The clerihew is a bit of rhyming doggerel invented by Edmund ...

The clerihew is a bit of rhyming doggerel invented by Edmund
Clerihew Bentley (1875-1956).
Traditionally, it's a four-line verse made up of two rhyming couplets,
with meter intentionally (often ridiculously) irregular.
Its purpose is to offer a satiric or absurd biography of a famous person.
Here are collections of clerihews Jasper Rose gave to friends for
Christmas 2002, 03, 04 and 05, reproduced now c/o Sydney Afriat
(without permission) for the sake [sic] of others
02
03
04
05
Jasper Rose
His wont to compose
When not yet again a picture
Would have to be another stricture
A few Musical Clerihews
for Christmas
A Few Frivolous Clerihews
for
The Festive Season 2003
Cunning Clerihews
To Stuff a Sock or Two
Christmas 2004
B9 & 4 tun 8
CLERIHUS 4 XMAS
Can anyone do better?
Please try!
Submit Rose or other Competition entries to
info@bookshopsiena.com or afriat@unisi.it

Pablo Cas81s
liked to play with his pals.
They said: Hey there' Fellow!
Bow that Bach on your 'cello.
Edvard Oriel
Joined the Nordic League
When Ibsen asked: "00 be a doll
And rustle up some music for my troll.-
w. a. '-.,art
Thought Ethnic was smart
$0, for him a Rondo alia Turca:
- For Chopin the Mazurka.
-.El1IV8
Cast a magical spell
On Mother Goose
For the Ball«t~ Ru~
Heil ! Herr Direktor Richard Strauss!
His operas so Schon, so Marvellous!
Tone Poems too. Many, Many Thanks!
For Till EulensDiaae/s Merrv Pranks!
Rlriplt YGlfgltan WIlIiCUtIS
Sang while riding on the trams
With sundry traffic thunders blending
He intoned the "Lark Ascending."
As a conductor Zabin ~.-bfa
Takes rank as a first rater I
From his shape, I'd guess, at eating
He would also take some beating.
Abbe Llszt
Smashed his fist
On a precious pianoforte'
( And did other things as naughty! )
Brahm.-
Ala rms
Better to bore
Like Louis Spohr
For many years Composer -
Remained the rage. I
His silences (4 mins) were purest gOI~;
His noises were what left one cold!
A few Musical Clerlhews
for Christmas
FMnz S~
Died in a last creative spurt.
His repute was undiminished
By the symphony he left unfinished.
Sca1attl
Wrote a fugue Maestoso, batty,
He collaborated with his cat !
Now how about that !
JANACEK
Loathed high tech,
And would not let his Cunning Vixen frisk
On any kind of plastic disk.
Kurt WeDl
Had style!
With librettos by Bert Brecht
He belonged to the ELECT.
John Philip Sousa
Was bitted by a bruiser.
Hence all the appalling groans
Emitted by his Sousaphones.
Some use a metronome to mark
The gigues and sarabandes of Bach
A practice which spells utter ruin
Opined Yehudi M.nuhin.
ChxISTopba .~w~
Favours Irish Bogwood
For it endows all transverse flutes
With ancient and melodious toots.
WFeltx Mendelssohn
Had lived to play the saxophone
His 'Midsummer Night's Dream'
Would be reckoned MAINSTREAM.
Carl Maria von Weber
When he went into labour
Delivered a Concerto: and, you bet,
He composed it for the clarinet'
Luciano Pavarotti
Drove the soccer fans quite dotty
Singing operatic snatches
At world cup football matches.

