"Bodice" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... shillings—we've got to eat something, and live somewhere. You can't eat marriage licences, nor use them as shelter. I've seen one once, belonging to Mrs. Mactavish. She kept it sewed inside the lining of her bodice, all among the bits of whalebone that made her stand up straight. It's a crackly ...
— Captivity • M. Leonora Eyles
... five-and-thirty, spinning and dreaming, her waist encircled with a long black taffety bodice, and her head covered with a velvet headdress, with ...
— The Man-Wolf and Other Tales • Emile Erckmann and Alexandre Chatrian
... gentle, sweet-faced wife. She was painted seated, a little son on either side of her; and now in the dimness she looked out from the heavy gold frame, a half smile playing about her lips, on her lap an open book, and about the low-cut crimson velvet bodice rare old lace pinned at the bosom with a large brooch of wrought gold, framing a ...
— The Eye of Dread • Payne Erskine
... the brook, or at the garden-palings, or about Castlewood: it was, "Lord, Mr. Henry!" and "how do you do, Nancy?" many and many a time in the week. 'Tis surprising the magnetic attraction which draws people together from ever so far. I blush as I think of poor Nancy now, in a red bodice and buxom purple cheeks and a canvas petticoat; and that I devised schemes, and set traps, and made speeches in my heart, which I seldom had courage to say when in presence of that humble enchantress, ...
— The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. • W. M. Thackeray
... displayed. As may be supposed, not a bone was to be traced in her upper neck, but all was dazzling in colour and flesh, which is such a beauty in woman. When a woman shows her gaunt collar bones, it is a proof of bad breeding, and a common nature. Aunt's truly grand bubbles rose magnificently over her bodice, which I thought at the time was their support, but this glorious woman required nothing of the sort, for when perfectly stripped, her bubbles stood out firm and projecting in all their grandeur, and they were of the largest, worthy of all her other fully developed charms. Her belly alone was somewhat ...
— The Romance of Lust - A classic Victorian erotic novel • Anonymous
... the heave of her bosom it was plain to see that either her fears still possessed her or that she had been running for dear life, and must catch breath. Her hand went up to her bodice. ...
— Major Vigoureux • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... little virgins of Filippo Lippi. Her complexion was a little muddy, her hair was light brown, always untidy, and done up in a slovenly chignon. She was slight of figure, small-boned. And her movements were lazy. Dressed carelessly—a gaping bodice, buttons missing, ugly, worn shoes, always looking a little slovenly—she charmed by her grace and youth, her gentleness, her instinctively coaxing ways. When she appeared to take the air at the door of her shop, the young men who passed used to look at her with pleasure: and although ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... perhaps, after the middle of life. He was then so weak as to stand in perpetual need of female attendance; extremely sensible of cold, so that he wore a kind of fur doublet, under a shirt of very coarse warm linen with fine sleeves. When he rose, he was invested in a bodice made of stiff canvass, being scarcely able to hold himself erect till they were laced, and he then put on a flannel waistcoat. One side was contracted. His legs were so slender, that he enlarged their bulk with three pair of stockings, which were drawn ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... the floor to something white that lay on a board, a candle at the head, and drew off the sheet. A girl of fifteen, almost a child, lay underneath, dead,—her lithe, delicate figure decked out in a dirty plaid skirt, and stained velvet bodice,—her neck and arms bare. The small face was purely cut, haggard, patient in its sleep,—the soft, fair hair gathered off the tired forehead. Margret leaned over her, shuddering, pinning her handkerchief about the child's ...
— Margret Howth, A Story of To-day • Rebecca Harding Davis
... speak here,' he said, and motioned away an aged woman. She bent above a sea coal fire on the hearth where boiled, hung from a hook, a great pot. The old thing, in short petticoats and a linsey woolsey bodice that had been purple and green, protested shrilly. Her crock was on the boil; she was not there to be driven away; she had work like other folk, and had been with the printer's mother eight years before he was born. His voice, raised to its ...
— Privy Seal - His Last Venture • Ford Madox Ford
... became the whilom Charming Josephine of Lake Beauport, had a kind heart, nevertheless, under her old-fashioned bodice. She sincerely pitied this young creature who was passing her days in prayer and her nights in weeping, although she might rather blame her in secret for not appreciating better the honor of a residence at Beaumanoir and the friendship of ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... portrait, and she drew nearer, like a connoisseur bent on examining a picture. She saw before her within the carved gilt framework a beautiful maiden's form, in sky-blue satin robe that fell in wide, heavy folds around her full and blooming figure. The low-necked bodice left wholly uncovered her dazzling white shoulders, and beneath the transparent gauze of her sleeves shone the fair white arms as from out a silver cloud. Her head rested proudly and gracefully upon the slender alabaster neck, and was crowned by a profusion of black hair, caught up behind in great ...
— The Youth of the Great Elector • L. Muhlbach
... a stranger at a first glance to discover the nationality of the ladies. Mrs. Brimmer and her friend Miss Chubb had entirely succumbed to the extreme dishabille of the Spanish toilet—not without a certain languid grace on the part of Mrs. Brimmer, whose easy contour lent itself to the stayless bodice; or a certain bashful, youthful naivete on the part of Miss Chubb, the rounded dazzling whiteness of whose neck and shoulders half pleased and half frightened her in her low, white, ...
— The Crusade of the Excelsior • Bret Harte
... somebody. By the light of a lamp burning before an image of the Virgin, he distinctly made out the face, as well as the strange dress. It was an old woman of the uttermost hideousness, which struck the eye the more from her being grotesquely clad in a scarlet bodice embroidered with gold. Emilius fancied at first it must be some extravagant mask that had lost its way: but the bright light soon convinced him that the old brown wrinkled face was one of Nature's ploughing, ...
