The Dutch Toy

Princess Charlotte (a flattering portrait) stands raising a whip to lash a top spinning on the floor, on which sits in profile to the right a little Dutchman smoking a pipe. He wears the short jacket, bulky breeches, and flower-pot hat of the Dutchman in English caricature, but orange-coloured and with epaulets, and with a paper inscribed ‘Contract’ in his pocket to show that he is the Prince of Orange. An ermine-lined robe hangs from her shoulders over a décolletée dress. She says: “Take this for Ma! and this for Pa!—and this! and this! for myself, you ugly thing you!—” The door (right) is slightly open, allowing an arm holding a birch-rod tied with orange ribbon and an unmistakable leg to project into the room. The words of the concealed Regent float in on a label: ‘If you don’t find pleasure in whipping the Top, I shall whip the Bottom!’ Against the wall (left) is a square piano with an open music-book, with the words and music of a song :

‘An Obstinate Daughter’s the plague of you [sic] life
No rest can you take tho your rid of your Wife
At twenty she laughs at the duty you taught her
Oh! what a plague is an obstinate Daughter.’
[Sheridan, ‘The Duenna’.]

On the piano is a book, ‘School for Wives’ [comedy by Hugh Kelly, 1773]. On the wall is a picture of Cupid standing on his head on a terrestrial globe at the point where ‘Holland’ is marked: he has dropped his bow, arrows fall from his quiver towards ‘England’.

Reference: British Museum J,3.108