"Bluebeard" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... was not this characteristic?—the ruling passions of Pope are nothing to it. Whilst the poor distracted manager was bewailing the loss of a building only worth 300,000 l., together with some twenty thousand pounds of rags and tinsel in the tiring rooms, Bluebeard's elephants, and all that—in comes a note from a scorching author, requiring at his hands two acts and odd scenes of ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. I. (of VI.) - With his Letters and Journals. • Thomas Moore
... yet the conceits which are showered upon it exactly harmonise with the mood of most of the stories that have attracted his pencil. Grimm's "Household Stories," as he pictured them, are a lasting joy. The "Bluebeard" and "Jack and the Beanstalk" toy books, the "Princess Belle Etoile," and a dozen others are nursery classics, and classics also of the other nursery where children of a larger growth take ...
— Children's Books and Their Illustrators • Gleeson White
... unchivalrous days of Henry VIII. a Sir W. Hungerford, who, like his royal master, was a much married man, consigned his third wife to these uninviting quarters, and kept her under lock and key, with a chaplain for her only attendant. The lady, however, not only survived this knightly Bluebeard, but had the courage to contract a second marriage. The general arrangements of the castle are not very obvious to the casual observer. It seems to have consisted of a gatehouse and an outer and inner court. ...
— Somerset • G.W. Wade and J.H. Wade
... were of daily, sometimes hourly, occurrence,—a bell, the rope of which descended into the hall, brought the whole of the turnkeys to their assistance. A narrow passage at the north of the Stone Hall led to the Bluebeard's room of this enchanted castle, a place shunned even by the reckless crew who were compelled to pass it. It was a sort of cooking-room, with an immense fire-place flanked by a couple of cauldrons, and was called Jack Ketch's Kitchen, because the quarters of persons ...
— Jack Sheppard - A Romance • William Harrison Ainsworth
... awe. But, naturally, on my report of the case, the whole of our party were devoured by a curiosity to see the departed fair one. Had Mr. White, indeed, furnished us with the key of the museum, leaving us to our own discretion, but restricting us only (like a cruel Bluebeard) from looking into any ante-room, great is my fear that the perfidious question would have arisen amongst us—what o'clock it was? and all possible ante-rooms would have given way to the just fury of our passions. I submitted ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... Those people could speak French, and Mr. Caruthers could speak Spanish, and Mr. Lenox spoke German. Whether well or ill, Lois did not know; but in any case, how many doors, in literature and in life, stood open to them; which were closed and locked doors to her! And we all know, that ever since Bluebeard's time—I might go back further, and say, ever since Eve's time—Eve's daughters have been unable to stand before a closed door without the wish to open it. The impulse, partly for good, partly for evil, is incontestable. Lois fairly longed to know what Tom and his sister knew in the fields ...
— Nobody • Susan Warner
... fancy of the ancients to make woman the incarnation of original sin,—the tempter and the temptation in one,—a combination of the apple and the serpent. King David, Herod, and even the terrible Bluebeard, might have behaved well in a world without women. It is proverbial that there is no quarrel ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 108, October, 1866 • Various
... can: and the truth is, that for reasons you may understand some day—though I hope to Heaven you'll never have to!—my association with those men is one of the things I long to turn the key upon. I know that that sounds like Bluebeard to Fatima, but it isn't as bad as that. To me, it doesn't seem bad at all. And I swear that whatever mystery—if you call it 'mystery'—there is about me, it sha'n't hurt you. Will you believe this—and ...
— The Second Latchkey • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... army of shining and generous dreams," an army that is easily routed, an army that the wife too often puts to flight with an injudicious criticism. It is said that since Prohibition came in the cases of cruelty to wives have increased greatly in number. We do not disbelieve this. Bluebeard was ...
— The So-called Human Race • Bert Leston Taylor
... the Church differed widely from that in which the archdeacon had been reared. To him a clergyman was a priest who belonged to a sacerdotal caste, and who ought not "to merge himself in the body of the nation." To him the Reformation was an infamous crime, and Henry VIII. was worse than the Bluebeard of the nursery. His hero was Thomas a Becket. He wrote a sketch of his life and career, which he did not live to finish. His friends ill-advisedly published it after his death. His ideal ecclesiastical statesman of modern times was Archbishop Laud. Charles I. was a martyr, and the Revolution ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude
... wish I could guess—it is too absurd to doubt, and worse to ask; and, what's more, he would not stand it. If I did but know! I'm not so far gone yet, but that I could leave the field to him, if that would do him any good. Heigh ho! it would be en regle to begin to hate him, and be as jealous as Bluebeard; but there! I don't know which it is to be about, and one can't be jealous for two ladies at once, luckily, for it would be immensely troublesome, unless a good, hearty quarrel would be wholesome to ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. I) - or, The Clue of Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... about to enter a Bluebeard's castle, but deeming it polite to take no notice of the uproar, she tried to appear unheeding though the shrieks increased in violence as they came up to the house and the carriage stopped ...