— The Old Man of the Mountain, The Lovecharm and Pietro of Abano - Tales from the German of Tieck • Ludwig Tieck
... and singing, and abundance of good cheer. Nouns! Dick, Doll Lister is a delightful lass, and if you can only get Alizon out of your head, would be just the wife for you. She sings like an angel, has the most captivating sigh-and-die-away manner, and the prettiest rounded figure ever bodice kept in. Were I in your place I should know where to choose. But you will see her at Hoghton to-day, for she is to be at ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... hundred years ago Those close-shut lips had answered "No!" When forth the tremulous question came That cost the maiden her Norman name, And under the folds that look so still The bodice swelled with the bosom's thrill— Should (we) be (we), or could it be One-tenth ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various
... one John Duddlestone, sir, only a bodice-maker, and I pray you not to take it amiss if I ask you and the gentleman who is with, you, to come to my humble home, where you will be ...
— New National Fourth Reader • Charles J. Barnes and J. Marshall Hawkes
... the dress now, a low-cut, sleeveless, fluffy affair, but he really had eyes only for the brownish-red hole on the left side of the back of the bodice, about halfway between shoulder and waist—a waist so small he could have spanned it with his two hands, including its band of fuchsia velvet ribbon. There also had been a bow of fuchsia velvet ribbon on the lace and straw hat she had swung so charmingly ...
— Murder at Bridge • Anne Austin
... town full, to predict some great event which would revive curiosity and increase faith. Pere Lactance therefore announced that on the 20th of May three of the seven devils dwelling in the superior would come out, leaving three wounds in her left side, with corresponding holes in her chemise, bodice, and dress. The three parting devils were Asmodeus, Gresil des Trones, and Aman des Puissances. He added that the superior's hands would be bound behind her back at the time the ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... untwisting a long string of her mother's abandoned pearls, great pear-shaped things full of the pale lustre of gibbous moons. She wore a dress of white samarcand, with a lavish ornament like threads and purfiles of gold upon the bodice, and Ursule followed with a cloak. As she entered the drawing-room, the great bunches of white azalea, which her mother had brought from the swamps, caught her eye; she threw down the pearls, and broke off rapid dusters ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 39, January, 1861 • Various
... unresisting. When they reached the bedroom she halted and stared around as one who had lost her bearings. She winced once and shook as Molly's gentle fingers began to unfasten her bodice, but afterwards stood quite passive and suffered herself to be undressed as a little child. Molly unlaced her shoes. Molly brought cool water in a basin, bathed her face and hands, braided her hair—the masses of red-brown hair she had been used to admire and caress, passing a hand over ...
— Hetty Wesley • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... pictures. The first was a fantastically dressed ideal woman's figure depicted as an ornament for the title-page, with bare feet and flowing locks. Huerlin remembered that he had a stump of lead-pencil in his pocket. He took it out, wet it in his mouth, and drew two large round breasts on the woman's bodice, which he continued to emphasize, wetting his pencil again and again, until the paper was almost worn through. Then he turned the page and saw with satisfaction that the impress of his artistic design had gone through several other pages. The next picture on which he came illustrated a fairy-story, ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... dinner was the delicate, battered-looking actress, in a Royal fringe and a tight bodice with short sleeves, who had once been a celebrity, though no-one remembered for what. Miss Myra Mooney, formerly a beauty, had known her days of success. She had been the supreme performer of ladylike parts. She had been known as ...
— Tenterhooks • Ada Leverson
... disreputable. She was wearing an old black dress many sizes too big for her. Great pleats of it were secured by pins in unexpected places, so that quaint chaos was made of the scheme of decoration—black velvet and bugles—on the bodice. Instinctively I felt that a middle-aged, fat, second-hand-clothes-dealing Jewess had built it many years ago for synagogue wear. On the girlish figure it looked preposterous. Preposterous too was her head-gear, an amorphous bonnet ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... the children gave amusing amateur theatricals, gotten up by Lorraine and Ted. The acting was upon Laura Roosevelt's tennis court. All the children were most cunning, especially Quentin as Cupid, in the scantiest of pink muslin tights and bodice. Ted and Lorraine, who were respectively George Washington and Cleopatra, really carried off the play. At the end all the cast joined hands in a song and dance, the final verse being devoted especially to me. I love all these children and ...
— Letters to His Children • Theodore Roosevelt
... no story? You asked me what I came for—at least, so I understood it—and I answered you, "Dinner," and that's what I am here for. Oh, do make haste, Miss Sarah! You could keep on that white skirt, and just slip on this pretty bodice; master won't never notice. There's the gong! Oh dear, oh dear!' said Naomi, getting quite flustered in her anxiety to get Sarah ...
— Sarah's School Friend • May Baldwin
... take up the coquette's part for her; perhaps of the two, he was the more gratified by the curious glances directed at those little feet, shod with plum-colored prunella; at the dainty figure outlined by a low-cut bodice, filled in with an embroidered chemisette, which only partially concealed the girlish throat. Her dress was lifted by her movements as she walked, giving glimpses higher than the shoes of delicately moulded outlines beneath open-work silk stockings. ...
