"Crinoline" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... a prophecy of the future. The wind blows here, but long after it is spent the big wave which is its creature, breaks on a shore a thousand miles away. It is curious how swiftly influences travel from centre to circumference. A certain empress invents a gracefully pendulous crinoline, and immediately, from Paris to the pole, the female world is behooped; and neither objurgation of brother, lover, or husband, deaths by burning or machinery, nor all the wit of the satirists, ...
— Dreamthorp - A Book of Essays Written in the Country • Alexander Smith
... flee was struck, probably by a piece of shell, in the side. Almost as by a miracle she escaped with only a terrible and extensive bruise, and a temporary paralysis of the lower limbs. The elastic steel wires of her crinoline, had resisted the deadly force of the blow, which otherwise would undoubtedly have killed her. A smaller missile, nearly cut away the string of her hat, which was found next day covered by the ghastly smear of human blood and flesh, ...
— Woman's Work in the Civil War - A Record of Heroism, Patriotism, and Patience • Linus Pierpont Brockett
... in huts and in marble halls— From Shepherdess up to Queen— Cared little for bonnets, and less for shawls, And nothing for crinoline. But now simplicity 's not the rage, And it's funny to think how cold The dress they wore in the Golden Age Would seem in the Age of Gold. The Two ...
— The World's Best Poetry — Volume 10 • Various
... road a traveller took the train, who happened to enter the car in which the young lady occupied a seat. After walking up and down between the seats, the gentleman found no unoccupied seat, except the one-half of that upon which the lady had deposited her precious self and crinoline—the latter very modestly expansive. Making a virtue of necessity—a "stand-ee" berth or a little self-assurance—he modestly inquired if the lady had a fellow-traveller, and ...
— Railway Adventures and Anecdotes - extending over more than fifty years • Various
... nose. "I know some Ashtons who live in Brayanstone Square," she said at last. "A mother and son. A very handsome woman she is, with white hair, she has a sort of grande dame look about her—the sort of woman you can imagine in a powdered wig and a crinoline, curtsying to the queen." She scrambled up, and, snatching a paper fan from the shelf, swept Esther a graceful ...
— The Phantom Lover • Ruby M. Ayres
... home-manufactured article. But no one ever competed. The first attempts, indeed, were put to an end, when Schofield crossed the Blue Lick, and destroyed the dams on Yellow Branch. The consequence was, that people's crinoline collapsed faster than the Confederacy did, of which that brute of a Grierson said there was never anything of it but ...
— The Man Without a Country and Other Tales • Edward E. Hale
... She wore a straight, pale gray-green jacket, into the pockets of which her hands were thrust. Her skirt, of the same colour and material, hung in straight folds to her feet, being innocent alike of trimming and the then prevailing fashion of crinoline. Further, she wore a little, round matador's hat, three black pompons planted audaciously upstanding above the left ear. Her eyes, long in shape and set under straight, observant brows, appeared at first sight of the same clear, light, warm brown as her hair. ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... gentle and quiet eyed, her light summer dress of the cheapest material, yet deftly fashioned by her own fingers from slightly opened neck, where an old brooch lay against her soft throat, down to the dainty spotless flounces lying above her petticoat of crinoline. ...
— The Littlest Rebel • Edward Peple
... rose-color in small things. This room was planned for the guests of the daughter of the house, so the furnishings were naively and adorably feminine. The dressing-table was made of a long, low box, with a glass top and a valance so crisp and flouncing that it suggested a young lady in crinoline. The valance was of chintz in gentian blue and white. The white mirror frame was decorated with little blue lines and tendrils. Surely any girl would grow pretty with dressing before such an enchanting affair! And ...
— The House in Good Taste • Elsie de Wolfe
... without a bonnet, and with only her thick snow-white cap? Who does not delight in the simplicity of dress which the French, Norman, and Breton peasants still preserve? Contrast it with the dress of our servant-girls, with their crinoline and absurd little bonnets, and say ...
— Routledge's Manual of Etiquette • George Routledge
... of the hall. It was a drawing-room, with traces of the same shabby gorgeousness that prevailed in the bedroom, but mitigated by a good deal of clean, faded chintz; and at one end was a brilliant full-length Millais portrait of Mrs. Maria Idle in blue silk and a crinoline. It was a long room, pleasant in the dim light; for although it had three windows, the farthest a French one and open, all were covered with awnings, coming low down and showing nothing of the outer world but a hand's breadth of turf and wandering bits of ...
— The Invader - A Novel • Margaret L. Woods
... than she did on her brougham. It never became brown and rusty with her, or formed itself into old lumpy folds, or shaped itself round her like a grave cloth. The written law had not interdicted crinoline, and she loomed as large with weeds, which with her were not sombre, as she would do with her silks when the period of her probation should be over. Her weepers were bright with newness, and she would waft them aside from her shoulder with an air which turned even them into auxiliaries. ...
— Can You Forgive Her? • Anthony Trollope
... the educated classes; but as good and bad alike have to begin on the surface, and gradually filter through to the dregs of society, we may hope that the women who wore the last chignon and the last crinoline may yet solace their sordid lives in flowing or tight woollen garments, adorned with their own needlework; and that the dark-stained floor of the cottage or humble lodging will set off the shining brass kettle, and the flower in a brown ...
— Needlework As Art • Marian Alford
... together. He was but eight-and-twenty, was a member of Parliament, solicitor-general, owner of a house in Eaton Square, and possessor of as much well-trained beauty as was to be found at that time within the magic circle of any circumambient crinoline within the bills of mortality. Was it not sweet for him to wander through the rye? Had he not fallen upon an Elysium, a very paradise of earthly joys? Was not his spring-tide at the ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope
... the most important features of the Refuge, is the workshop. On entering the shop, the visitor is amused by finding a lot of little urchins occupied in making ladies' hoopskirts of the latest fashionable design; nearly 100 are engaged in the crinoline department. In the same long room, about fifty are weaving wire for sifting cotton, making wire sieves, rat-traps, gridirons, flower baskets, cattle noses, etc. The principal work, however, is carried on in the boot and shoe department. ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... from her neck to the ground like a tent. When this arrangement is concluded she is perfectly happy, as none of the precious fumes can escape, all being retained beneath the robe, precisely as if she wore a crinoline with an incense-burner beneath it, which would be a far more simple way of performing the operation. She now begins to perspire freely in the hot-air bath, and the pores of the skin being thus opened and moist, the volatile oil from ...
— In the Heart of Africa • Samuel White Baker
... at all events ladies wearing crinolines have sat inside it, that is certain, and gentlemen wearing peg-top trousers with braid upon them. Good God, Doris, if you were to wear a crinoline I should love you beyond hope of repentance. Don't I remember when I was a boy every one wore white stockings; I had only heard of black ones, and I always hoped to meet a lady wearing black stockings... now my hope is ...