— Patty Fairfield • Carolyn Wells
... goodwife. feme [Fr.], feme coverte [Fr.]; squaw, lady; matron, matronage, matronhood^; man and wife; wedded pair, Darby and Joan; spiritual wife. monogamy, bigamy, digamy^, deuterogamy^, trigamy^, polygamy; mormonism; levirate^; spiritual wifery^, spiritual wifeism^; polyandrism^; Turk, bluebeard^. unlawful marriage, left-handed marriage, morganatic marriage, ill- assorted marriage; mesalliance; mariage de convenance [Fr.]. marriage broker; matrimonial agency, matrimonial agent, matrimonial bureau, matchmaker; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... bath at Trichinopoly in 1826. In addition to Palestine he wrote Europe, a poem having reference specially to the Peninsular War, and left various fragments, including an Oriental romance based on the story of Bluebeard. H.'s reputation now rests mainly on his hymns, of which several, e.g., From Greenland's Icy Mountains, Brightest and Best of the Sons of the Morning, and Holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty, are sung wherever the English ...
— A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature • John W. Cousin
... favourites of God were not admirable characters, and that therefore the Bible cannot be a divine revelation. As for animus: I do not believe any of these men ever existed. I regard them as myths. Should one be angry with a myth? I should as soon think of being angry with Bluebeard, or the ...
— God and my Neighbour • Robert Blatchford
... by Arthur's study I looked in, and saw his bunch of keys hanging in the drawer of his desk, where he'd forgotten 'em. Well, I guess we're all to the Mrs. Bluebeard now and then, ain't we, Lynn? I made up my mind I'd have a look at that memento he kept so secret. Not that I cared what it was—it ...
— The Voice of the City • O. Henry
... of dust arising far ahead along the road wrought up his hopes to a Bluebeard pitch, as regularly to fall. First came a cast-off soldier from the war in the Netherlands, rakishly forlorn, his breastplate full of rusty dents, his wild hair worn by his steel cap, swaggering along on a sorry hack with ...
— Master Skylark • John Bennett
... thousand airs that are always floating in German brains. Sometimes, if the ballad was a favourite one, the others would take part in any verses that contained a dialogue. This was generally the case with some verses in the pet ballad of Bluebeard, at that exciting point where Sister Anne is looking from the castle window. First the Maerchen-Frau read ...
— Melchior's Dream and Other Tales • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... most obscure garments. I tried to spread them out. I used two hooks to every petticoat, and three for my kimono, and when I had finished there were rows of hooks to spare. Tiers of shelves yawned for hat-boxes which I possessed not. Bluebeard's wives could have held a family reunion in that closet and invited all of Solomon's spouses. Finally, in desperation, I gathered all my poor garments together and hung them in a sociable bunch on the hooks nearest the door. How ...
— Dawn O'Hara, The Girl Who Laughed • Edna Ferber
... Buda Pesth. All Europe pitied her at the time; there was but one form of prophecy as to her future. There were those who went so far as to say that her father had delivered her into the hands of a latter-day Bluebeard, who whisked her off into the highlands many ...
— Truxton King - A Story of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... London home there is nothing to fascinate the eye. The contemplation of the mews and the chimney-pots through the back-windows of the nursery will not elevate even the most impressible child. There is no mystery, no dreamland, no Enchanted Palace, no Bluebeard's Chamber, in a stucco mansion built by Cubitt, or a palace of terra-cotta on the Cadogan estate. There can be no traditions of the past, no inspiring memories of virtuous ancestry, in a house which your father bought five years ...
— Fifteen Chapters of Autobiography • George William Erskine Russell
... is one thing in little girls more hateful than another, it is curiosity," answered Chirper, with her mouth half-full of nails. "Curiosity has been the bane of many of our sex. Witness Bluebeard's unhappy wife. If you want to know more, you must ask Mrs. Whitehead. I have my instructions and I act ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 1, January, 1891 • Various
... quarrelsome—the lie circumstantial and the lie direct—are of immeasurably greater interest in the House of Commons than the health, the taxation, and the education, of a whole people. I will not penetrate into the mysteries of that secret chamber in which the Bluebeard of Party keeps his strangled public questions, and with regard to which, when he gives the key to his wife, the new comer, he strictly charges her on no account to open the door. I will merely put it to the experience of everybody here, whether the House of Commons ...
— Speeches: Literary and Social • Charles Dickens
... genius, his diffusion, and affluence of conversation; but I would not talk to him of the Rockingham party.' GOLDSMITH. 'But, Sir, when people live together who have something as to which they disagree, and which they want to shun, they will be in the situation mentioned in the story of Bluebeard: "You may look into all the chambers but one." But we should have the greatest inclination to look into that chamber, to talk of that subject.' JOHNSON, (with a loud voice.) 'Sir, I am not saying that you could ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell
... answer. The books and newspapers talk about women's curiosity. It's nothing to a man's curiosity when it is aroused. Oh, I know the story of Bluebeard very well. But if Mrs. Bluebeard had been a strong minded woman, and had killed her seven husbands, I wonder if the eighth would not have taken a peep. He would not have waited for the key but would have broken ...
