THE POT CALLING THE KETTLE BLACK
The first depicts Cole as the
pot and Maxwell as the kettle
in a double pun “The pot
calling the Kettle Black” and
refers to a spat between the
two men partly carried out in
the Oxford and Cambridge
Undergraduate’s Journal of
1879. Maxwell here quoting
“I am not the author of either
the silly poem or pamphlet. I
am convinced that if the
work’s opinion about negroes
were to be formed from the
merits of our embryo author,
we poor negroes would be
nowhere. Vide OCUJ Oct
30/79.”
KING COLE’S RETURN – HOME SWEET HOME
The second shows Cole’s
triumphant return to his native
Sierra Leone in 1879.
The survival of these two large
original pen and ink caricatures
is all the more extraordinary
considering their subject matter.
Shrimpton issued over 1,200
photographically produced
cartoons and very few of the
originals survive; a handful are
recorded at the Bodleian
Library and a few other public
institutions.