piddler

Picasso had called Bonnard a piddler, saying: "Don't talk to me about Bonnard.

This stems from his army days when he toured Egypt as part of the cast of what he calls Piddler On The Roof.

He told them to work at the "Mother Superior," to dig out the trench in "The Piddler" and clean out the "Canavaro."

No more than 'Mother Superior,' or 'Knock- knees,' or 'The Piddler.'

In fact, no one who has looked seriously at his work can have thought of him as a lightweight hedonist, much less a piddler, though he did paint some bad pictures, because he painted a lot.

He once lampooned a fellow House member, "Of all the 'piddlin' politicians that ever piddled 'piddlin' politics on this floor, my esteemed friend, the gentleman from Wisconsin, is the greatest piddler that ever piddled."

One critic of the Bonnard show attacked him as a piddler (and the people who like him as complacent or blind), and I wondered whether the critic's unusual peevishness didn't perhaps also reflect an agitation that can be linked, at least subconsciously, with shock.