— Laicus - The experiences of a Layman in a Country Parish • Lyman Abbott
... inspect them, and select one according to his taste. But this Oriental notion was not indulged by the French king, who had more taste and delicacy; and Henry remained without a wife for more than two years, the princesses of Europe not being very eager to put themselves in the power of this royal Bluebeard. At last, at the suggestion of Cromwell, he was affianced to Anne, daughter of the Duke of Cleves, whose home was on the banks of the Rhine, in ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord
... story," and mamma, tired and weary, says she is too busy, or, for the want of a better, tells over again for the hundredth time, "Little Red Riding Hood," or some other equally foolish or more injurious tale, such as Bluebeard or Cinderella. Anecdotes of great men, suitably arranged, events in history and biography, carrying with them valuable and important morals, will afford all the amusement the child desires, without developing a love ...
— The Philosophy of Teaching - The Teacher, The Pupil, The School • Nathaniel Sands
... him," she resumed, "he'd better watch his reputation, for he was beginning to be regarded as the local Bluebeard. Oh, I was as frank as George Washington. And I told him also that there isn't a man inside the U.S.A. that would treat a black as he treats his wife. I think that surprised him some, for he began to stutter, and then of course I had the advantage. ...
— The Knave of Diamonds • Ethel May Dell
... even plays it with me. It makes horrid things seem nice. And Jimmie never wanted me to know the boys and girls at school—because I'm lame, I guess—so I always pretended things about them and gave them names. You should have seen Bluebeard." She laughed at the recollection. "And now I'm going on playing. I'm the little beggar-maid who awakens to find her self in the castle. Do you suppose there's a fairy godmother somewhere? ...
— Red-Robin • Jane Abbott
... was Lucille, "a daughter of the gods, divinely tall," linked forever to the dwarf Perrywinkle; there was my friend Porphyro, the poet, with his delicate genius shrivelled in the glare of the youngest Miss Lucifer's eyes; there they were, Beauty and the Beast, Pride and Humility, Bluebeard and Fatima, Prose and Poetry, Riches and Poverty, Youth and Crabbed Age— Oh, sorrowful procession! All so wretched, when perhaps all might have been so happy if they had only paired differently! I halted ...
— A Midnight Fantasy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... somebody were coming in or going out, or there was something to be hidden in those dark mahogany presses. Is there an inner apartment that I have not seen? The way in which the house is built might admit of it. As I thought it over, I at once imagined a Bluebeard's chamber. Suppose, for instance, that the narrow bookshelves to the right are really only a masked door, such as we remember leading to the private study of one of our most distinguished townsmen, who loved to steal away from his stately library to that ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... raving about your gallantry," said Dan with all a brother's ruthlessness, "until I told them it was merely a habit of mind with you; then Sis called you a Bluebeard." ...
— The Iron Trail • Rex Beach
... into the living-room. There might be more notes there. Her spirits had gone up, and she was laughing to herself a little—it felt like exploring Bluebeard's castle. She investigated the book case, shaking out every book. She ran up to the toy balcony and even pushed out the couch there, noticing for the first time that the balcony had curtains which could be drawn. But there was nothing behind couch or curtains. She ...
— I've Married Marjorie • Margaret Widdemer
... and went into his tiny workroom. His pile of manuscript notes about the Marshal de Rais, surnamed Bluebeard, looked at him derisively from the ...
— La-bas • J. K. Huysmans
... structure; until he is actually able to buy it back with the compound interest that has been accumulating. In that case nothing will be left but a heap of ruins. One could shriek and tear one's hair because the German does not see that in his basement there is an awful Bluebeard's chamber. And not for women alone. He has no inkling of what an arsenal of clerical instruments of torture lie there ready for use—clerical, because they lie ready for the infliction of horrible corporal martyrdom in the service of a bloody, fanatical, papistical belief. Woe, when the ...
— Atlantis • Gerhart Hauptmann
... cellar with a flaring candle—furtive explorations of the storeroom. And when we came to a door that was locked—Aha! Here was a puzzle and a problem! We tried every key in the house, right side up and upside down. Bluebeard's wife, poor creature,—if I read the tale aright,—was merely seeking her Christmas presents around the house ...
— Chimney-Pot Papers • Charles S. Brooks
... down the book, and went to her closet for another; but it was as good (or as bad) as Bluebeard's closet, for there hung the pretty crimson merino, with delicate lace at the throat and round the short sleeves, in which Miss Lizzy Griswold once intended to electrify Mr. John Boynton this very evening. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 17, March, 1859 • Various
... did Jack refuse food and a draught of cold water, the greatest boon, in our ardent climate, that he could offer, to a wearied child? Oh, there was much poetry in the poor fellow! And here, had they not that most melodramatic (as you choose to word it) of thieves, Blackbeard, before whom Bluebeard must for ever hide his diminished head? Why, Bluebeard had only one wife at a time, although he murdered five of them, whereas Blackbeard had seldom fewer than a dozen, and he was never known to murder above three. But I have fallen ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... had been said about it, and he had agreed. Are you going to tell me that he won't go out with you, and yet dislikes your going out without him? Is he such a Bluebeard as that?" ...
