WeRead Powered by ReaderPub
"Mr. Punch's" Book of Arms cover

"Mr. Punch's" Book of Arms

Chapter 10: Viscount Stanley of the Congo.
Open in WeRead

Explore more books like this:

About This Book

A sequence of humorous mock coats of arms presents parody blazons, crests, supporters, and mottos that lampoon prominent public figures, institutions, and current events of the author's day. Each entry mimics heraldic language while twisting symbols into absurd, ironic descriptions that expose political foibles, journalistic excesses, and imperial pretensions. The work alternates detailed visual description with sharp, often bawdy wordplay, arranging entries like an illustrated armorial interspersed with brief epigrams. Through exaggerated symbolism and mock-formality, it satirizes power, public personalities, and civic ceremonial, inviting readers to view familiar characters and controversies through a comic, barbed heraldic lens.

Viscount Stanley of the Congo.

Arms / quarterly / i two dwarfs of the forest of perpetual night proper, journalistically exploited to the nines / ij a continent sable, crossed by a small white band issuant from the interior / iij a New York herald blowing a trumpet of his own in exultation over repeated columns of copy sensational to the last / iiij a missionary of renown discovered in solitude near U-jiji sable. Crest / out of a demi-terrestrial globe +southern hemisphere+ a spread-eagle proper emergent in his glory gorged with honorary degrees +south latitude+, bearing in dexter claw an American flag, in sinister an union-jack. Supporters / dexter, a neutral monarch crowned, sceptred, and habited proper in a can't-go-free state / sinister, a publisher radiant charged in the arms with a colossal profit on the books of the present viscount. Second Motto / 'Mr. Speaker, I presume?' +on very rare occasions+.