"Gentlewoman" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... gentlewoman just arrived from Naples, having a choice secret to prevent infection, which she found out by her great experience, and did wonderful cures with it in the late plague there, wherein there ...
— A Journal of the Plague Year • Daniel Defoe
... women to each other! Oh, the humiliation if men only knew some of us as we really are! What could I do? I couldn't defend myself against mere imputations; and I couldn't remain in my situation after a slur had been cast on me. My pride (Heaven help me, I was brought up like a gentlewoman, and I have sensibilities that are not blunted even yet!)—my pride got the better of me, and I left my place. Don't let it distress you, Mr. Midwinter! There's a bright side to the picture. The ladies in the neighborhood have overwhelmed me with kindness; I have the prospect ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... Bible, sir. My mother, don't you know, often remarks that anybody who makes the Bible a rule of conduct can't help being a gentleman or gentlewoman. Can't help it, ...
— Dorothy's House Party • Evelyn Raymond
... misery. Mrs. Bolton had orders to send no one from the door who asked for food or work, but to call Annie and let her judge the case. She knew that it was folly, and she was afraid it was worse, but she could not send the homeless creatures away as hungry or poor as they came. They filled her gentlewoman's soul with loathing; but if she kept beyond the range of the powerful corporeal odour that enveloped them, she could experience the luxury of pity for them. The filthy rags that caricatured them, their sick or sodden faces, always frowsed with a week's beard, represented typical ...
— Annie Kilburn - A Novel • W. D. Howells
... never set eyes on her; and, for that matter, the Lady Irene was handsome enough in all conscience, and a jovial young gentlewoman to boot. Ye gods! do you mind how she sighed for him and pursued him? It was a sight to please the goddess Aphrodite herself. But then, our good Asander, who had only to lift up his little finger, was so cold and positively forbidding, that I once came upon the poor lady crying ...
— Gycia - A Tragedy in Five Acts • Lewis Morris
... half of the door was open, and, on my rapping at it, a young person in black made her appearance and admitted me; she was not a menial, but remarkably genteel (an American characteristic) for an English girl, and was probably the daughter of the old gentlewoman who takes care of the house. This lower room has a pavement of gray slabs of stone, which may have been rudely squared when the house was new, but are now all cracked, broken, and disarranged in a most unaccountable ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... I forget the consternation, the blank dismay of his countenance, when, one fine, sunshiny morning, I announced to him my intention of installing in the mansion some respectable middle-aged gentlewoman as my housekeeper. It was some time before ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... who keeps it is a reduced gentlewoman," explained Miss Barry. "Her husband was a British officer, and she is very careful what sort of boarders she takes. Anne will not meet with any objectionable persons under her roof. The table is good, and the house is near the ...
— Anne Of Green Gables • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... to Leonato. Beatrice, niece to Leonato. Margaret, gentlewoman attending on Hero. Ursula, gentlewoman ...
— Much Ado About Nothing • William Shakespeare [Knight edition]
... a strict economist, which she said, enabled her to be liberal; out of her little income of about L300 a year she bestowed at least a third in well-chosen charities, and with the rest, lived like a gentlewoman, and even with hospitality more general than seemed to suit her age; yet I could never prevail on her to accept of any assistance. You cannot conceive how affecting it was to me to see the little preparations of presents which she ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... the Duke of Leeds shall married be To a fine young lady of high quality, How happy will that gentlewoman be In his Grace of Leeds's ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 4 (of 6) • Boswell
... the truth, as a neighbour of whom I made some inquiries on the subject was not slow to inform me. 'Ah, sir,' said the good woman, 'poor Mrs D—— have had a hard time of it, and she born an' bred a gentlewoman.' ...
— Chambers' Edinburgh Journal, No. 421, New Series, Jan. 24, 1852 • Various
... of old Brussels are shown in the now discarded "lappets," which when a lace head-piece and lappets were part of every gentlewoman's costume, were actually regulated by Sumptuary Laws as to length. The longer the lappets ...
— Chats on Old Lace and Needlework • Emily Leigh Lowes
... until both children were sent to a school for little children kept by a gentlewoman named Merlin, in the Rue de l'Homme Arme. According to the fallacious circular which Mademoiselle Merlin sent to the folks of the quarter, there was a garden—that is to say, four broomsticks in a sandy court; and it was there, the first day during recess, that ...
— Ten Tales • Francois Coppee
... were all so coarse and uneven, and the whole of the letter so awkwardly spelt, and so unmercifully blotted and bedawbed, that you would have thought it had been the elegant epistle of Tony Clodhopper to his grandmother Goody Linsey Woolsey. As for his mamma, poor gentlewoman! when she first opened it, she thought it had been sent to her by some impudent shoe black or chimney sweeper; but when she had directed her eyes to the bottom and read (though not, I assure you, without the greatest difficulty)—"from yr, loven ind respactfle sun, ...
