The Wasp, 1918 · page 14 of 330
The Wasp — 1918 — page 14: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This page contains no cartoon or illustration—it's purely text from what appears to be a biographical or narrative piece about Sir Walter Burnham and his family. The passage describes Burnham's obsessive need to mark his possessions with his heraldic crest and family symbols, even tattooing the griffin crest onto his children's shoulders. It then shifts to criticizing his son James, who possessed family courage but lacked the "nice sense of honour" expected of his lineage—reportedly assaulting a schoolmaster with a book and later attending Oxford. Without additional context about the Burnham family or whether this is satirizing a real historical figure, the specific point of critique remains unclear. The text suggests mockery of both excessive heraldic vanity and a son's moral failings.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
THE WASP : 5 of a passion with him—was to put his mark on every article in his possession. His mark was the heraldic device of the Burnhams of Burn- ham ; or, in some cases, only a part of that device. Large and highly valued pieces of plate were engraved with the paternal arms, topped by the helmet, the wreath, and the crest, and underpinned by that brief but honourable and poetic statement, “ Expectans equito.” On smaller pieces the crest only was cut. On his house of Burnham and on a dozen farm-. ‘houses and a score of cottages the four-barred hurdle, a-device from his arms, was cut deep in the stone. But he drove his passion for ‘putting his mark on things even farther than this; and the crest of the Burnhams of Burn- ham, a conventional griffin, was tattooed just _ beneath the left shoulder-blade of each of his four sons and of his one daughter. All the sons of Sir Walter Burnham promised well and rode straight except James. James ee possessed the courage of his race and its danger- ous temper, but he lacked the nice sense of honour ' that had ballasted the men of his family through : rny centuries. _He went to school and felled one of his masters ith a book ; he went up to Oxford, with a view comichooks.con