"Rubicund" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of the New Kent Road, a little way from the Elephant and Castle; and the caravanserai bearing the title of the Jolly Butchers is an unpretending beershop, with no outward and visible signs of especial joviality. On entering I met mine host, rubicund and jolly enough, who politely pioneered me upstairs, when I reported myself as in quest of the linnets. The scene of contest I found to be a largish room, where some twenty or thirty most un-Arcadian looking gentlemen were already assembled, the only adjunct ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies
... orders marched past, from the Dominicans to the Carthusians, from the Carmelites to the Capuchins. They advanced slowly, their eyes cast down, their step austere, their hands on their hearts; some faces were rubicund and shining, with large cheek-hones and rounded chins, herculean heads upon bullnecks; some, thin and livid, with cheeks hollowed by suffering and penitence, and with the look of living ghosts; in short, here were the two sides of ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - NISIDA—1825 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... day at dinner. Grandpapa, like a great many other persons in Finland, being a vegetarian, had gone to the rubicund and comfortable landlord that morning and explained that he wanted vegetables and fruit for his dinner. At four o'clock, the time for our mid-day meal, we all seated ourselves at table with excellent appetites, the Judge being on my left hand ...
— Through Finland in Carts • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... and ascending for hours through open pasture lands, arrived at some rocks interspersed with stunted ilex, where a lamb was roasting for our dinner. The meridian sun had long ere this pierced the clouds that overhung our departure, and the sight of the lamb completely irradiated the rubicund visage of the plethoric clerk. A low round table was set down on the grass, under the shade of a large boulder stone. An ilex growing from its interstices seemed to live on its wits, for not an ounce of soil was visible for its ...
— Servia, Youngest Member of the European Family • Andrew Archibald Paton
... A rubicund Mexican priest is the celebrant, while two old Mexicans in modern dress, and a Pueblo Indian in a red blanket, are acolytes. When the host is elevated, an Indian at the door beats a villainous drum and four musket ...
— My Native Land • James Cox
... The Inspector's rubicund countenance was white with fury. His head kept turning in the direction of Laura, to whom the Professor was ...
— The Black Box • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... fiction is a gaunt figure, with a hatchet face, spare of flesh. Our Little Man is a chubby lad, standing about four foot ten in his stockinged feet, rubicund and corpulent, and he wears a mackintosh with a very mackintoshy smell in all weathers. He never did a day's work, and he never means to try, but he is a genius at getting it out of others. Some say he is of Swiss origin, some say he is American, and some say that surely he ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, October 27, 1920 • Various
... as to the future to a man of quicker perceptions than Mr. Wheelwright—but fortunately his wife was the earliest riser. It happened that as his spouse was exchanging some rather undignified jokes with the milkman, a jolly son of Erin came along, whose rubicund visage kindled with a thousand smiles as his eyes rested ...
— Ups and Downs in the Life of a Distressed Gentleman • William L. Stone
... recalled immediately that it was a forge book kept in Gilbert Penny's day; then Myrtle Forge had been new, that other Howat alive. He opened it carefully, powdered his knees with leather dust, and studied the faded entries; what flourishing, pale violet initials, what rubicund ...
— The Three Black Pennys - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... glittering under the soft radiance of many candles and surrounded by a numerous company—fat and thin, old and young, red-faced and pale, gentle and simple. At the end farthest from the street one figure stood erect—a short, round, rubicund little man, wearing a gown of rusty black, one thumb stuck into his vest, and a rosy benignity in the glance with which he scanned the table. He threw back his head, cleared his tight throat sonorously, and began, in tones perhaps best described as treacly, to address the seated company, ...