— Vice in its Proper Shape • Anonymous
... Americanization to see the landlord and employer according to American standards. This constitutes a change of mind, which is, in effect, when the inoculation succeeds, a change of vision. His eye sees differently. One kindly gentlewoman has confessed that the stereotypes are of such overweening importance, that when hers are not indulged, she at least is unable to accept the brotherhood of man and the fatherhood of God: "we are strangely affected by the clothes we ...
— Public Opinion • Walter Lippmann
... giving you the worst fire department and police to be obtained for money; and, by and by, a grateful machine will make him mayor, or send him to the Legislature, very likely to Congress, where he will misrepresent the honest State of Iowa. Then he will bloom out in a social way, and marry a gentlewoman, and they will snub the old people who ...
— Stories of a Western Town • Octave Thanet
... but a hard student, shows best in his dramas. In his occasional poems, strongly influenced by Donne, he is best at panegyric, worst at burlesque and epigram. In "On a Gentlewoman's Silk Hood" and some other pieces he may challenge comparison with the most futile of the metaphysicals; but no one who has read his noble elegy on Sir Bevil Grenvil, unequal as it is, will think lightly ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... youth and the errors of my age notwithstanding, it is told us there is no marrying and giving in marriage; and this is well, for I do not know how my wives, Montezuma's daughter and the sweet English gentlewoman, would agree ...
— Montezuma's Daughter • H. Rider Haggard
... gentlewoman of English birth, married to a deformed scholar, whom she does not love. She comes alone to Boston, meets Arthur Dimmesdale, a young clergyman, and becomes his wife in all except in name. When her child is born she is condemned to stand in the pillory, holding it in her arms, to be reprimanded ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... matter, gentlewoman? Am I excluded from my own fortress; and by the way of barricado? Am I to dance attendance at the door, as if I were some base plebeian groom? I'll have you know, that, when my foot assaults, the lightning and the thunder are not so terrible as the strokes: brazen gates shall tremble, and bolts ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. 6 (of 18) - Limberham; Oedipus; Troilus and Cressida; The Spanish Friar • John Dryden
... could not make her husband see it so. Yet—and she looked up at him with a sudden passion of love in that gaze—it was this big, sanguine, restless, masterful spirit in him that had won her. From the narrow, restricted conditions of a provincial gentlewoman's life, she had looked out into a bigger world for living, through the eyes of this masterful yeoman, his heart big with desire to conquer and ambition to achieve. Was her faith in his capacity to know and seize the essential in his venturing, ...
— A Warwickshire Lad - The Story of the Boyhood of William Shakespeare • George Madden Martin
... point Mary's mind was strongly made up. No wealth, no mere worldly advantage could make any one her superior. If she were born a gentlewoman, then was she fit to match with any gentleman. Let the most wealthy man in Europe pour all his wealth at her feet, she could, if so inclined, give him back at any rate more than that. That offered at her feet she knew she would never tempt her to ...
— Doctor Thorne • Anthony Trollope
... his witchcrafte he did bewitch a Gentleman dwelling neere to the Saltpans, where the said Doctor kept Schoole, onely for being enamoured of a Gentlewoman whome he loued himselfe: by meanes of which his Sorcerye, witchcraft and diuelish practises, he caused the said Gentleman that once in xxiiij. howres he fell into a lunacie and madnes, and so continued one whole hower together, and for the veritie of the same, ...
— Daemonologie. • King James I
... years that had sped so happily since she came back to Linden House from a Brussels pension, she found herself, even in her present trouble, wondering how it was possible that David Verity could be her mother's brother. This coarse-mannered hog of a man, brother to the sweet-voiced, tender-hearted gentlewoman whose gracious wraith was left undimmed in the girl's memory by the lapse of years—it would be unbelievable if it were not true! He was so gross, so tubby, so manifestly over-fed, whereas her mother had ever been elegant and bien soignee. But he had shown kindness to her in his domineering ...
— The Stowaway Girl • Louis Tracy
... the dark wall he began to be aware of something marvellous on old gold when tea interrupted his observations. Tea with Emma was always engrossing. The mere practice and etiquette of it brought the gentlewoman in her into a lovely salience. Her hands and eyes became magical, her talk light and constant without insistency. A symbolist might imagine eternal correspondence between the amber brew and her sunny hair. It was easy to adore Emma at tea, and generally she did not resent ...
— The Collectors • Frank Jewett Mather
... as having an appearance of triviality. And, to be sure, had the matter gone no further than the humouring of a poor silly girl by a young gentleman of quality, it had been very well. But to proceed. We shall make it appear that after three or four weeks the prisoner became contracted to a young gentlewoman of that country, one suitable every way to his own condition, and such an arrangement was on foot that seemed to promise him a happy and a reputable living. But within no very long time it seems that this young gentlewoman, hearing of the jest that was going about that ...
