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<DIV><FONT size=2 face=Arial>When I was writing my little biography for the
British Library in the late 1990s, I couldn't find what I was (wrongly)
convinced was the quotation: "had there been such a thing as a
four-piece-suit, T S Eliot would have worn it" for the caption next to the snap
of him that I used (on page 59). Instead, I eschewed quotation marks
and wrote, "T S Eliot, of whom a friend once remarked that his clothes were
English but his underclothes were American'. How very SMART he looks in
that particular three-piece suit, and HOW TIDY his hair. There is,
however, a hint - in that slightly raised right eyebrow of his - of his thinking
"I know what you're thinking and I don't altogether approve." Sorry,
Tom.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=2 face=Arial></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=2 face=Arial>Ruth Webb</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=2 face=Arial>VWSGB Vice-Chair</FONT></DIV>
<BLOCKQUOTE
style="BORDER-LEFT: #000000 2px solid; PADDING-LEFT: 5px; PADDING-RIGHT: 0px; MARGIN-LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px">
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial">----- Original Message ----- </DIV>
<DIV
style="FONT: 10pt arial; BACKGROUND: #e4e4e4; font-color: black"><B>From:</B>
<A title=stuart.n.clarke@btinternet.com
href="mailto:stuart.n.clarke@btinternet.com">Stuart N. Clarke</A> </DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>To:</B> <A
title=VWOOLF@lists.acs.ohio-state.edu
href="mailto:VWOOLF@lists.acs.ohio-state.edu">woolf list</A> </DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>Sent:</B> Monday, February 24, 2014 11:41
AM</DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>Subject:</B> Re: [Vwoolf] four-piece
suit</DIV>
<DIV><BR></DIV>
<DIV dir=ltr>
<DIV style="FONT-FAMILY: 'Calibri'; COLOR: #000000; FONT-SIZE: 12pt">
<DIV>This is (allegedly) an uncollected PC from VW to Bell: see <SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: ; mso-fareast-font-family: times; mso-ansi-language: en-gb; mso-fareast-language: en-us; mso-bidi-language: ar-sa">Clive
Bell, <I style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal">Old Friends</I> (London: Chatto
& Windus, 1956), p. 120 (“<SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: ; mso-fareast-font-family: times; mso-ansi-language: en-gb; mso-fareast-language: en-us; mso-bidi-language: ar-sa">Tom
is coming, and, what is more, is coming with a four-piece suit</SPAN>”).<SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN></SPAN></DIV>
<DIV><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: ; mso-fareast-font-family: times; mso-ansi-language: en-gb; mso-fareast-language: en-us; mso-bidi-language: ar-sa"><SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"></SPAN></SPAN> </DIV>
<DIV><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: ; mso-fareast-font-family: times; mso-ansi-language: en-gb; mso-fareast-language: en-us; mso-bidi-language: ar-sa"><SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes">There seems to be a pun here on “three-piece suite”,
which in turn is non-U: we (we?) would say “a sofa and two (three)
chairs”.</SPAN></SPAN></DIV>
<DIV><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: ; mso-fareast-font-family: times; mso-ansi-language: en-gb; mso-fareast-language: en-us; mso-bidi-language: ar-sa"><SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"></SPAN></SPAN> </DIV>
<DIV><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: ; mso-fareast-font-family: times; mso-ansi-language: en-gb; mso-fareast-language: en-us; mso-bidi-language: ar-sa"><SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes">Stuart</SPAN></SPAN></DIV>
<DIV
style="FONT-STYLE: normal; DISPLAY: inline; FONT-FAMILY: 'Calibri'; COLOR: #000000; FONT-SIZE: small; FONT-WEIGHT: normal; TEXT-DECORATION: none">
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt tahoma">
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV style="BACKGROUND: #f5f5f5">
<DIV style="font-color: black"><B>From:</B> <A title=jeremy.hawthorn@ntnu.no
href="mailto:jeremy.hawthorn@ntnu.no">Jeremy Hawthorn</A> </DIV>
<DIV><B>Sent:</B> Monday, February 24, 2014 10:32 AM</DIV>
<DIV><B>To:</B> <A title=VWOOLF@lists.acs.ohio-state.edu
href="mailto:VWOOLF@lists.acs.ohio-state.edu">VWOOLF@lists.acs.ohio-state.edu</A>
</DIV>
<DIV><B>Subject:</B> [Vwoolf] four-piece suit</DIV></DIV></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV></DIV>
<DIV
style="FONT-STYLE: normal; DISPLAY: inline; FONT-FAMILY: 'Calibri'; COLOR: #000000; FONT-SIZE: small; FONT-WEIGHT: normal; TEXT-DECORATION: none">In
the <I>London Review of Books</I> for 20 February 2014 Colin Burrow has a
(good I think) review of Geoffrey Hill's <I>Broken Hierarchies: Poems
1952-2012</I>. Burrow notes that Hill was "a grammar-school-educated son of a
policeman from Bromsgrove, and so was not ever likely to be an Eliotean Tory
in a four-piece suit".<BR><BR>I was really puzzled by the "four-piece suit":
Google does suggest that the inclusion of a matching bow-tie can turn a
three-piece suit into a four-piece one, but I cannot imagine Eliot wearing
such a monstrosity. So I wrote to Burrow and he told me what I probably should
have known, that it was a joke, but not an original one, as he had stolen in
from Virginia Woolf. Woolf wrote to Clive Bell that she was always expecting
Eliot to turn up in a four-piece suit. I suppose the point of the joke is that
the fourth piece remains unspecified; Burrow admitted that he had wondered if
it could have been spats, while admitting that that would have meant five
pieces.<BR><BR>This somehow reminds me of the volume control in <I>This is
Spinal Tap</I> that goes up to 11.<BR><BR>Jeremy Hawthorn<BR>
<P>
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