— In Clive's Command - A Story of the Fight for India • Herbert Strang
... together. The soldier appealed to the little imagination. Robin's ardor was concentrated for the moment in his pride of possession. He owned a father who—his own nurse had told him so—was not as other fathers, not as ordinary fathers such as stumped daily about the narrow streets of Welsley, rubicund and, many of them, protuberant in the region of the watch-chain. They were all very well; Robin had nothing against them; many of them were clergymen and commanded his respect by virtue of their office, their gaiters, the rosettes and cords ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... face was red in ordinary hours, no epithet sufficiently rubicund or sanguineous can express its colour at this appeal. "The man's mad," he said, at last, with a tone of astonishment that almost concealed his wrath,—"stark mad! I take his child!—lodge and board a great, positive, hungry child! Why, sir, many and many a time have I said ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... smoke?—Well then, load away." And he handed me a seal-skin pouch of tobacco and a pipe. We sat smoking together in this little sea-cabinet of his, till it began to look much like a state-room in Tophet; and notwithstanding my host's rubicund nose, I could hardly see ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville
... Beck appeared a personage of a figure rather short and stout, yet still graceful in its own peculiar way: that is, with the grace resulting from proportion of parts. Her complexion was fresh and sanguine, not too rubicund; her eye, blue and serene; her dark silk dress fitted her as a French sempstress alone can make a dress fit; she looked well, though a little bourgeoise, as bourgeoise indeed she was. I know not what of harmony pervaded her whole person; and ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... some ten minutes—a fat, rubicund, spectacled man, with a cast in his left eye and two fingers missing, to remind him of early days in experimental work on explosives. Under his arm he carried several tomes and pamphlets; and so, bowing first to one financier, then to the other, he stood there on the threshold, ...
— The Air Trust • George Allan England
... broke in another officer, whose rather rubicund face told of credit somewhere, and the product of credit,—good wine and good dinners generally. "That is true, Monredin! The old curmudgeon of a broker at the corner of the Cul de Sac had the impudence ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... gold, glittered in the sunshine. The first man might have cut off a head with his own hand, but the second was capable of entangling innocence, virtue, and beauty in the nets of calumny and intrigue, and then poisoning them or drowning them. The rubicund stranger would have comforted his victim with a jest; the other was incapable of a smile. The first was forty-five years old, and he loved, undoubtedly, both women and good cheer. Such men have passions which keep them slaves to their calling. But the young man was plainly without passions ...
— An Historical Mystery • Honore de Balzac
... he was very cold and that he hated everybody and everything. He heard many voices somewhere in the distance, doors were being continually opened and shut, and little winds blew down the dismal passages. They were suddenly in a study lined with books and a stout rubicund gentleman with a gold watch chain and a habit (as Peter at once discovered) of whistling through his teeth was writing at ...
— Fortitude • Hugh Walpole
... little alarmed, and the Professor horrified, on looking at their companions' faces, to observe that they were pinched, haggard, and old-looking, as if they all had aged somewhat during the last few hours! Captain Wopper's rubicund visage was pale, and his nose blue; the face of Lewis was white all over, and drawn, as if he were suffering pain; Dr Lawrence's countenance was yellow, and Slingsby's was green. The Professor himself was as bad as his comrades, and the porters ...
— Rivers of Ice • R.M. Ballantyne
... a flourish of silver trumpets, was borne in by liveried servants walking two and two, with rubicund marshals strutting in front and behind, bearing white wands in their hands, not only as badges of their office, but also as weapons with which to repel any impertinent inroad upon the dishes in the journey from the kitchen to the hall. Boar's heads, ...
— Sir Nigel • Arthur Conan Doyle
... to console himself, when driven from home, by frequenting a kind of perpetual club of the sages, philosophers, and other idle personages of the village; which held its sessions on a bench before a small inn, designated by a rubicund portrait of His Majesty George the Third. Here they used to sit in the shade through a long lazy summer's day, talking listlessly over village gossip, or telling endless sleepy stories about nothing. But it would ...
