"Dowdy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the use of having them? And don't you think for the daughters of a Marchioness they are a little what you'd call—dowdy?" ...
— Is He Popenjoy? • Anthony Trollope
... Ho! get away you bullock-man, you've 'eard the bugle blowed, There's a regiment a-comin' down the Grand Trunk Road; With its best foot first And the road a-sliding past, An' every bloomin' campin'-ground exactly like the last; While the Big Drum says, With 'is "rowdy-dowdy-dow!"— "Kiko kissywarsti don't you hamsher ...
— Departmental Ditties and Barrack Room Ballads • Rudyard Kipling
... other is. Who should it be but Mary, though, with whom he should walk, with his arm round her waist talking so affectionately. But see, she raises her head. Why! that is not Mary. That is old Jewel's dowdy, handsome, ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... ill-will felt disposed to laugh at the happiness of the appellation. "See, now," says Dr. Johnson, "what haste people are in to be hooted. Nobody ever thought of this fellow nor of his daughter, could he but have been quiet himself, and forborne to call the eyes of the world on his dowdy and her deformity. But it teaches one to see at least that if nobody else will nickname one's children, the parents ...
— Anecdotes of the late Samuel Johnson, LL.D. - during the last twenty years of his life • Hester Lynch Piozzi
... but generous. The two gowns that you saw Brigitte and Madame Thuillier wear last night were a present from her, and it was because she came herself to superintend the toilet of our two 'amphitryonesses' that you were so surprised last night not to find them rigged in their usual dowdy fashion." ...
— The Lesser Bourgeoisie • Honore de Balzac
... there was a hush as the slight girlish figure—and she seemed very young—stood upright before us. She thrust back the unlovely bonnet, and her thin face was flushed; but when, clenching nervous fingers upon the dowdy gown, she raised a high clear voice, every man in the assembly settled himself to listen. Perhaps it was a chivalrous respect for her womanhood, or mere admiration for personal courage, and she had most gallantly ...
— Lorimer of the Northwest • Harold Bindloss
... girls as exquisitely beautiful, stylish, quick-witted, energetic, and good-tempered, while the mothers are portrayed as awkward, dowdy, stupid, and ill-educated, though honest and kind. We resent the distortion of this picture, for in America, as elsewhere, girls are largely what they are made by their mothers, yet we do have certain conditions which make sharp contrasts between mothers ...
— Girls and Women • Harriet E. Paine (AKA E. Chester}
... shape, voice, language, look, and features, into almost another animal, with a strong Devonshire dialect, a broad, laughing voice, a poking head, round shoulders, an unconceiving eye, and the most bediz'ning, dowdy dress that ever cover'd the untrain'd limbs of a Joan Trot. To have seen her here you would have thought it impossible the same creature could ever have been recover'd to what was as easy to her, the gay, the ...
— The Palmy Days of Nance Oldfield • Edward Robins
... life-like the portrait which the word paints for us! a coarse, fat female, her dingy cap, with its faded ribbons, awry upon her unkempt hair; eyes hookless, holes buttonless, upon her shabby gown; a boot-lace trailing on the ground. When we clergy visit Mrs. Dowdy's home, or the residence of her sister, Mrs. Slattern, and find that, though it is towards evening, they have not tidied either self or house, we know why the children are unhealthy and untaught, and why the husband prefers the warmth and cleanliness of "The Manor Arms" to his ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie
... violently at times, and Max Hastings, who had had considerable previous experience in outdoor life, there were Steve Dowdy, whose quick temper and readiness to act without considering the consequences had long since gained him the name of "Touch-and-Go Steve"; Owen Hastings, a cousin to Max, and who, being a great reader, knew more ...
— With Trapper Jim in the North Woods • Lawrence J. Leslie
... said Osborn. Walking was a sort of recreation not too dowdy. They went a little way on foot, then turned into a Tube station and travelled home. When they wormed their way down a crowded tube train compartment to two seats they were faced with the everyday aspect of life again. Tired people were going home; business ...
— Married Life - The True Romance • May Edginton
... he gave this excuse with such a conceited smile that all were convinced he was going to crown himself with the most flattering of laurels at the mansion of some princess of the royal blood. In reality, he was going to see one of his Conservatoire friends, a large, lanky dowdy, as swarthy as a mole and full of pretensions, who was destined for the tragic line of character, and inflicted upon her lover Athalie's dream, Camille's ...
— A Romance of Youth, Complete • Francois Coppee
... the dowdy, suffocating little room where Matilda Bent lay gasping for breath, she was sick for a moment with sympathetic pain. There the dying woman lay, her world narrowed to four close walls, propped up on the pillows near the one little window. Her eyes seemed ...
— Other Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... of Paradise are grateful Under skies serene; But the human type is hateful On a tragic scene; When the outlook's drear and cloudy Punch would rather see you dowdy Than extravagant and rowdy In your dress ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, March 22, 1916 • Various
... careful in learning. Your sister Fanny says the Boston young men stick out their elbows dreadfully when they waltz, and look like owls spinning on invisible teetotums. She declares, too, that all the Boston girls are dowdy. But she is obliged to confess that Mr. Beacon and Mr. Dinks are as well dressed and gentlemanly and dance as well as our young men here. And as for the Boston ladies, Mr. Dinks tells Fanny that he has a cousin, a Miss Wayne, who lives in Delafield, ...
— Trumps • George William Curtis
... Anderson driving a pair of gray ponies along the boulevard and he was much pleased with the sight. It reached to the top of his ambition. Florence was to his eyes really the sort of a girl whom a man in his position ought to marry. A secretary of legation in a small foreign capital cannot do with a dowdy wife, as may a clerk, for instance, in the Foreign Office. A secretary of legation,—the second secretary, he told himself,—was bound, if he married at all, to have a pretty and distinguee wife. He knew all about the intricacies which ...
— Mr. Scarborough's Family • Anthony Trollope
... Lucien's career; he put away a good many of his ideas as to provincial life in the course of it. His horizon widened; society assumed different proportions. There were fair Parisiennes in fresh and elegant toilettes all about him; Mme. de Bargeton's costume, tolerably ambitious though it was, looked dowdy by comparison; the material, like the fashion and the color, was out of date. That way of arranging her hair, so bewitching in Angouleme, looked frightfully ugly here among the daintily devised coiffures which he saw ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac
... "I'm a dowdy frump!" she lamented, half-voiced. "I dressed myself while Marie was packing. But you needn't ...