— Ghost Stories of an Antiquary - Part 2: More Ghost Stories • Montague Rhodes James
... he think of my presence, that returning from a ride one day, he seized and detained the princess's hand. She frowned with pained surprise, but unresistingly, as became a young gentlewoman's dignity. Her hand was rudely caught and kept in the manner of a boisterous wooer—a Harry the Fifth or lusty Petruchio. She pushed her horse on at a bound. Prince Hermann rode up head to head with her gallantly, having now both hands free of the reins, like an ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... interfering and dragging her off forcibly, "dinna deave the gentlewoman wi' your testimony! ye hae preached eneugh for sax days. Ye preached us out o' our canny free-house and gude kale-yard, and out o' this new city o' refuge afore our hinder end was weel hafted in it; and ye hae preached Mr Harry awa to the prison; and ye hae preached twenty punds out o' the Laird's ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... two, whom the prince first named, the Lord Edmund, [Marginal note: The lord Edmond was the prince his brother.] and the lord Iohn Voisie, And doe you also faithfully loue your Lord and prince? Who answered both, Yea vndoubtedly. Then sayth he, take you away this gentlewoman and lady (meaning his wife) and let her not see her lord and husband, till such time as I will you thereunto. Whereupon they tooke her from the princes presence, crying out, and wringing her hands. Then sayd they vnto her, Be you contented good Lady and Madame, ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries - of the English Nation. v. 8 - Asia, Part I. • Richard Hakluyt
... a daughter). Mrs. Apperthwaite herself, in her youth, might have sat to an illustrator of Scott or Bulwer. Even now you could see she had come as near being romantically beautiful as was consistently proper for such a timid, gentle little gentlewoman as she was. Reduced, by her husband's insolvency (coincident with his demise) to "keeping boarders," she did it gracefully, as if the urgency thereto were only a spirit of quiet hospitality. It should be added in haste that she ...
— Beasley's Christmas Party • Booth Tarkington
... man, whereas a woman's good sense is then most conspicuous when she knows how to preserve herself from becoming enamoured of a man, her superior in rank, I am minded, fair my ladies, to shew you by the story which I am now to tell, how by deed and word a gentlewoman both defended herself against attack, and weaned her ...
— The Decameron, Volume I • Giovanni Boccaccio
... "Mistress Henshaw is gentlewoman born," returned Emlyn, with a toss of her head. "She ought to have all that is becoming her station in return for being wedded to an old hunks like that! And 'tis very well she should have one like me who has seen what becomes good blood! So ...
— Under the Storm - Steadfast's Charge • Charlotte M. Yonge
... me, but for the poor wench; she must now cry vale to Lobster pies, hartichokes, and all such meats of mortality; poor gentlewoman, the sign must not be in virgo any longer with her, and that ...
— The Merry Devil • William Shakespeare
... his debts, returned in 1795 to the United States, accompanied by the beautiful and eccentric gentlewoman who was his wife, and who had been with her husband in Paris during the Terror. They brought with them on this occasion a very large collection of fine French furniture, decorations, and paintings. The colonel ...
— The Romance of Old New England Rooftrees • Mary Caroline Crawford
... his wife, interrupting him; "that is just it—Aunt Barbara is quite perfect, a kind of ideal gentlewoman in cultivation, and refinement, and piety, and everything else; but she is, without exception, the most alarming ...
— My Little Lady • Eleanor Frances Poynter
... If he have reacht the Noble worth of Captain, He may well claim a worthy Gentlewoman, Though she ...
— A King, and No King • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... no woman is suffered to wear a silk hood unless she be a gentlewoman; that is, a gentleman's daughter, or married to a gentleman. A rich maid having the offer of a wealthy yeoman, or a bare gentleman, wished for the last, to qualify her to wear a black hood. It is since spoken to such wealthy ...
— The Proverbs of Scotland • Alexander Hislop
... descended from the Family of the Honesti, who by the death of his Father, and an Unckle of his, was left extraordinarily abounding in riches, and growing to yeares fitting for marriage, (as young Gallants are easily apt enough to do) he became enamored of a very bountifull Gentlewoman, who was Daughter to Signior Paulo Traversario, one of the most ancient and noble Families in all the Countrey. Nor made he any doubt, but by his meanes and industrious endeavour, to derive affection from ...
— Ravenna, A Study • Edward Hutton
... Sir Launcelot, a gentlewoman brought me hither, but I know not the cause. In the meanwhile, as they thus stood talking together, there came twelve nuns which brought with them Galahad, the which was passing fair and well made, that unneth in the world men might not find ...
— Song and Legend From the Middle Ages • William D. McClintock and Porter Lander McClintock
... books. George was absorbing impressions of the things around him: of the quaint old Norfolk town, its "clean but narrow streets branching out from thy modest market-place, with thine old-fashioned houses, with here and there a roof of venerable thatch"; of that exquisite old gentlewoman Lady Fenn, {9b} as she passed to and from her mansion upon some errand of bounty or of mercy, "leaning on her gold-headed cane, whilst the sleek old footman walked at a respectful distance behind." {9c) On Sundays, from the black leather-covered seat in the church-pew, he would contemplate ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins
... and takes the sermon, and measures out a nap by it, just as long. She sends religion afore to sixty, where she never overtakes it, or drives it before her again. Her most necessary instruments are a waiting gentlewoman and a chambermaid; she wears her gentlewoman still, but most often leaves the other in her chamber window. She hath a little kennel in her lap, and she smells the sweeter for it. The utmost reach of her providence is the fatness of a capon, and her greatest envy is the next ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various
... her I'll make her the best husband in the world, and Lady O'Trigger into the bargain!—But we must get the old gentlewoman's ...