— Memoirs of My Dead Life • George Moore
... before sewing on. The simplest, though least desirable, method of sewing-on these fastenings is to place the eye at the edge of the seam or facing and the hook sufficiently far back from the opposite side to give a lap. A much preferable method is to baste a bias strip of crinoline along the positions to be occupied by the hooks and eyes; this gives strength to the finish. Sufficient material should be allowed for folding over the shanks after the hooks and eyes have been sewed on, or they may be covered with silk ribbon, ...
— Textiles and Clothing • Kate Heintz Watson
... 'glorious' sight To be viewed in that parlor on that winter night. There were beaux, who the finest of broadcloth were dressed in— Invested in vestments they always invest in— And belles, who assisted to fill up the scene With roods upon roods of their huge crinoline. Such flounces! they seemed to my wondering eyes Like Alps upon Alps that in majesty rise. The costliest jewels and handsomest laces Imparted their charms to embellish their graces. And the men seemed to float through ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 1, July, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... end of the story. As soon as the boilers cooled off they worked all right on those supply pumps. May I be hanged if they had not sucked in, somehow, a long string of yarn, and cloth, and, if you will believe me, a wire of some woman's crinoline. And that French folly of a sham Empress cut short that day the victory of the Confederate navy, and old Davis himself can't tell when we shall have ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VII. (of X.) • Various
... Bluebeard. But, for the most gallant gentleman, on the whole, in the United Kingdom, he is not so invariable in fairness towards the fair as could be wished. The follies and frivolities of absurd fashions are his proper game; and he does brave service in hunting them down. Still, his warfare against crinoline, small bonnets, and other feminine fancies in dress, has been tiresomely inveterate. Even Mr. Punch had better, as a general rule, leave the management of the female toilette to those whom it most nearly concerns. But in his case, the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly , Volume 2, No. 14, December 1858 • Various
... see how the same wants and tastes find the same implements and modes of expression in all times and places. The young ladies of Otaheite, as you may see in Cook's Voyages, had a sort of crinoline arrangement fully equal in radius to the largest spread of our own lady-baskets. When I fling a Bay-State shawl over my shoulders, I am only taking a lesson from the climate that the Indian had learned before me. A BLANKET-shawl we call it, and not a plaid; and ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... other on the back, and jump upon each other's shoulders. Harlequins and clowns—shabby, spiritless, and unmasked—grin inanely in your face, and seem to be hunting after a joke they can never find. A quack doctor, or a man in crinoline, followed by a nigger holding an umbrella over his head, or a swell with pasteboard collars, and a chimney-pot on his head, pass from time to time and shout to the bystanders, but receive no answer. Give them a wide berth, for they are spies, and bad company. ...
— Rome in 1860 • Edward Dicey
... refinement was almost excessive. Oh, she was "high-toned," no doubt of that! As she moved forward and stood in front of Mrs. McLane, or acknowledged introductions to those that stood near, the women gave another gasp, this time of consternation. She wore neither hoop-skirt nor crinoline. Could it be that the most elegant fashion ever invented had been discarded by Paris? Or was this lovely creature of surpassing elegance, a ...
— Sleeping Fires • Gertrude Atherton
... Susy," surrounded with a wooden scaffolding like a lady in her crinoline, and on the scaffolding Paul and the foreman climbed busily about, hammering, ...
— Dame Care • Hermann Sudermann
... there was the fat blonde in Saint Jo, and the panatela brunette at Skillet Ridge, and the gold tooth down in the Kaw valley. Redruth gets his cases mixed, and they send him up the road. He gets out after they are through with him, and says: 'Any line for me except the crinoline. The hermit trade is not overdone, and the stenographers never apply to 'em for work. The jolly hermit's life for me. No more long hairs in the comb or dill pickles lying around in the cigar tray.' You tell me they pinched old Redruth for the noodle villa ...
— Heart of the West • O. Henry
... a picture of Cynthia's mother in a crinoline with her baby on her knee. There was a famous artist's painting of a storm passing over the wooded knoll that now was John Knight's favorite retreat. The famous artist had been visiting John Knight and had painted the storm as he watched it from the ...
— Green Valley • Katharine Reynolds
... crash upon each other, and timbers fly while men are swearing. But here there was neither crashing nor swearing; and the boats noiselessly pressed against each other as though they were cased in muslin and crinoline. ...
— Volume 1 • Anthony Trollope
... it only needs gumption," thought Patty, hopefully. "Here's my real chance to prove that it doesn't need a series of lessons to get some satin smoothly on a crinoline frame. If I do it neatly, she won't ask some other girl ...
— Patty's Success • Carolyn Wells
... it, their desiderata; so he waited to put on one of his gloves with judicious deliberation before getting into the carriage again, to give himself an excuse for allowing his eye to follow the young woman, whose skirts were pleasingly set out by something else than these odious and delusive crinoline bustles. ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... Grabowska, my daughter. My name is Joseph Grabowski; my late wife's brother, Monsieur Pelletier." Davos was puzzled by the name, Constantia Grabowska! She sat before him, dressed in black silk with crinoline; two dainty curls hung over her ears; her profile, her colouring, were slightly Oriental, and in her nebulous gray eyes with their greenish light there was eternal youth. Constantia! Polish. And how she played Chopin—ah! it came to him before ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... skirts till they took on the monstrous contours of Victorian crinolines, a sunken memory stirred in her that was almost romance—a memory of a dusty volume of Punch in an aunt's house in infancy: pictures of crinoline hoops and croquet hoops and some pretty story, of which perhaps they were a part. This half-perceptible fragrance in her thoughts faded almost instantly, and Diana Duke entered the house even more promptly than her companion. Tall, slim, aquiline, ...
— Manalive • G. K. Chesterton
... of a mortal paleness. Sometimes she looked plump, on other occasions wofully thin. "When she goes into the world," said the same chronicler, "ma cousine surrounds herself with jupons—c'est pour defendre sa vertu: when she is in a devotional mood, she gives up rouge, roast meat, and crinoline, and fait maigre absolument." To spite the Duke her husband, she took up with the Vicomte de Florac, and to please herself she cast him away. She took his brother, the Abbe de Florac, for a director, and presently parted from him. "Mon frere, ce saint ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... of it, dear I remember doing the first Jandiala Settlement for the sake of a girl in a crinoline; and she was slender, Lizzie. I've never done as good a piece of work since. He'll work like ...