— A Woman of Thirty • Honore de Balzac
... dressing for her first party. Twice did her hair fall about her shoulders and twice must she gather it up, fingering carefully the long curl, patting it into place; hooking the bodice so that all its modesty would be preserved and yet the line of the throat show clear, shaking out the full, pannier-like skirt until it stood out quite to her liking. Then with a mock curtsey to herself in the glass, she dashed out of the room, up the narrow stairs and into the garret again ...
— Colonel Carter's Christmas and The Romance of an Old-Fashioned Gentleman • F. Hopkinson Smith
... retrousse nose, and the curling locks are faithfully represented; yet we realize the force of character that lies under this soft, child-like face, and the frank joyousness which made her so attractive. Each stray lock of hair is rendered with delicate accuracy, the brocaded bodice of her gown and the scarf lightly thrown over her shoulders are elaborately adorned with the triangular diamond and other favourite devices of the house of Este. The quaint figure of the two hands holding a veil, from which fertilizing dust falls on the open flower, ...
— Beatrice d'Este, Duchess of Milan, 1475-1497 • Julia Mary Cartwright
... swallowed her morsel of potato. She was a worn-looking blonde, peevish, not without traces of good looks. She wore the sleeves of her bodice rolled up to the elbows, and her wrists and forearms were bleached by her ...
— Brother Copas • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... her things in feverish haste, pacing about the room restlessly the while, as if that helped her to be quicker. Everything she wore seemed too hot, too heavy, or too tight, and she flung hat and cloak and bodice down just where she took them off in her haste to get rid of them. Throwing her things about like that was an old trick of her childhood, and becoming conscious of what she was doing, she remembered ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... again and put it on her escritoire. Soon she picked it up, reread it, and, after a little hesitation, put it in her pocket. It remained in the pocket for a moment or two, when out it came for another perusal, and then she unfastened her bodice and put it in her bosom. Mary had been so intent upon what she was doing that she had not seen Jane, who was sitting quietly in the window, and, when she turned and saw her, she was so angry she snatched the note from her ...
— When Knighthood Was in Flower • Charles Major
... in the billowy silken skirts, puffed sleeves, tight bodice, and wide ruff of Queen Elizabeth, and carried off well the character of that hot-tempered majesty, making no effort to disguise the fact that she was deeply wounded and ...
— Nobody • Louis Joseph Vance
... work," reproduced here, "may be called a miniature picture. It is a portrait of a little lady, apparently six or seven years old, in an artistic old-fashioned gown, the bodice low in neck and cut in sharp point at the waist line in front; elbow sleeves, slippers with large rosettes, just peeping out from her dress, her feet not touching the floor, so high is she seated. Her hair, curling about her face, ...
— Women in the fine arts, from the Seventh Century B.C. to the Twentieth Century A.D. • Clara Erskine Clement
... shadows of the floor, and melting into the walls behind her; the high lights on the bare shoulder and arms divided by the severe band of black; the subdued grays in the fall of lace uniting the flesh tones and the bodice; and, more than all, the ringing note of red sung by the japonica tucked in her hair and which found its only echo in the red of her lips—red as a slashed pomegranate with the white seed-teeth showing through. The other side of her beautiful self—the side ...
— The Fortunes of Oliver Horn • F. Hopkinson Smith
... horror the dark queen began stripping off the bodice of her gown—which for the added reason of its ridiculed condition she was only too glad to be free of—till she had bared her plump neck, shoulders, and arms to the moonshine, under which they looked as luminous ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
... fastened round her waist, thus looking like some gipsy in holiday garb. And she went on laughing, her head thrown back, her bosom swelling with mirth, delighted with her flowers, wild flowers which she had plaited into her fair hair, fastened to her neck, her bodice, and her bare slender golden arms. She seemed like a huge ...
— Abbe Mouret's Transgression - La Faute De L'abbe Mouret • Emile Zola
... opened as the rest of the party came up; and, as they crossed and entered the hall, they beheld, through the open door of the drawing-room, two figures in the window—one, a dark torso, perched outside on the sill; the other, in blue skirt and boy-like bodice, negligently reposing on one side of the window-seat, her dainty little boots on the other; her coarse straw bonnet, crossed with white, upon the floor; the wind playing tricks with the silky glory of her flaxen ringlets; her cheek flushed with lovely carnation, ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... have a practical but peculiar costume; the thickly-pleated skirt has a bright-coloured border, while the close-fitting bodice is adorned with embroidery, and pretty antique buttons. A folded cotton kerchief and accordion-pleated apron give a daintiness to the whole dress. The head-dress, however, gives the most singular finish to the costume. ...
— Denmark • M. Pearson Thomson
... old-fashioned lace-paper valentine. The dress was made of a much-mended lace curtain. The front of the bodice had two square lapels wired at the edges, so that they could be folded together like the front of a real valentine, or opened back like shutters to show on her breast a panel of pale blue satin, on which was outlined two white doves perched above a great red heart. Mrs. Ware painted ...
— Mary Ware's Promised Land • Annie Fellows Johnston
... the larder and cellar, and to their thriving and healthful influences. She was a widow, but years ago had passed through her state of weeds, and burst into flower again; and in full bloom she had continued ever since; and in full bloom she was now; with roses on her ample skirts, and roses on her bodice, roses in her cap, roses in her cheeks,—aye, and roses, worth the gathering too, on her lips, for that matter. She had still a bright black eye, and jet black hair; was comely, dimpled, plump, and tight as a gooseberry; and though she was not exactly what the world calls young, you may make an ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... in contemplation of the quaint wood-cut representing the arrival of this lady at Brockhurst. Clothed in a bottle-green bodice—very generously decolletee, her head adorned by a portentous erection of coronet and feathers, a sanguine dab of colour on her cheek, she craned a skinny neck out of the window of the family coach. Apparently she was engaged in directing the ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... thaw of the morning was again locked by ice, and it was quite a nippy night for the season. I, revelled mentally in the fact that my dinner waist was crimson in colour, and abbreviated only in the way of elbow sleeves, and the pretty low corn-coloured crepe bodice that I saw Lucy unpacking from Sylvia's suit ...
