[Vwoolf] "squares where all the couples are triangles"

[Stuart N. Clarke]

Thanks to Vara’s lead, I have now discovered the origin of the phrase.  The result of my researches (if that doesn’t sound too pompous) will be published in the January 2018 issue of the “Virginia Woolf Bulletin”.

http://www.virginiawoolfsociety.co.uk/vw_bulletin.htm

Stuart

From: Neverow, Vara S. 
Sent: Wednesday, October 25, 2017 9:42 PM
To: vwoolf listserve 
Subject: [Vwoolf] A Bloomsbury real-estate article

Below is a guide to living in Bloomsbury (if you can afford it). 



The article uses the contested moniker Bloomsbury Set (not Group) and also garbles the phrase regarding those delightful Bloomsberries who "lived in squares, painted in circles, and loved in triangles," a phrase that Dorothy Parker did not devise. The article says that the Group members "lived in houses" (as opposed to tents, perhaps?)



I may have said this on the VW listserve before, but it's worth saying again that the original version of that phrase seems to have been coined by Margaret Irwin. Kingsley Martin indicates in the piece he wrote on 20 March 1941 for the “Critic’s London Diary” in the New Statesman that:  “Certainly it is no longer what Margaret Irwin used to describe in the twenties as the place where ‘all the couples were triangles and lived in squares’” (94). (see https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/alt.english.usage/ArJIaqXzADM). 


[snip]


Best, 



Vara





Vara Neverow
Department of English
Southern Connecticut State University
New Haven, CT 06515
203-392-6717
neverowv1 at southernct.edu
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