— The Short-story • William Patterson Atkinson
... hummed a song under his breath and slapped his reins against the flanks of the plodding horse to keep time. He came into a piece of woodland. He seemed to take cheery and fresh interest in this place. He poked his rubicund face out from the shadow of the chaise's canopy and peered to right and to left. There was a smile in his puckery eyes. When there were trees ahead of him, trees behind him, and trees all about he pulled his old horse to ...
— The Landloper - The Romance Of A Man On Foot • Holman Day
... see him very often and was in no way intimate with him, I kept my ears open for any account of his doings. From one point of view, the Club Window outlook, he was a very usual figure, one of those stout, rubicund, jolly men, a good polo player, a good man in a house party, genial-natured, and none too brilliantly brained, whom every one liked and no one thought about. All this he was on one side of the report, but, on the other, there were certain stories that were something ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Various
... He was not caring what happened to Braden Thorpe, he was not even thinking about the vast fortune that had been placed at the young man's disposal. His soul was sick. In spite of all that he could do to prevent it, his gaze went furtively to Murray's rubicund jowl, and then shifted to the rapt, eager face of his young mistress. Twenty-five thousand dollars! There was no excuse for him now. With all that money he could not hope to stay on in service. He was rich. He would have to go out into the world and shift for himself. ...
— From the Housetops • George Barr McCutcheon
... after the proposed elopement, and which cannot be passed over without mention, was a call from Squire Hennion on Mr. Meredith. The master of Boxely opened the interview by shaking his fist within a few inches of the rubicund countenance of the master of Greenwood, and, suiting his words to the motion, he roared: "May Belza take yer, yer old—" and the particular epithet is best omitted, the eighteenth-century vocabulary being more expressive than ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... decorated with a heron's feather. The hero of Sherwood was personated by a tall, well-limbed fellow, to whom, being really a forester of Bowland, the character was natural. Beside him stood a very different figure, a jovial friar, with shaven crown, rubicund cheeks, bull throat, and mighty paunch, covered by a russet habit, and girded in by a red cord, decorated with golden twist and tassel. He wore red hose and sandal shoon, and carried in his girdle a Wallet, to contain a roast capon, a neat's tongue, or any other dainty given him. ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... to kill it he volunteered to act as witness to the butcher's marriage, one being wanted. The effects of a jovial night, fortified by some matutinal potations, were still visible in the small black eyes of the rubicund butcher—a huge man, apparently of cheery disposition; he swung to and fro before the shiny oak table as might one of his own carcasses. His bride, a small-featured woman, wrapped in a plaid shawl, evidently fearing that his state, if perceived by the Registrar, ...
— Mike Fletcher - A Novel • George (George Augustus) Moore
... court-yard, where he witnessed a sight that might have appalled one less resolute than himself. The image of death was everywhere present. The bodies of men and animals lay strewn about, apparently lifeless, and the silence was truly awful. Still, he soon perceived, by the rubicund noses and jolly faces of the porters, that they were only asleep; while their goblets, still retaining a few drops of wine, proved beyond a doubt that sleep had surprised them in the midst of a drunken bout. He then passed ...
— Bo-Peep Story Books • Anonymous
... milliner's shop was full of fat squiresses, buying muslin ammunition, to make the ball go off; and the attics, even at four o'clock, were thronged with rubicund damsels, who were already, as Shakspeare says of waves in ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... had followed the hint of his father's figure in his make-up, and appeared as a rubicund old gentleman, large in the waist, bald, with an apoplectic tendency, a wheezy asthmatic voice, ...
— The Old Folks' Party - 1898 • Edward Bellamy
... west, where the waysides were blue with the flowers of the wild chicory. A priest astride upon a rough old cob passed me, his hitched-up soutane showing his gaitered legs. The French rural priests are generally rubicund, but this one was cadaverous. He would have looked like Death on horseback, swathed in a black mantle, but for the dangling gaitered legs, which spoilt the solemn effect. A very curious figure did he cut upon his shaggy, ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... Frenchman. That woman had no business to sing in public, and as for those youths who call themselves artists—why aren't they in the trenches?" And hastily touching Mrs. Dobson's hand, he slipped away: the expression in her rubicund face was pained ...
