Wit is a commodity that defies free market forces.  Always in short supply, it is usually undervalued because at any moment it can turn on you.  A good time to measure a man’s value is when he is staring at the business end of a biting wit.  Where honesty is a machete for hacking off chunks of bullshit, wit is a scalpel whose wielder is often measured by the patient’s ability to see the scar.

The back page of yesterday’s New York Times contains Margalit Fox’s excellent response to a writing assignment that many might try to avoid, tackling the obituary of Hugh Massingberd.  Massingberd used wit to perform autopsies as the famed obituary editor for London’s Daily Telegraph, very often cutting open and sewing up with the same stroke.

My experience with Massingberd is limited, but what I have read usually leaves me in stitches, as wits always have a few extra slashes for their more astute observers.  I understand fully that this is a statement one makes at one’s own peril, which were he still with us, might prompt Massingberd to give me the same treatment he gave many who were my betters and many who weren’t. 

Here are a couple of examples:

“The 3rd Lord Moynihan, who has died in Manila, aged 55, provided, through his character and career, ample ammunition for critics of the hereditary principle.

His chief occupations were bongo-drummer, confidence-trickster, brothel-keeper, drug-smuggler and police informer, but (he) also claimed other areas of expertise – as ‘professional negotiator’, ‘international diplomatic courier’, ‘currency manipulator’ and ‘authority on rock ‘n’ roll’.”

and

“Fanny Cradock…..became as celebrated for her bad temper as for her cooking. …in 1964 she was charged with careless driving and fined £5 – the arresting officer described her as ‘abusive and excited’. When he asked her to move her Rolls Royce (parked across the stream of traffic) she called him a ‘uniformed delinquent’ and…….reversed into the car behind…………………when in 1977 she married Johnny Cradock she claimed she was 55, even though her eldest son was then 50 years old……..in 1983 she was prosecuted for dangerous driving. She had swerved across her lane and caused a collision. When the other driver tried to talk to her she said, “How dare you hit my car” and drove off………the other driver followed her for 15 miles…..he finally overtook her and stood in front of her car waving her down.

Mrs Cradock proceeded to run him over.” 

and finally a list of military figures who were Massingberd’s specialty

“Lieutenant-Colonel Peter Sanders, who accepted an invitation to lunch from the same Waziri tribesman who a few days earlier had blown him up and cost him his right arm; Bunny Roger, the Mayfair “aesthete” who marched through German lines brandishing a rolled-up copy of Vogue; Warrant Officer “Muscles” Strong, who interrupted his Chinese captors’ lectures on western imperialism with cries of “Bollocks!”; Sir “Honker” Henniker, Bt., an Indian Army brigadier who enjoyed being saluted by his elephants; Charles Upham, the New Zealander who charged two German machine-gun nests singlehanded and is one of only three men in history to be awarded two Victoria Crosses.”

Here are a quick series of links to some of Massingberd’s writing found on the web

• A review of Virginia Nicholson’s Singled Out

• Text of a speech to the Anthony Powell Society

• Some bits from Massingberd’s fantastic obits

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