He was not above broad farce when the fancy seized him. At the
time when a certain kind of nonsense verse was popular, he, with
Sir Noel Paton and others, added not a few facetious sonnets to
Edward Lear's book, which lay on Madame Novikoff's table. His
authorship is betrayed by the introduction of familiar
Somersetshire names, Taunton, Wellington, Curry Rivel, Creech,
Trull, Wilton:
"There was a young lady of Wilton,
Who read all the poems of Milton:
And, when she had done,
She said, 'What bad fun!'
This prosaic young lady of Wilton."
There were many more, but this will perhaps suffice; ex ungue
leonem. They were addressed to the "Fair Lady of Claridge's,"
Madame Novikoff's hotel when in London, and were signed "Peter
Paul, Bishop of Claridge's."
"There is a fair lady at Claridge's,
Whose smile is more charming to me,
Than the rapture of ninety-nine marriages
Could possibly, possibly, be;--"
is the final dedicatory stanza. It is the gracious fooling of a
philosopher who understood his company. "There are folks," says
Mr. Counsellor Pleydell, "before whom a man should take care how he
plays the fool, because they have either too much malice or too
little wit.
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