The Perfect Infinitive

“Let us take a typical case. A gentleman and his wife, calling on friends, find them not at home. The gentleman decides to leave a note of regret couched in a few well-chosen words, and the first thing he knows he is involved in this:

We would have liked to have found you in.

“Reading it over, the gentleman is assailed by the suspicion that he has too many ‘haves,’ and that the whole business has somehow been put too far into the past. … He takes an envelope out of his pocket and grimly makes a list of all the possible combinations, thus getting:”

We would have liked to have foundWe would have liked to findWe would like to have foundWe would like to findWe had hoped to have been able to have found

“If he has married the right kind of woman, she will hastily scratch a brief word on a calling card, shove it under the door, and drag her husband away.”

— James Thurber, “Ladies’ and Gentlemen’s Guide to Modern English Usage,” 1931