— Little Miss Grouch - A Narrative Based on the Log of Alexander Forsyth Smith's - Maiden Transatlantic Voyage • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... the pack'd audience from their posts retir'd, And Julius in a general hiss expir'd, Sage Booth to Cibber cried, "Compute your gains; These Egypt dogs, and their old dowdy queens, But ill requite these habits and these scenes! To rob Corneille for such a motley piece— His geese were swans, but, zounds, thy swans are geese." Rubbing his firm, invulnerable brow, The bard replied, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 13, Issue 353, January 24, 1829 • Various
... no use in talking to you. You will go your own way. Only, as I am in town, do come to my dressmaker's. Though you had your mourning in Paris, do you know, you look quite dowdy. You'll not mind my ...
— A Crooked Path - A Novel • Mrs. Alexander
... Bolton's new Hippopotamus in the place of it. This Hippopotamus is to be the correct thing in pictures this year, and no woman with any claim to be considered smart will fail to have it over her piano. Marcus Stone's new engraving will also be rather chic. Watts's Hope is now considered a little dowdy.' And so forth. This gregarious admiration is the very antithesis of artistic appreciation, which I tell you, ...
— Select Conversations with an Uncle • H. G. Wells
... wear on this eventful day; and on her mamma's suggesting that she and Julia should put on their grey dresses, she was vehemently opposed by that young lady, who declared she would rather stay at home than go to the Gardens with Mr. and Mrs. Norton in such a dowdy dress. ...
— Aunt Mary • Mrs. Perring
... positively dowdy. Pray wear something better in honour of Lord Mallow. There is the gown you had for my wedding," suggested Mrs. Winstanley, blushing. "You look ...
— Vixen, Volume II. • M. E. Braddon
... passed the dully-lighted shop, and turned in at her own gate. In a moment she was inside the house, sniffing at the warm odour-laden air within doors. Her mouth drew down at the corners. Stew to-night! An amused gleam, lost upon the dowdy passage, fled across her bright eyes. Emmy wouldn't have thanked her for that! Emmy—sick to death herself of the smell of cooking—would have slammed down the pot in ...
— Nocturne • Frank Swinnerton
... of the house came a cackle of voices. Tina was gossiping. There was no smell of supper in the air. Mary Gowd shrugged patient shoulders. Then, before taking off the dowdy hat, before removing the white cotton gloves, she went to the window that overlooked the noisy Via Babbuino, closed the massive wooden shutters, fastened the heavy windows and drew the thick curtains. Then she stood a moment, eyes shut. ...
— Cheerful—By Request • Edna Ferber
... is; but the moment tumbling is established in various parts of the garden, and the whole thing is made a sort of Bartholomew Fair, the object of breathing a little fresher air, and hearing ourselves talk is ended; crowds of raffs in boots and white neckcloths attended by their dowdy damsels and waddling wives, rush from one place to another, helter skelter, knocking over the few quiet people to whom the "sights" are a novelty; turning what in the days of the late Lady Castlereagh, the present Duchess of Bedford, the first Duchess of Devonshire, and the last Duchess of Gordon ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 381 Saturday, July 18, 1829 • Various
... guileless Genevieve!"—Withers delighted in dispensing equivocal nothings to the dowdy Muse of the sofa and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 12, October, 1858 • Various
... her spring silk—these easy way parties are so ill to manage, and Polly was of the same mind, and she came in to show me the effect, for I always like to see the girls after they are dressed, and be satisfied how they look—and there she has forgotten the box, and she will appear quite a dowdy, and ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... declare it's charming! Now look at yourself. Why should you make yourself look dowdy? It's all very well—but you can't be ...
— Helena • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... been out about two or three hours, when we came to a dancing hall, the toughest we'd seen,—a regular dive,—and we went in, bound to have some fun. The place was full of tough-looking subs, and a lot of frouzy, dowdy girls, and what they lacked in good looks they made up in paint and brass,—such brazen faces I never saw. Half way down the hall was a big, fat woman, with her hair blondined, who seemed to have charge of the place, and was giving orders to the man behind the bar. They had some ...
— The Award of Justice - Told in the Rockies • A. Maynard Barbour
... There's the dowdy girl, And the rowdy girl, And the girl that's always late; There's the girl of style, And the girl of wile, And the girl with ...
— Cole's Funny Picture Book No. 1 • Edward William Cole
... hint to trail away in the very direction I wanted to lead you. There are a lot of things we can do to add to our soldiers' comfort. They need chocolate—sweets are good for them—and 'comfort-kits' of the real sort, not those useless, dowdy ones so many well-intentioned women are wasting time and money to send them; and they'll be grateful for lots ...
— Mary Louise and the Liberty Girls • Edith Van Dyne (AKA L. Frank Baum)
... clothes. I saw her the first day she came, and was the victim of despair until she suddenly got sick and so couldn't wear those wonderful waists and jackets. I felt like a dowdy when I saw ...
— The Circular Study • Anna Katharine Green
... fur-lined coat. So many things "go with it." It is in this respect like that grand piano to which you succumbed in a moment of paternal weakness—or after a lucky stroke in rubber. The old furniture, which had seemed so unexceptionable before, suddenly became dowdy in the presence of this princely affair. You wanted new chairs and rugs and hangings to make the piano accord with its setting. Even the house fell under suspicion, and perhaps you date all your difficulties from the day that you bought that grand piano, and found that it had ...
— Pebbles on the Shore • Alpha of the Plough (Alfred George Gardiner)
... be pretty soon," said Belle, bitterly, to her sister. "For I won't stand that dowdy thing here for long, ...
— The Girl from Sunset Ranch - Alone in a Great City • Amy Bell Marlowe
... unattractiveness is not absolute or real; it is only 'that we should desire Him.' We are but poor judges of true 'form or comeliness,' and what is lustrous with perfect beauty in God's eyes may be, and generally is, plain and dowdy in men's. Our tastes are debased. Flaunting vulgarities and self-assertive ugliness captivate vulgar eyes, to which the serene beauties of mere goodness seem insipid. Cockatoos charm savages to whom the iridescent neck of a dove has no charms. Surely this part of the description fits ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... Conquest, A Lily of Mordaunt, The Little Marplot, The Little Miss Whirlwind Lost, A Pearle Magic Cameo, The Marguerite's Heritage Masked Bridal, The Max, A Cradle Mystery Mona Mysterious Wedding Ring, A Nameless Dell Nora Queen Bess Ruby's Reward Sibyl's Influence Stella Rosevelt That Dowdy Thorn Among Roses, A Sequel to a Girl in a Thousand Thrice Wedded Tina Trixy True Aristocrat, A Two Keys Virgie's Inheritance Wedded By Fate Welfleet Mystery, The Wild Oats Winifred's Sacrifice ...
— The Masked Bridal • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... with a becoming hue, as Gard was jogged along in a roundabout way through the city. Here at the left were the august bridges and great park, all famed in Napoleon's battles. Over there were the dowdy royal palaces. There, too, was the house of the sacred Sistine. Her sweet lineaments shone down in almost ...