— War-time Silhouettes • Stephen Hudson
... grape-spurt, a vine-splash, a tossed tress, flown vaunt 'tis! Suffer my singing, Gipsy of Seasons, ere thou go winging; Ere Winter throws His slaking snows In thy feasting-flagon's impurpurate glows! The sopped sun—toper as ever drank hard - Stares foolish, hazed, Rubicund, dazed, Totty with thine October tankard. Tanned maiden! with cheeks like apples russet, And breast a brown agaric faint-flushing at tip, And a mouth too red for the moon to buss it, But her cheek unvow its vestalship; Thy mists enclip Her steel-clear circuit ...
— Poems • Francis Thompson
... different man: he was about twenty-eight, and he was writing some work of fiction. He was a small, sturdy, rubicund creature, with beady eyes and pink cheeks, cherubic in aspect, entirely good-natured and lively, full of not very exalted humour, and with a tendency to wild and even hysterical giggling. I used to think that Father Payne did not like him very much; ...
— Father Payne • Arthur Christopher Benson
... was genuine or not is another point, nor would I like to vouch for its being altogether devoid of irony. "Father Christmas" paid us his customary visit anyway, in his mantle of snow—fancy snow within fifteen degrees of the line!—which merry, rubicund, and very ancient man was ably personated by a gigantic marine, the necessary barrel-like proportions being conveyed by a ...
— In Eastern Seas - The Commission of H.M.S. 'Iron Duke,' flag-ship in China, 1878-83 • J. J. Smith
... Pretoria, Opperman looked a picture of misery, and would come to us and speak of his resolve to shoot his wife and children and perish in the defence of the capital. Dr. Gunning was an amiable little Hollander, fat, rubicund, and well educated. He was a keen politician, and much attached to the Boer Government, which paid him an excellent salary for looking after the State Museum. He had a wonderful collection of postage stamps, and was also engaged in forming a Zoological Garden. This last ambition had just ...
— London to Ladysmith via Pretoria • Winston Spencer Churchill
... with a pleasant rubicund visage beaming under a felt hat, to tell Lotta that dinner was ready. To him I was ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... cafe across the street from the humble Hotel de la Republique was the richer by a generous gold piece, and the rubicund proprietaire marvelled to his equally rubicund wife over the peculiar habits of the Englishman, who preferred to drink much black coffee and smoke many black cigars sitting at the little table in the ...
— High Noon - A New Sequel to 'Three Weeks' by Elinor Glyn • Anonymous
... was Brother Timothy, Of larger mould and of a coarser paste; A rubicund and stalwart monk was he, Broad in the shoulders, broader in the waist, Who often filled the dull refectory With noise by which the convent was disgraced, But to the mass-book gave but little heed, By reason he ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... Foley, and a young rubicund gentleman, beautifully clothed, and with fair curly locks, named Ziegler. Mr. Ziegler was far more perfectly at ease than anybody else at the table, which indeed as a whole was rendered haggard and nervous by the precarious state of the conversation, expecting its total ...
— The Lion's Share • E. Arnold Bennett
... back to the well-worn interior of the coach. Suddenly, as the startling realization of her position came to her, she uttered a loud cry, sprang toward the door, and, with nervous fingers, strove to open it. The man's face became more rubicund as he placed a detaining hand on her shoulder, and roughly thrust ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... Ringadoon Joe? Ah, for the music over and done, The band all dismissed save the droned trombone! Where's Glenn o' the gun-room, who loved Hot-Scotch— Glen, prompt and cool in a perilous watch? Where's flaxen-haired Phil? a gray lieutenant? Or rubicund, flying a dignified pennant? ...
