steel hand, velvet glove

[Laurence Horn]

At 6:28 PM -0400 10/7/04, Douglas G. Wilson wrote:
>>Here's the primary OED cite (s.v. "iron, a.") :
>>
>>"1850 T. CARLYLE Latter-d. Pamph. ii. 8 Soft of speech and manner, yet
>>with an inflexible rigour of command..‘iron hand in a velvet glove’, as
>>Napoleon defined it."
>>
>>Carlyle's attribution may well be correct, as an ECCO search for "Iron
>>hand" + "velvet glove" yielded nothing.
>>
>>None of the OED cites, by the way, have "iron fist."
>
>>From Gallica on-line:
>
>----------
>
>Wairy, Constant, _Mémoires de Constant, Premier Valet de Chambre de
>l'Empereur, sur la Vie Privée de Napoléon, Sa Famille et Sa Cour_ (Ladvocat
>[Paris], 1830): vol. 3, p. 260:
>
><<On a dit qu'il faut gouverner les Français avec une main de fer et un
>gant de velours *>>
>
>[Footnote: <<* Ce mot est attribué à Bernadotte.>>]
>
>----------
>
>-- Doug Wilson

Interesting; this suggests a reanalysis of "an iron fist and a velvet
glove" (assuming that was the original calque) into "an iron fist in
a velvet glove", just as our "hand-in-glove" meaning 'intimate' seems
to have derived from the earlier "hand and glove", which was the
standard version until the early 19th century.

Larry