— People of the Whirlpool • Mabel Osgood Wright
... acquainted with the state of his friend's finances. During the next moment or two he glanced meditatively through the open door into the adjoining room, where Sally Creighton was busy beside the stove. The sleeves of her light bodice were rolled up well above the elbow, and she had pretty, round arms, which were just then partly ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss
... struggle, and, vanquished, resigned, allowed him to undress her. One by one he neatly and rapidly stripped off the different articles of clothing with the light fingers of a lady's maid. She had snatched her bodice from his hands to hide her face in it, and remained standing amidst the garments fallen at her feet. He seized her in his arms and bore her towards the couch. Then she murmured in his ear in a broken voice, "I swear to you, I swear to you, that I ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... 20.—Capt. W. M. Myers, delegate for Richmond in the general assembly, has introduced an amendment to the anti-nuisance, or "red light," measure, making it unlawful for any woman to wear a skirt the length of which is more than four inches from the ground, a bodice or shirt waist showing more than three inches of neck, or clothes of transparent texture. Delegate Myers said ...
— News Writing - The Gathering , Handling and Writing of News Stories • M. Lyle Spencer
... long black tassel hanging down to the shoulder, or else in a quaint mitre of white linen, of which a drawing alone could give you an idea, the remainder of an Icelandic lady's costume, when not superseded by Paris fashions, consists of a black bodice fastened in front with silver clasps, over which is drawn a cloth jacket, ornamented with a multitude of silver buttons; round the neck goes a stiff ruff of velvet, figured with silver lace, and a silver belt, often beautifully chased, binds the long dark wadmal petticoat round the waist. ...
— Letters From High Latitudes • The Marquess of Dufferin (Lord Dufferin)
... perhaps forgotten when he came courting his love to 'spier at her brither John'; and when she stoops from horseback to kiss this sinister kinsman at parting, he thrusts his sword into her heart. The rosy face of the bride is wan, and her white bodice is full of blood when the gay bridegroom greets her, and he is left 'tearing his yellow hair.' More often, death itself does not ...
— The Balladists - Famous Scots Series • John Geddie
... male and female devil. If it be considered that this rule is obeyed in these pages, the latter character must be supposed to have fallen to the lot of Mrs Proudie. But she was not all devil. There was a heart inside that stiff-ribbed bodice, though not, perhaps, of large dimensions, and certainly not easily accessible. Mrs Quiverful, however, did gain access, and Mrs Proudie proved herself a woman. Whether it was the fourteen children with their probable ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... the Chateau de Grez of my own flowering into rose chiffon after an afternoon's hunting with him in corduroys. And in truth I spoke no falsehood to that Madam Whitworth, for she was of a very great beauty of body, very much of which was in view from a scantiness of bodice that I had never seen excelled ...
— The Daredevil • Maria Thompson Daviess
... coach I saw at once. But describe her—to be plain—I cannot, having tried a many times. So let me say only that she was the prettiest creature on God's earth (which, I hope, will satisfy her); that she had chestnut curls and a mouth made for laughing; that she wore a kirtle and bodice of grey silk taffety, with a gold pomander-box hung on a chain about her neck; and held out a drinking glass toward us ...
— The Splendid Spur • Arthur T. Quiller Couch
... just tipped with gold that often gave the eyes a dazzling appearance. Her ear was like a bit of pinkish shell or a half crumpled rose leaf. And where her chin melted into her neck, and the neck sloped to the shoulder, there were exquisite lines. After the fashion of the day her bodice was cut square, and the sleeves had a puff at the shoulder and a pretty bow that had done duty in various places before. He did not understand that it was beauty that moved him so, for he had always been deeply sympathetic over the ...
— A Little Girl in Old Philadelphia • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... life should be free and chainless as the winds. Never more should needle and thread tempt her to a womanish inactivity. As Hercules, whose counterpart she was, changed his club for the distaff of Omphale, so would she put off the wimple and bodice of her sex for jerkin and galligaskins. If she could not allure manhood, then would she brave it. And though she might not cross swords with her country's foes, at least she might levy tribute upon the unjustly rich, and confront an enemy wherever there ...
— A Book of Scoundrels • Charles Whibley
... scene inside rose to the imagination. A man with ragged clothes and a half-empty pipe is squeezed into the stone nook beside the blazing turf. The kettle, hanging from its hook, swings steaming beside him. The woman of the house, barefooted, sluttish, in torn crimson petticoat and gray bodice pinned across her breast, moves the red cinders from the lid of the pot-oven and peers at the browning cake within. Babies toddle or crawl over the greasy floor. The car rattled into the village street. Men whom he knew stopped it to speak to him. Children ...
— Hyacinth - 1906 • George A. Birmingham
... Lady Hunsdon, who no doubt was the leader likewise of the fashion; but it is impossible, with our ideas of grace and comfort, not to commiserate this unfortunate lady; whose standing-up wire ruff, rising above her head; whose stays, or bodice, so long-waisted as to reach to her knees; and the circumference of her large hoop farthingale, which seems to enclose her in a capacious tub; mark her out as one of the most pitiable martyrs of ancient modes. The amorous Sir Walter Raleigh must have found some ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... is just as greedy of your work as before. I sometimes wish," she went on, with a laugh that had a touch of real merriment in it, "that ladies were made with hair like a cat, I am so tired of the everlasting bodice and skirt!—Only what would become of us then! It would only be more hunger for less weariness!—It's a ...