— The Kipling Reader - Selections from the Books of Rudyard Kipling • Rudyard Kipling
... to be said for crinoline on hygienic grounds, and on those of cleanliness, must be obvious to its most prejudiced opponents."—Lady JEUNE "In ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, February 18, 1893 • Various
... exaggerated even the most extravagant, and hunted after the newest styles with the national energy which their countrywomen of a nobler class expended upon nobler objects; and were more ready to deform or ignore nature, and swear allegiance to the despotic rule of the Crinoline Sovereign, than any Parisian belle under ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... becoming. The following ornaments are to be absolutely prohibited—"feathers, flowers, brooches, buckles or clasps, earrings, lockets, neck-ribbons and velvets, kid-gloves, parasols, sashes, jackets, Garibaldis, all trimming on dresses, crinoline, or steel of any kind." No dress to touch the ground. No pads, frisettes, no chignons, no hair-ribbons. Having swept away by a stroke of the pen all this mass of finery, a "Clergyman's Wife" goes on to make some "suggestions," ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous
... primitive as that. You may have at any restaurant a smaller morsel than an ox or even an ox's shoulder; and as to ladies' finery, there is no article de Paris, no indispensable inutility, no crinoline, hoop, or cage, of impossible materials, shape, and dimensions, which you may not find under the Portici, or in Vianuova, a facility of which the Turinese beauties give themselves the benefit rather freely. What I meant to say, when I spoke of life on a broad, homely scale, was ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 18, April, 1859 - [Date last updated: August 7, 2005] • Various
... day, all such feeble watery minds as hers were regarded as semi-imbecile, pitied as intellectual cripples, and wisely kept in the background of society; but, bless me! in this generation they skip and prance to the very edge of the front, pose in indecent garments without starch, or crinoline, or even the protection of pleats and gathers; and insult good, sound, wholesome common sense with the sickening affectations they are pleased to call 'aesthetics.' Don't waste your time, and dilute your own mind by quoting the silly twaddle of a poor girl who was turned loose too early on ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... gives principally the musicians. By careful counting, we find there are six hundred faces to the square inch in the more crowded portion of the scene which the view embraces,—a part occupied by the female singers. These singers are all clad in white, and packed with great compression of crinoline,—if that, indeed, were worn on the occasion. Mere points as their faces seem to the naked eye, the stereoscope, and still more a strong magnifier, shows them with their mouths all open as they join in the chorus, and with such distinctness that some of them might readily be recognized by those ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... feature of the day's entertainment, or rather they would indulge in the humour of gratifying their masculine prejudices at the mass meeting. They stamped their feet, they hooted, they looked at the still empty stage and demanded to know where were the leaders of the "Crinoline Campaign." They whispered and nudged each other ...
— The Co-Citizens • Corra Harris
... "'As absolutely as crinoline and the novels of G. P. R. James,' answered our host, lightly. But I, who was watching him closely, saw his eyes harden. Estes had said more than one imprudent thing that evening, and this time he had gone too far. I would have to get ...
— The Gates of Chance • Van Tassel Sutphen
... the impact of the projectile, which lay almost buried in the earth. Two or three trees, broken by its fall, sprawled on the turf. Among this debris was the missile; resembling nothing so much as a huge crinoline. At the moment we reached the spot P.C. A581 was ordering it off; and Henry Pearson, aged 28 (no fixed abode), and Martha Griffin, aged 54, of Maybury Tenements, were circulating among the crowd offering matches for sale. ...
— The War of the Wenuses • C. L. Graves and E. V. Lucas
... willow bush one day, the branches of which came right down over the water like a crinoline, I saw inside, and under the branches, a number of fair-sized chub of about 1 lb. or 1-1/2 lbs. It struck me that they felt themselves absolutely safe there, and that if in any way I could get a bait over them they might take it. The entry under which I find this chronicled is August ...
— The Naturalist on the Thames • C. J. Cornish
... than any fair lady regnante crinolina. For the man, under the colour of a warming-pan, retained Nature's outline. But it was subaudi equum! Scarce a pennyweight of honest horse-flesh to be seen. Our crinoline spares the noble parts of women, and makes but the baser parts gigantic (why this preference?); but this poor animal from stem to stern was swamped in finery. His ears were hid in great sheaths of white linen tipped with silver and blue. ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... saddle-room, etc., and a good bedroom for English servants, and beyond that, again, among large clumps of rose-bushes, a native hut. It came up here half built—that is, the frame was partly put together elsewhere—and it resembled a huge crinoline more than anything else in its original state. Since that, however, it has been made more secure by extra pales of bamboo, each tied in its place with infinite trouble and patience by a knot every inch or two. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, April, 1876. • Various
... has copied already two busts, the Young Augustus and the Psyche, and is engaged on another, enchanted with his new trade, working six hours a day. In the evening he generally goes out as a bachelor—free from responsibility of crinoline—while I go early to bed, too happy to have him a little amused. In Florence he never goes anywhere, you know; even here this winter he has had too much gloom about him by far. But he looks entirely well—as ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume II • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... You give me no trouble. It is you have the trouble to come here. You come early and I have not got my crinoline. If you are contented, so am I." Then she smiled, and sat herself down suddenly, letting herself almost fall into her special corner in the sofa. "Take a chair, Mr. Harry; then ...
— The Claverings • Anthony Trollope
... screens in the room, with shelves specially constructed to hold little gimcracks, which in their turn were specially shaped to stand upon the little shelves. There was a portentous standing-lamp, six feet high in its bare feet, with a shade like a crinoline. There were settees and poufs and des prie-Dieu, and strange things hanging on the wall without rhyme, reason, or beauty. And nowhere a pipe, or a tennis racket, or even a pair of boots—not so much as a single manly indiscretion in the way of ...
— From One Generation to Another • Henry Seton Merriman
... craft and the old English stage-coach are, after all, the only modes of conveyance worthy the patronage of Britons. Against exaggerated hoop-skirts he has all along set his face, and seldom, if ever, condescends to delineate a lady in crinoline. His beau-ideal of female beauty is comprised in an hour-glass waist, a skirt that fits close to the form, a sandalled shoe, and very long ringlets; whereas tight lacing, narrow skirts, sandalled ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 87, January, 1865 • Various
... Grand, in 1862. In action the vessel was to be partly submerged, so that only her three turrets and the top of the armoured glacis would be visible. No. 3 is Admiral Elliott's "Ram," of 1884. The ship was to carry a "crinoline" of stanchions along her water-line, practically a fixed torpedo-net. No. 4 is Thomas Cornish's Invulnerable Ironclad, of 1885. She was to have two separate parallel hulls under water; above she was of ...