— Villa Elsa - A Story of German Family Life • Stuart Henry
... had passed out of Virginia's voice, while the little lines faded as suddenly from the corners of her eyes. She looked better already—only she really ought not to wear such dowdy clothes, even though she was happily married, reflected Susan, as she watched her, a few minutes later, pass over the mulberry leaves, which lay, thick and still, on ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow
... and looked at him a while like one about to call; then thought otherwise, sighed, and shook her head, and proceeded on her rounds alone. The house lasses were at the burnside washing, and saw her pass with her loose, weary, dowdy gait. ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... with less danger of dislocation, to these pinnacles of passion, by transferring more of the elevated idiom of the style: for, in some of the complicated paragraphs, a too English rendering of the clauses gives the sentiment a dowdy and prosaic air. We should not object to an occasional inversion of the order, even where Jean Paul himself is more direct than usual; for this always appeared to us to lend a racy German flavor to the page. No doubt Jean Paul needs, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 96, October 1865 • Various
... possessed since her marriage and which it seemed to her might be utilized delightfully in her department. She would endeavor to treat dress from the standpoint of ethical responsibility to society, and to show that both extravagance and dowdy homeliness were to be avoided. Clothes in themselves had grown to be a satisfaction to her, and any association of vanity would be eliminated by the introduction of a serious artistic purpose into a weekly commentary concerning them. Accordingly she accepted ...
— Unleavened Bread • Robert Grant
... toward him. She paused at a rose-bush on the way and plucked a bright-red bud, and, bringing it to him, she began to fasten it on the lapel of his coat. "You are getting entirely too slouchy," she mumbled, a pin in her mouth. "You never used to wear such dowdy clothes. You've got to spruce up—ain't ...
— Dixie Hart • Will N. Harben
... glance all the good points of a figure; she knows how to bring them out strongly; she discovers by intuition what is lacking, and dexterously hides the defects. I have seen her convert the veriest dowdy into an elegant woman. And, when she gets a subject that pleases her, she perfectly revels in her art. Look at this dress for instance,—see by what delicate combinations it ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... dear; it's so plain an' dowdy. I've somethin' better than that;' and, looking as pleased as a young girl at his interest in her dress, she went off nodding and smiling at the thought of the pleasure she was going to give him at ...
— Sarah's School Friend • May Baldwin
... was the lady, fair, faded, with mildly aquiline features, and an aspect at once distinguished and dowdy, who appealed to Merton. She sought him in what she, at least, regarded as the interests of her eldest daughter, an heiress under the will of a maternal uncle. Merton had met the young lady, who looked like a portrait of her mother in youth. He knew that Miss Malory, now 'wrapped up in' ...
— The Disentanglers • Andrew Lang
... I called for Duperre's wife at the hotel, and she came down wearing a plain, dark-brown motor coat with a small, close-fitting cap to match. She was, indeed, unusually dowdy in appearance. ...
— The Golden Face - A Great 'Crook' Romance • William Le Queux
... well-shod feet would do more than pass muster here, she reflected with satisfaction. Indeed, although she was more plainly dressed than most of the women present, she rejoiced to feel she did not suffer too much by comparison. Esther was never dowdy. She was not ashamed of her well-tailored coat and skirt, marron in colour—which went well with her eyes and hair—nor of her little new felt hat, purchased in Paris. Her small choker fur was of good stone-marten, even her gloves and the handkerchief peeping from her pocket had the correct ...
— Juggernaut • Alice Campbell
... the blank solitude of hospital nights or becalmed, mid-ocean days, and had hours for fruitless dreaming, I wonder what viands we should choose, in setting forth a banquet from that ambrosial past! Foods unknown to poetry and song: "cold b'iled dish," pan-dowdy, or rye drop-cakes dripping with butter! For these do we taste, in moments of retrospect; and perhaps we dwell the more on their homely savor because we dare not think what hands prepared them for our use, ...
— Meadow Grass - Tales of New England Life • Alice Brown
... appearance of the tower and spire, after restoration, contrasted so strongly with the "dowdy" appearance of the remainder of the church, that it was little wonder a more determined effort should be made for a general building, and this time (1872) the appeal was no longer in vain. Large donations were given by friends as well as ...
— Showell's Dictionary of Birmingham - A History And Guide Arranged Alphabetically • Thomas T. Harman and Walter Showell
... the figure and form of one of her country churns, although her name was Juliet! Pretty as the name was, the Beguine had not an atom of the poetic about her. Romance troubled her not. Yet with a face like the full moon, and a pile of petticoats which would have made a dowdy of the "Belvedere Diana," she was a capital creature. Juliet, fat as she was, had the natural frolic of a squirrel; she was everywhere, and knew every thing, and did every thing for every body; her tongue and her feet were constantly busy; and I scarcely knew which was ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 349, November, 1844 • Various
... defilement, contamination &c. v.; defoedation|; soilure[obs3], soiliness|; abomination; leaven; taint, tainture|; fetor &c. 401[obs3]. decay; putrescence, putrefaction; corruption; mold, must, mildew, dry rot, mucor, rubigo|. slovenry[obs3]; slovenliness &c. Adj. squalor. dowdy, drab, slut, malkin[obs3], slattern, sloven, slammerkin|, slammock[obs3], slummock[obs3], scrub, draggle-tail, mudlark[obs3], dust- man, sweep; beast. dirt, filth, soil, slop; dust, cobweb, flue; smoke, soot, smudge, smut, grit, grime, raff[obs3]; sossle[obs3], sozzle[obs3]. sordes[obs3], ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... myself a very fortunate girl. I can have all that is best in fashion through Mrs. Vandervoort, and all that is intellectual through Mrs. Latimer, so you see I come in for both. Then if Floyd had married Madame Lepelletier, there would have been another set here. But that little dowdy, who doesn't even know how to dress decently! Common respect ought ...
— Floyd Grandon's Honor • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... That's the wife, isn't it?—the dowdy little woman, all alone, over there? Dear me, what could ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99., August 2, 1890. • Various
... spite of being half nettled. "Are you going to stop wearing what all the other women wear—and be looked at askance? Are you going to be dowdy and frumpy ...
— The Call of the Canyon • Zane Grey
... even helped to lay her out. Ah didn't go to the graveyard though. Ah didn't have a home after she died and Ah wandered from place to place, stayin' with a white fambly this time and then a nigger fambly the next time. Ah moved to Jackson County and stayed with a Mister Frank Dowdy. Ah didn't stay there long though. Then Ah moved to Winder, Georgia. They called it 'Jug Tavern' in them days, 'cause jugs wuz made there. Ah married Green Hinton in Winder. Got along well after marryin' ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves: Volume IV, Georgia Narratives, Part 1 • Works Projects Administration
... her picture, and you will see what a plain, dowdy old maid she is. She is not for the like of you, Gavin—a bit country dressmaker, poor, ...