— Is He Popenjoy? • Anthony Trollope
... time after the fatal accident which deprived her of her husband, Mrs. Bluebeard was, as may be imagined, in ...
— Stories of Comedy • Various
... should be ashamed of myself if I did not; and I am sure that none of us, who are good for anything, have altogether lost that old belief; and when we look back at those days of young romance, and remember the thrill with which we read of Bluebeard's punishment, and Beauty's reward, we feel that it would be better for us if they had more of that old childlike faith. And so I encourage my youngsters to read and listen to, over and over again, the same ...
— Our Young Folks, Vol 1, No. 1 - An Illustrated Magazine • Various
... that's wrong," replied Helen. "No superman ever said 'I want,' because 'I want' must lead to the question, 'Who am I?' and so to Pity and to Justice. He only says 'want.' 'Want Europe,' if he's Napoleon; 'want wives,' if he's Bluebeard; 'want Botticelli,' if he's Pierpont Morgan. Never the 'I'; and if you could pierce through him, you'd find panic and emptiness in ...
— Howards End • E. M. Forster
... seemed to her if that had been the case he would have enlisted in the Navy. He talked like a man who had spent many years on the water; but in labour or in pleasure, he made it most difficult for her to tell. Of his people, of his past, not Bluebeard's closet was more firmly shut. Still with a little smile she recalled that eventually a woman had opened that closet door, and hadn't had her ...
— The Pagan Madonna • Harold MacGrath
... so—not particularly. She is fond of church and all that, but she doesn't often speak out as she did at dinner to-night. Now, don't let us be gloomy; come indoors, and I will show you Bluebeard's cupboard in the study, It is well worth looking at, for it is beautifully carved, and I am going to try and copy it. You know how ...
— The Carved Cupboard • Amy Le Feuvre
... soul's pretty clean-swept, I think, save for one Bluebeard chamber in it that's been kep' locked ever so many years. It's nice and dirty by this time, I expect,' he says. Then the grin comes on his mouth again. 'I'll open it some day,' he says, 'and look. There's something in it about comparing me to a dancing dervish, with the wind in my ...
— At a Winter's Fire • Bernard Edward J. Capes
... single battle. If only somebody or something would tell them whether they were for war or peace! The oracles were dumb, and all summer long they looked anxiously out, like Sister Anne from her tower, for the hero who should rescue unhappy Columbia from the Republican Bluebeard. Did they see a cloud of dust in the direction of Richmond or Atlanta? Perhaps Grant might be the man, after all, or even Sherman would answer at a pinch. When at last no great man would come along, it was debated ...
— The Writings of James Russell Lowell in Prose and Poetry, Volume V - Political Essays • James Russell Lowell
... needless to say that forbidden doors and rooms form a lieu-commun in Fairie: they are found in the Hindu Katha Sarit Sagara and became familiar to our childhood by "Bluebeard." ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... him of nothing so much as of Bluebeard in the fairy books, or the Black Brothers in "The ...
— Panther Eye • Roy J. Snell
... all own up—we men of above forty who aspire to respectability and do actually live orderly lives and achieve even the odor of sanctity—have we not been stained with murder?—aye worse! What man has not his Bluebeard closet, full of early crimes and villainies? A certain boy in whom I take a particular interest, who goes to Sunday-school and whose life is outwardly proper—is he not now on week days a robber of great renown? A week ago, masked and armed, he held ...
— The Delicious Vice • Young E. Allison
... This way, I know every inch of this palace. It was left to the Fairy Berylune by Bluebeard.... Let us make the most of our last minute of liberty, while the children and Light pay their visit to the Fairy's little daughter.... I have brought you here in order to discuss the position in which we are placed.... Are ...
— The Blue Bird: A Fairy Play in Six Acts • Maurice Maeterlinck
... own voluminous writings it would seem to be extremely doubtful whether he ever saw Anne of Cleves at all, and we suspect him here of being no more than a slavish echo of the common voice, which attributed Cromwell's downfall to the ugliness of this bride he procured for his Bluebeard master. To the common voice from the brush of Holbein, which permits us to form our own opinions and shows us a lady who is certainly very far from deserving his lordship's harsh stricture. Similarly, I like to believe that Lord Henry was wrong in his pronouncement upon Sir Oliver, and ...
— The Sea-Hawk • Raphael Sabatini
... world," he continued, "who would find it hard to stand a single disappointment about a woman. But think of a thousand disappointments! A thousand attempts to find a good wife—just one woman who could furnish a man a little rational companionship at night. Bluebeard also must have been a well-informed person. And Henry the Eighth—there was a man who had evidently picked up considerable knowledge and who made considerable use of it. But to go back a moment to the idea of the felis family. Suppose we do this: we'll begin to ...
— The Choir Invisible • James Lane Allen
... could scarcely support them. Cicely, from the place where she was standing, could fortunately look through the window and command a view of the field below. Though she gazed with as keen anxiety as Sister Anne in the story of Bluebeard, she did not see anybody hurrying to their rescue. The dog apparently grew a little tired, for it threw itself down on the floor, but without relaxing any of its ...
