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"Mr. Punch's" Book of Arms

Chapter 3: The Right Hon. Sir William Vernon Harcourt, P.C. M.P.
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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.

The Right Hon. Sir William Vernon Harcourt, P.C. M.P.

Arms / quarterly / i on a ship party-coloured, shattered, dismasted and waterlogged, a crew prone to mutiny reguardant in complacence over the side a tried and weather-beaten chief avoirdupois proper, incontinently jettisoned without scruple or remorse / ij on a ground of grievance two tents of Achilles, freely canvassed in the press, conjoined morly in tension and possibly somewhat overstrained / iij a masterly heraldic bouget of finance, charged with a fleece of gold lifted proper from sundry millionaires gorged or, collared in transit on the hop / iiij on a ground protestant kensittee a veteran campaigner statant single-handed "on his helmet the motto 'Ut veniant omnes!'—'Let 'em all come!'" bearing a plume mordant guttee de l'encre transfixing several anglican traitors foxy to the last but exposed proper in mummery. Crest / emergent from a crown of the Plantagenets, a rogue-elephant of the forest jumbonee, thwarted circumvented and finally ousted with alacrity. +Motto / 'Contra dexter et audax'—'Skilful and bold in opposition.'+ Supporters +'otherwise engaged!—mainly in accepting resignations by return of post—but in place thereof possibly the following will answer the purpose'+ / dexter, an eminent litterateur similarly isolated and unique in courtesy, and gratitude, charged with a colossal biography proper / sinister, an heraldic sun luluois radiant in geniality, exemplarily staunch and filial to the core. Second Motto +Welsh translation+ / 'Lyddthe ryfraf, dydd yu effyr, nod yff y nowydd!'