print;
satirical print
- Museum number
- 1868,0808.7319
- Title
- Object: The honors of the sitting!! A cabinet picture.
- Description
-
George III (l.) and Addington (now Sidmouth) face each other across a small round dinner-table. On the table stands a four-tiered dumb waiter. On the top-most shelf is a ducal coronet below are earl's coronets, a star, and a ribbon; below again are (?) patents' and on the lowest and largest shelf are loaves and fishes. Sidmouth sits grasping a knife and fork; on his plate is a fish, beside it a 'loaf' and a bottle of 'Imperial Tokay', the bottle stoppered with a crown. The King says: "Help yourself Doctor [cf. BMSat 9849] there is every thing you can wish for on the Side Board". Addington answers, glancing sideways towards it, "They are indeed very inviting I cannot help turning a Side-mouth to them." Pitt, outside a window immediately behind him (r.), looks into the room registering angry alarm; he says, "Zounds that Fellow will get all the Pickings." 30 January 1805
Hand-coloured etching
- Production date
- 1805
- Dimensions
-
Height: 247 millimetres
-
Width: 350 millimetres
- $Inscriptions
-
- Curator's comments
- (Description and comment from M.Dorothy George, 'Catalogue of Political and Personal Satires in the British Museum', VIII, 1947)
A satire on Pitt's coalition with Addington, which delighted the King, thus making the Pittites, alarmed at favours to Addingtonians, fear a double government, Lowther predicting that like Chatham, Pitt would soon feel 'the ground was hollow under his feet'. Feiling, 'Second Tory Party', 1938, p. 242 f. Cf. 'Cobbett's Pol.Reg.', 5 Jan. 1805: 'Mr. Addington does not join the present administration; he comes in to take possession of it. . . . Mr. Pitt will now become merely the debater of the administration over which Mr. Addington will, in reality, have the almost absolute control.' His friends 'very frankly declare that Mr. Addington is again "the King's Minister'". On 7 Jan. 'Addington dined at Kew, tête-à-tête; an honour not conferred on any subject since Lord Bute'. 'Memoirs of Horner', 1843, i. 281. See also 'Huskisson Papers', 1931, p. 53 f. Addington was created Viscount Sidmouth on 12 Jan., and on 14 Jan. replaced Portland as Lord President of the Council. See a letter from Harrowby to Bathurst, 31 Jan., 'H.M.C.', Bathurst MSS., pp. 44 ff.
- Location
- Not on display
- Acquisition date
- 1868
- Department
- Prints and Drawings
- Registration number
- 1868,0808.7319