— The Manor House School • Angela Brazil
... constant evidence of derivation from the earliest, common sources of all folk-lore and myth; parallels to the fairy tales and legends of other lands and other ages. There is a version of the Bluebeard theme in Imarasugssuaq, "who, it is said, was wont to eat his wives." Instances of friendship and affection between human beings and animals are found, as in the tale of the Foster-mother and the Bear. Various resemblances to ...
— Eskimo Folktales • Unknown
... stealing of keys and peering into Bluebeard's closet," said Dicky gayly, as he closed and locked ...
— Revelations of a Wife - The Story of a Honeymoon • Adele Garrison
... the teacher smiled a real, sure-enough schoolma'am smile, and remarked that she hoped our brilliant scholar, Mister Champneys, knew now what the boy got for his chestnuts. The class laughed as good scholars are expected to laugh on such occasions. Peter came to the conclusion that Herod, Nero, Bluebeard, and The Cruel Stepmother all probably began ...
— The Purple Heights • Marie Conway Oemler
... call 'To Rescue from Imminent Danger,' has been widely popular alike with the ancients and the moderns, so we have in subdivision (A) a condemned person rescued by a hero, as in the myth of Andromeda, the folk-tale of Bluebeard, and the first act of 'Lohengrin'; and in subdivision (B2) a condemned person rescued by a guest of the house, as ...
— Inquiries and Opinions • Brander Matthews
... by the comparison, Shakespeare or the folk-tales? It might be rather a pleasant task to discover who is the Cordelia, the Othello, the Rosalind, and the Portia of the folk-tales; or who the Beauty, the Bluebeard, the Cinderella, the Puss-in-Boots, and the Hop-o'-my-Thumb, ...
— A Study of Fairy Tales • Laura F. Kready
... had not had the pleasure of cutting off her head. Here he married his sixth wife, Lady Catherine Parr, widow of Neville, Lord Latimer, and sister of the Marquis of Northampton. This lady, who had the hardihood to marry this royal Bluebeard, after he had divorced two wives and chopped off the heads of two others, narrowly escaped the fate she so rashly hazarded. The very warrant for her committal to the Tower, whence she was only to be brought forth to be burned at the stake for heresy, ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume I. - Great Britain and Ireland • Various
... you," Dorry protested, merrily. "But it was so funny to hear you putting the English queens into the pots and pans; that was all. Here, let me help a little. Come, Jamie, sit on Dotty's lap, and she'll tell you all about Bluebeard." ...
— Donald and Dorothy • Mary Mapes Dodge
... one of the fifty-seven varieties of which he was a firm believer. He told me that his astral colors were red and blue, and that a phrenologist had told him that a bump on the back of his head indicated that he ought never to buy mining stock. With the same instinct that undid Bluebeard's and Lot's wives he had tried it, and is once more back at his job of gardening with ...
— The Smiling Hill-Top - And Other California Sketches • Julia M. Sloane
... its thousand follies and extravagances. Robert Macaire had all these to exploiter. Of all the empire, through all the ranks, professions, the lies, crimes, and absurdities of men, he may make sport at will; of all except of a certain class. Like Bluebeard's wife, he may see everything, but is bidden TO BEWARE OF THE BLUE CHAMBER. Robert is more wise than Bluebeard's wife, and knows that it would cost him his head to enter it. Robert, therefore, keeps aloof for the moment. Would there be any use in his martyrdom? Bluebeard cannot ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... thought the Count; "but the fair songster who signals from her window and has clandestine meetings at midnight with masculine voices must expect some incredulity on that point. Can it be possible that here I have Bluebeard or Lothario? The laughter of the woman seems to indicate that if here is not Lothario, here at all events is something more than seems upon the surface. Tonnerre de dieu! I become suspicious of the whole breed ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro
... sounded her relative on the subject, and was laughingly informed that she might go anywhere about the place she pleased, saving to one spot, namely, "Bluebeard's Chamber"; and there she could certainly never succeed in poking her nose, as its locality was known only to three people, all of whom were pledged never to reveal it. At the commencement of her tour of inspection, Mrs. ...
— Scottish Ghost Stories • Elliott O'Donnell
... will enter the Forbidden Chamber, and I shall have to play Bluebeard. This time, however, I do not mind. Leave it there ...
— The Lure of the Mask • Harold MacGrath
... you going to stay? Tell me, Louis. I'm as tragically curious as Pandora and Psyche and Bluebeard's wife, melted into the one ...
— The Common Law • Robert W. Chambers
... He drew back at once. "If you go you will make me nervous—and the recital is sold out," he signalled. She regarded him steadily. "Your art usually ends in the box-office." They drank their coffee sadly. Leaving her with a pad upon which he had scribbled "Patience, Fatima, wife of Bluebeard!" Belus went to his concert, she ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker
... the star boarder. As everything about the place was misnamed, the alley itself included, so was he. His real name was Michael, but the children called him Barney, and the name stuck. When they were at odds, as they usually were, they shouted "Barney Bluebeard!" after him, and ran away and hid in trembling delight as he shook his key-ring at them, and showed his teeth with the evil leer which he reserved specially for them. It was reported in the alley that he was a woman-hater; hence the ...