— Winter Evening Tales • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... the light was good. While I walked around the house outside, they passed through the front room, which seemed to be the common dormitory as well as parlor. To my surprise and chagrin, the girls and their dowdy mother had, in those brief moments of transition, contrived to arrange their hair and dress to a degree which took from them all those picturesque qualities with which they had been invested at the time of my arrival. The father was being reproved, as he emerged upon the porch, ...
— Afloat on the Ohio - An Historical Pilgrimage of a Thousand Miles in a Skiff, from Redstone to Cairo • Reuben Gold Thwaites
... when he overtook Mrs. Duncombe and offered her a lift, for her step was weary. She was indeed altered, pale, with cheek-bones showing, and all the lustre and sparkle gone out of her, while her hat was as rigidly dowdy ...
— The Three Brides • Charlotte M. Yonge
... gin-drinking charwoman to the left, and the quarrelsome gin-drinking Irish customers at the back. Everything in this picture reeks of gin; the only persons not imbibing it are the proprietor and his dowdy barmaids, whom I have no manner of doubt the artist intended to ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt
... undertaker's permanent stock-in-trade. Henrietta hated the mournful looks of these ancient cousins, the shaking of their black beads, their sibilant whisperings, and in their presence she was dry-eyed and rather rude. Aunt Caroline would have laughed at them and their dowdy clothes that smelt of camphor, but it seemed as though no one would ever laugh again in ...
— THE MISSES MALLETT • E. H. YOUNG
... child," said Elma, "do you imagine for a moment that that excrescence at the back of your head is fashionable? I never saw anything more dowdy." ...
— Wild Kitty • L. T. Meade
... spring-time in a small town! Do you know it? Main Street—on the right side—all a-bustle; farmers' wagons drawn up at the curbing; farmers' wives in the inevitable rusty black with dowdy hats furbished up with a red muslin rose in honor of spring; grand opening at the new five-and-ten-cent store, with women streaming in and streaming out again, each with a souvenir pink carnation pinned to her ...
— Roast Beef, Medium • Edna Ferber
... 'Done? It is not what you have done, it is what you are. I have no patience with you. Why are you so dull, sir? Why are you so dowdy? Why do you go about with your doublet awry, and your hair lank? Why do you speak to Maignan as if he were a gentleman? Why do you look always solemn and polite, and as if all the world were a preche? ...
— A Gentleman of France • Stanley Weyman
... the account in the Yankee papers of Lincoln and his wife at a reception of the diplomatic corps? It is too funny. The Lincoln woman was a Southerner. She has some good blood, and ought to know better. She was dressed like a dowdy, and when the ministers bowed she gave them her hand ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan
... cleverest. She is quite puzzled sometimes by my frankness about some things, for instance, about her looks. I notice she compliments me on my looks whenever I am decidedly off colour, when I wear a green ribbon, or a dowdy dress, or big shoes. But I am honest with her in these things, and I like to see her look well. The game ...
— An Anarchist Woman • Hutchins Hapgood
... girls have pleasant features than in England. What may be called nice looking girls abound all over Australia. In dress the Melbourne ladies are too fond of bright colours, but it can never be complained against them that they are dowdy—a fault common to their Sydney, Adelaide, and English sisters—and they certainly spend a great deal of money on their dress, every article of which costs about 50 per cent. more than at home. In every town the shop girls and factory girls—in ...
— Town Life in Australia - 1883 • R. E. N. (Richard) Twopeny
... frocks; others, with more limited means, contented themselves with Sunday frocks or delicately coloured robes that had been manoeuvred into something that showed enough white neck and bosom to be at once alluring and decorous. There was nothing of the plain or the dowdy. They were all out for enjoyment, and they meant to make the best of everything, themselves included. Frills and fluffiness were the order. They ...
— Nights in London • Thomas Burke
... said Pheasant. "There's my new mauve silk dress! it was a very expensive silk, and I haven't worn it more than three or four times, and it really looks quite dowdy; and I can't get Patterson to do it over for me for this party. Well, really, I shall have to give up company because I ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... Botolph's Mission Hall the oddly-assorted crowd which generally finds its way to such functions. There were smart people, just a scattering of the cultured, dowdy and dull folk, who had "helped the good cause," and expected to get as much sober entertainment in return as might be had for the asking. Then, there were the ever-present army of free sight-seers, and a leaven of ...
— The Scarlet Feather • Houghton Townley
... to make no secret of their regrets, for presently one of them, with a smile, called my attention to some faded photographs hanging over the divan. They represented groups of plump provincial-looking young women in dowdy European ball-dresses; and it required an effort of the imagination to believe that the lovely creatures in velvet caftans, with delicately tattooed temples under complicated head-dresses, and hennaed feet crossed on muslin cushions, were the same as the beaming frumps in ...
— In Morocco • Edith Wharton
... satyrs, fauns, Sport in our floods, and trip it o'er our lawns; Flowers which once flourish'd fair in Greece and Rome, More fair revive in England's meads to bloom; Skies without cloud, exotic suns adorn, And roses blush, but blush without a thorn; Landscapes, unknown to dowdy Nature, rise, And new creations strike our wondering eyes. For bards like these, who neither sing nor say, Grave without thought, and without feeling gay, 60 Whose numbers in one even tenor flow, Attuned to pleasure, and attuned ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... style and had taught Clara some valuable lessons. "Any woman can dress well if she knows how," Kate had declared. She had taught Clara how to study and emphasize by dress the good points of her body. Beside Clara, Rose McCoy looked dowdy ...
— Poor White • Sherwood Anderson
... stroked down an upstarting frill, and coloured furiously. "Ah, my blouse! Do you admire it? I wrote to town for it, to your dressmaker, and I've ordered a lovely frock. You'll see. For once in my life I shall be really well dressed! Seeing you and Mrs Fane has made me discontented with my dowdy old rags!" ...
— The Lady of the Basement Flat • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... out an enterprise where many hands were needed, but has been well-nigh appalled at times by the imbecility of the average man—the inability or unwillingness to concentrate on a thing and do it. Slipshod assistance, foolish inattention, dowdy indifference, and half-hearted work seem the rule; and no man succeeds, unless by hook or crook, or threat, he forces or bribes other men to assist him; or mayhap, God in His goodness performs a miracle, and sends him an angel ...
— Public Speaking • Irvah Lester Winter
... one of Bulwer's heroes, or Disraeli's, or even Thackeray's! And his simple old duke of a father and his dowdy old duchess of a mother are almost as devoid of swagger as himself; they seem to apologise for their very existence, if we may trust these American chroniclers who seem to know them so well; and I really think we no longer ...