— John Marr and Other Poems • Herman Melville
... clerk. A tall man of middle age, with two goggle eyes (one of which was fixed), a rubicund nose, a cadavarous[TN-41] face, and a suit of clothes decidedly the worse for wear. He had the gift of distorting and cracking his finger-joints. This kind-hearted, dilapidated fellow "kept his hunter and hounds once," but ran through his fortune. ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... saw the landlord standing at its entrance—John Cox. A rubicund man, with a bald head, who evidently did justice to his own good cheer, if visitors did not. Shading his eyes with one hand, he had the other extended in the direction of the village, pointing out the way to a strange gentleman ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood
... with thy pale student's brow and rubicund nose, with thy rusty and tattered black coat overswept by white flowing locks, with thy professional white neckcloth scrupulously preserved when even a shirt to thy back was problematical,—art by no means to be overlooked in the muster-roll of vagrant gentlemen possessing ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... is a work in tapestry representing Jesus Christ bursting forth from the sepulchre, but he has a visage far too rubicund and wanting in dignity; he looks like a person flushed with wine issuing from a tavern; in the countenance there is depicted (so it appears to me) a vulgar, not ...
— After Waterloo: Reminiscences of European Travel 1815-1819 • Major W. E Frye
... the library in the same deliberate way, and turned up the gas. Mr. Frayling came hurrying down, fat and fussy, and puffing a little, but cheerfully rubicund upon the success of the day's proceedings, and apprehending nothing untoward. When he saw his son-in-law he opened his eyes, stopped short, turned pale, ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... so soon? The night's young yet, boy! Come, sit down and have some of the 'rosy,'" shouted a rubicund-faced youth, with a generous proportion of carrotty hair crowning his low ...
— Marguerite Verne • Agatha Armour
... in session and Hal sat for a while in the court-room, watching Judge Denton. Here was another prosperous and well-fed appearing gentleman, with a rubicund visage shining over the top of his black silk robe. The young miner found himself regarding both the robe and the visage with suspicion. Could it be that Hal was becoming cynical, and losing his faith in his fellow man? What he thought of, in connection with the Judge's appearance, was that there ...
— King Coal - A Novel • Upton Sinclair
... was in the club at the same hour, and again Major Selby entered. This time he walked with considerable difficulty, and I noticed an expression of pain and malaise upon his rubicund countenance. He ordered a whisky and soda from the servant, and then sat down ...
— Doctor Therne • H. Rider Haggard
... of Central Europe last autumn, but he never mentioned Josef on his return. Harris? Well, one would scarcely call Harris a businessfriend. Filmer? No, Filmer is too selfish, I fear, to do me so good a turn. Ah, of course! Kelly, dear old burly rubicund Kelly, with his unfailing memory for an address and his delightfully abbreviated style. And he goes everywhere too: the very man. I can almost hear him saying it: "Then there's Johnson, my staunch old businessfriend Johnson, whom I can ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, May 20, 1914 • Various
... eyes to the outlook from the window, which presented a happy combination of grange scenery with marine. Upon the irregular slope between the house and the quay was an orchard of aged trees wherein every apple ripening on the boughs presented its rubicund side towards the cottage, because that building chanced to lie upwards in the same direction as the sun. Under the trees were a few Cape sheep, and over them the stone chimneys of the village below: outside these lay the tanned sails of a ketch or smack, and ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy
... two men riding round the store-wing and dismounting. One of the two remained in the background screened by the trails of native cucumber overhanging the veranda end. The other—a wiry, powerful figure in uniform, with a rubicund face, black bristling moustache and beard and prominent black eyes, reminding one of the eyes of a bull—walked forward and spoke with an air ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed
... the degeneracy of the moderns, as if men now-a-days were in every respect inferior to their 99ancestors; but I maintain, and challenge contradiction, that there are many stout rubicund gentlemen in this metropolis that might be backed for eating or drinking with any Bacchanalian or masticator since the days of Adam himself. What was Offellius Bibulus, the Roman parasite, or Silenus Ebrius, or Milo, who could knock down an ox, and eat him up directly afterwards, ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... was Courtecuisse, in whom you would scarcely have recognized the once jovial forester, the rubicund do-nothing, whose wife made his morning coffee as we have before seen. Aged, and thin, and haggard, he presented to all eyes a lesson that no one learned. "He tried to climb higher than the ladder," was what his neighbors said when others ...