— The Battle with the Slum • Jacob A. Riis
... that you served her right in the last beating matter? and weren't they coming to knives, just as in your case? By my faith, they were. Ay, and at the "Braund's Head," when some fellow said that you were a bloody Bluebeard, and would murder your wife, stab me if Tom wasn't up in an instant and knocked the fellow ...
— Catherine: A Story • William Makepeace Thackeray
... dismay, Albinia could not help thinking of Bluebeard's closet. Her inclination was to stay where she was, and take her chance of losing her head, yet she felt as if she could not bear to be found invading a sanctuary of past recollections, and was relieved to find that it was a false alarm, though not relieved by the announcement ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge
... as well as I do that we all like that kind of play, whether we admit it or not—something along in between "Bluebeard, Jr.," and "Cymbeline" ...
— Strictly Business • O. Henry
... varied, the most erroneous opinions have been expressed with regard to the famous individual commonly known as Bluebeard. None, perhaps, was less tenable than that which made of this gentleman a personification of the Sun. For this is what a certain school of comparative mythology set itself to do, some forty years ago. It informed the ...
— The Seven Wives Of Bluebeard - 1920 • Anatole France
... therefore relatively more simple—they were terrified of anything that had been "already said." The most gifted of them coldly devoted themselves to working contrariwise. The process was childishly simple: they pitched on some beautiful legend or fairy-story, and turned it upside down. Thus, Bluebeard was beaten by his wives, or Polyphemus was kind enough to pluck out his eye by way of sacrificing himself to the happiness of Acis and Galatea. And they thought of nothing but form. And once more it seemed to Christophe (though ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland
... somewhat freely with the popular life of the great city. She was taken to Drury Lane, the Covent Garden theatres, and to other places of amusement, but she could not "like plays." She saw some good actors; witnessed "Hamlet," "Bluebeard," and other dramas, but confesses that she "cannot like or enjoy them"; they seemed "so artificial." Then she somewhat oddly says that when her hair was dressed "she felt like a monkey," and finally concluded that "London ...
— Elizabeth Fry • Mrs. E. R. Pitman
... first few days after our arrival, my time was agreeably spent in receiving the visits of the nobility and gentry who came to pay their respects to the noble new-married couple, and, like Bluebeard's wife in the fairy tale, in inspecting the treasures, the furniture, and the numerous chambers of the castle. It is a huge old place, built as far back as Henry V.'s time, besieged and battered by the Cromwellians in the Revolution, and altered ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray
... hair—to make pompadour. Last week when they have tableaux, Patty has borrowed it and has dyed it with blueing to make a beard for Bluebeard. But being yellow to start, it has become green, and the color will not wash out. The sweetch is ruin—entirely ruin—and Patty is desolate. She has apologize. She thought it would wash, but since it will not wash, she has suggest to ...
— Just Patty • Jean Webster
... and tongs. I may say that we were all fairly intimate friends, and thus had the advantage of entire liberty of speech. I looked daggers at the husband; he looked daggers at me, and occasionally looking at his wife, gave her a glance which was like the opening of Bluebeard's closet. You could see the poor murdered bodies dangling within the shadowy cupboard of his eye. Of course we got no further. Additional opposition but further enraged him. He recapitulated what he would no doubt call his arguments,—they sounded more like threats,—and ...
— The Quest of the Golden Girl • Richard le Gallienne
... bitterest blunder of my life was committed there—a blunder that I never can repair in this world, and may be damned for in the next. Rest satisfied with this, Babie, lest you prove like Bluebeard's wife, and make another skeleton in my ...
— Pauline's Passion and Punishment • Louisa May Alcott
... princesses, queens in glittering raiment, fairies and elves. Without these ugly figures, folk-tales would soon lose their power to charm. All tale tellers know that fear is a potent spell. The curiosity which drove Bluebeard's wife to explore the hidden chamber lures us on to know the worst, and as we listen to horrid stories, we snatch a fearful joy. Human nature desires not only to be amused and entertained, but moved to pity and fear. All can sympathise with the youth, who could not ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead
... been overruled for good by that Providence which takes the wise in their own craftiness, the revolution of 1688, in itself considered, affords just as little cause for self-congratulation on the part of Protestants as the substitution of the supremacy of the crowned Bluebeard, Henry VIII., for that of the Pope, in the English Church. It had little in common with the revolution of 1642. The field of its action was the closet of selfish intrigue,—the stalls of discontented prelates,—the chambers of the wanton ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... her. It was as if she had gradually become complete mistress of a house, and then had suddenly discovered a new room into which she peeped for a minute before it was lost to her again and the door shut. It was no Bluebeard's chamber into which she looked; it was much more that she had a suspicion that the room contained a live mistress who might come out one day and dispute her own title. She could tell how Peter would act nine times out ...
— Simon Called Peter • Robert Keable
... be taken away from its pretty theatre, it sha'n't!" said she, pettingly; "and it shall not be asked to go away with any great ugly Bluebeard, and be shut ...
