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

"Mr. Punch's" Book of Arms

Chapter 6: Horatio Herbert, first Viscount Kitchener of Omdurman.
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.

Horatio Herbert, first Viscount Kitchener of Omdurman.

Arms / quarterly / i a series of cataracts neatly and punctually surmounted while you wait / ij a Gallic cock marchant in chicane and emergent theatrical in advance collared in trespass and +we trust+ given the chucque proper / iij a British lion radiant in his glory sheathing an avenging sword rusted with age but trenchant to the full / iiij several stars of journalism rampant and purpure with fury incontinently ordered to Cairo. Crest / on a mount urgent with the hump a caliph proper of the Soudan imbrued gory to the last, dropping in his flight on a ground sable sundry spouses reluctant puffy without mules. Supporters / dexter, an Egyptian soldier drilled armed and furnished with a backbone made in England, crowned with laurels and bearing in his right hand the black banner of the Khalifa / sinister, a British trooper in triumph similarly charged and wreathed with laurels in augmentation, holding in his left hand a lance and in the right a return ticket proper to Khartoum available for a month. Second Motto / 'Dwell as if about to depart'—ahem! proper.