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"Mr. Punch's" Book of Arms cover

"Mr. Punch's" Book of Arms

Chapter 27: Baron Bartlett of Sheffield.
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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.

Baron Bartlett of Sheffield.

Arms / quarterly / i sable a Turkish imperial star and crescent quixotically flaunted +motto, 'Without stain'+ / ij a Swazi chieftain dancette, labelled 'Silomo,' armed and accoutred proper, and habited—well, ahem!—suitably to a tropical climate / iij on an heraldic provincial platform a knight rampant and demonstrant charged with a peroration grandiloquent to the last / iiij a private chart proper, showing the principal ports and soundings on the coast of Poland, discovered and surveyed by the present baron. Crest / an American or spread-eagle bearing the union-jack displayed, over all a sun in splendour which never sets. Supporters / dexter, a more or less British lion in fury bearing a fire-arm proper periodically discharged at random / sinister, a Russian bug-bear passe and out at elbows, suitably bound for transport to the wilds of hysteria. Second Motto / 'Oh, Swaziland! my Swaziland!'