What a great language

Margalit Fox, Hugh Massingberd, Laureate for the Departed, Dies:

Hugh Massingberd, a celebrated former obituaries editor of The Telegraph of London who made a once-dreary page required reading by speaking frankly, wittily and often gleefully ill of the dead, became the recipient of his own services after dying in West London on Christmas Day. He was 60 and lived in London.

The cause was cancer, according to The Telegraph. The newspaper announced Mr. Massingberd’s death in an expansive obituary that described, not unkindly, his being “invariably strapped for cash” and the “gourmandism” and “bingeing” that had turned him “into an impressively corpulent presence whose moon face lit up with Pickwickian benevolence.”

Sometimes called the father of the modern British obituary, Mr. Massingberd was The Telegraph’s obituaries editor from 1986 to 1994. He was also a shy autodidact who had never been to college; a past editor of Burke’s Peerage, the venerable record book of the titled families of Britain and Ireland; the author of dozens of books on the English aristocracy; a recognized authority on the country homes of England, stately and moldy alike; and a rabid theatergoer whose enthusiasm for “Phantom of the Opera” was undimmed by the fact that he had seen it more than 50 times and knew every word and every note by heart.

In 2002 The Spectator, a British weekly magazine, described Mr. Massingberd as “an English eccentric of the sort Hollywood imagines shoot snipe in their underpants.” ...

To dispatch his subjects, Mr. Massingberd used the thinnest of rapiers, but also the sharpest. Cataclysmic understatement and carefully coded euphemism were the stylistic hallmarks of his page. Here, for the benefit of American readers, is an abridged Massingberd-English dictionary:

¶“Convivial”: Habitually drunk.

¶“Did not suffer fools gladly”: Monstrously foul-tempered.

¶“Gave colorful accounts of his exploits”: A liar.

¶“A man of simple tastes”: A complete vulgarian.

¶“A powerful negotiator”: A bully.

¶“Relished the cadences of the English language”: An incorrigible windbag.

¶“Relished physical contact”: A sadist.

¶“An uncompromisingly direct ladies’ man”: A flasher.