— There & Back • George MacDonald
... barefooted, clothed only in bodice and leather jacket and a rather short ochre-colored skirt that blew in the gaining wind and showed the outline of her lithe young figure. Her long black hair billowed and galloped ...
— The Eye of Zeitoon • Talbot Mundy
... enemy. The reason seems to have been that he was more eager for an exchange of compliments than for friendship. He affected the attitude of a man in love, when Lady Mary saw in him only a monkey in love. He is even said to have thrown his little makeshift of a body, in its canvas bodice and its three pairs of stockings, at her feet, with the result that she burst out laughing. Pope took his revenge in the Epistle to Martha Blount, where, describing Lady Mary as Sappho, he declared ...
— Old and New Masters • Robert Lynd
... the women was disinclined to face the camera, one of them explaining that she was not ashamed but was afraid. However, an example in acquiescence was set by the blian and her family. She wore for the occasion an ancient Katingan bodice fitting snugly around the body, with tight sleeves, the material showing foreign influence but not the style of making. Another woman was dressed in the same way, and a big gold plate hung over the upper part of the chest, as is the prevailing mode among women and children. Gold ...
— Through Central Borneo: - An Account of Two Years' Travel in the Land of Head-Hunters - Between the Years 1913 and 1917 • Carl Lumholtz
... thought with longing about her innocent homeland: about the breezy sky, about the laughing young gentlemen, about tennis matches, and she felt nostalgia for the Sunday afternoons—she took off her garters, placed her little bodice on ...
— The Prose of Alfred Lichtenstein • Alfred Lichtenstein
... son of Anak appeared in the little bodice of a coat, stuck upon the hips; and still worse, when some very clumsy forms assumed the dress, and one in particular, that I remember, who was equally huge in person and coarse in manners, whose taste, or economy, or both,—the one as probably as the other,—had led him to ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall
... picture inclosing a brownish landscape with a blue and white sky, and the broad black frame of the picture of Cupid tell strongly, yet fall into plane behind the figure in white satin—quite a different quality of white, and warmer and brighter than the wall. The bodice is a steely blue silk, which is repeated in the velvet seat of the chair; while the blue and white landscape upon the open lid of the spinet repeats the blue and white landscape on the wall, and the blue and ...
— Line and Form (1900) • Walter Crane
... out above the doubtful green Of her bodice, in the green sky overhead; Pale in the green sky were the stars I ween, Because the moon shone like ...
— The Defence of Guenevere and Other Poems • William Morris
... Half-length portraits in crayons abounded all through the house, but were so dispersed that I found the brother of a youthful officer of mine in the china-closet and the grey old age of my pretty young bride, with a flower in her bodice, in the breakfast-room. As substitutes, I had four angels, of Queen Anne's reign, taking a complacent gentleman to heaven, in festoons, with some difficulty; and a composition in needlework representing fruit, a kettle, and an alphabet. All the movables, ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... was sixteen, was dressed in a skirt of striped silk, with a blue bodice, and silver clasps; and she wore a cap of scarlet cloth, adorned with silver lace—her light hair flowing over her shoulders: yet though so finely arrayed, her feet were bare; for she only put on her red slippers when she ...
— Far Off • Favell Lee Mortimer
... done to yourself this evening?"—Then she put on a rather wide black velvet neck-ribbon, which showed off the whiteness of her skin. One patch took the place of the assassine of our grandmothers. And Valerie pinned the sweetest rosebud into her bodice, just in the middle above the stay-busk, and in the daintiest little hollow! It was enough to make every man under thirty ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac
... application of perfumed essence. Three pearl studs fastened his shirt front, and his necktie was tied in a butterfly bow. He displayed some of the nonchalant ease which wealth and position create, smiled a little on catching sight of the jersey worn by a lady who had neglected to fasten the back of her bodice, and strove to decipher the impression the faces conveyed to him. He grew aware of that flitting anxiety which is inseparable from the task of finding a daily living, and that pathos which tells of fidelity to idea and abstinence from gross pleasure. A young man, who stood apart, ...
— Evelyn Innes • George Moore
... housemaid, not bad-looking, but very stout and snub-nosed; in a white dress, of which the bodice is short and ill-fitting. About her neck is a little red kerchief; her hair is ...
— Plays • Alexander Ostrovsky
... ruby lips, handsome faces grow tender as they bend over white necks and drooping beads; timid eyes convey things that lips dare not speak, and beneath silken bodice and broadcloth, hearts beat time to the sweet notes of "Love's ...
— Rolling Stones • O. Henry
... trying for her any more, for by God I've won her.' And out of his breast-pocket he pulls a little knot of blue ribbon. Your mother, my dear, had worn a very fine gown that evening, with little knots of blue ribbon all over the bodice of it. The words were not out of his mouth when Ned Cuffe starts to his feet as white as a sheet: 'It's a damned lie,' he cries, and out of his pocket he pulls another little knot. 'She gave it to me with her own hands,' he cried and glares ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... her protests, adjusted her own dress upon her mistress,—short striped petticoat, black bodice, winged turban-like white cap, and a great muffling gray cloth cloak and hook over the head and shoulders—the costume in which Veronique was wont to run to her home in the twilight on various errands, ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... cannot breathe." With wild emotion she tore open her velvet bodice, and heaving a deep sigh, signed to ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... a basket on one arm and walking with a strong stick, came steadily towards the door. She would have been comely if it had not been for a fixed frown which seemed odd on her pleasant, good-tempered face. She wore a print bodice, with a point back and front, and a short bunchy stuff skirt. Though Sarah was well in sight she took no notice of her, but walked straight on towards her, until the ...
