above, the crest consisting of a cock mounting a hen. Three columns of verse beneath. 19 October 1736
- Production date
- 1737
- Dimensions
-
Height: 335 millimetres
-
Width: 210 millimetres
- Curator's comments
- The print is evidently a pair to "To the Mortal Memory of Madam Geneva" (BM Satires 2279).
Tom King's coffee house appears in Hogarth's "Morning" (Paulson 1989, 146)
- Location
- Not on display
- Acquisition date
- 1868
- Department
- Prints and Drawings
- Registration number
- 1868,0808.3595