— Social Pictorial Satire • George du Maurier
... French from Italian women, Spanish from Austrian, Hungarian from Russian or German types. Almost invariably the pretty women and the good-looking men were well dressed. Only the plain and ugly ones seemed not to care for appearances. But there were more plain people than handsome ones; and dowdy forms strove jealously to hide the charming figures, as dark clouds swallow up shining stars. All faces, however, no matter how beautiful or how repulsive, how old or how young, had a strange family likeness in their expression, it seemed to Mary; a tense eagerness, such as before ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... strange, for now that he sat there in that quiet room that had once witnessed the trying out of a manly soul, and saw the calm eyes of the plain mother on the wall opposite, and the true eyes of the dowdy school-boy on the other wall, he was feeling ...
— The Witness • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... trailing in, tall and thin, in her sagging grey coat and skirt, her wispy grey hair escaping from under her floppy black hat, and with the air of having till a moment ago been hung about with parcels (she had left them in the hall), looked altogether unsuited to her environment, like a dowdy lady from the ...
— Dangerous Ages • Rose Macaulay
... I don't know now whether I've done you any kindness in inviting you aboard to see over the Stella Maris," she said. "I reckon your own ship will seem a bit dowdy ...
— The First Mate - The Story of a Strange Cruise • Harry Collingwood
... women think they deceive us for our good, but they should continue to do so after marriage. 'Pon honor! I have seen the sweetest, most amiable girl turn as sour as could be a few months after the ceremony. The dressiest ones often get dowdy, the most musical can't abide music, the most talkative have the dumps. A man has no chance of judging how they are going to turn out. He is duped by the daughters, inveigled by their mothers, and, what ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 86, February, 1875 • Various
... was now middle-aged, stout and dowdy—"like a cook with pretty hands," as Stendhal said of her—mattered nothing to her admirers, many of whom remembered her in the days of her lovely youth. She was, in their eyes, as much a Queen as if she wore a crown; and, moreover, she ...
— Love affairs of the Courts of Europe • Thornton Hall
... why, she is a very dowdy, A dishclout, a foul gipsy unto thee. Come to my closet, lass, there take thy earnest Of love, of pleasure, ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VII (4th edition) • Various
... figure—slight and short, but remarkable for its neatness. There was something of her brother, much of him indeed, in a certain gentleness of manner, and in her look of timid trustfulness; but she was so far from being a fright, or a dowdy, or a horror, or anything else, predicted by the two Miss Pecksniffs, that those young ladies naturally regarded her with great indignation, feeling that this was by no means what they ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... the gay crowd was more admired or more noticed than "the bride," as she was still called, young Mrs. Kynaston. Helen had surpassed herself in the elaboration of her toilette. The country dames and damsels, in their somewhat dowdy home-made gowns, could scarcely remember their manners, so eager were they to stare at the marvels of that wondrous garment of sheeny satin, and soft, creamy gauze, sprinkled over with absolute works of art in the shape of ...
— Vera Nevill - Poor Wisdom's Chance • Mrs. H. Lovett Cameron
... have nowhere seen it remarked, and I therefore call attention to the fact, that a certain note of rustic origin still clings to many words of this class; and I would instance such as these: bawl, bloated, blunder, bungle, clog, clown, clumsy, to cow, to craze, dowdy, dregs, dump, and many more of a like character. I do not say that such words cannot be employed in serious literature; but they ...
— English Dialects From the Eighth Century to the Present Day • Walter W. Skeat
... observe one or two peculiarities of this kind as we stroll about the city, and they are explained to us by our colonial friend. Some extremely dowdy females we see riding in a barouche are the wife and daughters of a high official, who is stingy to his woman-kind, so they say. Two youths we pass are in striking contrast, as they walk along arm-in-arm. One is ...
— Brighter Britain! (Volume 1 of 2) - or Settler and Maori in Northern New Zealand • William Delisle Hay
... sarcastic on board ship as to the dresses of some of the people, but I thought it was only his way of grumbling at things in general, though certainly I generally agreed with him. He told me one day that my taste evidently inclined to the dowdy, but you see I wore half mourning ...
— Rujub, the Juggler • G. A. Henty
... screamed and fought, crying, "I ain't guilty of killing the doctor and you oughtn't to kill me"; and to silence her cries one member of the mob struck her in the mouth with a monkey wrench, knocking her teeth out. On May 24, 1919, at Milan, Telfair County, Georgia, two young white men, Jim Dowdy and Lewis Evans, went drunk late at night to the Negro section of the town and to the home of a widow who had two daughters. They were refused admittance and then fired into the house. The girls, frightened, ...
— A Social History of the American Negro • Benjamin Brawley
... mostly women and all pretty and perfectly dressed, as even quite common people appear to be in America. I haven't caught sight of a dowdy woman since I came. None of their frocks hitch up in front and dip down behind, as you see people's doing if you are taken to a shop in Oxford Street or even sometimes in Bond Street; and their belts always point beautifully ...
— Lady Betty Across the Water • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... a crust the pastry and bake in a moderate oven for forty-five minutes. Let cool and then run a knife around the edge of the baking dish and loosen the crust from the dish. Place a large platter over the dowdy and then invert. Dust the dowdy lightly with nutmeg and serve ...
— Mrs. Wilson's Cook Book - Numerous New Recipes Based on Present Economic Conditions • Mary A. Wilson
... brushed me, and her breath touched my cheek; her eyes, like gray stars now that they were less anxious, went to my head a little, I suppose. Oh, yes, she was lovely. Of course that was a factor. If she had been past her first youth and skimpy as to hair, and dowdy, I don't pretend that I should ever have mixed myself up in the ...
— The Firefly Of France • Marion Polk Angellotti
... fashionable or anything of that kind. I would not for one moment think of allowing any of my court-ladies to cut their hair short, for instance, or to wear one of those foolish hobble skirts; but nobody, nobody could accuse us of being dowdy. Now tell me, have you ever seen one of us looking like ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, June 11, 1919 • Various
... big window which looked out across the garden. He carried her boxes up himself. "We don't run to a butler," he said. "Got everything you want? Ring if you haven't. We have supper at eight and we shan't dress. Only—well, you couldn't look dowdy if you tried." ...
— Running Water • A. E. W. Mason
... and market day in Jersey. The square was crowded with people. All was a cheerful babel; there was movement, colour everywhere. Here were the high and the humble, hardi vlon and hardi biaou—the ugly and the beautiful, the dwarfed and the tall, the dandy and the dowdy, the miser and the spendthrift; young ladies gay in silks, laces, and scarfs from Spain, and gentlemen with powdered wigs from Paris; sailors with red tunics from the Mediterranean, and fishermen with blue and purple blouses from Brazil; man-o'-war's-men ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... as a relation." Then, oh! visions of the golden dream of bliss when she could visit such titled kin in Old England, and report it all when at home in New York, filled her head. And with her mind eaten up with it, she pushed rudely by a plain, somewhat dowdy-looking woman who obstructed ...
