[Vwoolf] The battle of life

[Adolphe Haberer]

Dear Stuart,
There is Dickens, of course, but don't you think 
that "the battle of life" is a sort of set phrase 
or cliché? My mother, whose life indeed was a 
long struggle, often commented on difficulties 
with a philosophical "C'est la lutte pour la vie 
!" She would almost automatically add the 
nonsensical "La canne et le parapluie" for the 
sake of the rhyme, and I always felt that she was 
quoting something she had heard people say when 
she was a child.
I was sufficiently intrigued by "the battle of 
life" to check "battle" in the OED online and 
search "life". Can you guess what the result was?

1653   S. Clarke Life Tamerlane 8   He divided 
his Army into three main Battels.

I thought Stuart would like that.
Best
Ado






>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" 
>(<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scare_quotes>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scare_quotes).
>
>See Wharton's "The Custom of the Country", "passim"!
>
>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)
>
>Andrew McNeillie annotates this with "The source 
>of this apparent quotation has not been 
>discovered" (p. 428, n. 3).
>
>If he hasn't found it in book under review, Mrs 
>Asquith's "Lay Sermons" (and neither have I; see 
>also
><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), 
>then it is likely that VW is distancing herself 
>from the concept: she writes "something which is 
>called ...", not "something which Mrs Asquith 
>calls ...".
>
>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.
>
>Stuart
>
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-- 
Adolphe Haberer
Professeur émérite, Université Lumière-Lyon 2,
1, route de Saint-Antoine
F-69380 Chazay d'Azergues
tel & fax +33 (0)4 78 43 65 24
E-mail : <Adolphe.Haberer at univ-lyon2.fr>, <ado at haberer.fr>