— Sons of the Soil • Honore de Balzac
... tall and spare, with the forward thrust of head and neck seen in vultures and other unclean birds. The other, who held the sacks while his companion shovelled, was on the contrary stout and short, of a notably jovial, rubicund countenance, in habit like the hostler of an inn, or perhaps a well-to-do ...
— The Black Douglas • S. R. Crockett
... the talk in the dining room fell flat, and looking up William Wetherell perceived a portly, rubicund man of middle age being shown to his seat by the headwaiter. The gentleman wore a great, glittering diamond in his shirt, and a watch chain that contained much fine gold. But the real cause of the silence was plainly in ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... iron rods projecting at the top. This was the target, and it was highly amusing and characteristic to watch these burghers gathered round and firing at the bird or some other object on the top. Now they were all returning carrying their bows, and in high good-humour. A young and rubicund priest was of the party, regarded evidently with affection and pride by his companions; for all that he seemed to say and do was applauded, and greeted with obstreperous Flemish laughter. When an old ...
— A Day's Tour • Percy Fitzgerald
... them, who had a red face and a large carbuncle on his nose, which served to distinguish him from his companions, who though they had both very rubicund faces had ...
— Wild Wales - Its People, Language and Scenery • George Borrow
... however, the two presented. The man next the aisle was well past sixty, rotund of abdomen, rubicund of countenance, beetle-browed. He was elaborately well-groomed, almost foppish in attire, and wore the obvious stamp of worldly success, the air of one accustomed to giving orders and seeing them obeyed ...
— Wild Wings - A Romance of Youth • Margaret Rebecca Piper
... Palmer, gave a dinner at Carlton House, when a fair trial was to be given to his claret. A select circle of gastronomes was to be present, amongst whom was Lord Yarmouth, well known in those days by the appellation of "Red-herrings," from his rubicund whiskers, hair, and face, and from the town of Yarmouth deriving its principal support from the importation from Holland of that fish; Sir Benjamin Bloomfield, Sir William Knighton, and Sir Thomas Tyrwhitt, were also of the party. The wine was ...
— Reminiscences of Captain Gronow • Rees Howell Gronow
... three-sided plate-warmer, made to fit the whole front of the large fireplace, kept watch beneath it over a sarcophagus- shaped cellaret that had in its time held many a dozen of Pebbleson Nephew's wine. But the little rubicund old bachelor with a pigtail, whose portrait was over the sideboard (and who could easily be identified as decidedly Pebbleson and decidedly not Nephew), had retired into another sarcophagus, and the plate-warmer had grown as cold as he. So, the golden and black griffins that supported ...
— No Thoroughfare • Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins
... longer, and burst into a roar of laughter; for my uncle, stumpy, fat, and rubicund, presented ...
— The Strand Magazine: Volume VII, Issue 37. January, 1894. - An Illustrated Monthly • Edited by George Newnes
... a prominent figure at the Capitol and in Washington society. He was a trifle larger round at the waistband than anywhere else, his long white hair stood out as if he were charged with electric fluid, and South Carolina was legibly written on his rubicund countenance. The genial old patriarch would occasionally take too much wine in the "Hole in the Wall" or in some committee-room, and then go into the Senate and attempt to bully Chase or Hale; but every one liked ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... they want to stop my star performance for?" asked Santa Claus, pulling off his beard and revealing the rubicund face of Ben Tremont, who was slowly baking beneath the heavy ...