— Five Little Peppers Abroad • Margaret Sidney
... There's a regiment a-comin' down the Grand Trunk Road; With its best foot first And the road a-sliding past, An' every bloomin' campin'-ground exactly like the last; While the Big Drum says, With 'is "rowdy-dowdy-dow!" — "Kiko kissywarsti don't ...
— Verses 1889-1896 • Rudyard Kipling
... matter. Fancy your remembering my wardrobe like that! And wanting me to wear them all for years! So I shall, dear, secretly, when we are quite quite alone. But they are all out of date already, and if in a year or so you saw your poor dowdy wife with tight sleeves among a roomful of puff-shouldered young ladies, you would not be consoled even by the memory that it was in that dress that you first . . . ...
— A Duet • A. Conan Doyle
... a pie consisting of apples, molasses, and bread crumbs baked in a tin pan. This is known to New Englanders as "Pan Dowdy." An agreeable bread was at one time made by an ingenious Frenchman which consisted of one third of apples boiled, ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie
... with twenty people or so of kindred tastes to himself, who appreciated the cost and understood his feelings. On such people, however, his Dresden china was thrown away. Joe and Mrs. Joe were much more in their way than the elegant University man and the well-bred mother, who was "a poor little dowdy," they all said. Therefore the fact had been forced upon Mr. Copperhead that his circle must be widened and advanced, if his crowning glories were to be appreciated as ...
— Phoebe, Junior • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... themselves in the long mirrors. Annesley took a last peep at herself also, not an affectionate but an anxious one. Compared with these visions, was she (in Mrs. Ellsworth's cast-off clothes, made over in odd moments by the wearer) so dowdy and second-hand that—that—a stranger would be ...
— The Second Latchkey • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... have the fewest charms, that they may make something out of nothing. They succeed best in fiction, and they apply this rule to love. They make a goddess of any dowdy. As Don Quixote said, in answer to the matter-of-fact remonstrances of Sancho, that Dulcinea del Toboso answered the purpose of signalising his valour just as well as the 'fairest princess under sky,' so any of the fair sex will serve them to write about just as well as another. They take ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... a faggot.) Another, complimenting his convenient, said, Yours, my shell; she replied, I was yours before, sweet oyster. I reckon, said Carpalin, she hath gutted his oyster. Another long-shanked ugly rogue, mounted on a pair of high-heeled wooden slippers, meeting a strapping, fusty, squabbed dowdy, says he to her, How is't my top? She was short upon him, and arrogantly replied, Never the better for you, my whip. By St. Antony's hog, said Xenomanes, I believe so; for how can this whip be sufficient to ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... lady justified the exception as follows: "If I was going to be married to myself, or to some gentleman I did not care for, I would not spend a shilling. But I am going to marry him; and so—oh, Edward, think of them saying, 'What has he married? a dowdy: why she hadn't new things on to go to church with him: no bonnet, no wreath, no new white dress!' To mortify him the very first day of our——" The sentence remained unfinished, but two lovely ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... the style which, after all, does go so far. There's nothing dowdy about her. A dowdy woman would have killed me. She attracted me from the first moment; and, by Jove, old fellow, I can assure you it was mutual. I am the happiest fellow alive, and I don't think there is anything I envy ...
— Ralph the Heir • Anthony Trollope
... same way. Young men possessed the earth; young women had to wrest what they wanted out of it piecemeal. Johnny might end a cabinet minister, a notorious journalist, a Labour leader, anything.... Women's jobs were, as a rule, so dowdy and unimportant. Jane was bored to death with this sex business; it wasn't fair. But Jane was determined to live it down. She wouldn't be put off with second-rate jobs; she wouldn't be dowdy and unimportant, ...
— Potterism - A Tragi-Farcical Tract • Rose Macaulay
... died in January, 1873, and was intimately acquainted with Byron and his contemporaries, speaks of her as a "Dowdy-Goody." ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Letters and Journals, Vol. 1 • Lord Byron, Edited by Rowland E. Prothero
... of no really suitable place where she could buy a new evening dress at eight-thirty on Sunday evening. And, anyhow, he said, she looked quite nice, really very smart; besides, Mrs Mitchell was not the sort of person who would think any the less of a pretty woman for being a little dowdy and ...
— Tenterhooks • Ada Leverson
... so dressed up, and hooped up, I ween, They're mothers full often before they're sixteen, And fading and dowdy and sickly at twenty, With one boy in trowsers and two girls in laces Complaining of starving while dying of plenty The fate is ...
— Nothing to Eat • Horatio Alger [supposed]
... had only known how ravishing that simple costume made her appear and what a vision she would be to the hungry eyes of Bob McGraw! Yet, she was ashamed to let even the San Pasqualians see her leaving town in such a dowdy costume, and as she walked up the tracks from the Hat Ranch that momentous morning, bearing aloft a parasol that but the day before had been the joy of her girlish existence, she was fully convinced that a more ...
— The Long Chance • Peter B. Kyne
... little tulle tossed up with flowers or feathers into the most perfect little crown for a fair head, a little velvet with nodding plumes that made the wearer at once into a duchess. The duchess herself was present, but she was dowdy, as duchesses have a right to be. And then the arrivals, the carriages that came gleaming up, the horses that pranced and curved their beautiful necks, as highbred as the ladies! Geoff, who had come with his mother, posted himself ...
— A Country Gentleman and his Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... laughs; "I have nothing to wear. There is a white Swiss muslin in my trunk, but it will look wofully rustic and dowdy, I'm ...
— A Terrible Secret • May Agnes Fleming
... did so well that I lived in luxury, and, I fear, somewhat extravagantly, and my performance as heroine in —— was so highly praised that I had no doubt my future was well assured. Last year I earned L40, and I have to live on what I earn, and if I look dowdy when I go seeking an engagement I have little chance of getting it. Yet I am under thirty, and although not one of the little group of alleged beauties whose faces appear monotonously week after week in the illustrated ...
— Our Stage and Its Critics • "E.F.S." of "The Westminster Gazette"
... plain lamp and a big door-plate—then some dreary private lodging-houses—then, at right angles to these, a street of shops; the cheese-monger's very small, the chemist's very smart, the pastry-cook's very dowdy, and the green-grocer's very dark, I was still looking out at the view thus presented, when I was suddenly apostrophized by a ...