— Women of the Country • Gertrude Bone
... worries me," continued Marguerite, unhooking her bodice; "give me a dressing-gown. Well, ...
— Camille (La Dame aux Camilias) • Alexandre Dumas, fils
... heart-searching truths that are inculcated by the real oracles of God. Then the lady was a woman in the meridian of her charms, aided by all the cunning of the toilet and a taste that was piquant and peculiar, if not pure; while the other stood in her simple, dark Neapolitan bodice and a head that had no other ornament than its own silken tresses; a style of dress, however, that set off her faultless form and winning countenance more than could have been done by any of the devices ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper
... she called on him on her way home from a ball, and they went out for a stroll in the Bois de Boulogne, she in evening dress, he in his dressing-jacket. It was springtime; the weather was beautiful. The odor of her bodice embalmed the warm air—the odor of her bodice, and also a little, the odor of her skin. What a divine night! When they reached the lake, as the moon's rays fell across the branches into the water, she began to weep. A little surprised, he ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume VIII. • Guy de Maupassant
... best; but now the very earth, perhaps, will never receive her. Oh yes, anything you like—the body trimmed with jet, if you wish it, and let me see, a gauze bodice, goffered, fastened to the throat. That is all, I think; the sleeves confined at the wrist just enough not to expose the arm, and yet ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade
... There were four other young women, who joined their hands and danced merrily forward, making gestures of obeisance to the strangers. They were only less beautiful than the lady who seemed to be their mistress. Yet Eurylochus fancied that one of them had sea-green hair, and that the close-fitting bodice of a second looked like the bark of a tree, and that both the others had something odd in their aspect, although he could not quite determine what it was, in the little while that ...
— The Children's Hour, Volume 3 (of 10) • Various
... of some cheap black material and her bodice of velveteen, laced with black cords over a white cotton waist. She also wore a Russian ...
— The Red Cross Girls with the Russian Army • Margaret Vandercook
... their race; no! nor even of their time. She stands among them, just as Bergeron saw her, a delicate, timid figurine du dix-huitie'me sie'cle. With her powdered hair and her hooped skirt and her stiff bodice of rose silk, she seems more fit for the consolations of some old Monsignore than for the homage of these frenzied Pagans and the amorous regard of their master. At him, pressing her shut fan to her ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm
... busies himself in the house, doing the work which will ensure that Mrs. Owen shall not be missed, at any rate, for some time. He dusts and tidies; some few hours later he even slips on his aunt's skirt and bodice, wraps his head in a shawl, and boldly allows those neighbours who are astir to see what they believe to be Mrs. Owen. Then he goes back to her room, resumes his normal appearance ...
— The Old Man in the Corner • Baroness Orczy
... well; I hope you are quite well. The world is too much with us, and my mother bids me bind my hair and lace my bodice blue. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... daily sees Dreadful dyes of Aniline. Worn by women fat and thin, Bonnet, bodice, back and breast. One can hardly call thee fair, With thy fierce magenta glare, With thy green, the green of peas, Violet, and all the rest. What appalling tints are ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, May 20, 1893 • Various
... free to observe the texture of her skin, bloomed over with down like a peach, and the curves of her young shoulders, a little inclined to stoop, as young backs often are in the strain of growth, but so firm, so fresh, so white under the thin stuff of her bodice: below her silken plaits, on the nape of her neck, a curl or two of hair grew in close rings, so fine that it was almost indistinguishable from its own shadow. Swiftly, without warning, Lawrence was aware of a pleasurable commotion in his veins, a ...
— Nightfall • Anthony Pryde
... nobody wanted her to have any pleasure, and everybody was down on her; it would be best for her if she could die soon. And Elsie blubbered more and more vehemently, until she was all out of breath, and her mother had to undo her bodice hastily, thinking in all seriousness that Elsie was going to die. Then the good mother held her peace again; for she did not want to scold Elsie to death. She merely complained at times to Freneli that she didn't know what ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various
... to come all the way out in gondolas, certain existing enterprises might as well go out of business. The steamer was full of Venetians, and we saw that they were charming, though momma wishes it to be understood that the modern Portia wears her bodice cut rather too low in the neck and gazes much too softly at the modern Bassanio. Poppa and I thought it mere amiability that scorned to conceal itself, but momma referred to it otherwise, admitting, however, that she found it ...
— A Voyage of Consolation - (being in the nature of a sequel to the experiences of 'An - American girl in London') • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... brooches of a rich man's daughter rousing the admiring envy of the school-children, whose weekly excitement it was to count them up—nobody would have thought that under the plaited tresses of this young girl's shapely head was a brain seething in revolt, or that the silken laces of her bodice muffled the beatings of a heart suffocated by the luxurious dulness of a life which she now told herself had become insupportable. Cicely had thought a great deal since her visit to London and Muriel's wedding, and had arrived ...
— The Squire's Daughter - Being the First Book in the Chronicles of the Clintons • Archibald Marshall
... drove round the lawn and drew up outside the windows. Hortense sprang out and helped an old woman to alight, dressed in a fluted linen cap, a black velvet bodice and a ...