— The Illustrated War News, Number 21, Dec. 30, 1914 • Various
... was—a respectable servant in a respectable family; and the Boundaries so regarded her, as she passed through them, letter in hand. Martha, Lady Augusta's housemaid, answered the door, presenting a contrast to Judith. Martha wore a crinoline as big as her lady's, and a starched-out muslin gown over it, with flounces and frillings, for Martha was "dressed" for the day. Her arms, red and large, were displayed beneath her open sleeves, and something that looked like a bit of twisted lace was stuck on the ...
— The Channings • Mrs. Henry Wood
... courting observation. The vulgar impression derived in Broadway from an opposite habit is vastly increased by modern fashions; for the apology for a bonnet that leaves brow, cheek, and head fully exposed,—the rustle and dimensions of crinoline,—the heavy masses of unctuous false hair attached to the back of the head, deforming its shape and often giving a coarse monstrosity to its naturally graceful poise and proportions,—the inappropriate display of jewelry and the long silk trains of the expensive robes trailing ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 110, December, 1866 - A Magazine of Literature, Science, Art, and Politics • Various
... crinoline may stand eventually for rough crystalline surface, unless you pin it in; and then you may make a polished crystal ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... who fell into our hands reveals the secret springs of her action. Wishing to spare her as a member of the defenceless sex, it pains us to say, that, ingenious as her counterfeit walking is, she is an impostor. Worse than this,—with all our reverence for her brazen crinoline, duty compels us to reveal a fact concerning her which will shock the feelings of those who have watched the stately rigidity of decorum with which she moves in the presence of admiring multitudes. She is a quadruped!. Inside of her great ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various
... Rarey's lessons, and studied his art, but very few have tried, and still fewer have succeeded. It is just one of those things that all ladies fond of horses should know, as well as those who are likely to visit India, or the Colonies, although it is not exactly a feminine occupation; crinoline would ...
— A New Illustrated Edition of J. S. Rarey's Art of Taming Horses • J. S. Rarey
... idees that chile Miss Elsie hab, Vic," she cried, shaking the flounces into place over her enormous crinoline. "Now 'serve she never wore dis sumptious dress more en once, but sent it down here good as new; 'sides de turban, jes see it shine. Yes, Vic, I forgives yer, so don't rub dem knuckles in yer eyes ...
— A Noble Woman • Ann S. Stephens
... circumstances.[189] In most of the cases where great distress has been caused, the directly operative influence has not been introduction of machinery, but sudden change of fashion. This was the case with the crinoline-hoop makers of Yorkshire, the straw-plaiters of Bedfordshire, Bucks, Herts, and Essex.[190] The suddenly-executed freaks of protective tariffs seem likely to be a fruitful source of disturbance. So far as the ...
— The Evolution of Modern Capitalism - A Study of Machine Production • John Atkinson Hobson
... of the beautiful Anstruther sisters, who, as certain New Yorkers still remember—those grizzled, portly, rosy-gilled fellows who prattle on provocation of Jenny Lind and Castle Garden, and remember everything—created a pronounced furor at their debut in the days of crinoline and the Grecian bend; and Margaret Anstruther, as they will tell you, was married to Thomas Hugonin, then a gallant cavalry officer in the service of Her ...
— The Eagle's Shadow • James Branch Cabell
... Had crinoline been in vogue in the year 1851, Robert would have found a parallel before his eyes, in these birch-bark flounces arranged over a sustaining framework, in four successive falls, narrowing in circumference as they neared ...
— Cedar Creek - From the Shanty to the Settlement • Elizabeth Hely Walshe
... dress I shall wear Is too lovely; but"—"But what then, ma chere?" Said Brown, as the lady came to a full stop, And glanced round the shelves of the little back shop. "Well, I want—I want something to fill out the skirt To the proper dimension, without being girt In a stiff crinoline, or caged in a hoop That shows through one's skirt like the bars of a coop; Something light, that a lady may waltz in, or polk, With a freedom that none but you masculine folk Ever know. For, however poor woman aspires, She's always bound down to the earth by these wires. Are you listening? ...
— East and West - Poems • Bret Harte
... need hardly say, consisted in the parodying of the title of the emperor's musical composition "Sang am Aegir!" The lustre hanging from the ceiling, which is known in Germany as a "Kronleuchter" was in the form of an old crinoline. At the entrance to the banqueting hall hung the representation of a gold medal, which a lady painter was trying in vain to grasp. The tone of the speeches throughout the evening was in thorough keeping with the decorations, ...
— The Secret Memoirs of the Courts of Europe: William II, Germany; Francis Joseph, Austria-Hungary, Volume I. (of 2) • Mme. La Marquise de Fontenoy
... Benvenuto Cellini pattern, which were the admiration of all London. Before a month it is a fact that the wretched haberdashers in the city exhibited the blue stocks, called "Heiress-killers, very chaste, two-and-six:" long before that, the monde had rushed to Madame Crinoline's, or sent couriers to Madame Marabou, at Paris, so as to have copies of her dresses; but, as the Mantuan bard observes, "Non cuivis contigit,"—every foot cannot accommodate itself ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the water, it is a matter of great importance to have the hose as strong as possible; and for this purpose, in some claims, it is surrounded by iron bands, which are about two inches wide, and are connected by four ropes which run perpendicularly down. The rings are about three inches apart. The "crinoline hose," thus made, is very flexible, and will support a column of water one hundred and fifty or two hundred feet high. The pipe at the end of the hose is like the pipe of a fire-engine hose, though usually larger. Sometimes the pipe will be eight inches ...
— Hittel on Gold Mines and Mining • John S. Hittell
... a dash about Maryanne Brown that at certain moments was invincible. Hooped petticoats on the back of her sister looked like hoops, and awkward hoops. They were angular, lopsided, and lumpy. But Maryanne wore her hoops as a duchess wears her crinoline. Her well-starched muslin dress would swell off from her waist in a manner that was irresistible to George Robinson. "Such grouping!" as he said to his friend Walker. "Such a flow of drapery! such tournure! Ah, my dear fellow, the artist's eye sees these things at a glance." And then, walking ...
— The Struggles of Brown, Jones, and Robinson - By One of the Firm • Anthony Trollope
... as amazing as his diminutives. He is capable of penning a canto to a crinoline, and has a pathetic monody on a mackintosh. He sings of pretty puckers and pliant pleats, and is eloquent on frills, frocks and chemisettes. The latest French fashions stir him to a fine frenzy, and the sight of a pair of Balmoral boots thrills him with absolute ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... they brought him a thick guernsey shirt, a pair of drawers and pair of inside stockings, which he put on and fastened securely. Sometimes a "crinoline" to afford protection to the stomach in deep water is put on, but on the present occasion it was omitted, the water being shallow. Then Baldwin put on him a "shoulder-pad" to bear the weight of the helmet, ...
— Under the Waves - Diving in Deep Waters • R M Ballantyne
... tackety buit on the boddom o' the butter kit, an' in it gaed, an' him wi't, an' there he was, clappin' his hands, an' stanin' juist like's he'd on a wid crinoline. You never heard sic a roostin' an' roarin' an' hear-hearin' an' hurrain'! I had to shut my een for fear o' bein' knokit deaf a'thegither. Stumpie Mertin jumpit up as spruce as gin he had baith his legs, instead o' only ane, an' forgettin' whaur he was, he glowered a' roond ...
— My Man Sandy • J. B. Salmond
... establishment, while Gilda was complacent; but otherwise the two women were identical. Their dresses were largely similar—Amity's a dun, Gilda Penny's grey, moire silk, high with a tight lace collar, and bands of jet trimming from shoulder to waist, there spreading over crinoline to the floor. Lace fell about their square, capable hands, and Gilda wore broad, locked bracelets checked in black ...
— The Three Black Pennys - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... than this I name Ne'er met at onny party; All girt grand balls they put to shame, They were sae gay an' hearty. Here yan had made hersel quite fine, Wi' lace an' braid's assistance; An' there a girt grand crinoline, To keep t' lads at a distance, Stood out ...
— Yorkshire Dialect Poems • F.W. Moorman
... their return. They were generally very plain, to say the least of it. Round their waists and over their under-dress they pass a piece of silk, which is wrapped tight round the person. The result is as nearly as possible the opposite to the effect produced by a crinoline. ...
— Letters and Journals of James, Eighth Earl of Elgin • James, Eighth Earl of Elgin
... is built of rough blocks of marble to represent Mount Sinai, on which a melodramatic statue of Moses receives the tables of the law from God the Father, with frescoed seraphim in the background. For the same reason, I suppose, that the devout prefer a hideous Bambino and a Madonna in crinoline to the most graceful artistic conception of those sacred personages, San Moise is the most popular church for the midnight mass in Venice, and there is no mass at all in St. Mark's, where its magnificence ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells
... teeth and gums, my double teeth, my single teeth, my stopped teeth, and my sound. In this Arcadian rest, I am fearless of him as of a harmless, powerless creature in a Scotch cap, who adores a young lady in a voluminous crinoline, at a neighbouring billiard- room, and whose passion would be uninfluenced if every one of her teeth were false. They may be. He takes them all ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens
... the Dowager. 'Tear her wig off! Scrub the paint off her face! Flatten her nose on the pavement! Saw off her legs and give her no crinoline! Take her out bathing, I say, and bring her home in a wheelbarrow with fern roots on the top ...
— The Brownies and Other Tales • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... astray; it is the wives who are naturally corrupt or morally weak. A talented lady contributor to the ICONOCLAST once asserted that 'tis not for good women that men have done great deeds. Perchance this is true, for men who do great deeds are goaded thereto, not by the swish of crinoline, but by the immortal gods. Such acts are bred in the bone, are born in the blood and brain. It certainly is not for bad women that men soar at the sun, for every man worth the killing despises corruption in womankind. ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... In putting on a band, see that it is laid quite flat, and is drawn tightly round the waist before it is pinned in front; that the pin is a strong one, and that it is secured to the stays, so as not to slip up or down, or crease in the folds. Arrange the folds of the dress over the crinoline petticoats; if the dress fastens behind, put a small pin in the slit to prevent it from opening. See that the sleeves fall well over the arms. If it is finished with a jacket, or other upper dress, see that ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... and from the fact that Mrs Lupex depended greatly upon her stays and crinoline for such figure as she succeeded in displaying, it may, perhaps, be understood that Mr Cradell did not understand ...
— The Small House at Allington • Anthony Trollope
... on made his effort; the sleigh turned, indeed, but on its side, and the adventurous Miss Tremaine, summarily ejected, sank to her waist in the deep snow, her crinoline rising as she descended, spread out under her arms, looking like an inverted umbrella. Jack and Bluebell were suffocating with the laughter they vainly tried to hide, and Bertie, who was on foot, took in the situation at once, and rushed ...
— Bluebell - A Novel • Mrs. George Croft Huddleston
... that must come out of the darkness. Sometimes the sidewalks over which they passed were of flag-stones, sometimes they were of gravel or of strewn cinders. Now and then an old stone house, which had once sheltered crinoline and lace ruffles, or had served as a trading station with the Indians before Dinwiddie had become a city, would loom between two small shops where the owners, coatless and covered with sweat, were selling flat beer to jaded and miserable customers. Up Bolingbroke Street a faint breeze blew, ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow
... bayonets, and wooden swords. Their faces and necks, bodies and arms, are ghastly white with chalk or ashes; the hair is left in its original jet, and the dingy lower limbs contrast violently with the ghostlike absence of colour above. The dress is a crinoline of palm-fronds, some fresh and green, others sere and brown; a band of strong mid-rib like a yellow hoop passed round the waist spreads out the petticoat like a farthingale, and the ragged ends depend to the knees; sometimes it is worn under the axillae, but in all ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... the most abhorrent to her. For instance—the ladies will appreciate this power—at a time when crinolines were extensive, I made that poor creature draggle about in a costume conspicuous by the absence of crinoline, and making her look like some of the ladies out of a ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies
... language not serene. We must all be very green, And our senses not too keen, If we can't say what we mean, Write in paper, magazine, Send petitions to the QUEEN, Get the House to intervene. Paris fashion's transmarine— Let us stop by quarantine Catastrophic Crinoline! ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 104, January 14, 1893 • Various
... are destined to see within your walls—if any walls remain to you—your own wives and daughters clog their dainty tread with encumbrances of English leather, flatten their heads beneath mushroom-shaped hats, surround themselves with crinoline and flounces, and wear magenta, that abominable mixture of red and blue which always filled your soul with horror. Then, to increase the resemblance of your Parisian women with the Londoners or Cockneys (for it is time you learnt ...
— Paris under the Commune • John Leighton
... will cultivate my crops and tend my flocks and herds; and in the long evenings smoke the calumet with the worthy aborigines. If I should find there some dusky maiden, like Palmer's Indian girl, who has no idea of puns, polkas, crinoline, or eligible matches, I will woo her in savage hyperbole, and she shall light my pipe with her slender fingers, and beat for me the tom-tom when I am sad. I will live in a calm and conscientious way; the Funny Fellow shall become ...
