[Ads-l] a couple of quotations: sources needed

[George Thompson]

Garson's quotation crediting Margaret Irwin with a variant of the
Bloomsbury tag is from the New Statesman and Nation, March 29, 1941, p.
317, the 3rd paragraph under the headline A London Diary.
A pdf attached -- with luck it will be allowed through.  [no luck: i've
sent it directly to Garson, and will sent it to any one else, upon request]

I note that the writer attributes the quotation when I hear of culture I
reach for my revolver to Goering.  I recall, from decades ago, that it has
been attributed to a Spanish Fascist general, during the Spanish Civil
War.  I no doubt saw this in Hugh Thomas' book.

GAT

On Thu, Sep 3, 2015 at 1:42 PM, George Thompson <george.thompson at nyu.edu>
wrote:

>
> Garson's quotation crediting Margaret Irwin with a variant of the
> Bloomsbury tag is from the New Statesman and Nation, March 29, 1941, p.
> 317, the 3rd paragraph under the headline A London Diary.
> A pdf attached -- with luck it will be allowed through.
>
> I note that the writer attributes the quotation when I hear of culture I
> reach for my revolver to Goering.  I recall, from decades ago, that it has
> been attributed to a Spanish Fascist general, during the Spanish Civil
> War.  I no doubt saw this in Hugh Thomas' book.
>
> On Thu, Sep 3, 2015 at 12:24 AM, ADSGarson O'Toole <
> adsgarsonotoole at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> The quotation about Bloomsbury has many variants. Below is an instance
>> attributed to Margaret Irwin in the Google Books database in a book
>> with a GB year of 1960. Only a snippet was visible but the snippet
>> revealed a date of March 29, 1941. Apparently, the excerpt below
>> appeared in the New Statesman in 1941. Maybe something similar can be
>> found in the 1920s or 1930s.
>>
>> Year: 1960
>> Book title: Critic's London Diary: From the New Statesman, 1931-1956
>> Book author: Kingsley Martin
>> Date within text: March 29, 1941
>> Quote Page 94
>> Publisher: Secker & Warburg, London
>> Database: Google Books Snippet View; data may be inaccurate and should
>> be checked on paper; 1941 date is visible in snippet with quotation
>> text
>>
>> https://books.google.com/books?id=mKYeAAAAIAAJ
>>
>> [Begin excerpt]
>>                                                             29 March, 1941
>>
>> I wonder what people mean by "Bloomsbury"? I asked myself as I looked
>> at the dismantled flat. 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". Whatever it was once, it is gone
>> now.
>> [End excerpt]
>>
>> Garson
>>
>> On Wed, Sep 2, 2015 at 10:56 PM, Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at yale.edu>
>> wrote:
>> > ---------------------- Information from the mail header
>> -----------------------
>> > Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>> > Poster:       Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU>
>> > Subject:      Re: a couple of quotations: sources needed
>> >
>> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>> >
>> >> On Sep 2, 2015, at 8:12 PM, George Thompson <george.thompson at NYU.EDU>
>> =
>> > wrote:
>> >>=20
>> >> An article in the August 14, 2015 TLS refers to an "apocryphal =
>> > description"
>> >> by Dorothy Parker of the Bloomsbury group as "living in squares, =
>> > painting
>> >> in circles and loving in triangles".  It's not in YBQ -- i didn't look
>> =
>> > in
>> >> the other quote books I have, and in general, I don't look things up
>> >> on-line -- sorry about that.
>> >
>> >
>> > Hmm.  An wonderful line from Dorothy Parker about the Bloomsburys to be
>> =
>> > sure, whether or not apocryphal (though a shame if it is).  And it is =
>> > all over the web, without an obvious source.  But it was the phrasing =
>> > that caused a brief double-take for me.  I took the reference to
>> >
>> > 'an "apocryphal description" by Dorothy Parker of the Bloomsbury group =
>> > as "living in squares, painting in circles and loving in triangles"'
>> >
>> > as thrusting Parker herself from the Algonquin Circle into the complex =
>> > group algebras of the Bloomsburys (which she might have enjoyed for a =
>> > bit).  And all because of the syntactic versatility of "of"; "Dorothy =
>> > Parker's 'apocryphal description' of the Bloomsbury group..." wouldn't =
>> > have allowed those same enticing possibilities.
>> >
>> > LH
>> >
>> >> Whoever said it, it's a witty remark, and all too true.
>> >> It's been taken for the title of a new book on the group, by Amy =
>> > License:
>> >> Living in Squares, Loving in Triangles.
>> >>=20
>> >
>> > ------------------------------------------------------------
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>>
>> ------------------------------------------------------------
>> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>>
>
>
>
> --
> George A. Thompson
> The Guy Who Still Looks Stuff Up in Books.
> Author of A Documentary History of "The African Theatre", Northwestern
> Univ. Pr., 1998..
>



-- 
George A. Thompson
The Guy Who Still Looks Stuff Up in Books.
Author of A Documentary History of "The African Theatre", Northwestern
Univ. Pr., 1998..

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org