— Macleod of Dare • William Black
... aunt's behests," he explained. "My strict orders were to make myself agreeable to a young woman who lives in a sort of bluebeard's house, where no visitors are allowed and smiling ...
— The Kingdom of the Blind • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... propitious aid of Father Ehrle, is better still. Joan of Arc prospers less than the disciples of Perfect Poverty; and after Joan of Arc many pages are allotted, rather profusely, to her companion in arms, who survives in the disguise of Bluebeard. The series of dissolving scenes ends, in order of time, at Savonarola; and with that limit the work is complete. The later Inquisition, starting with the Spanish and developing into the Roman, is not so much a prolongation or a revival as a new creation. The mediaeval ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... Mr. Sympson continued as bland as oil, but also he seemed to sit on pins, and his gait, when he walked, emulated that of a hen treading a hot girdle. He was for ever looking out of the window and listening for chariot-wheels. Bluebeard's wife—Sisera's mother—were nothing to him. He waited when the matter should be opened in form, when himself should be consulted, when lawyers should be summoned, when settlement discussions and all the delicious worldly fuss should ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... rob, is strung up at the end, they will not let me finish; but if it is concerning a woman or child, or, for example, a poor devil like me, who would be thrown to the ground if he was only blown upon, and let him be ill-treated by a Bluebeard, who persecutes him solely for the pleasure of persecuting him, for honor, as they say; oh! then they shout with joy when, at the end, the Bluebeard receives his pay. I have, above all, a history called Gringalet and Cut-in-half, which created ...
— Mysteries of Paris, V3 • Eugene Sue
... the scribbler. "We call him 'Sister Anne.' You know she was the lady in Bluebeard's yarn that kept looking out the window. He is always sticking his head out of the trenches, to see what he can see. He's going to ...
— Shelled by an Unseen Foe • James Fiske
... subtle, adventurous, his tail A banner flaunted in disdain Of human stratagems and shifts: King over All the Catlands, present and past And future, that moustached Artificer of fortunes, Puss-in-Boots! Or Bluebeard's Closet, with its plenishing Of meat-hooks, sawdust, blood, And wives that hung like fresh-dressed carcases - Odd-fangled, most a butcher's, part A faery chamber hazily seen And hazily figured—on dark afternoons And windy nights was visiting of the best. Then, too, the pelt of hoofs ...
— Poems by William Ernest Henley • William Ernest Henley
... instinct, I can only solemnly pronounce the words that justice utters over its doomed victims, "The Lord have mercy on your soul!"' There, it is true, the key in question unlocks the delicate instrument of the nervous system, and not necessarily a Bluebeard's chamber of guilt; but where the latter is also the case to some extent the remark by no means loses in significance, and if any man had the torturing instinct to perfection, Caffyn might be said to be that individual. There was nothing he would enjoy ...
— The Giant's Robe • F. Anstey
... sanctum, Jack, I don't at all approve. It will be hard enough, I've no doubt, to keep you from lapsing into barbarism, and I shall never allow you to set up a den, a regular Bluebeard's room, all by yourself. I promise never to put your table in order, but I wouldn't trust the best of men with the care of a closet or a bureau-drawer for a single week, much less of an entire room with two closets, a case of drawers, a cupboard and a chimney-piece. But the chief fault ...
— The House that Jill Built - after Jack's had proved a failure • E. C. Gardner
... then a door somewhere opening and shutting. Ogden came from Mr. Richards' apartment, locked the door after him, put the key in his pocket, and went away. Rose dropped her book and sat gazing at that door—that Bluebeard's chamber—that living mystery in their common-place Canadian home. While she looked at it, some one came whistling up the stairs. It was her father, and he ...
— Kate Danton, or, Captain Danton's Daughters - A Novel • May Agnes Fleming
... grew excited by the prohibition of Mejnour, and he found himself gazing too often, with perturbed and daring curiosity, upon the key of the forbidden chamber. He began to feel indignant at a trial of constancy which he deemed frivolous and puerile. What nursery tales of Bluebeard and his closet were revived to daunt and terrify him! How could the mere walls of a chamber, in which he had so often securely pursued his labours, start into living danger? If haunted, it could ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... and shoulders the sweetest assortments ever seen of new things in summer fashions. These headless dummies of the Bowery have a very ghastly look at night. They suggest a procession of the ghosts of Bluebeard's wives, who, true to their instincts while in life, nightly revisit the "ladies' furnishing establishments" here, to rummage among scarfs and ribbons, and don for the brief hour before cock-crow the valuable stuffs and stuffings that are yet so ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various
... another twenty years, and stories would be told of him to children in the nursery. The case of assault and battery, a thing of the far past, would probably develop into a fable of manslaughter, of murder; his wife's death was already regarded very much in that light, and would class him with Bluebeard; his house on the Heath would assume a forbidding aspect, and dread whispers would be exchanged of what went on there under the shadow of night. Was it not already beginning to be remarked by his neighbours that you met him wandering about lonely places ...
