The fathers darling [graphic]

"A grocer's snug parlour, with 'Mr. Fig', an ugly 'cit', holding on his knee an ugly child who is playing havoc with the tea-things. With a mug inscribed 'EF' the infant has smashed the tea-pot, while an overturned milk-jug makes a pool on the floor at which a cat laps. The man's back is to the fireplace (left), where a kettle is boiling over, and a red-hot poker is burning the floor. He says, with a fatuous smile: "Pretty Dear Heart! what a Gulley [an unrecorded word, evidently from Gully the pugilist]. it has given the Tea Pot, she delights in a little mischief, I should not be surprised Mrs Fig if she was to make as much Noise in the World as her Namesake, and as the Poet says "like another Ellen fire another Troy". Mrs. Fig (right), with arms angrily extended, exclaims: "Troy indeed Mr Fig, I think your more likely to Fire the House, look where the red hot poker lays and see how the tea Kettle is boiling over!!" On the wall is a framed print of 'The Worlds End', a flaming globe (the sign of more than one public house in the outskirts of London). On the mantelpiece are a large china mandarin (sign of the grocer's connexion with the tea-trade) and a medicine-bottle labelled 'Composing Draught for Miss Fig'. In a letter-rack are letters 'To Mr Fig Grocer'."--British Museum online catalogue