SMA~, Ct~c,otIM.ttt.:
.sa~ aow~ o~ A Sttttt
Afra.:d kt mi.eht ~Lt
I~ A ~Lt.
Klossowski de Rola, 'Balthus',
Kept a phallico-calico puss;
And taught him how his tail to twirl
At every passing nubile girl.
ITJiru ~~6eno£es
'Duncan's, ~~s, c{M's Vane.ssa
Was free with her Jr...Ii[y fawurs,
So; she was the girl on toy
'At the 0metj4 ~FIO)'.
lo/uz M aynalri Xt:yneJ
6(I;Ss fter 1
Suffered tile u.nN1/ pzn.ry pain.r
Ti/ aPn.r dL Dp;ux wit/z .lopoklova
Landed him in clo~
At Still Lifes Roger Fry
Would try, and try, and try /
But no amount of elbow grease
Resulted in a masterpiece
~e_i.c.5Vt.M.ts
SAd I ~~ stet... I
}:)e1.~t'\.9 Lw.~Low CQ.stLt t~td k£S c-AYety.
ok 1 what A 'f)Lt1:j thAt kt ~i.a tI\.ot sti..c.R.
To 'pA~t'\.9 gtrls o~ 'pi,trs t~ wALberswi.c.k..
Stanhope Forbes
Concocted some fantastic daubs
Getting fishergirls to play the fool in
Victorian Newlyn
A few Frivolous clerihews
for
1:tae festive Se4son 20°3
I
William Dyce
Made his Madonnas look ever so nice
But 17 d rather have Pe~ll BaX
At the end of the day.
En~lish Philoso~hers
Thomas Hobbes, Malmesburiensis
In Disputation never rushed his fences
He'd snap a syllogism with a crunch
And settle down to a long late lunch.
9£ 'MDOTe
Was sure
'TIie onfy thine that mattered to mankind
Was 'states of minJJ.
Jolin Stuan Mill
Found tile /fji! of tk mind decidedly chill
F 0 ~ animolil'elting on W omen :r Sub jeaio n
He azme lip with a purely mental eret:tiJn I
...
Andrea Verocchio
Sells well in Tokyo
Ever since Sony
Promoted the Plastic Colleoni.
One day MBIY Fedden
Woke up feeling awfully leaden,
Bm by mid afternoon she came to the boil,
And knocked ofIthree gouaches and a
sizeable oil.
Amadeo Modigliani
Courted girls through a mixture of good looks
and blarney;
When he added booze and hard drugs to the blend
That spelt the EN D .

Questions of Attribution
Grumbled and grunted, Giorgione;
"This modem sd1olarship is all baloneyl"
It's mine, not Titian's, The concert Cham~l
tlU just a jumped up ~tit maitre"
Nicholas Hawksmo~
Said; -Maybe Vanbrogh talks mo~
BUt donor let Blenheim bewilder
Yon -1 was dle builder. W
Sebastiana del Piombo
Came. a cropper, cooking up a
A madly ambitious plan -
Michelangelo as 'ideas manr
combo
Georgia O'Keefe
Lost all self belief
When she could not find the pistil
In her thistle.
George Stubbs
SUffered innumerable snubs. -
From critics who thought that painting
the horse
Was indescribably coarse.
I'
Architectural Extras
C. R. MacIntosh
Made tea drinking posh
At Mrs. CranStOn's, ~nishing care. I
Perched ,on a tall "oocked designer c",ir.
In ranking his work, Le Corbusler
Grew choosier and choosier;
~illa Savoie? Superbe! Ronchamp? O.K.!
Chandlgargh?
Malheureusement - a bit below par!*
Sir John Soane
Emitted an almighty posthumous groan -
For what Posterity did to his Bank
STANK!
...
Jackson Pollock
Worshipped no God but only Molochl
Great I loot from an ego trip
With a dripl
Prirnili!d,tSaa kina:
Douanier Rousseau
Tbou.gb naif. was a Pro.
Goodness only knowses
How unlike Grandma Moses.
Alfred Wallis, ancient seaman,
Was captured by a painting demon
And became the ocean's bard
Capturing its beauty on stray scraps
of card.
Lawrence Alma - Tadema, shortened
to Tad,
Was halfway between a gent and a cad,
In the Tepidarium keeping secret vigils
He painted Roman bimbos, brandishing..
their strigils.
A Last Judgement
Michelangelo Buonarotd
Drove several Roman Pontiffs potty;
Medici, della Rm-ere~ Faroese!
TOT:A.IME NTE CRAZY!
Yessir! Michelangelo
Made that there ceiling GLOW!
If all ~ get Is a crick in the neck
Well- WHATTHE HECK!

