Lancelot Ware

Lancelot Lionel Ware, the founder of Mensa, died on August 15th 2000, aged 85

In the beginning, so it is said, members of Mensa saw themselves as people of superior wisdom, to whom governments would humbly turn for guidance. Lancelot Ware later denied this, and he was far too pleasant a man to be doubted. It would have been impolite to suggest, as some mischievously claimed, that no government showed any enthusiasm for Mensa’s advice.

In any case, the origins of Mensa are obscure. The generally accepted version, in Victor Serebriakoff’s history of Mensa, is that Mr Ware and Roland Berrill, an Australian, were strangers on a train, in a first-class carriage, when, in an unEnglish way, the Australian sought to make conversation. He asked if the publication Mr Ware was reading was Hansard, a report of proceedings in Parliament.

“Obviously,” said Mr Ware. “You can see it from the title.”

Not a promising first encounter, but by the end of the journey the two men, both lawyers, had formed a tentative interest in each other. They discussed cleverness. The Australian thought it could be measured by studying bumps in the head. Mr Ware was a fan of intelligence tests and offered to give his new companion a test. The Australian did brilliantly well and was immensely pleased; no one had said he was clever before. Would it not be a splendid idea to bring together an aristocracy of gifted people to attend to the problems of the world? It would indeed, the two men agreed. In 1946 Mensa was born with the aim of recruiting the 600 most intelligent people in Britain. They first thought of calling it Mens, Latin for mind, but this was thought to be too close to Men Only, a magazine that had photographs of nude women, albeit rather prim ones. They settled for the more prosaic Mensa, a table, explaining to the puzzled that the group was like a round table where no one had precedence.

The question of who actually founded Mensa was for years a matter of dispute. Roland Berrill had his supporters. He put up the money to start the group and wrote the first pamphlets, but he upset some members with his preoccupation with bumps, interest in the occult and passion for bright clothes. He left the group in 1950. Mr Ware’s claim to have started the organisation was also challenged. Cyril Burt, an academic, believed that he was the first to propose a legion of the elite in a broadcast on the BBC some years earlier. Others point to the writings on heredity of Francis Galton, a Victorian, but these days they seem tinged with racism, and no one in Mensa would want to have anything to do with that.

In 1967, after some 20 years of mulling over the matter, Mensa declared that Mr Ware was indeed its founder, and had run a similar group back in 1938. There is a plaque on a house in Oxford, where Mr Ware once lived, informing passing Romans that he was fons et origo Mensae. Founder he might be, but in the 1950s Mr Ware also quit Mensa, apparently tired of arguments among the elite. Like Roland Berrill, he had other interests, among them real tennis, which predates the Wimbledon sort and, according to addicts, is its superior. He sought to prove that the plays attributed to Shakespeare were by other hands, and he collected what he described as “useful pieces of wood”.

His law career was prospering – he specialised in “intellectual property”, such as copyright – and he took an interest in politics at a local level. Nevertheless, in 1961 he was easily persuaded to rejoin Mensa. He had “an easy rapport” with people of high intelligence, he said. By then Mensa had outgrown its infant waywardness. Victor Serebriakoff, who took over from Mr Ware, turned a wobbly membership of about 100, rather than the hoped-for 600, into a national, then an international, organisation.

Mensa now has about 100,000 members, almost half of them in the United States. Admission is by intelligence test. One reproduced in Mr Serebriakoff’s book would probably not tax any reader of The Economist. But being intelligent, if in fact any test can measure intelligence accurately, does not guarantee wisdom. Some of Mensa’s critics scoff that it is not selective enough. Mr Ware said he was disappointed that so many members spent so much time solving puzzles. “It’s a form of mental masturbation,” he said. “Nothing comes of it.” A Mensa gathering is “a place where eggheads get laid”, said a probably jealous outsider. Mensa has had many rivals, but few have lasted. Some were simply potty, like the Cinque, which aimed to consist of the world’s five brightest people. Mr Serebriakoff concedes that people in Mensa “bicker a lot”, but “we shall survive”.

Mensans, as they call themselves, take all jibes stoically. The American Mensans see themselves as a brotherhood and sisterhood who laugh and play and “cry on each other’s shoulders”. They display stickers on their car bumpers, proudly announcing their membership of Mensa. The British, as might be expected, tend to be more reticent. The pioneer members wore yellow buttons, but soon discarded the practice. You could never be sure, but some stranger might try to start up a conversation in a train.