— Humorous Masterpieces from American Literature • Various
... might be irritable for some days, and no women in silk dresses or crinoline, or creaking shoes, must enter the room. He told her the nurse was evidently a clumsy woman, and would be letting things fall. She had better get some old soldier used to nursing. "And don't whisper in the room," said he; "nothing ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade
... 'It will be settled before Owen turns up. I'll get ready this instant. I say,' she added at the door, 'housemaids always come to be hired minus crinoline and flowers, is it the same ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... her. He saw again the pale face she ever after wore; he remembered how, when he met her in the street, she used at first to droop her head and blush, until her will lifted her chin like a bearing-rein and she forced herself to a proud blank stare, while her small stature worked to make her crinoline an indignant spreading majesty behind her. Yet, after all, she was not the only person to be inconvenienced, for he had fashed himself a great deal over the business and had slept very badly for a time. He ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... you cut off those high shoulders from her sleeves? Why should we pay any deference to a hideous fashion that will be extinct a year hence? Next to the unapproachable ugliness of 'crinoline,' I think these high-shouldered sleeves are the worst things invented for ladies in our time. Imagine how horrified they would be if one of their daughters were really ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... world's sobs could always be soothed into smiles by an open bureau with large liberty to upheave its contents from turret to foundation-stone. As the infant world ascended from cambric and dimity to broadcloth and crinoline, its propensity for investigation grew stronger. It loved not bureaus less, but a great many other things more. What sad consequences might have ensued, had this passion been left to forage for itself, no one can tell. But, by the wonderful principle ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... with which they were ornamented. The Hindoo ladies draped their saris around them; while the Mahomedans, with their bright-coloured trousers, skirts, and yashmaks, made a vivid contrast to the other guests. The skirts of some of the ladies were so full that they stuck out further than any crinoline ever seen, and must, I am sure, have had more than a hundred yards of satin in them. When it was time to leave, it was curious to see how closely all the ladies veiled. Some of the attendants were provided with bundles which proved ...
— The Last Voyage - to India and Australia, in the 'Sunbeam' • Lady (Annie Allnutt) Brassey
... No, she stuck to it that it wasn't like a regular present, being got through a grocer, and as she couldn't send him back the tea, being drunk,—but did you hear how she treated EMMA over the crinoline ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, August 30, 1890. • Various
... crinoline hoop-skirts over their shoulders; others brandished boots and shirts, and one glistening brave swung a banjo at arm's-length over his flying horse's head. Another party of the despoilers discovered a shipment of silks and satins. These ...
— The Mountain Divide • Frank H. Spearman
... Goods—Wet a piece of crinoline and lay it over the shiny surface of the goods. Cover with a dry cloth and press with a hot iron. Pull the crinoline away quickly, as you would a plaster, and this will raise the nap of ...
— Fowler's Household Helps • A. L. Fowler
... several improvements designed to perfect the details of his invention, among which we may mention the steering arrangement and arrangements for attacking a vessel provided with what our contemporary, Engineering, not inaptly terms a "crinoline," i. e., a network for keeping off torpedoes. The transverse dimensions of our engravings have been considerably augmented for the ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 481, March 21, 1885 • Various
... from which there was a drive of several miles to Vilray. At the landing he was met by a woman, as much a miniature of the days of Orleanist France as himself. She wore lace mits which covered the hands but not the fingers, and her gown showed the outline of a meek crinoline. ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... fellow! (said Harrington), here is a question to rile Mr. Rogers. If Aaron's toggery needed one portion of the spirit of wisdom from Jehovah, how many portions does the Empress Eugenie's best crinoline need? ...
— Phases of Faith - Passages from the History of My Creed • Francis William Newman
... was by nature very small and mean in appearance; but she had puffed out her dress with crinoline and hoops to a size so immense, that she half filled up Matty's little parlour, and it was hard to imagine how she had contrived to squeeze herself through the doorway. She had seven very full flounces, each of a different colour, adorned with flowers and beads. Her waist ...
— The Crown of Success • Charlotte Maria Tucker
... vex and worry him, Dull, modeless Man, whose spark Long (beside Woman's) burning dim, Has now gone down in dark? Ha! He'd kick up the greatest shine (If he could kick) at—CRINOLINE. Were he recalled to breath, I'll have one last man-mocking spree By donning hooped skirts. Victory! This takes all ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, February 11, 1893 • Various
... young man leaning against the railings). Fix your eyes upon the lady's skirt; the grey one will do—above the pink silk stockings. It changes; drapes her ankles—the nineties; then it amplifies—the seventies; now it's burnished red and stretched above a crinoline—the sixties; a tiny black foot wearing a white cotton stocking peeps out. Still sitting there? Yes—she's still on the pier. The silk now is sprigged with roses, but somehow one no longer sees so clearly. There's no ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... auspiciously that ladies' dress Was then not as we know it to have been, That concentration of all ugliness— That awful bustle and the crinoline— It would have been unfortunate, I mean, For their ascent, and with me you'll agree, It would have proved a hopeless case, I ween, And ended in a dire catastrophe, Which simply would have ...
— The Minstrel - A Collection of Poems • Lennox Amott
... Farther on, he came on a young man who was grinding some very feeling ballads upon a barrel organ. Near the man, on the footpath, was a young girl of about fifteen years of age, fashionably dressed, with crinoline, mantle, and gloves, and a straw hat trimmed with gaudy feathers, but all old and terribly worn out, who, in a loud and cracked though not altogether unpleasing voice, was singing before a shop in expectation ...
— The Most Interesting Stories of All Nations • Julian Hawthorne
... mackintosh, waterproof, raincoat; ulster, P- coat, dreadnought, wraprascal[obs3], poncho, cardinal, pelerine[obs3]; barbe[obs3], chudder[obs3], jubbah[obs3], oilskins, pajamas, pilot jacket, talma jacket[obs3], vest, jerkin, waistcoat, doublet, camisole, gabardine; farthingale, kilt, jupe[obs3], crinoline, bustle, panier, skirt, apron, pinafore; bloomer, bloomers; chaqueta[obs3], songtag[Ger], tablier[obs3]. pants, trousers, trowsers[obs3]; breeches, pantaloons, inexpressibles|!, overalls, smalls, small clothes; shintiyan|!; shorts, jockey ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... his ire were quite different from those of the present day. At that time, you must know, the Empire dress, that you have seen in portraits of the time of the first Napoleon, was all the fashion; no crinoline, skirts so extremely scant and gored that they clung to the figure like drapery upon a statue, and waists a finger and a half in depth, with inch-wide bands instead of sleeves. This style of dress was very ...
— The Story of a Summer - Or, Journal Leaves from Chappaqua • Cecilia Cleveland
... askance on an heretical new generation; parents who believe that to play cards or go to theater is the way of Satan find their children leaving home to do these very things. Everywhere mothers wonder why daughters like short skirts, powder and perhaps rouge, when they were brought up on the corset, crinoline and the bustle; and they rebel against the indictment passed out broadcast by their children. "You are old-fashioned; this is the year 1921." When children grow up, their wills clash with their parents', ...
— The Foundations of Personality • Abraham Myerson
... that prompts this gentle and refined woman to people her gracious solitudes of spirit with those still more gracious lady-like beings which she employs. For her pictures, that is her most typical ones, contain always these groupings of figures in crinoline-like gowns with perhaps more of the touch of eighteen-eighty than of seventy in them, so given to flounces and cascades of lace with picture hats to shade the eyes, and streamers of velvet ribbon to give attenuated sensations ...
— Adventures in the Arts - Informal Chapters on Painters, Vaudeville, and Poets • Marsden Hartley
... her. He was a plump young fellow, clad in summer garments and wearing a straw hat. He had but very little luggage with him, because it was so cumbersome in the great heat; he had, however, swimming-trousers with him, which are nothing to carry. Then came the mother herself, in crinoline, Madame AUGUST, a wholesale dealer in fruit, proprietress of a large number of fish ponds and a land cultivator. She was fat and heated, yet she could use her hands well, and would herself carry out beer to the laborers ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... for women were coming in universally, she always wore hers long and ample, though they were looped up by various economical and thrifty devices; on the top of the dress—which might have covered a crinoline, but didn't—a shawl, long after every one else had ceased to wear shawls; and above the shawl a hat, of the large mushroom type and indecipherable age. And in the midst of this antique and generally untidy gear, the youngest and liveliest face imaginable, ...
— Lady Connie • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... scant starch holding her together is felt to give her among us this antique and austere consistency. I don't talk things over with Lorraine for nothing, and she does keep for me the flashes of perception we neither of us waste on the others. It's the "antiquity of the age of crinoline," she said the other day a propos of a little carte-de-visite photograph of my ancestress as a young woman of the time of the War; looking as if she had been violently inflated from below, but had succeeded in resisting at any cost, and with a strange intensity ...
— The Whole Family - A Novel by Twelve Authors • William Dean Howells, Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, Mary Heaton Vorse, Mary Stewart Cutting, Elizabeth Jo
... be punctual; but there were already a hundred yards of carriages in advance. The toilet, of course, must be made at home, and the huge pelisses of fur so adjusted as not to disarrange head-dresses, lace, crinoline, or uniform: the footmen must be prompt, on reaching the covered portal, to promote speedy alighting and unwrapping, which being accomplished, each sits guard for the night over his own special pile of pelisses ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 93, July, 1865 • Various
... joyously through the refreshed hills and dust-laid roads arriving at Liberty in good time, and went to 'Avenel,' the pretty home of the Burwells. The comforts of this sweet old place seemed very delicious to me after my short experience of roughing it. Papa was much amused when I appeared in crinoline, my 'hoops' having been squeezed into the saddle-bags and brought with me. We remained here the next day, Sunday, and the day after rode on some twelve miles to Captain Buford's. The Captain, in his shirt-sleeves, received us with open arms, seemed ...
— Recollections and Letters of General Robert E. Lee • Captain Robert E. Lee, His Son
... lady in her beauty, which was in truth very great. I used to hear that her lover was fond of comparing her to the Venus of Milo; and, indeed, if you can imagine the mutilated goddess with her full complement of limbs, dressed out by Madame de Crinoline, and engaged in small talk beneath the drawing-room chandelier, you may obtain a vague notion of Miss Josephine Leary. Locksley, you remember, was rather a short man, dark, and not particularly good-looking; ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various
... collected, She rightly concluded—he'd Nothing to Say. Then she lifted her skirts with a masterly hand, And out of the puddles and ruts kept them well up,— Thus showed that she had the most perfect command Of the crinoline mysteries of her envelope, 'Twas done with the daintiest grace all the while, And discovered the daintiest possible gaiter,— Then she turned to her friend with a nod and a smile, And told him to follow—he straightway obeyed her. As they hurried along, she kept ...
— Nothing to Say - A Slight Slap at Mobocratic Snobbery, Which Has 'Nothing - to Do' with 'Nothing to Wear' • QK Philander Doesticks
... the Bible and the commentaries, I very nearly had a real knife, also of my own making. I found a bit of steel belonging to my mother's crinoline, and I set it very cleverly into a piece of wood. I sharpened the steel beautifully on a stone, and naturally cut all my ...
— Jewish Children • Sholem Naumovich Rabinovich
... I shall not see crinoline, nor be expected to do the polite thing. I'll go for the ...
— Nobody • Susan Warner
... dryly. "Fauvette, you're interesting and pretty—when you don't cry (for goodness' sake look at your red eyes in the glass!); but you're as sentimental as an Early Victorian heroine. You ought to wear a bonnet and a crinoline, and carry a little fringed parasol, and talk about your 'papa'! If you don't get safely engaged to an officer before you're out of your teens, you'll turn into one of those faded females who bore one with sickly ...
— The Madcap of the School • Angela Brazil
... for once I'm going to have my own way," I said, and pressing my knee against the door, I forced it open, and there stood my pretty cousin, angry and blushing, trying to hide from my view the crinoline which had ...
— The Blunders of a Bashful Man • Metta Victoria Fuller Victor
... as you doze each e'en, From your disjointed mutterings I glean Your mind is running on a crinoline, O SERAPHINE! ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, February 25, 1893 • Various
... to forget fitness and comfort, and since their initiative has regulated the vagaries of fashion we must admit that our women have never been the victims of such inconvenient, ugly, and absurd inventions as crinoline, leg-o'-mutton sleeves, the coiffure a la fregate, and the various other monstrosities of the Republic, the Directory, and the Restoration, which, thanks to the traditional supremacy of France in matters ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, October 1885 • Various
... the doorway, she suddenly recollected with a blush that she was staring like a schoolgirl, and sat down. And he drew up a chair before her and seated himself; and then under the billowy rose crinoline she set her pretty feet close together, folded her hands, and looked at him with a smiling composure which she no longer ...
— Ailsa Paige • Robert W. Chambers
... the Japanese were that they had a more manly physique, and were less mildly tempered, but that they were lower in morals, than the Chinese. The women were especially eager to know the mysteries of crinoline, and anxiously inspected the ...
— Charles Carleton Coffin - War Correspondent, Traveller, Author, and Statesman • William Elliot Griffis
... wretched custom of the bridal tramp, which is considered so necessary in this country, society should rise up and call you blessed. But it is funny, for all that. I am sure that the first woman who dared to go without crinoline was very funny, and when I heard of a hospital for cats I could not help laughing; but I believed in it, and worked for it. And now where ...