— The Rivals - A Comedy • Richard Brinsley Sheridan
... haue one play but one thing. But Host, doth this Sir Protheus, that we talke on, Often resort vnto this Gentlewoman? Ho. I tell you what Launce his man told me, He lou'd ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... of Bessie's talk pleased Lady Latimer. She decided that Mrs. Carnegie must be a gentlewoman, and that Bessie had qualities capable of taking a fine polish. She would have held the child in conversation longer had not Mrs. Wiley come up, and after a word or two about the success of the feast, bade Bessie run away and see that her little brothers ...
— The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax • Harriet Parr
... of the frivolous about her. In the frequent informal social gatherings she was always the life of the occasion, but never did her merriment get down to the level of silliness. Without a suspicion of prudishness there was always with her the natural dignity of the true-born gentlewoman. ...
— The Romance and Tragedy • William Ingraham Russell
... ever had heard of her death at all. He spoke of our cousins' kindness to this forlorn soul, and that, learning her desolation and her piteous history (and being the more pitiful because of her shattered mind), when she had last wandered to their door, they had cared for the old gentlewoman to the end of her days—"for I do not think she can be living yet," said my father, with a merry twinkle in his eyes: "she must have been nearly a hundred years old when you saw her. She belonged to a fine old family which had gone to wreck and ruin. She strayed about for years, and it was a godsend ...
— An Arrow in a Sunbeam - and Other Tales • Various
... night?"]—"Yes, God help us—half a score priests, or twenty or thirty gentry." And I observe the depth of the groan is nearly in proportion to the quality of the person she commiserates. Thus, a groan for a Comte, a Marquise, or a Priest, is much more audible than one for a simple gentlewoman or a merchant; and the arrival of a Bishop (especially if not one of the constitutional clergy) is announced in a more sorrowful ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady
... was the snow and the low arch of dun vapor—there was the stifling oppression of that gentlewoman's world, where everything was done for her and none asked for her aid—where the sense of connection with a manifold pregnant existence had to be kept up painfully as an inward vision, instead of coming from without in claims that would have ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... off their lady-major uniforms, stop driving tractors and wearing overalls, and with the precious knowledge of the experience they would evolve quite a new-old standard, as charming as lavender and lace and as old as Time—the gentlewoman! They would no longer accentuate their ugliness with that unlovely honesty of the feminist which has been quite as distressing as the impossible Victorian lack of honesty and everlasting concealment of vital things. They would no longer be feminists ...
— The Gorgeous Girl • Nalbro Bartley
... sorry," he said, his face lengthening, "to remember something that dropped even from the gentlewoman herself. She pretends to religion and loyalty very much—how greatly she wept at the death of King Charles the Martyr—and owns her great obligations to the late king and his royal brother. And yet no sooner is one in the grave than she forgets ...
— The Historical Nights' Entertainment • Rafael Sabatini
... Esmond, sure enough, my lady," says Mrs. Worksop the housekeeper (an old tyrant whom Henry Esmond plagued more than he hated), and the old gentlewoman looked significantly towards the late lord's picture, as it now is in the family, noble and severe-looking, with his hand on his sword, and his order on his cloak, which he had from the emperor during the war on the Danube against ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... his hands with chains, a dungeon was his abode, and his feet stuck fast in the mire. Murderers and thieves were his companions, yet even among them did he pursue his labors, until God, by means of a pious gentlewoman, who had seen and pitied ...
— A Soldier of Virginia • Burton Egbert Stevenson
... gentlewoman like personage of about fifty-four, of a grave, authoritative and somewhat severe aspect; but with the remains of very extraordinary personal beauty which she had once possessed in an eminent degree. ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various
... the two did not always see eye to eye. Perhaps if Maria had been more unbending, things might have turned out differently; but Methodism in its severest aspects was not more severe than Maria Farringdon. She was a thorough gentlewoman, and extremely clever; but tenderness was not counted among her excellencies. George would have been fond of almost any woman who was pretty enough to be loved and not clever enough to be feared; but ...
— The Farringdons • Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler
... on a written page and delivered by hand, for the old Colonel averred that no gentleman should assume to shriek his voice by mechanical device into the ear of a gentlewoman. In cases of illness, accident or fire, or perhaps in pressing business needs, the telephone had its uses; but a faux pas of the first order was to ...
— Sunlight Patch • Credo Fitch Harris
... resided for a time, in a pleasant suite of apartments at Hampton Court, a young and beautiful gentlewoman, who was greatly beloved by all who knew her, for her goodness and her sweet and winning ways. Lady Mary Hamilton, or "the Lady Mary," as she was called by the pensioners and retainers there, was the youngest daughter of a poor Scottish nobleman, ...
— Stories and Legends of Travel and History, for Children • Grace Greenwood
... seventeen years of age, and had just come from a Protestant convent, as they called establishments where young women were educated at Chester. Mr. Trevannion was still with his face covered, and not yet recovered from his burst of feeling, when this young gentlewoman came ...
— The Privateer's-Man - One hundred Years Ago • Frederick Marryat
... contingent upon a stable domestic life, was quickened in Virginia with the coming of the gentlewoman Mrs. Lucy Forest and her maid Ann Burras, who with Mrs. Forest's husband Thomas, arrived in the second supply, 1608, following the planting of the colony at Jamestown, ...
— Domestic Life in Virginia in the Seventeenth Century - Jamestown 350th Anniversary Historical Booklet Number 17 • Annie Lash Jester
... forgetting my French. Or is it only that I am growing old? too old to keep school?" This dread was beginning to haunt Miss Ailie, and the pages between which the blotting-paper lay revealed that she had written to the editor of the Mentor asking up to what age he thought a needy gentlewoman had a right to teach. The answer was not given, but her comment on it told everything. "I asked him to be severely truthful, so that I cannot resent his reply. But if I take his advice, how am I to live? And if I do not take it, I fear I am but ...
— Sentimental Tommy - The Story of His Boyhood • J. M. Barrie
... do me a very great favour. Mrs. Williams, a gentlewoman whom you may have seen at Mr. Thrale's, is a petitioner for Mr. Hetherington's charity: petitions are this day ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... conferred on her the doubtful advantage of a gentlewoman's tastes and bearing, making of her, therefore, an alien in her father's house. When Mrs. Atkins, who was responsible for her education, realized the equivocal good of these things, and saw moreover that the girl had grown ...
— Judith Of The Plains • Marie Manning
... by Diana and her mother. He denied that Diana had any claim on him, and spoke of her as though her life was spent in the gutter. But she asked him what sort of gentlewoman it was to whom he gave, as to her he gave, the ring of his ancestors now missing ...
— Beautiful Stories from Shakespeare • E. Nesbit
... she thought. "If people in a better world are really au courant as to the affairs of this, I should like Lady Jane Vawdrey to know that I am not utterly without the instincts of a gentlewoman." ...
— Vixen, Volume III. • M. E. Braddon
... at these words. A corpse that returns from the world beyond the grave! This young gentlewoman certainly had a terrifying imagination. Nevertheless he swore by his hope of salvation that he would not bestow a glance upon the papers, but would give them to ...
— The Poor Plutocrats • Maurus Jokai
... mean little cabin on our coast some time ago while a trained nurse from New York washed a sick baby and taught the mother how to save the poor little mite's life. It was that gentlewoman's ministry for Jesus Christ. For the privilege she was paying her own expenses and receiving no salary. If ever I realized the Master standing by in my life it was then and there in the semi-darkness of that hut. That ...
— What the Church Means to Me - A Frank Confession and a Friendly Estimate by an Insider • Wilfred T. Grenfell
... delightful, and in spite of her established position in Russian society, she tried abroad to be like a European fashionable lady, which she was not—for the simple reason that she was a typical Russian gentlewoman; and so she was affected, which did not altogether suit her. The prince, on the contrary, thought everything foreign detestable, got sick of European life, kept to his Russian habits, and purposely tried to show himself abroad less European ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... said, "Oh, really! How very interesting!" and looked about as uninterested the while as a human creature could be. In the pause which followed it was obvious that she was readjusting the first impression of a young gentlewoman belonging to her own leisured class, and preparing herself to cross-question an entirely different person—an ordinary teacher in a High School! There was a touch of patronage in her manner, but it was still quite agreeable Mrs Fanshawe was always agreeable for choice: she found it the best policy, ...
— The Independence of Claire • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... she replied, undismayed, "if you deprive me of my lands, you take away all that your ancestors' generosity gave, and you break the only bonds which attach us together. You cannot dispose the hand of any gentlewoman by force." ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VIII • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... Dormina, do not grudge me the pleasure of it, since there are so very few that entertain Calista.' This last she spoke with a sigh, and a languishment in her voice, that shot new flames of love into my panting heart, and trilled through all my veins, while she pursued her walk with the old gentlewoman; and still I kept myself at such a distance to have them in my sight, but slid along the shady side of the walk, where I could not be easily seen, while they kept still on the shiny part: she led me thus through all the walks, through all the maze of love; ...
— Love-Letters Between a Nobleman and His Sister • Aphra Behn
... woman, was a distressed gentlewoman. The death of her husband, a warehouse clerk, by acute alcoholic poisoning, seems to have given her her first chance of displaying those strong qualities which ultimately became her chief characteristic. And she was of those to whom plan of action comes instantly ...
— Once Aboard The Lugger • Arthur Stuart-Menteth Hutchinson
... the infant go back to sleep. I was glad to be alone, to have a chance to get myself together. But suddenly I heard a rustle of skirts in the doorway behind me, and turned and saw a white-clad figure; an elderly gentlewoman, slender and fragile, grey-haired and rather pale, wearing a ...
— Sylvia's Marriage • Upton Sinclair
... appear who were the likeliest in the world to be alarmed; and the noise of swords is made to draw only two poor women thither, who were most certain to run away from it. Upon Lucia and Marcia's coming in, Lucia appears in all the symptoms of an hysterical gentlewoman:— ...
— Lives of the Poets: Addison, Savage, and Swift • Samuel Johnson
... be pleased to file off to the left, and make room for the venerable matron that stands behind you. Old gentlewoman, says he, I think you are fourscore? You have heard the question, what have you been doing so long in the world? Ah! sir, says she, I have been doing what I should not have done, but I had made a firm resolution ...
— The Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor, and English Teacher's Assistant • John Hamilton Moore
... much that I never saw my father or my mother respect anything in any one but goodness.' Her father was a great reader of the best books, and he took great pains that his children should form the same happy habit and should carefully cultivate the same excellent taste. Her mother, while a Christian gentlewoman of the first social standing, did not share her husband's love of serious literature. She passed far too much of her short lifetime among the romances of the day, till her daughter has to confess that she took no little harm from the ...
— Santa Teresa - an Appreciation: with some of the best passages of the Saint's Writings • Alexander Whyte
... "Lord, Madam," says she, "you catch us very unfit for company; but so kind a heart needs no excuse, and I will be candid with you. We are of birth and breeding like yourself." ('Twas a skilful compliment and the lady simpered.) "And therefore, as a gentlewoman of quality, you shall understand my grief when I present myself as my Lord Viscount Mayo's daughter, and add that I have not the wherewithal to clothe or feed these innocents! You are yourself too young to be a mother, Madam" (again the lady simpered), "yet will comprehend a mother's anguish. ...
— The Ladies - A Shining Constellation of Wit and Beauty • E. Barrington
... discovers that the succession of the legitimate children 'is ordered by reason, and is the will of heaven from eternity.' Cardinal Ippolito de' Medici founded his claim to the lordship of Florence on the fact that he was perhaps the fruit of a lawful marriage, and at all events son of a gentlewoman, and not, like Duke Alessandro, of a servant girl. At this time began those morganatic marriages of affection which in the fifteenth century, on grounds either of policy or morality, would have ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt
... other day of a visit from a gentlewoman (a stranger to me) who seemed to be about thirty. Her complexion is brown; but the air of her face has an agreeableness, which surpasses the beauties of the fairest women. There appeared in her look and mien a sprightly health; and her eyes had too much vivacity ...
— The Tatler, Volume 1, 1899 • George A. Aitken
... how she let her tongue run on, without bit or bridle, while vindicating her injured honor from this foul aspersion, quite forgetting her own theory in the redundancy of her practice! There never was, by her own account, such a discreet, amiable, well-spoken, benevolent, and virtuous gentlewoman! And how the cruel Captain continued to laugh at, and quiz, and draw her out: until Juliet, in order to cause a diversion in her aunt's favor, pinched her favorite black cat's ear. But this stratagem only turned the whole torrent of the old ...
— Mark Hurdlestone - Or, The Two Brothers • Susanna Moodie
... to their choice in marriage, "Please God, and please yourselves, and you shall never displease me;" and greatly blamed those parents who conclude matches for their children without their consent. He sometimes mentioned the saying of a pious gentlewoman, who had many daughters.—"The care of most people is how to get good husbands for their daughters; but my care is to fit my daughters to be good wives, and then ...
— Life and Literature - Over two thousand extracts from ancient and modern writers, - and classified in alphabetical order • J. Purver Richardson
... begin to consider the subject of the working woman discover presently that there is a vast field of inquiry lying quite within their reach, without any trouble of going into slums or inquiring of sweaters. This is the field occupied by the gentlewoman who works for a livelihood. She is not always, perhaps, gentle in quite the old sense, but she is gentle in that new and better sense which means culture, education, and refinement. There are now thousands of these ...
— As We Are and As We May Be • Sir Walter Besant
... very Saturday night before I left Hunsford—between our pools at quadrille, while Mrs. Jenkinson was arranging Miss de Bourgh's footstool—that she said, 'Mr. Collins, you must marry. A clergyman like you must marry. Choose properly, choose a gentlewoman, for my sake; and for your own, let her be an active, useful sort of person, not brought up high, but able to make a small income go a good way. This is my advice. Find such a woman as soon as you can, bring her to Hunsford, and I will visit her!' Allow me, ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... of that numerous class of females, whose society can raise no other emotion than surprise at there being any men in the world who could like them well enough to marry them. She had neither beauty, genius, accomplishment, nor manner. The air of a gentlewoman, a great deal of quiet, inactive good temper, and a trifling turn of mind were all that could account for her being the choice of a sensible, intelligent man like Mr. Allen. In one respect she was admirably fitted to introduce a young lady into public, being as fond of going ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... to make this confession, because, in every sense of the word, Mary Fuller was my idea of a young gentlewoman—or as near an approach to that exquisite being, as a girl of her years ever can be. More than this, she promised those higher and still more noble qualifications that distinguish souls lifted out from the multitude ...
— The Old Homestead • Ann S. Stephens
... put her foot over its threshold. Decima went once in a way; but she, never. If she and Stephen Verner met abroad, she was coldly civil to him; she was indifferently haughty to Mrs. Verner, whom she despised in her heart for not being a lady. With all her deficiencies, Lady Verner was essentially a gentlewoman—not to be one amounted in her eyes to little less than a sin. No wonder that she, with her delicate beauty of person, her quiet refinements of dress, shrank within herself as she swept past poor Mrs. Verner, with her great person, her crimson face, and her flaunting colours! No wonder that ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood
... this world; and if you prevent it in any species, I'll have the law of you; and I take this respectable woman," looking at Mrs. Martha, who came in with a salver of cakes and wine, "I take this here respectable gentlewoman to be my witness, if you choose to refuse my husband (that is to be) admittance to his true and lawful nearest relation upon earth. Only say the doors are locked, and that you won't let him in; that's all we ask of you, Mrs. Patty Paramount. Only say that afore this ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... looked around, and then hung down his head. He knew the calm, fearless eyes of this gentlewoman were upon him; he felt the influence of her firm tones. ...
— Mingo - And Other Sketches in Black and White • Joel Chandler Harris
... coffee time now. The soldiers were lingering politely about with their tin cups in hand—not too expectantly, so as to assure the ladies that if by any chance there was no coffee they would not be disappointed. The gentlewoman in attendance had recently come from a canteen near the front where soup is made and often eight thousand bowls of it served in a day. The skin of her arms and hands is, I fear, permanently unlovely from the steam of the great kettles—or perhaps I should say permanently ...
— Defenders of Democracy • The Militia of Mercy
... waiting on the platform too, and was attracted by the perfection of her appearance, her lofty carriage and the expression of the true gentlewoman on her countenance. ...
— The Portland Peerage Romance • Charles J. Archard
... him. I had lost in the same hour my love and my friend. I would make up my mind to be lonely and pay no heed. As for the picture he gave me, what good to me was the face of that fair girl? Lancelot's sister Marjorie was a gentlewoman, born and bred, as my lost Lancelot was a gentleman. What could she or he really have to do with the mercerman in the dull little Sussex town? Marjorie had a beautiful face, if the limner did not lie—and indeed he did not—and I could well believe that as lovely a ...
— Marjorie • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... hunting, card-playing, dicing and the like. The qualifications for a gallant were described by another writer in 1603 as "to make good faces, to take Tobacco well, to spit well, to laugh like a waiting gentlewoman, to lie well, to blush for nothing, to looke big upon little fellowes, to scoffe with a grace ... and, for a neede, ...
— The Social History of Smoking • G. L. Apperson
... and promised herself, not without some compunction, to hand over the gold to McDougall, if any should materialize. Next she flew to her dressing-room and made herself look as much like a gentlewoman's housekeeper as she could in the few minutes at her disposal. Then she danced through a long, dark passageway, and whisked down a narrow winding stair, and stood at last in the door of the Great Tower ...
— The Spread Eagle and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... poor, notorious and obscure, nor was he a lad of perceptions; yet he knew at once that this was a very unusual sort of lady for Green's Ferry. If he had been a man of the social world he would have known that she was a gentlewoman of notably high-bred appearance. She glanced, not without dismay, about the shabby work-room, as if she felt herself where she had no business to be. Nevertheless, she came forward frankly, and asked in the friendly way of one whose station ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 9 • Various
... you not have enquired what place this was before he had accepted it? Perhaps, as Molly says, it may be in the kitchen; and truly I don't care my daughter should be a scullion wench; for, poor as I am, I am a gentlewoman. And thof I was obliged, as my father, who was a clergyman, died worse than nothing, and so could not give me a shilling of potion, to undervalue myself by marrying a poor man; yet I would have ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... in a dainty cap with flying streamers, was sitting by the fireside spinning. She had heard the news of Pete as Philip passed through to Sulby, and was now wondering if it was not her duty to acquaint Uncle Peter. The sweet and natty old gentlewoman, brought up in the odour of gentility, was thinking on the lines of poor Bridget, Black Tom when dying under the bare scraas, that a man's son was his son in ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine
... a great Expedition set on foot to go and find out Mrs. Fielding; and to be dismally penitent to that excellent gentlewoman; and to bring her back, by force, if needful, to be happy and forgiving. And when the Expedition first discovered her, she would listen to no terms at all, but said, an unspeakable number of times, that ever she should have ...
— The Cricket on the Hearth • Charles Dickens
... echo from generation to generation. Now it is Mr Windebanke complaining to Cecil that his son "has utterly no mind nor disposition in him to apply any learning, according to the end you sent him for hither," being carried away by an "inordinate affection towards a young gentlewoman abiding near Paris."[310] Now it is Mr Smythe desiring to be called home unless the allowance for himself and Francis Davison can be increased. "For Mr Francis is now a man, and your son, and not so easily ruled touching expenses, about which we have had more brabblements than ...
— English Travellers of the Renaissance • Clare Howard
... hadn't said that because of a certain conjunction of planets—or whatever it was—in my horoscope, I should have an accident to-night, I shouldn't have jumped out of the brougham. I should have waited for Mr. Ferdinand to assist me, as befits a gentlewoman." ...
— The Prophet of Berkeley Square • Robert Hichens
... story went in the country, that he had been heard to say while they were quarrelling, 'Why can't you be quiet, there's none so many of you.' Benoni, or the child of sorrow, I knew when I was a school-boy. His mother had been deserted by a gentleman in the neighbourhood, she herself being a gentlewoman by birth. The circumstances of her story were told me by my dear old dame, Ann Tyson, who was her confidante. The lady died broken-hearted. In the woods of Alfoxden I used to take great delight in noticing the habits, tricks, and physiognomy ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... Another gentlewoman of the same period was Mrs. Laura Wolcott Gibbs, wife of Colonel George Gibbs of Newport. The first Oliver Wolcott, a Signer, Governor of Connecticut and General in the Revolutionary War, was her grandfather; while the second ...
— As I Remember - Recollections of American Society during the Nineteenth Century • Marian Gouverneur
... not always be at your book," she said, and turned her back. To some papists in the antechamber he remarked, "Why should the pleasing face of a gentlewoman affray me? I have looked in the faces of many angry men, and yet have ...
— John Knox and the Reformation • Andrew Lang
... looked as fresh, and was as strong as a man of fifty. His son Hugh looked older; and, as Dr Johnson observed, had more the manners of an old man than he. I had often heard of such instances, but never saw one before. Mrs M'Sweyn was a decent old gentlewoman. She was dressed in tartan, and could speak nothing but Erse. She said, she taught Sir James M'Donald Erse, and would teach me soon. I could now sing a verse of the song Hatyin foam'eri, made in honour of Allan, the famous Captain of Clanranald, ...
— The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. • James Boswell
... minds his own business, and does not show by his demeanor that he bears about with him a sense of degradation and inferiority, and who gives evidence that he considers himself a man, and expects the treatment due to a man, will secure politeness and respect from every true gentleman and gentlewoman in the world. The man who shies, and suspects, and envies, and is full of petty jealousies, and is always afraid that he shall not get all that is due to him in the way of polite attention, and manifests a feeling of great uncertainty and anxiety concerning his own social position, ...
— Lessons in Life - A Series of Familiar Essays • Timothy Titcomb
... not pretty; she had a broad, curious face. Her clothes were much too good to throw away. You would have enjoyed giving them to a decayed gentlewoman. ...
— Living Alone • Stella Benson
... and refinement, can never be mistaken, and differ as widely as gold and tinsel. How captivating is gentleness of manner derived from true humility, and how faint is every imitation! That suavity of manner which renders a real gentlewoman courteous to all, and careful to avoid giving offence, is often copied by those who merely subject themselves to certain rules of etiquette: but very awkward is the copy. Warm professions of regard are bestowed on those who do not expect them, and the esteem which ...
— Enquire Within Upon Everything - The Great Victorian Domestic Standby • Anonymous
... your selfe with[64] all respect Toward the gentlewoman you affect. You must learne with here since the citty Could spare you none.—Ile to ...
— A Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. II • Various
... keenness; and after a few minutes, though she was shyly obedient in the manner of an untutored orphan from the West, she had no fear of the other. Miss Grierson was a large, flat-backed woman who was on the descending slope of middle age. She was really a "gentlewoman," in the self-pitying and self-praising sense in which those who advertise themselves as such use that word. She was all the social forms, all the proprieties. She was deferentially autocratic; her voice was monotonously dignified and cultured; ...
— Children of the Whirlwind • Leroy Scott
... stepmother's judgment; like all of the new Mrs. Breckenridge's friends, she was deeply, dumbly impressed with that lady's amazing efficiency. She had been a spoiled and discontented little rowdy. She became an entirely self-satisfied little gentlewoman. Clarence, jealously watching her progress, knew that Rachael was doing for his daughter far more than he ...
— The Heart of Rachael • Kathleen Norris
... not at all extraordinary that a gentlewoman's gentlewoman should take a fancy to me," said he to himself. "I am twenty-seven years old, and I have a title and an income of two hundred thousand a year. But that her mistress, who hates water like a rabid cat—for it would be hard ...
— The Magic Skin • Honore de Balzac
... Madame Valiere. And then each stared involuntarily at the other's head. They had shared so many things that this new possibility sounded like a discovery. Pleasing pictures flitted before their eyes—the country cousin received (on a Box and Cox basis) by a Parisian old gentlewoman sans peur and sans reproche; a day of seclusion for each alternating with a ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill |
