steel hand, velvet glove

[Jesse Sheidlower]

On Tue, Oct 05, 2004 at 02:31:46PM -0400, Douglas Bigham wrote:
> Does anyone have any info on "a steel hand in a velvet glove" or versions of
> it?

I thought [i.e. I'm too lazy to even Google it] that the canonical
form was "an iron fist in a velvet glove".

Jesse Sheidlower
OED