— The Eight Strokes of the Clock • Maurice Leblanc
... club," she explained, turning to me—"my pleasure club, 'The Moonlight Maids,' give a ball to-night." Which fact likewise explained the curl-papers as well as the slattern shirt-waist, donned to save the evening bodice worn to the factory that morning and now tucked away in a ...
— The Long Day - The Story of a New York Working Girl As Told by Herself • Dorothy Richardson
... the great overhanging gables of the wooden chalet. She, too, favours the national green; but, as relief, there is no lack of bonny red ribbons, to flutter in the wind, and, underneath the ornamented skirt, peeps out a bright-hued petticoat. Around her ample breast she wears a dark tight-fitting bodice, laced down the front. (I think this garment is called a stomacher, but I am not sure, as I have never liked to ask.) Her square shoulders are covered with the whitest of white linen. Her sleeves are also white; and being very full, and of some soft lawnlike material, suggest ...
— Diary of a Pilgrimage • Jerome K. Jerome
... gown of soft white over a white satin slip. It should be cut low in the corsage, and have no sleeves. A touch of colour in the shape of loops of small pink roses at the foot, heading a triple flounce of white, and on the shoulders and around the top of the bodice. You know for a portrait, madame, you want no epoch-making effect. It should be quite simple, so that in the years to come it may still please the eye as a work of art and not a creation ...
— Abroad with the Jimmies • Lilian Bell
... was gliding a very stately and beautiful lady, tall, graceful, and exceedingly haughty. She was richly clad in a bodice of gold-coloured camlet and a skirt of gray silk trimmed with gold and silver lace. A handkerchief of priceless Genoa point half hid and half revealed her beautiful throat, and was fastened in front by a cluster of pearls, while a rope of the same, each one worth a ...
— The Refugees • Arthur Conan Doyle
... in a bygone fashion, drawn smoothly up from the little ears, coiled high and falling across her forehead in a light, straight fringe. Her wonderful white shoulders rose from a wonderfully low white bodice; a bracelet of emeralds was on her arm, a spray of jasmine in her fingers; she was evidently a girl, yet in her apparel was a delicate splendor, in her gaze a candid assurance, that marked her as an American girl. And she expressed charmingly, with sincerity as it were, a frivolous convention. ...
— A Fountain Sealed • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... to look charming in any case, and I am already busy with my dress. It is a black silk gown with a tight-fitting bodice. The bodice has windbag sleeves, formed of shawl pieces of guipure lace, and some lilies of the valley on the breast, finished with a waistband of heliotrope velvet, and I am going to wear long black gloves all the way up my arms, which are growing round and plump, and lovely enough ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... within him the tug of the old personality. He stared at her, suddenly conscious that she was a woman and that she was smiling at him. Charming, in her way. Bare arms. A little black bodice laced over a white waist. Straight blonde hair, braided thickly and twisted around her head. A peasant, but pretty.... You see, his desire was to frighten her, as he most certainly would have frightened her had he been true to Cecil Grimshaw. But ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various
... entirely at her ease and unconscious of her costume, except for a shy suspicion that it becomes her, and she, it. Her waist is of its natural size and in its proper place. Her shoulders are covered, and her arms have free play; and although her bodice is cut rather low, the rising chemise and the falling kerchief redeem it from ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... not radiant, she was; cold and calm, but not blushing and uncertain. Her wedding gown was all in white, true enough to tradition, though but of delaine, pressed new from its packing trunk by her mother's hands. Her bodice, long and deep in front and at back, was plain entirely, save for a treasure of lace from her mother's trunk and her mother's wedding long ago. Her hands had no gloves, but white short-fingered mitts, also cherished remnants of days of schoolgirl belledom, did service. Over white stockings, below ...
— The Covered Wagon • Emerson Hough
... from her writing to where the dark girl, her figure raked very much back in her stiff bodice, played daintily with the tassels of the curtain ...
— The Fifth Queen Crowned • Ford Madox Ford
... listening to her with a smile of obsequious attention, and now and then, suddenly, and as if irrelevantly, breaking into a jubilant laugh. Her dusty hair looked as though, like the White Queen's, a comb and brush might be entangled in its masses; the low cut neck of her bodice displayed a ruddy throat wreathed in many strings of dirty seed-pearls, and her grey satin dress ...
— Tante • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... market day, and the costumes in the streets are brilliant. The women wear a white petticoat, a blue skirt made straight and tightly bound above it, a white richly worked bodice, and the white square-folded napkin of the Abruzzi on their heads. Their jacket is of red or green—pure colour. A rug of striped red, blue, yellow, and black protects the whole dress from the rain. There is a very noble quality of green—sappy and gemmy—like some of Titian's or ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... smell! Up in the little room in the gable stands a little dancing girl. She stands sometimes on one foot, sometimes on both; she seems to tread on all the world. She's nothing but an ocular delusion: she pours water out of a teapot on a bit of stuff—it is her bodice. 'Cleanliness is a fine thing,' she says; her white frock hangs on a hook; it has been washed in the teapot too, and dried on the roof. She puts it on and ties her saffron handkerchief round her neck, and the dress looks all the whiter. Point your toes! ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V2 • Charles H. Sylvester
... Pectoral Drops and the Darby brand of British Oil, workers of many occupations solemnly swore that they had received benefit. Most of them were humble people—a porter, a carpenter, the wife of a gardener, a blanket-weaver, a gunner's mate, a butcher, a hostler, a bodice-maker. Some bore a status of greater distinction: there were a "Mathematical Instrument-Maker" and the doorkeeper of the East India Company. All were jubilant at their ...