— Ted Strong in Montana - With Lariat and Spur • Edward C. Taylor
... most inordinate. He was eating from morning till night; half the time he would be at work cooking some private repast for himself, and he paid a visit to the coffee-pot eight or ten times a day. His rueful and disconsolate face became jovial and rubicund, his eyes stood out like a lobster's, and his spirits, which before were sunk to the depths of despondency, were now elated in proportion; all day he was singing, whistling, laughing, and telling stories. As ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester
... "here we have many friends and all fine blades. This is indeed a pleasure party." His eyes travelled from the table to the window, where the man in black still sat and read quite unconcernedly. Something like surprise puckered Cocardasse's rubicund face. ...
— The Duke's Motto - A Melodrama • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... the window. There he saw as he looked out upon the lawn something that interested him; that caused a grin to fasten itself upon his rubicund countenance. Phil, under a fire of snowballs from a group of boys who were waiting with their Christmas sleds for a chance to hitch to a passing vehicle, gained Amzi's gate, ducked behind the fence to gather ammunition, ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson
... respect he showed to a coroneted head, even when cracked; and a bishop under his charge was always secured, as far as possible, from the least whisper of heretical conversation. He possessed besides a pleasant rubicund countenance and an immaculate wardrobe. He was further fortunate in having in his assistants, Dr Escott and Dr Sherlaw, two young gentlemen whose medical knowledge was almost equal to the affability of their manners and the excellence of their ...
— The Lunatic at Large • J. Storer Clouston
... climate serves one the same in regard to jokes as in food. One is never satiated with them, and there are no morbid, worn distinctions of taste—an old one, an exceedingly mild one, have all the convulsive power of the keenest flash from less healthy and rubicund intellects. ...
— Vesty of the Basins • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... nobody, except Mr. ——, whose assistance he needed, in order to be identified at the bank. He wrote to me from 24 George Street, Hanover Square, and told me he delighted in London, and wished he could spend a year there. He enjoyed floating about, in a sort of unknown way, among the rotund and rubicund figures made jolly with ale and port-wine. He was greatly amused at being told (his informants meaning to be complimentary) "that he would never be taken for anything but an Englishman." He called Tennyson's "Charge of the Light Brigade," just printed at that ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields
... imprudent to pray the advent of, that we are well rid of him for a while. In the interim he does mischief, serious mischief; he does worse than when, a juvenile, he paid the Dannegelt for peace. Englishmen of feeling do not relish him. For men with Irish and Cambrian blood in their veins the rubicund grotesque, with his unimpressionable front and his noisy benevolence of the pocket, his fits of horned ferocity and lapses of hardheartedness, is a shame and a loathing. You attach small importance to images ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... his erstwhile pupil; "he really looked what he was, a gentleman of the law—there was nothing of the pettifogger about him: somewhat under middle size, and somewhat rotund in person, he was always dressed in a full suit of black, never worn long enough to become threadbare. His face was rubicund, and not without keenness; but the most remarkable thing about him was his head, which was bald, and shone like polished ivory, nothing more white, smooth and lustrous. Some people have said that ...
— George Borrow in East Anglia • William A. Dutt
... short and thick, though in the earlier part of his life he had been thought handsome. His face, latterly, became somewhat rubicund, and his utterance so confused, that Johnson compared it to the gobbling of a turkey. The portrait of him by Reynolds, besides the resemblance of the features, is particularly characterized by the manner in which the hand is drawn, so as to give it a great air of truth. He was negligent ...
— Lives of the English Poets - From Johnson to Kirke White, Designed as a Continuation of - Johnson's Lives • Henry Francis Cary
... said Havill, who was also present, in the tone of one who, though sitting in this rubicund company, was not of it. 'I could have told you the truth of it any ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... the head messenger—who had rather the air of a seneschal or chamberlain—to the editorial apartment, where I found Arncliffe giving audience to his news editor, Mr. Pink, and one of his leader-writers, a very old Advocate identity, Mr. Samuel Harbottle—-a white-whiskered and rubicund gentleman, who was entitled to use most of the letters of the alphabet after his name should he so choose. I was presented to both these gentlemen, and in a few minutes they took ...
