print;
satirical print
- Museum number
- 1877,0811.207
- Title
- Object: Johnny Newcome in love in the West Indies.
- Description
-
A companion plate to No. 11132 with the same signature and imprint. Six designs on one plate arranged in two rows, with borders in which the inscriptions are engraved. Johnny is a smartly dressed young man. There is a landscape background in Nos. 1 and 3 (in which Johnny wears a top-hat and top-boots). In Nos. 2, 4, 5 a boarded floor indicates an interior. [1] With folded arms and bowed head he approaches from behind a grinning black woman who holds a tobacco-pipe. Above: Smitten with the charms of Mimbo Wampo a sable Venus, daughter of Wampo Wampo, King of the Silver Sand Hills in Congo. [2] Bare-legged he sits in a chair, his bare foot held by the black woman who sits on the ground at his feet. Above: Delicately declaring his Love to the aimable Mimbo Wampo, while she is picking his Cheqoes. "You lub me Massa" eh! eh!? [3] Johnny and an old slave wearing only breeches face each other. Beside the latter is a large jar inscribed Feathers, Grave Dirt, Egg Shells, &c. Above: Consulting Old Mumbo Jumbo the Oby Man, how to get possession of the charming Mimbo Wampo. "Lets me alone for dat Massa." [4] He kneels at the feet of Mimbo Wampo taking her hand; she sits on a stool smoking a pipe. Four women stand in a row watching, two are black, two are mixed race. Above: Mr Newcome happy,—Mimbo made Queen of the Harem. [5] He embraces Mimbo; two other black women stand behind her, one holding two pale-skinned black-haired infants, the other with a third infant held on her head in a tray. Two other children stand by their mother. Above: Mr Newcome taking leave of his Ladies & Pickaneenees, previous to his departure from Frying Pan Island to graze a little in his Native land. [6] Portrait heads of the children, numbered I to 9, arranged in three rows. Above: A few of the Hopeful young Newcomes. Below the whole design: J. Lucretia Diana Newcome, a delicate Girl very much like her Mother; only that she has a great antipathy to a pipe, and cannot bear the smell of Rum.—2 Penelope Mimbo Newcome. 3 Quaco Dash Newcome prodigiously like his father.—4 Cuffy Cato Newcome. 5. Caesar Cudjoe Newcome.—6 Helena Quashebah Newcome— 7 Aristides Juba Newcome.—8 Hector Sammy Newcome, a child of great spirit, can already Damnme Liberty and Equality and promises fair to be the Toussaint [see No. 10090] of his country.—9 Hannibal Pompey Wampo Newcome.
April 1808
Hand-coloured etching and aquatint
- Production date
- 1808
- Dimensions
-
Height: 246 millimetres
-
Width: 351 millimetres
- $Inscriptions
-
- Curator's comments
- (Description and comment from M. Dorothy George, 'Catalogue of Political and Personal Satires in the British Museum', VIII, 1947)
New-come or Newcome = new arrival, the earliest instance in the O.E.D. is Egan, Life in London, 1821, i. 300. For Johnny New-come in the West Indies, a print by Abraham James, 1800, see Fortescue, Hist. of the British Army, xi. 38 n. See also vol. ix, Adventures of Johnny Newcome [in the W.I.], 1812, &c.
- Location
- Not on display
- Acquisition date
- 1877
- Department
- Prints and Drawings
- Registration number
- 1877,0811.207