— Old English Patent Medicines in America • George B. Griffenhagen
... the paper, not because his interest in Lord Palmerston's speech had flagged, but because he had heard Miss Dickenson come in, and that consideration about her endurance of the daylight weighed upon him. On the whole, she is standing the glare of day better than he expected, and her bodice seems very nicely cut. It may have been an accident that she looked so dowdy yesterday morning. He and she exchange morning greetings, passionlessly but with civility. The lady may be accounting a tete-a-tete by moonlight with a gentleman, ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... heavy rug, she picked up the plush-lined necklace case. She dropped this again, open, on the floor, halfway between the safe and the window. With the case apparently burst open as it fell, and the necklace also on the floor, the stage would be set! She felt inside her bodice, drew out the necklace—and as she stood there holding it, and as it caught the light and flashed back its fire and life from a thousand facets, a numbness seemed to come stealing over her, and a horror, and a great fear, and a dismay that robbed her of power of movement until it seemed ...
— The White Moll • Frank L. Packard
... had drawn a small, gleaming flask of gold from the misty bodice of her gown, and was holding it out while she laughed with red lips and ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, December 1930 • Various
... gloaming, her superb beauty enhanced by the delicate evening dress of fine white lace; the shapely shoulders were polished and white, the exquisite arms rounded and clasped by a bracelet of pearls. She wore a rose in the bodice of her dress, and, as Ronald bent over the music she was showing him the sweet, subtle perfume came to him like a ...
— Dora Thorne • Charlotte M. Braeme
... is rather put out," said Mrs. de Noel in her slow gentle way. "It is all my fault. I forgot to pack up the bodice of my best evening gown, and Parkins says it is the only one I look fit to be ...
— Cecilia de Noel • Lanoe Falconer
... delicacy of form and colour which one would hardly expect to find amongst the peasantry. But their eyes were colourless; and their blonde hair was like tow—it lacked the golden ray. The dresses were picturesque: a white triangular head-kerchief, with embroidered ends hanging down the back; a bodice either of white flannel picked out with splashes of colour, or of a black glazed and plaited stuff; a skirt of lively hue, edged with a broad belt of even livelier green, blue, pink, or yellow; white ...
— The Romance of Isabel Lady Burton Volume II • Isabel Lady Burton & W. H. Wilkins
... cut of the skirt is lovely, but I am not altogether satisfied with the severe bodice. I want you to wear this fichu of mine, it ...
— When the Birds Begin to Sing • Winifred Graham
... sprang upon Halima, opened her scarlet bodice roughly, plunged his claw into her swelling bosom, and ...
— Halima And The Scorpions - 1905 • Robert Hichens
... in a black skirt, with a scarlet velvet bodice which did justice to her brilliant complexion and soft, dark hair, paused in the act of turning out a number of glittering glass balls ...
— The Wharf by the Docks - A Novel • Florence Warden
... you were Judith and had given your body to be able to behead me! Look, there is the dress I was going to wear, that you wished to humiliate me with. Yes, you felt that it was debasing to wear those things, and thought it disguised your desire to irritate,—this low-cut bodice and the corsets which were to advertise your woman's wares. No, I return your love-token and shake off the fetters. [He throws down the wedding-ring. Bertha looks at him in wonderment. Axel pushes back his hair.] You didn't want to see that my forehead is higher than yours, so ...
— Plays: Comrades; Facing Death; Pariah; Easter • August Strindberg
... arm. A tambourine hung loosely from the hand nearest her face; the other lay, palm outward in its abandonment, among the folds that covered her limbs. The folds hung from her waist, and she wore above them a short close bodice like a Bengali woman. Her head covering had slipped, and clung only to the knot of hair at the nape of her neck; she lacked, pathetically, the conscious hand to draw it forward. She was unaware even of the gaze of the Duke's Own, though it had ...
— The Path of a Star • Mrs. Everard Cotes (AKA Sara Jeannette Duncan)
... If you have no money, you have friends; a friend has given you your new pillow, you know, and another friend, perhaps, may give you a room to live in." Her eyelids drooped, her color came and went quickly, I detected beneath her bodice the convulsive movement of her heart. The agitation she betrayed communicated itself to me; I rose from my chair and leaned against the window-sill, so that my face might be no longer on a level with her eyes. "I ...
— Dreams and Dream Stories • Anna (Bonus) Kingsford
... sudden impulse, she went back into the sitting-room, and taking a black-headed pin out of her bodice stuck it amid the leaves of the Bible. Then she opened the Book, and looked at the page ...
— The Lodger • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... his wife, a round, buxom, laughter-loving dame, with black eyes, a tight well-laced bodice, a green apron, and a red petticoat edged with a slight silver lace, and judiciously shortened so as to show that a short heel, and a tight clean ankle, rested upon her well-burnished shoe,—she, of course, felt interest in a young man, who, besides being very handsome, good-humoured, ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... leisure moments, the flesh from human bones. And when at last the curtain rose, and the damp air came out upon him from behind the scenes as he sat in the pit, and the play began with some wonderful creature in tight bodice and painted cheeks, sailing across the stage, it seemed to him that the flames of Divine wrath might presently be bursting out over the house, or a great judgment of God break down the roof ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 96, October 1865 • Various
... if never to beat again? You, young woman, who with ready belief and tender sympathy will look upon these pages, if they are ever spread before you, know what it is when your breast heaves with uncontrollable emotion and the grip of the bodice seems unendurable as the embrace of the iron virgin of the Inquisition. Think what it would be if the grasp were tightened so that no breath of air could ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist) |
