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Description: | Plate 6.
The penultimate plate in the series depicts men in the waiting room at the Admiralty. However there are only a handful people in naval costume, including an elderly midshipman standing in the middle dressed in a blue sailor suit with an empty right sleeve, and a young man, presumably Master B, dressed in full lieutenant uniform and looking up arrogantly towards the older midshipman. The room is quite sparsely furnished except for three chairs and a rug. On one chair a thin older man reads the ‘Morning Post’, while in the background a younger man is asleep. On the right, the seated man is writing D A M NA on the floorboard with his walking stick, this could be short for ‘damnation’ – all the signs suggest that visitors to the Admiralty were expected to wait for some time! Standing in front of the seated man is a well fed gentleman and his son, dressed almost identically. In the large man’s back pocket is a slip of paper which reads ‘vote and interest’.
Inscribed on the wall behind:
'In sore affliction, tried by God's command / Of patience, Job, the great example stands / But in these days, a trial more severe / Had been Job's lot, if God had sent him here.'
Inscribed below the image, a well-chosen line from Othello:
‘Tis the curse of service that preferment goes by favor & affection’
Other versions of this image in the collection are: PAD4726, PAD4810, PAI5984, PAJ1834, PAJ3897.
Box Title: 5 caricatures. | Publisher: | http://collections.rmg.co.uk/page/7d7ded6fb50d6031e2884961a200be58.html | Source: | Royal Museums Greenwich | Creator: | McLean, Thomas | Identifier: | http://collections.rmg.co.uk/collections... | Go to resource |
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