Lavished

The New York Times has been lavishing us with the obituaries of wealthy eccentrics. Today it's the reclusive daughter of a copper baron: "She ate austere lunches of crackers and sardines and watched television, most avidly 'The Flintstones.' A housekeeper kept the dolls’ dresses impeccably ironed." The other day it was a viscount, who said this as he led a visitor through a gallery of his ancestral portraits: "That’s the second baron, known as Dickie Ducklegs. He spent most of his wife’s fortune building this place and defending a woman in Godalming accused of giving birth to rabbits."