— After Dark • Wilkie Collins
... will show a lack of "finish," and the tender-hearted bride who, for the sake of their purses sends her bridesmaids to an average "little woman" to have their clothes made, and to a little hat-place around the corner, is apt to have a rather dowdy little flock fluttering down the ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... aboriginal from a wild and distant country, and they shot glances at each other, uneasy, half-jealous, half-envious glances, as they noted the beauty of the face, and the grace of the figure in its black dress, which, plain as it was, seemed to make theirs still more dowdy and vulgar. In the midst of this lugubrious account of the annoyances and worries of the journey, Mr. Heron broke ...
— At Love's Cost • Charles Garvice
... occasions when the king and queen drove out, the royal carriage was generally attended by a second, in which was ex-empress Isabella, at the time on a visit to the royal palace, though she makes her home at present in Paris. She is fat, dowdy, and vulgar in appearance, with features indicative of sensuousness and indulgence in coarse appetites. The last time we saw her was in the Puerto del Sol, as she rode in a carriage behind the royal vehicle, with a lady companion by her side, ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou
... who go to dance at the Rainbow. One of them, however, was very neat and prim, while the other—well! she was a terrible dowdy." ...
— Monsieur Lecoq • Emile Gaboriau
... So that dowdy get-up is for my benefit, and is not habitual to her!—Or is it, that she has only one costume and keeps it for Sundays and days ...
— Man and Maid • Elinor Glyn
... Nor was her surprise so much the effect of his dissimulation, as of his want of taste and discernment. She inveighed against him, not as the most treacherous lover, but as the most abject wretch, in courting the smiles of such an awkward dowdy, while he enjoyed the favours of a woman who had numbered princes in the train of her admirers. For the brilliancy of her attractions, such as they at present shone, she appealed to the decision of her minister, who consulted ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett
... matter of fact, so far from discouraging the passion for dress among their female dependents, ladies of position and fortune are apt to insist on their dressing smartly. They like to see some of their own lustre reflected on their attendants. A dowdy in sad-colored print or linsey is by no means to their taste. This has been well pointed out in a letter in which a "Maid-servant" replied, through the Pall Mall Gazette, to the project of reform proposed by a "Clergyman's Wife." Looking at the question ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous
... full mouth, with a slightly lifted upper lip that did not know whether it was raised in scorn of all men or out of eagerness to be kissed, but which believed the former. She carried her head back, as if she had drawn away in contempt, perhaps from men also. She wore a large, dowdy hat of black beaver, and a sort of slightly affected simple dress that made her look rather sack-like. She was evidently poor, and had not much taste. Miriam usually ...
— Sons and Lovers • David Herbert Lawrence
... me give you a few finishing touches before we go," said Marion, a few minutes afterwards, "and I will lend you my green brooch and a veil. You must let me alter your bonnet a little one night next week. There; now you don't look quite so dowdy," said Marion, as she pushed her cousin before the looking-glass after the "few touches" had been given to her ...
— Kate's Ordeal • Emma Leslie
... are not the things they were, If caste declines and Vandals Go practically everywhere From Cavendish to Berkeley Square, And dowdy frumps without ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, November 10, 1920 • Various
... often been remarked that in the bird world the rule is for the males to have the brilliant plumage, with all the beautiful colors and for the females to be the dowdy ones—a rule which would entail a revolution in fashions, startling and ludicrous, if it were to be introduced for variety among our own kind. Again, gaily-dressed birds have the least pleasing song—the screaming jay bearing an ...
— Our Young Folks at Home and Abroad • Various
... a speckled Hamburg hen, and a nice quiet she-goat,' said Robina; 'but they are all dowdy, and would not ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... who had "understanding" mothers, did not need this special inspiration and help, but it was noticeable that girls who had no mothers at all, found in the little, plump, rather dowdy "old maid school teacher" one of those choice souls that God has put on earth to fulfil the duties of parents ...
— The Corner House Girls at School • Grace Brooks Hill
... smarter," said Matilda; "and there's nothing on earth so dowdy as an old black coat, But, then, officers are always going away: you no sooner get to know one or two of a set, and to feel that one of them is really a darling fellow, but there, they are off—to Jamaica, China, Hounslow ...
— The Kellys and the O'Kellys • Anthony Trollope
... being old-fashioned. None would dare to despise her. She was what Hilda could never be, had never long desired to be. She was what Hilda had definitely renounced being. And there stood Hilda, immature, graceless, harsh, inelegant, dowdy, holding the letter between her inky fingers, in the midst of all that hard masculine mess,—and a part of it, the blindly devoted subaltern, who could expect none of the ritual of homage given to women, who must sit and work and ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... that I should ever forget a jot of the real happiness of any portion of my life. When you and I, dear Sook (an awful scowl, and a sudden change of her position, on her costly rocking chair. Fitz looked askance at Mrs. Fitz, and proceeded); when you and I, Susan, lived in Dowdy's little eight by ten 'blue frame,' down in Pigginsborough; not a yard of carpet, or piece of mahogany, or silver, or silk, or satin, or flummery of any sort, ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley
... was to be found in the saloons, and the subjects chosen would hardly find entertainment elsewhere. The furnishing of the houses was within the bounds of good taste. Monumental marbles were not erected by the hearth-side; the window drapery was diaphanous rather than dense and dowdy. The markets of San Francisco were much to blame for the flashiness of the domestic interior: they were stocked with the gaudiest fixtures and textures, and in the inspection of them the eye was bewildered and ...
— In the Footprints of the Padres • Charles Warren Stoddard
... 'tis a gala night Within the "Rational" latter years! A female throng, dowdy, bedight In veils, and drowned in tears, Sits in a theatre, to see A play of hopes and fears, Whilst the orchestra breathes fitfully The music of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 101, September 26, 1891 • Various
... ornaments of the Society Column, displayed toward the rest of the company, convinced Undine that they must be more important than they looked. She liked Mrs. Fairford, a small incisive woman, with a big nose and good teeth revealed by frequent smiles. In her dowdy black and antiquated ornaments she was not what Undine would have called "stylish"; but she had a droll kind way which reminded the girl of her father's manner when he was not tired or worried about money. One of the other ladies, having white ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton
... on the stone steps of Miss Teeturn's boarding-house for the dowdy servant-girl's return—such dirty, unkempt steps as they were, and such a dingy door-plate, spotted with rain and dust, not like Malachi's, he thought—he could hardly restrain himself from beating Juba with his foot, ...
— The Fortunes of Oliver Horn • F. Hopkinson Smith
... only I never feel as if I was dressed right. My things seemed elegant at home, and I thought I'd be over over-dressed if anything; but I look countrified and dowdy here. No time or money to change now, even if I knew how to do it,' answered the other, glancing anxiously at her bright pink silk ...
— Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... her friends. They bowed, and shook hands with Mrs. Fargus, but were at no pains to conceal their indifference to the drab and dowdy little woman in the soiled sage green, and the glimmering spectacles. 'What a complexion,' whispered Elsie the moment they were outside the door. 'What's her husband like?' asked Cissy as they descended the first flight. ...
— Celibates • George Moore
... exclaimed. "Did you ever see women so weary-looking and so dowdy? They do not talk. They seem to spend their time yawning and inspecting their neighbour's dresses through those hateful glasses. It never seems to enter their heads to try ...
— Anna the Adventuress • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... her. She had no remembrance of having seen her mother dressed in that gown or cloak. Besides, she looked so wet and muddy. Where had she come from dressed in that dowdy style. ...
— A Love Episode • Emile Zola
... and beans, which I loathed. Some would choose plum-pudding, others apple-pies. There were always two or three dishes for breakfast, as, for instance, fried potatoes and butter, or cold meat, or pan-dowdy—a kind of coarse and broken up apple-pie—with the tea and bread and coffee, but we could only eat of one. There was rather too much petty infant-schoolery in all this, but we got on very well. Pepper and mustard were forbidden, but I always had a great natural craving for these, and when I asked ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland
... you think, would be above eating gingerbread between service. None of them, you imagine, ever read "Thaddeus of Warsaw," or ever used a colored glass seal with a Cupid and a dart upon it. You are quite certain they never did, or they could not surely wear such dowdy gowns, and suck ...
— Dream Life - A Fable Of The Seasons • Donald G. Mitchell
... dull here," she moaned. "I'm afraid you'll be bored to death." And she looked at Mary with her most smilingly cruel expression. "Oh, Mary, why did you put on that dreadfully dowdy frock? I've asked you over and over again to give it away, but you never pay attention to ...
— The Hero • William Somerset Maugham
... frequent and friendly. There were horseback rides together in the mornings, sails in the afternoons, and duets on the piano in the evenings. Then her Parisian toilets made poor Sophy's Largo dresses look funnily dowdy, and her sharp questions and affected ignorances of Sophy's meanings and answers were cleverly aided by Madame's cold silences, lifted brows, and hopeless acceptance of such an outside barbarian. Long before a dinner was over, ...
— A Knight of the Nets • Amelia E. Barr
... took the leading business at the Norwich circuit in 182-; and she herself had played for two seasons with some credit T.R.E.O., T.R.S.W., until she fell down a trap-door and broke her leg); the girls at Fanny's school, we say, took no account of her, and thought her a dowdy little creature as long as she remained under Miss Minifer's instruction. And it was unremarked and almost unseen in the dark porter's lodge of Shepherd's Inn, that this ...
— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray
... to ask me a question like that. Have I fretted and pined, and forgot to eat and sleep, and gone dowdy and slovenly, because my lover has been fool enough to desert me? Well, then, that is what any other girl would have done. But because I am of thy blood and stock, I take what comes to me as part of my day's work, and make no more grumble on the matter than ...
— An Orkney Maid • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... comfortable otherwise. They were forbidden, or, at all events, lacked the means, to follow out their natural instinct of adorning themselves; all were dressed in one homely uniform of blue-checked gowns, with such caps upon their heads as English servants wear. Generally, too, they had one dowdy English aspect, and a vulgar type of features so nearly alike that they seemed literally to constitute a sisterhood. We have few of these absolutely unilluminated faces among our native American population, individuals of whom must be singularly unfortunate, if, mixing as we ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... an intimate friend of Farquhar and Steele. There is an absence of indelicacy in her plays, but not a little farcical humour, especially in the character of "Marplot" in "The Busybody," and of rich "Mrs. Dowdy" with her vulgarity and admirers in "The Platonic Lady." She often adopts the tone of the day in ridiculing learned ladies. In one place she speaks as if even at that time the founding of a college ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 1 (of 2) - With an Introduction upon Ancient Humour • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... Piccadilly and Regent Street, and deigned to call upon his tailors. A morning-suit which he had commanded being miraculously finished, he put it on, and was at once not only spectacularly but morally regenerated. The old suit, though it had cost five guineas in its time, looked a paltry and a dowdy thing as it lay, flung down anyhow, on one of Messrs Quayther & Cuthering's cane chairs in the mirrored cubicle where baronets and even peers showed their braces ...
— The Regent • E. Arnold Bennett
... She removed her dowdy black dress, and, opening a drawer in her wardrobe, took out a soft gray silk which lay folded between tissue paper and sprigs of lavender. She put the dress on, and fastened soft lace ruffles round her throat and at her wrists. The dress transformed her. It toned with all her faded ...
— A Girl in Ten Thousand • L. T. Meade
... sha'n't wear dowdy, old-womanish dresses to please her, along with other girls of my size that are dressed up in their best. I'd rather stay at home than be mortified that way, and I just wish I had ...
— Elsie at Nantucket • Martha Finley
... she had talked it all over. So they compared notes, and Rosa told him how well she had got on with Miss Lucas, and made a friendship. "But for that," said she, "I should be sorry I went among those people, such a dowdy." ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade
... be nice to her," said Letty, playing with a flower on the mantelpiece. "Dowdy people make me feel wicked. ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. I • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... kept alive, and who be killed. And as those vizard-masks maintain that fashion, To soothe and tickle sweet imagination; So our dull poet keeps you on with masking, To make you think there's something worth your asking. But, when 'tis shown, that, which does now delight you, Will prove a dowdy, with a ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Volume 4 (of 18) - Almanzor And Almahide, Marriage-a-la-Mode, The Assignation • John Dryden
... Now go on." Then she again thumped herself. And she had thumped her hair, and thumped herself all round till she was as limp and dowdy as the elder sister of a Low Church ...
— The Landleaguers • Anthony Trollope
... like! It depresses me to see you going about in that dowdy thing, and it must be a martyrdom for you to wear it every day. Come out and buy a straw shape for something and 'eleven-three'," (it's always "eleven-three" in Edgware Road), "and I'll trim it with some of your scraps. You have such nice scraps. Then ...
— Big Game - A Story for Girls • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... Knaresborough, Bolton, and Fountains. You know, dear old pal, I'll be bound, As hantiquities isn't my 'obby, and ruins don't fetch me, not much! I can't see their "beauty," no more than the charms of some dowdy old Dutch. ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, October 15, 1892 • Various
... Feverels lived. There was a light in the upper window and some one was playing the piano. Robin hesitated for some minutes before ringing the bell. When it had rung he heard the piano stop. For a few seconds there was no sound; then there were steps in the passage and the door was opened by the very dowdy little maid-of-all-work whose hands were always dirty and whose eyes were always red, as though with ...
— The Wooden Horse • Hugh Walpole |