— A Life's Morning • George Gissing
... aloud to me "Sir Launcelot Greaves." Papa read "Anne of Geierstein."—I prepared Julian for acting Bluebeard; and Ellen Emerson lent me the gear. We worked hard all day.—We received the photographs of Una and myself. Mine of course uncomely.—Mr. Ticknor came to dine; and Mr. Burchmore [son of Stephen Burchmore, whose tales at the Custom House were so inimitable] also came.—My husband ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... time that Lang's article was written, Sir F.C. Burnand's burlesque, "Bluebeard" was produced at the Gaiety Theatre. In those days a certain type of young man, since known by many names, including the present day "nut," was called a "masher"; and Burnand's burlesque included a ...
— The Social History of Smoking • G. L. Apperson
... had been taken to it as a boy of five (also in Dresden), and I still retained my wondrous first impressions of it. All my earliest childish memories were revived, and I recollected how frequently and with what emphasis I had myself sung Bluebeard's song: Ha, die Falsche! Die Thure offen! to the amusement of the whole house, with a paper helmet of my own making on my head. My friend Heine still remembered ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... stage and seats, and persuaded a neighbor who played the cornet to act as 'band.' Then she taught a small group of us to act 'Villikens and his Dinah,' which she read aloud behind the scenes, and 'Bluebeard,' made into a little play. My paternal grandmother, a straight-backed, severe looking old lady, was then visiting us. How my mother managed it I don't know, but Grandma, who abhorred theatricals, was soon reading 'Villikens' for us to practice, and she even consented to appear as one of Bluebeard's ...
— The Life of Mrs. Robert Louis Stevenson • Nellie Van de Grift Sanchez
... be worshipped as such? Let us admire the diversity of the tastes of mankind; and the oldest, the ugliest, the stupidest and most pompous, the silliest and most vapid, the greatest criminal, tyrant booby, Bluebeard, Catherine Hayes, George Barnwell, amongst us, we need never despair. I have read of the passion of a transported pickpocket for a female convict (each of them advanced in age, being repulsive in person, ignorant, quarrelsome, ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... now and then to send out at noon for an extra biscuit; for as to the poor child, she was never admitted into his study (if I may give that name to his chief depository of parchments, law writings, &c.); that room was to her the Bluebeard room of the house, being regularly locked on his departure to dinner, about six o'clock, which usually was his final departure for the night. Whether this child were an illegitimate daughter of Mr. —-, ...
— Confessions of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas De Quincey
... killing them. Emperors and kings court the alliance of the conquering hero returning from fields of slaughter. Ladies in Melbourne forgot for a time the demands of fashion in their struggles to obtain an ecstatic glimpse of our modern Bluebeard, Deeming; and no one was prouder than the belle of the ball when she danced down the middle with the man who ...
— The Book of the Bush • George Dunderdale
... childish enthusiasm tinged their keen relish for the tale. They squirmed and puckered their wrinkled old faces and shivered convulsively, just as a child might have shivered over a Bluebeard horror, as they recalled how Old Denny had moaned in agony one moment that night, and then screamed horribly the next for the old stone demijohn that always stood in the corner of the kitchen. ...
— Once to Every Man • Larry Evans
... wit helped the man much. Even Bluebeard in the end fell a victim to the superior qualities of his last wife, and Scheherazade's wit alone has preserved the memory of her royal husband. The tradition of thirteenth-century society still rules the French stage. The struggle ...
— Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres • Henry Adams
... what I like with them. But then if I was married,I don't suppose I could fool so many at once. Why, Hazel, if you don't have your own way with men who let you, who will you have it with? Not the men who won't let you;such a bluebeard of a man as your guardian, for instance. O do tell me! don't you sometimes ...
— The Gold of Chickaree • Susan Warner
... dreamed," Margaret declared, as she looked around her, "that I should ever find myself inside this house. It has always seemed to me like one great bluebeard's chamber. If ever my father spoke of it at all, it was as of a place which he intended to convert into a ...
— The Evil Shepherd • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... BLUEBEARD, a wealthy seigneur, the owner of a castle; marries a beautiful woman, and leaves her in charge of the keys of the apartments in his absence, with injunctions not to unlock any of the doors, an injunction ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... who would have welcomed him as a son-in-law were led to believe that the divorce was only a blind, and that the prince's marriage would be actually, if not legally, a bigamous union. The satirical papers represented him as a fortune-hunter, a Bluebeard who had ill-treated his first wife, and declared that he had proposed for the hand of the dusky Empress of Hayti, then on a visit ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston
... that way too. So I simply asked him what he was doing and he made some silly remark about Bluebeard's chamber. He means to keep his old secret, too, 'cause he put the key on his key-ring when he didn't ...
— Ralestone Luck • Andre Norton
... when he opened it to speak, or to put in a morsel of food. Then, indeed, you suddenly became aware of a cave hidden behind the impervious and darksome shrubbery. There could be no doubt who this gentleman and lady were. Any child would have recognized them at a glance. It was Bluebeard and a new wife (the loveliest of the series, but with already a mysterious gloom overshadowing her fair young brow) travelling in their honeymoon, and dining, among other distinguished strangers, ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne |
