"Soubrette" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... soubrette trilling snatches of her topical song as she creamed off her make-up, came to them through the sulky gloom of the corridor. Behind the closed door of Miss De Voe's dressing room, the gabble of the pink satin ponies was like hash in the chopping. ...
— Defenders of Democracy • The Militia of Mercy
... Adore its heroines, those immortal dames, Time's only rivals, whom he never tames, Whose youth, unchanging, lives while thrones decay (Age spares the Pyramids-and Dejazet); The saucy-aproned, razor-tongued soubrette, The blond-haired beauty with the eyes of jet, The gorgeous Beings whom the viewless wires Lift to the skies in strontian-crimsoned fires, And all the wealth of splendor that awaits The throng that enters those ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... A glittering affair; in colour a bright blue, with pale blue leather straps and a great deal of gold fittings, and wire wheels. Eva said it was the kind of thing a soubrette would use, rather than an elderly business man. You saw him driving about in it, red-faced and rather awkward at the wheel. You saw him, too, in the Pompeian room at the Congress Hotel of a Saturday afternoon when doubtful and roving-eyed matrons in kolinsky capes are wont to congregate to ...
— Cheerful—By Request • Edna Ferber
... sister, the Canoness, a not too theatrical old maid; and Frederick's daughter, Amelie, though pert and not too good-natured, the most human creature of them all, albeit with the humanities of a soubrette rather than of a great lady. But what shall one say of Albert of Rudolstadt, the heir, the betrothed of Amelie (this fact excusing much in her), and, when Consuelo has joined the circle at Porpora's recommendation as music-mistress and companion in the higher kind to Amelie—her ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... of the old French piece, if I remember rightly) in a rather too forcedly ingenuous manner, but behaving most naturally in the interrupted courtship scene, and being generally very sympathetic. I mustn't omit Miss HUNTER, pink of parlour-maids, not the conventional flirty soubrette nor the low-comedy waiting-woman, but a self-respecting, responsible young person, conscious of her own and her young man's moral rectitude, and satisfied with quarter-day and the ...
— Punch, or, the London Charivari, Volume 98, March 8, 1890. • Various
... all respect to the efforts of the fair, I doubt if Mdlle. Barthet, or Mdme. Croizette herself, would reconcile the town to the loss of the fair De Brie, and Madeleine, and the first, the true Celimene, Armande. Yet had you ever so merry a soubrette as Mdme. Samary, so ...
— Letters to Dead Authors • Andrew Lang
... my monoplane a name. Tad Warren has been married to a musical comedy soubrette with ringlets of red-brown hair (Istra's hair is quite bright red, but this woman has dark red hair, like the color of California redwood chips, no maybe darker) and she wears a slimpsy bright blue dress with the waist-line nearly down to her knees, and skirt pretty short, showing a lot ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... years old, dressed in a charming milkmaid costume, with a milk-can hanging at her side; so too did he greet the Berthier children, Blanche and Sophie, the one masquerading as Folly, the other dressed in soubrette style; and he had even the hardihood to tackle Valentine de Chermette, a tall young lady of some fourteen years, whom her mother always dressed in Spanish costume, and at her side his figure appeared so slight that she seemed to be carrying him along. However, ...
— A Love Episode • Emile Zola
... semi-oriental salaam, offered to 'take a hand.' Madame de Mourairef was graciously pleased to order her to do so. We shuffled, cut, and played; and when midnight came, and it was necessary to retire, I felt almost afraid to examine into my own heart, lest I might find that the soubrette appeared to me at least ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 435 - Volume 17, New Series, May 1, 1852 • Various
... what do you think?—He has the impudence to talk about my attentions to Lady Binks as inconsistent with the prosecution of my suit to his sister! Yes, Hal—this awkward Scotch laird, that has scarce tact enough to make love to a ewe-milker, or, at best, to some daggletailed soubrette, has the assurance to start ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... had first met Mogley when she was a soubrette and he a "walking gentleman." It was his Guildenstern (or it may have been his Rosencrantz) that had won her. Shortly after their marriage there came to her that life-ailment which made it impossible for her ...
— Tales From Bohemia • Robert Neilson Stephens
... ceased to be in his mind the brilliant and fascinating soubrette, and had become in the silly lover's-Latin, his "pug, his duck, his bird." He answered a letter she wrote him describing her success ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 1 • Rupert Hughes
... opened, and were free, throughout the place, as those are free of a house who know its aspects of attic and cellar or how it looks from behind. I call our shepherdess Honorine even though perhaps not infallibly naming the sociable soubrette who might, with all her gay bold confidence, have been an official inspectress in person, and to whose easy care or, more particularly, expert sensibility and candour of sympathy and curiosity, our flock was freely confided. If she wasn't Honorine she was Clementine or Augustine—which ...
— A Small Boy and Others • Henry James
... queer scene that had been played under his eyes. Beyond the hedge other figures were moving. Three at that moment came crowding into the gap—a saucy-faced girl with a tip-tilted nose, whom he supposed to be Columbine, the soubrette; a lean, active youngster, who must be the lackey Harlequin; and another rather loutish youth who might be ...
— Scaramouche - A Romance of the French Revolution • Rafael Sabatini
... Theatricals. As we are only two women, my husband takes the part of a soubrette, and, in order to do that, he has shaved off his mustache. You cannot imagine, my dear Lucy, how it changes him! I no longer recognize him-by day or at night. If he did not let it grow again I think I should no longer love him; he looks ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... actress, had been before them; while she who had so well personated the part quietly resumed her seat without the least sign of merriment, as grave as possible. Most striking had been the transition from the calm, lady-like person, to the gay, loquacious soubrette; and not less so the sudden extinction of vivacity and resumption of well-bred decorum. This little scene for a few moments charmed everybody out of themselves, and gave a new ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie
... "In the stalls I noted a solid body of Russian officers. These soldiers from the Steppes. These bearded men. These Russians. They sat silent and watchful. They applauded little. The programme left them cold. The Trick Cyclist. The Dashing Soubrette and Idol of Belgravia. The Argumentative College Chums. The Swell Comedian. The Man with the Performing Canaries. None of these could rouse them. They were waiting. Waiting. Waiting tensely. Every muscle taut. Husbanding ...
— The Swoop! or How Clarence Saved England - A Tale of the Great Invasion • P. G. Wodehouse
... Mrs. Lander. "I wish I was going," she said, when Mrs. Lander guessed they should go, later on. "Well, you must come in and see me all you can, Clementina; and I shall have the pleasure of calling upon you," she added to Mrs. Lander with state that was lost in the soubrette-like volatility of her flight from them the next moment. "Goodness, I forgot all about Mr. Milray's breakfast! "She ran back to the table she had left on the other side ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... She notes the address of Vivie's hotel and promises to call for her there in the auto at three o'clock. Vivie leaves her, descends the richly carpeted stairs—the lift is worked by an odiously pretty, little, plump soubrette dressed as a page boy—and goes out into the street. Several lounging men stare hard at her, but decide she is too English, too plainly dressed, and a little too old to neddle with. This last consideration ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston
... whoever dreams of him roars for help. A horrible, greasy fellow. But without him the people who rent this old shell would get no money and the army-treasurer could strike the income of these rentals from his books.—[The door bell rings.]—That Is Miss Alice Ruetterbusch, the young soubrette with whom, unfortunately, I haven't been able to make a hard and fast contract yet on account of the way the aldermen of Strassburg shilly shally about their final decision. After my appointment, which I will secure by God's help, her engagement ...
— The Dramatic Works of Gerhart Hauptmann - Volume II • Gerhart Hauptmann
... would have contented, or, at least, I would clearly have enlightened him, and taught him well never again to expect of me the part of officious soubrette in a love drama; when, following his, soft, eager, murmur, meeting almost his pleading, mellow—"Do content me, Lucy!" a sharp hiss pierced my ear on the ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... Mr. Esmond had to warn the royal young adventurer of some imprudence or some freedom. He received these remonstrances very testily, save perhaps in this affair of poor Lockwood's, when he deigned to burst out a-laughing, and said, "What! the soubrette has peached to the amoureux, and Crispin is angry, and Crispin has served, and Crispin has been a corporal, has he? Tell him we will reward his valor with a pair of colors, ...
— The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. • W. M. Thackeray
... discerned a certain acid quality in his playing. His gloomy visage, the reflex of a disordered soul, caused Baudelaire to declare that he had added one more shiver to his extensive psychical collection. In Paris the Countess X.—charming, titled soubrette—said, "Have you heard Racah play the piano? He is a damned soul out for ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker
... luv a life on the ocean wave like a burlecue soubrette luvs an alarm clock; that is I like it a lot, but not a heluva lot. Fer four hours at a strech I leand over the side of the ship; I wuzn't interested in the ocean or the study of fishes, only I felt I had sumpin I must give up. Finally, ...
— Love Letters of a Rookie to Julie • Barney Stone
... Philocleon, clinging to his ass's belly like Odysseus escaping under the ram from the Cyclops's cave; of the baby in the Thesmophoriazusae seized as a Euripidean hostage, and turning out a wine bottle in swaddling-clothes; of light-foot Iris in the role of a saucy, frightened soubrette; of the heaven-defying AEschylean Prometheus hiding under an umbrella from the thunderbolts of Zeus. And they must have felt instinctively what only a laborious erudition reveals to us, the sudden subtle modulations of ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... done for. What a diabolical machine! What a terrible, swift, relentless answer had been returned when, out of space, this misguided gentleman had, by mistake, summoned his own affinity! And what an affinity! A saucy soubrette who might easily have just stepped from the coulisse of a ...
— The Green Mouse • Robert W. Chambers
... announced, who had never seen a play in her life. "They call that a soubrette. It will be a great chance to learn French." Charlotte gave a little soft, helpless groan. She had a vision of a wicked, theatrical person, clad in pink stockings and red shoes, and speaking, with confounding volubility, ...
— The Europeans • Henry James
... alacrity. The man did not exist in Dawson who would not have been flattered by the notice of Lucille Arral, the singing soubrette of the tiny stock company that performed nightly at the ...
— Smoke Bellew • Jack London
... stared at the large poster of Marie Kendall, charming soubrette, and, listlessly lolling, scribbled on the jotter sixteens and capital esses. Mustard hair and dauby cheeks. She's not nicelooking, is she? The way she's holding up her bit of a skirt. Wonder will that fellow be at the band tonight. If I could get that dressmaker to make a concertina skirt ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... mother or sisters, and whose wildest dissipations have consisted in a surreptitious cigarette and glass of beer, neither of which he enjoyed, but both of which he pretended to revel in for the sake of being "mannish,"—will talk knowingly of "the latest soubrette," "a jolly little ballet-dancer," "the wicked ways of this world," and "the dens of iniquity in our large cities." Dickens tells us that "when Mr. Feeder spoke of the dark mysteries of London, and ...
— The Secret of a Happy Home (1896) • Marion Harland
... Senorita, by name Madeline, used to burst into Tears every time she saw a Train pulling away from the Depot, for she certainly had laid the Soubrette's Curse on Home, ...
— Knocking the Neighbors • George Ade
... a soubrette," Gertrude announced, who had never seen a play in her life. "They call that a soubrette. It will be a great chance to learn French." Charlotte gave a little soft, helpless groan. She had a vision of a wicked, theatrical person, clad in pink stockings and red shoes, ...
— The Europeans • Henry James
... jewel of spotless purity ablaze with the immortal fire of genius—has gone mad with joy over a dirty tale of bawdry that might have been better told by a cheap reporter bordering on the jimjams. Has the American nation suddenly declined into intellectual dotage— reached the bald-head and dizzy soubrette finale in the mighty ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... indiscretion, Villain's partner makes confession. Juvenile, with golden tresses, Finds her pa and dons long dresses. Scapegrace comes home money-laden, Hero comforts tearful maiden, Soubrette marries loyal chappie, Villain skips, and ...
— The Complete Poems of Paul Laurence Dunbar • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... which will shine in every scene. Vertpre has her loveliness, her whims, but not her Proteus-genius, her nobility. I saw Vertpre in 'La Reine de Seize Ans,'—a piece which we have not yet; but she was only a saucy soubrette in royal splendor—a Pernille of Holberg's, as represented by a Parisian. We have Madame Wexschall, and we have Frydendal! Were Denmark only a larger country, these names ...
— O. T. - A Danish Romance • Hans Christian Andersen
... for Samaritan Actor's Aid Philanthropy. I was down that way managing a summer bunch of the gum and syntax-chewers that play the Idlewild Parks in the Western hamlets. Of course, we went to pieces when the soubrette ran away with a prominent barber of Beeville. I don't know what became of the rest of the company. I believe there were some salaries due; and the last I saw of the troupe was when I told them that forty-three ...
— Heart of the West • O. Henry
... the corner of her black apron to her eyes, as though she had been a stage soubrette ...
— Tales of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett |
