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<DIV>Not all phrases in quotation marks are quotations as such. They may
be what is now called “scare quotes”. For example, they may be a
distancing mechanism, implying that the phrase “is not necessarily the way the
quoting person would express its concept” (<A
title=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scare_quotes
href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scare_quotes">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scare_quotes</A>).</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>See Wharton’s “The Custom of the Country”, “passim”!</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>In “The Governess of Downing Street”, VW writes that “we are listening
submissively to a severe lady who is preparing us in a clear metallic voice for
something which is called ‘the battle of life’.” (The Essays, Vol. IV, p.
426)</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>Andrew McNeillie annotates this with “The source of this apparent quotation
has not been discovered” (p. 428, n. 3).</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>If he hasn’t found it in book under review, Mrs Asquith’s “Lay Sermons”
(and neither have I; see also</DIV>
<DIV><A
title=http://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt/search?id=mdp.39015063945920;view=1up;seq=9;q1=battle;start=1;size=10;page=search;orient=0
href="http://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt/search?id=mdp.39015063945920;view=1up;seq=9;q1=battle;start=1;size=10;page=search;orient=00">http://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt/search?id=mdp.39015063945920;view=1up;seq=9;q1=battle;start=1;size=10;page=search;orient=0</A>),
then it is likely that VW is distancing herself from the concept: she writes
“something which is called ...”, not “something which Mrs Asquith calls
...”.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>Although the phrase sounds Darwinian (he does use it several times in
“Origin of Species” [1859]), it was probably popularised by Dickens in his
Christmas book, “The Battle of Life” (1846). I’m sure he didn’t invent the
phrase. Mrs Carlyle writes of “the battle of existence” in a letter of 5
Oct 1840.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>Stuart</DIV></DIV></DIV></DIV></DIV></DIV></DIV></DIV></DIV></DIV></DIV></DIV></BODY></HTML>