~
Iris Murdock
Never suffered from 'writers' block'
It may sound snitty
But that was a pfty.
-
John Constable
Flung fiddles on the lawn-so goes the fable
It would have been a taller order
To plant, with pianos, theherbaceous
bolder.
H,G, Wells
Never stopped in cheap hotels:
.As THE popular novelist it befits
ME to retain a suite at the R/7Z "
Of l.uck Samuel Pepys
Had heaps and heaps:
Surviving the Bubonic
In '65 was supersonic.
L. S.Lowry
Stayed indoors when it was show'ry
But never could resist
Saltfordian SnXJg or Mancunian mist.
Sitting in his car John Piper
Adjusted his windscreen wiper.
~at a pain!
Painting the rain AGAIN!
Claude
Hated when it snowed.
It had to be sunny
For his money.
Sir Walter Scott
Wrote quite a ht.
But a nowl a day
Kept the creditors at bay.
Barbara Pym
Induk}ed her utnKJst whim
Eating tons of apple crumble
Buying loads of lovely JUMBLE.
! 6~ a:w~
~ I CtJtI;#" a' ~ 4W' IL.,
611~ 2001:
+
R;
~
t
,
~
~
4,
Maybe J.KRowling
Is equally bad at batting and bowling
But her publishers (Bloomsbury)with bountiful
batches
of HarrY Po'tte~ heid OOto sOme Super slip
. catches.
MIS. Edith Wharlon
Got her motoring coatee caught on
Her chauffeurs gogg/es.FrantiG Henry James
Called the fXJOf chap some frightful names.
When MIS. Woolf was IMng E.M.Forster
Most cordially endolSed her
But, equivocally, shook his head
When she was dead.
William Morris (his friends called him Topsy)
Was nabbed by a lovely Oxford popsy
But, being Janey Burden, she'd not give up
the hunt
Till she'd cornered Rossetti and nabbed
Scawen
Blunt
The two Sitwell scribblers, Osberl and Sach~J
No doubt, had a cerlain cachet
But 'IIhen you add Edith, Sitwell scribbler the
The result's patentlyabSurd.
third,
Sir T1KJm8s Lawrence
Viewed faces with growing abho"8nce:
It Rather than fashion another shinning eye,
Another plump pink ClJeek, I'd much rather
d' 11
Ie,
Poor Brune/leschi!
Designing dotne$ drove him pesky
Fooling with one point perspective
Provided 8 rorredive.

Donato Bramante
Upped the architectural ~
Offering Rome
A hemispherical dome.
Arthur Waley
Practiced ideograms daily
But his reactions were more than
calligraphic
Snarled up in rush hour traffic.
BaJdasssare Longhena!
Life enhancer! Life sustainer!
We drink to your and Venice's ~
A work of quite transcendent beauty.
Richard Rogers
Proved to be the prince of badgers:
l
THE MILLENIUM DOME good grie"
Just another burger without any beef!
Bonifazio de' Pitate
(A name intolerably arty)
Was just a Venetian second rater
- perhaps- a top ice hockey skater!
Paris Bordone
Never drew, or rode, a pony
Or straddled any kind of horse:
A Venetian lad of course.
Poet Laureates Enough
I Robert Bridges
K~pt his ice cream in a hundred fridges.
It'~ a little known fact that TUTTI FRUTTI
In~pired his TEST AMENT OF BEAUTY.
Andrew Motion:
Does he wear too much hair lotion?
He'd better give his head a rinse
Before he writes about the PRINCE!
Ted LeureateHughes
Is always in the news
But only as the aften11ath
OF SYL VIA PLA TH!