— The Record of Nicholas Freydon - An Autobiography • A. J. (Alec John) Dawson
... canon came in glowing hot. "Pouf!" and he wiped his rubicund, round visage with a handkerchief as brilliant. Coming straight from the glare out of doors, he was not aware of the stranger in the salon till his eyes were used to the gloom. Then madame and Bessie effected Harry's introduction, and as Harry, with a rare wisdom, had practised colloquial ...
— The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax • Harriet Parr
... a rubicund portly man. He knew the fortunes of a hundred families by the things left with him or taken back. It was on his stuffy shelves that poor Benjamin's coat had lain compressed and packed away when it might have had a beautiful airing in the grounds of the Crystal Palace. It was from his stuffy ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... visit to Cadurcis, when Lady Annabel was sitting alone, a postchaise drove up to the hall, whence issued a short and stout woman with a rubicund countenance, and dressed in a style which remarkably blended the shabby with the tawdry. She was accompanied by a boy between eleven and twelve years of age, whose appearance, however, much contrasted with that of his ...
— Venetia • Benjamin Disraeli
... short, stout, bald-headed type, sometimes called aldermanic. It was plainly to be seen that his was a jocund nature, and the awe which he felt in this dreadful presence of death, though clearly shown on his rubicund face, was evidently a rare emotion with him. He glanced round the room as if expecting to see everything there materially changed, and though he looked toward the figure of Mr. Crawford now and then, ...
— The Gold Bag • Carolyn Wells
... foot of each table sat some personal friend of my uncle, whose ready tongue, and still readier pistol, made him a personage of some consequence, not more to his own people than to the enemy. While of such material were the company, the fare before them was no less varied: here some rubicund squire was deep in amalgamating the contents of a venison pasty with some of Sneyd's oldest claret; his neighbor, less ambitious, and less erudite in such matters, was devouring rashers of bacon, with liberal potations of potteen; some pale-cheeked scion of the law, ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... a young man, not more than thirty-two or three years of age, though he lacked the ultra robust and rubicund appearance which is typical of so many Englishmen of his class at this period of life. A heavy bout of blackwater fever acquired on service in West Africa, which would have killed anyone of weaker constitution, had robbed his face of its bloom and left it much sallower, if more interesting ...
— The Yellow God - An Idol of Africa • H. Rider Haggard
... to luncheon comes as a pleasant shock. Is it possible that the morning has passed? It seems to have but commenced. I rouse myself and descend to the cabin. Toward the end of the meal a rubicund Frenchman opposite makes the startling proposition that if I wish to send a message home he will undertake to have it delivered. It is not until I notice the little square of oiled paper he is holding out ...
— The Ways of Men • Eliot Gregory
... on the perils that may follow what are termed "good times." His face would have been pale, except that his nose, which was as puffy as an omelette soufflee, and his left eye with a drooping lid sustained by a livid crescent, gave it a rubicund expression. His knees were shaky, his pulse feeble, his head top-heavy. He declined assistance rather sulkily, and descended holding by the stair-rail and stepping gingerly. Number Two, in spite of his genial, unruffled ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 18, April, 1859 - [Date last updated: August 7, 2005] • Various
... coach swayed to and fro, with its dignified elderly gentlemen and rubicund Lord Mayor, rejoicing in countless turtle feeds—for, reader, it was ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... friends said, it was a physical impossibility for it to do so, and his huge, rough body was as uncouth as his manners, and as unwieldy as his slow-moving tongue. Taylor, otherwise "Twirly," the butcher, was a man so genial and rubicund that in five minutes you began to wish that he was built like the lower animals that have no means of giving audible expression to their good humor, or, if they have, there is no necessity to notice it except by a well-directed kick. And Slum, quiet, unsophisticated ...
— The Night Riders - A Romance of Early Montana • Ridgwell Cullum |
