Yesterday I was clearing out my mother's books and came upon a little hand written book of nonsense rhymes and other verses by my Great Uncle Roy Bishop which he had copied out for his sister, my grandmother. (So that's where the doggerel comes from, I thought.) He had had some of them published in the Morning Post apparently, but it sounds as though it wasn't very lucrative.
This is what he had written in the flyleaf.
People who live by writing verse
Often end in a paupers hearse:
For it has been wisely said
"the poet is born, but never paid."
Rich fat bankers in the City
Don't read verses, (mores the pity):
These things I won't con or sift
So here's this book as an Xmas gift!
To Romer, from Roy
Xmas 1925.
