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"Mr. Punch's" Book of Arms cover

"Mr. Punch's" Book of Arms

Chapter 5: Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman, G.C.B. 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.

Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman, G.C.B. M.P.

Arms / quarterly / i on a sea of turbulence vert a jovial commodore, braided and epauletted proper in bullion, and wearing the insignia of the grand cross of the bath, mounting nimbly the bridge of a fighting-ship, drifting derelict and awash, barnacled, scuttled, riddled, and gutted / ij under a chief radiant in suavity, several heraldic partibores urgent, armed with queistions perennially brandished out of season, diplomatically exorcised, muzzled, and suppressed / iij on a ground semee of thistles, an elder of the auld licht lichtsome, kaily canny pawky silvendy to the fu', bearing an heraldic weebit cruizey or Scottish lantern, findin' salvation in the langsyne proper / iiij a rugged elephant of the New Forest on the war-path, sturdy in protestantism, and fully versed in the rubric, insulated by instincts antijingonee, turned up passee by the rest. Crest / a Scottish knight-in-armour, reluctant in temperament, but cedant under stress of suasion, haled, elected and ensconced proper in a cul-de-sac, conjoined Kimberley in opposition, portly for the nonce, but will probably gobony in harness. +Motto / 'Locus dulcis!'—'Cheerful post, eh!.'+ Supporters / dexter, a typical antique radical of retrenchment, straitened in view +kindly lent by the British Museum+, arrayed gudee gudee exeterallois to the last reguardant paly in dismay the trend gory of the times / sinister, a modern liberal of imperialism fashodee, statant sanguine on a stricken field, acquiescent in annexation, charged with a shamrock of home-rule slipped vert and demi-erased. Second Motto / 'Cordate si non cordite!'—'Wisely if without high explosives!'