[Vwoolf] A four-piece suit

[Jeremy Hawthorn]

Yes, the commentary suggests that the four-piece suit comment by Woolf implies not so much social exclusiveness but more super-correctness and repression on Eliot's part. However the commentary is Raine's, not Woolf's. I assume that Raine's source is the same one in Bell's book; there seems to be no alternative source given anywhere else, and the original postcard it seems has not survived.

Quentin Bell published a book of family photographs some years back I recall, and commented in a slightly embarrassed way about the lack of clothes worn by those photographed. So I remember anyway. And there are all those comments (from Leonard, I think) about clothes being a nightmare to Virginia. So her view of Eliot's sartorial ultra orthodoxy may contain a whiff of envy along with the mockery.

Jeremy
________________________________
From: adolphe at haberer.fr [adolphe at haberer.fr] on behalf of Adolphe Haberer [Adolphe.Haberer at univ-lyon2.fr]
Sent: 25 February 2014 16:47
To: Jeremy Hawthorn; Vwoolf at lists.service.ohio-state.edu
Subject: Re: [Vwoolf] A four-piece suit

Dear Jeremy,
Just browsing on the internet, I found a mention of Eliot's four-piece suit attributed to Virginia Woolf:
"In June 1927 Eliot was received into the Church of England, and in November became a naturalised British citizen. Virginia Woolf writes of Eliot "in his four-piece suit" - repressed, reserved, buttoned-up."
This in an article by Craig Raine in The Guardian.  The "repressed, reserved, buttoned-up" commentary is interesting.
http://www.theguardian.com/books/2007/jan/06/poetry.thomasstearnseliot
With all best
Ado Haberer


2014-02-25 13:30 GMT+01:00 Jeremy Hawthorn <jeremy.hawthorn at ntnu.no<mailto:jeremy.hawthorn at ntnu.no>>:
This is interesting, but also intriguing. Did the person who so described Stevens know of Woolf's comment about Eliot, I wonder? It is possible that two people made the same joke independently, but it seems more likely that (as in the Hill review) Woolf is being quoted without attribution. I am assuming that there really is no such thing as a four-piece suit, but what do I know?

I am reminded of the skit:

    And this is good old Boston,
    The home of the bean and the cod,
    Where the Lowells talk only to Cabots,
    And the Cabots talk only to God.

In both cases you think of a measure of upper-crustedness, and then top it.

Jeremy H

Den 24.02.2014 17<tel:24.02.2014%2017>:02, skrev Adolphe Haberer:
Not so rare as all that: There is a biography of Wallace Stevens by William Pritchard entitled _The Man who Wore a Four-Piece Suit_
See http://www.nytimes.com/1983/11/20/books/the-man-who-wore-a-four-piece-suit.html
Ado Haberer

Adolphe Haberer
Professeur émérite à l'Université Lumière-Lyon 2
1 route de Saint-Antoine
69380 Chazay d'Azergues
33 (0)4 78 43 65 24
adolphe.haberer at univ-lyon2.fr<mailto:adolphe.haberer at univ-lyon2.fr>



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