— The Associate Hermits • Frank R. Stockton
... what a picture! Mary wore a pale pink cotton gown which, over the light swellings of her crinoline, bulged and billowed round her, and generously swept the ground. Collar and cuffs of spotless lawn outlined neck and wrists. She bent low over her stitching, and the straight white parting of her hair intensified the ebony of the ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson
... shall wear flowers, feathers, brooches, buckles or clasps, earrings, lockets, neck-ribbons, velvets, kid gloves, parasols, sashes, jackets, or trimming of any kind on dresses, and, above all, no crinoline; no pads to be worn, or frisettes, or chignons, or hair-ribbons. The dress is to be gored and made just to touch the ground, and the hair to be drawn closely to the head, under a round white cap, without trimming of any kind. The same system of dress ...
— Women and the Alphabet • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... have remained so forever! There was not a painted cheek in Eden, nor a bald head, nor a false tooth, nor a bachelor. There was not a flounce, nor a frill, nor a silken gown, nor a flashy waist with aurora borealis sleeves. There was not a curl paper, nor even a threat of crinoline. Raiment was an after thought, the mask of a tainted soul, born of original sin. Beauty was unmarred by gaudy rags; Eve was dressed in sunshine, Adam was ...
— Gov. Bob. Taylor's Tales • Robert L. Taylor
... remain wholly beyond the limits of a candid, liberal, and unprejudiced examination,—we mean the important question, Whether the choicest of all substances, the most delicate of all muscular texture, that substance of which kings, philosophers, policemen, and supporters of crinoline are fashioned by the plastic hand of Nature, ought forever to be excluded from the reproductive process of wasted energy and proportionably consumed nervous and cerebral fibre. Reader, do not shrink; grant us a patient ear. You do not know how ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 17, March, 1859 • Various
... the color, and the material, because she was given to understand that change and variety stimulated trade. Her most revolutionary act had been to readopt, one fine spring morning, the ample skirt of the crinoline period in order to counteract the distress and shortage of work caused in the textile trade by the introduction and persistence of the "hobble skirt." As a consequence of this sudden disturbance of the evolutionary ...
— King John of Jingalo - The Story of a Monarch in Difficulties • Laurence Housman
... was unusually patronized by young officers, these women would sally out, promenade in crinoline, silk stockings, and saucy hoods, and the crowd would fall respectfully back to let them pass. A flag hung from a hospital over the sidewalk, and with a pert flourish, the landlord's daughters filed off the pavement, ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... the critic, "what then of the clairvoyant descriptions, or the visions where the aged father is seen, clad in the old-fashioned garments of another age, or the grandmother with crinoline and chignon? Are these the habiliments of heaven?" Such visions are not spirits, but they are pictures which are built up before us or shot by spirits into our brains or those of the seer for the purposes of recognition. Hence the grey hair and hence the ancient garb. When ...
— The Vital Message • Arthur Conan Doyle
... Humaine, Theophile Gautier says that Balzac may claim to have invented a new hero in fiction, le heros metallique. Of Shakespeare it may be said he was the first to see the dramatic value of doublets, and that a climax may depend on a crinoline. ...
— Intentions • Oscar Wilde
... country houses, filled with carte-de-visite photographs of old-fashioned people, all standing, apparently, in the same studio, and each resting one hand on the same marble pillar. The ladies wore spreading crinoline skirts, and had hair brushed in smooth bands on either side of their high foreheads; the men wore baggy trousers and beards; family groups were large, and those boys and girls taken separately looked altogether too ...
— The Happy Adventurers • Lydia Miller Middleton
... were possible to imagine a world without any women or children in it, du Maurier's contemporary, Keene, so far as we can judge from his art, would have got along very well in such a world. He would have missed the voluminous skirt that followed the crinoline, with its glorious opportunity for beautiful spacing of white in a drawing, more than he would have missed its wearer. But du Maurier's art is Romantic; in the background of its chivalric regard for women there is the history of ...
— George Du Maurier, the Satirist of the Victorians • T. Martin Wood
... copies of Parisian cockneydom, into thy Highland home; nor give up the healthful and graceful, free and modest dress of thy mother and thy mother's mother, to disfigure the little kirk on Sabbath days with crinoline and corset, high-heeled boots, and other ...
— Health and Education • Charles Kingsley
... qualities; the diction, for instance, of the Greek choruses, or of the Scottish poets who followed Chaucer, or of the troubadours. That of the classic writers of an Augustan age was not of such a kind. Words clothe thought; poetic diction had the artifice of the crinoline; it would stand by itself. The Romantics in their return to nature had necessarily to ...
— English Literature: Modern - Home University Library Of Modern Knowledge • G. H. Mair
... Monsieur and Madame were starting on an afternoon excursion in the great landau, with Mlle. de Peyronnet wedged between the white pantaloons and Mme. Lamartine's skirts (I presume I might at that date have said crinoline), a deputation of ouvriers suddenly appeared. Lady Sligo described them exactly as they are to be seen in Gavarni's wonderful drawings in The Illustrated London News of 1848—strange beings with long beards and rakish caps, sometimes of liberty and sometimes of less pronounced cut, with belts ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey
... dainty little bottines were tidily placed on a chair by her bedside, or thrown carelessly, as they had been taken off, upon the hearth-rug, where her favorite spaniel reposed, warming his nose in his sleep before the last smouldering embers of the decaying fire; or whether her crinoline—but if she did wear a crinoline, what can that possibly matter ...
— In the Yule-Log Glow, Book II - Christmas Tales from 'Round the World • Various
... corner behind the barn in days when his father was away. He feared both his father and his mother, and so was in an even more embarrassing situation than old Hiram himself. He had worked gradually up to tobacco by smoking cigarettes of cane made from abandoned hoop-skirts. Crinoline was fashionable, even in the country, in those days, and ribs of cane were used before the metallic distenders of dresses came in. One hoop-skirt, whose usefulness as an article of adornment was gone, would furnish delight and smoking material for a company of ...
— In the Midst of Alarms • Robert Barr
... eyesore to Miss Carlyle than that "brazen hussy," Afy Hallijohn! Smuggled in by Miss Carlyle's servants, there she was—in full dress, too. A green-and-white checked sarcenet, flounced up to the waist, over a crinoline extending from here to yonder; a fancy bonnet, worn on the plait of hair behind, with a wreath and a veil; delicate white gloves, and a swinging handkerchief of lace, redolent of musk. It was well for Miss Corny's peace of mind ever after that she remained in ignorance of that daring act. ...
— East Lynne • Mrs. Henry Wood
... heap of dust behind it, as Gypsy had left it when her mother sent her up to sweep the room that morning), and dressed it up in the three dresses, the cloaks and the cape, one above another, the chair serving as crinoline. Upon the top of the broom-handle he tied the torn apron, stuffed out with the rubber-boots, and pinned on slips of the geography leaves for features; Massachusetts and Vermont giving the graceful effect of one pink eye and ...
— Gypsy Breynton • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps |
