"Gentlewoman" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... little wretch, this is another of your stupidities. A well-bred lackey would have spoken in a whisper to the gentlewoman in attendance; the latter would have come to her mistress and have whispered in her ear: "Here is the footman of Mr. So-and-so, who wants to speak to you, Madam." To which the mistress would have answered, "Show ...
— The Countess of Escarbagnas • Moliere
... certain conjunction of planets—or whatever it was—in my horoscope, I should have an accident to-night, I shouldn't have jumped out of the brougham. I should have waited for Mr. Ferdinand to assist me, as befits a gentlewoman." ...
— The Prophet of Berkeley Square • Robert Hichens
... accomplishments, and elegant manners were most desirable things in her eyes, and she liked to associate with those who possessed them, often mistaking the false for the true, and admiring what was not admirable. Never forgetting that by birth she was a gentlewoman, she cultivated her aristocratic tastes and feelings, so that when the opportunity came she might be ready to take the place from which ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott
... which they prefer to live rather than do anything themselves that they consider menial; as if an untidy house, slovenly servants, badly cooked and coarsely served food, are not likely to do much more to lower their self-respect than any amount of so-called drudgery. 'A gentlewoman,' it has been said, 'never lowers herself by doing that which would make her feel less a ...
— The Skilful Cook - A Practical Manual of Modern Experience • Mary Harrison
... belonging to the buergerliche or middle classes were in her eyes wholly unworthy. If Anna had proposed to take washerwomen into her home, and required the princess's help in brightening their lives, it would have been given in the full measure, pressed down and running over, that befits a Christian gentlewoman; but for the Buergerlichen, those belonging to the class more immediately below her own, the princess's feeling was only Christian so long as they kept a great way off. There was so much good sense in the ...
— The Benefactress • Elizabeth Beauchamp
... Oh, tell her I'll make her the best husband in the world, and Lady O'Trigger into the bargain!—But we must get the old gentlewoman's ...
— The Rivals - A Comedy • Richard Brinsley Sheridan
... Bible, sir. My mother, don't you know, often remarks that anybody who makes the Bible a rule of conduct can't help being a gentleman or gentlewoman. Can't help it, don't ...
— Dorothy's House Party • Evelyn Raymond
... very friendly, was heartily glad to see me, and directed me to a proper place to board and lodge in Petticoat-Lane, till he could think of some way to settle me in, and paid for my lodging, and all my expences. The morning after I came to my new lodging, as I was at breakfast with the gentlewoman of the house, I heard the noise of some looms over our heads: I enquir'd what it was; she told me a person was weaving silk.—I express'd a great desire to see it, and ask'd if I might: She told me she would go up with me; she was sure I should be very welcome. She was as good as her word, and as ...
— A Narrative Of The Most Remarkable Particulars In The Life Of James Albert Ukawsaw Gronniosaw, An African Prince, As Related By Himself • James Albert Ukawsaw Gronniosaw
... undismayed, "if you deprive me of my lands, you take away all that your ancestors' generosity gave, and you break the only bonds which attach us together. You cannot dispose the hand of any gentlewoman by force." ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VIII • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... a gentlewoman, in a single gauze slip and many jewels, lounged on a rug and gazed at nothing across the city. A flat-shanked Ethiopian fanned her listlessly ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller
... all the lower classes of the English clad in something like costumes. The Channel waterman wore the short dowlas petticoat; the Thames waterman, a jacket and breeches of velveteen, and a badge; the gentleman and gentlewoman, attire such as was certainly to be seen in no other part of the Christian world, the English colonies excepted. Something of this still remained, but it existed rather as the exception than as the rule. I then felt, at every turn, that I was in a foreign country; whereas, now, the ...
— Recollections of Europe • J. Fenimore Cooper
... fine old gentlewoman "of the old school," as the phrase is. She was very stately and gracious in her manners, daintily neat in her person, and much attached to the old parson of the parish, who now sat near her chair. ...
— The Brownies and Other Tales • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... he was, the first Man alive, And he married a fine young Gentlewoman, call'd Mrs. Eve. And Mr. Adam and Mrs. Eve, between them twain Got a pretty little ...
— The Merry-Thought: or the Glass-Window and Bog-House Miscellany. Part 1 • Samuel Johnson [AKA Hurlo Thrumbo]
... those eager to earn a guinea and things became worse. The girl, helped by the young man—she had seen enough of him to know that he was both young and good-looking—urged her way through the crowd, and those in front, seeing she looked like a gentlewoman and knowing nothing of the guinea offered for her capture stood back and she passed through. At that moment she felt her companion's grasp relax. Then his fingers slipped from her arm. Some ...
— Madame Flirt - A Romance of 'The Beggar's Opera' • Charles E. Pearce
... Theophilus, one of the Oglethorpe boys, was sent out to his father's old friend Mr. Pitt, Governor of Fort St. George in India, the man of the Pitt Diamond. His outfit had to be prepared in a hurry, and a young gentlewoman, Frances Shaftoe, was engaged to help with the sewing of his several dozens of linen shirts, 'the flourishing of neckcloths and drawing of cotton stripes;' as young gentlewomen of limited means were used to do before they discovered ...
— Historical Mysteries • Andrew Lang
... little impressed with the honour done her, but recognizing that she was in the presence of a gentlewoman. She took the laird's seat at his invitation, and, leaning forward, gazed ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... After his arrival in London, being demanded of sundry his friends what thing he had brought them home out of that country, he had nothing left to present them withal but a piece of this black stone. And it fortuned a gentlewoman, one of the adventurer's wives, to have a piece thereof, which by chance she threw and burned in the fire, so long that at the length being taken forth, and quenched in a little vinegar, it glistened with a bright ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various
... his witchcrafte he did bewitch a Gentleman dwelling neere to the Saltpans, where the said Doctor kept Schoole, onely for being enamoured of a Gentlewoman whome he loued himselfe: by meanes of which his Sorcerye, witchcraft and diuelish practises, he caused the said Gentleman that once in xxiiij. howres he fell into a lunacie and madnes, and so continued one whole hower together, and for the veritie of the same, he caused the Gentleman to be brought ...
— Daemonologie. • King James I
... the valet mounts the dickey— That gentleman of Lords and Gentlemen; Also my Lady's gentlewoman, tricky, Tricked out, but modest more than poet's pen Can paint,—"Cosi viaggino i Ricchi!"[666] (Excuse a foreign slipslop now and then, If but to show I've travelled: and what's Travel, Unless it teaches one to quote ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... when their contemporaries are sneering round them? We must live above ourselves and each other; there is no other way of getting rid of the shams and disguises of life; and yet how is one who has been born in slavery to be absolutely true? How is an English gentlewoman to shake off the prejudices of caste and declare ...
— The Girl's Own Paper, Vol. VIII: No. 356, October 23, 1886. • Various
... was a gentlewoman of small means; but she was accomplished. She could make very spirited sketches, and knew how to colour them after they were outlined and shaded in Indian ink. She had a pleasant talent for versifying. She was ...
— The Peace Egg and Other tales • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... ways, and commend me, honest Barberacho, to the young Gentlewoman, and let her know, as soon as I may be certain to run no hazard in my Reputation, I'll visit ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. II • Aphra Behn
... dripping from the eaves—sixteen hours of rain, not merely audible, but visible for seven days in the week—would be enough to exhaust the patience of Job or Grizzel; especially if Job were a farmer, and Grizzel a country gentlewoman. Never was known such a season! Hay swimming, cattle drowning, fruit rotting, corn spoiling! and that naughty river, the Loddon, who never can take Puff's advice, and 'keep between its banks,' running about the country, fields, roads, gardens, and houses, ...
— Our Village • Mary Russell Mitford
... there was something so startling in the entrance, and so audacious in the inexplicable look of their conqueror, that the eyes of both sunk to the earth, under a feeling of terror and embarrassment. Then Inez recovered herself, and addressing the trapper, she demanded, with the dignity of an offended gentlewoman, though with her accustomed grace, to what circumstance they owed this extraordinary and unexpected visit. The old man hesitated; but clearing his throat, like one who was about to make an effort to which he was little used, he ventured ...
— The Prairie • J. Fenimore Cooper
... them, then?" she muttered. "I did think from the look of you that you would know a gentlewoman when you met one! Did you imagine for the thousandth part of one second that ...
— The Regent • E. Arnold Bennett
... "but for our gentlemen," we must feel detestation for them. Juliet's nurse is not the only disloyal servant. Shylock's servant, Launcelot Gobbo, helps Jessica to deceive her father, and Margaret, the Lady Hero's gentlewoman, brings about the disgrace of her mistress by fraud. Olivia's waiting-woman in "Twelfth Night" is honest enough, but she is none too modest in her language, but in this respect Dame Quickly in "Henry IV." can easily rival ...
— Tolstoy on Shakespeare - A Critical Essay on Shakespeare • Leo Tolstoy
... by the clavichord, happy and smiling. Vera was playing chess with Shinshin in the drawing room. The old countess, waiting for the return of her husband and son, sat playing patience with the old gentlewoman who lived in their house. Denisov, with sparkling eyes and ruffled hair, sat at the clavichord striking chords with his short fingers, his legs thrown back and his eyes rolling as he sang, with his small, husky, but true voice, ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... charge, sir; I thank God my father left me wherewithal: if it please you, sir, I have a great mind to this gentlewoman here, in ...
— The London Prodigal • William Shakespeare [Apocrypha]
... opposite to the Maxims he us'd to preach up before he was marry'd, that I you'd not forbear rubbing up the Memory of them. But he gave a very good-natur'd turn to his Change of Sentiments, by alleging that who ever brings a poor Gentlewoman into so solitary a place, from all her Friends and acquaintance, wou'd be ungrateful not to use her and all that belongs to ...
— Woman's Life in Colonial Days • Carl Holliday
... Bessie's talk pleased Lady Latimer. She decided that Mrs. Carnegie must be a gentlewoman, and that Bessie had qualities capable of taking a fine polish. She would have held the child in conversation longer had not Mrs. Wiley come up, and after a word or two about the success of the feast, bade Bessie run away ...
— The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax • Harriet Parr
... walked by the side of her pony up the avenue; and while she was receiving the salutations of the rest of the family, he took occasion to notice the fat coachman, to pat the sleek carriage-horses, and, above all, to say a civil word to my lady's gentlewoman, the prim, sour-looking vestal in ...
— Bracebridge Hall • Washington Irving
... dispiriting first month of hunting lodgings in the crowded city. She had to roost in a hall-room in a moldy mansion conducted by an indignant decayed gentlewoman, and leave Hugh to the care of a doubtful nurse. But later ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... cutts at the root of a tree, making signs that it would fall and kill her. That not being understood by her or any of them, she takes the journey—the dumb lass holding her to stay. When the young gentlewoman is there at Hamilton, a few days after, her sister and she goes forth to walk in the park, and in their walking they both come under a tree. In that very instant they come under it, they hear it shaking and coming ...
— Folk Lore - Superstitious Beliefs in the West of Scotland within This Century • James Napier
... the platform too, and was attracted by the perfection of her appearance, her lofty carriage and the expression of the true gentlewoman on her countenance. ...
— The Portland Peerage Romance • Charles J. Archard
... of the presence of visitors. Mrs. Hardy was sitting opposite his mother by the wide fireplace—the tall, white-haired gentlewoman in whose society he always felt himself transformed suddenly into a sort of saintly fellowship with the remarkably gentlemanly little boys whose acquaintance he made in the books provided by the chapel library. At the table sat Gable, the grey, chubby-faced third-class scholar whom ...
— The Gold-Stealers - A Story of Waddy • Edward Dyson
... though she was shyly obedient in the manner of an untutored orphan from the West, she had no fear of the other. Miss Grierson was a large, flat-backed woman who was on the descending slope of middle age. She was really a "gentlewoman," in the self-pitying and self-praising sense in which those who advertise themselves as such use that word. She was all the social forms, all the proprieties. She was deferentially autocratic; her voice was monotonously dignified and cultured; and she was tired, which she had ...
— Children of the Whirlwind • Leroy Scott
... bedridden—poor creature!—and had not been out of the chamber for fourteen years. Meanwhile the world had shot ahead of Dame Jocelyn. The changes that had taken place under her very nose were unknown to this faded, crooning old gentlewoman, whom the eighteenth century had neglected to take away with the rest of its odd traps. She had no patience with newfangled notions. The old ways and the old times were good enough for her. She had never seen a steam engine, though she had heard "the dratted thing" ...
— The Story of a Bad Boy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... possessor. In the good old times Maurice Brotteaux had called himself Monsieur des Ilettes and used to give elegant suppers which the fair Madame de Rochemaure, wife of a King's procureur, enlivened with her bright glances,—a finished gentlewoman whose loyal fidelity was never impugned so long as the Revolution left Maurice Brotteaux in possession of his offices and emoluments, his hotel, his estates and his noble name. The Revolution swept them all ...
— The Gods are Athirst • Anatole France
... would take her hand and say,—'Well, child, how do you do?—and why don't you speak to your old friend? You charming rogue, you know I remember you no bigger than your fan. And what mischief have you been about—eh? What mischief have you been about, I say, young gentlewoman? Turning all the pretty fellows' heads, I warrant you—eh!—turning their heads?' And he used to talk this sort of talk very slowly, and to hold their hands all the while, and even after this talk was exhausted, and grin sleepily, and wag his head, looking with a glittering, unpleasant ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... well, sir, but only half the truth. Half gypsy I am, and half gentlewoman. A mongrel, I suppose, that makes; and yet it is well to have good blood in one's veins, even ...
— The Baronet's Bride • May Agnes Fleming
... she, "why did I ever leave a genteel famly, where I ad every ellygance and lucksry, to marry a creatur like this? He is unfit to be called a man, he is unworthy to marry a gentlewoman; and as for that hussy, I disown her. Thank heaven she an't a Slamcoe; she is only fit to ...
— Memoirs of Mr. Charles J. Yellowplush - The Yellowplush Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... reft her suddenly at the age of seventeen from the educational care of an English gentlewoman warranted to fit her for marriage with any prince in Europe, and thrust her for the mornings and a moiety of the afternoons of the better part of a year, after a swift but competent training, into a shirt waist and an office down town. She had been entrusted at first to a harvester ...
— The Secret Places of the Heart • H. G. Wells
... gentlewoman told an ancient batchelour, who looked very young, that she thought he had eaten a snake: 'No, mistris,' (said he), 'it is because I never {131} meddled with any snakes which maketh me look so young.'"—Holy State, 1642, ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 39. Saturday, July 27, 1850 • Various
... counted this was a place where folks go to meeting; so I put my hymn-book in my pocket, and walked softly and grave as a minister; and when I came there, the dogs a bit of a meeting-house could I see. At last I spied a young gentlewoman standing by one of the seats which they have here at the doors. I took her to be the deacon's daughter, and she looked so kind, and so obliging, that I thought I would go and ask her the way to lecture, and—would you think it?—she called ...
— The Contrast • Royall Tyler
... at once employed to discover the hidden treasures. After all had been given, if the sum seemed too little, the proprietors were brutally punished for their poverty or their supposed dissimulation. A gentlewoman, named Fabry, with her aged mother and other females of the family, had taken refuge in the cellar of her mansion. As the day was drawing to a close, a band of plunderers entered, who, after ransacking ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. X (of X) - America - II, Index • Various
... pretty; she had a broad, curious face. Her clothes were much too good to throw away. You would have enjoyed giving them to a decayed gentlewoman. ...
— Living Alone • Stella Benson
... put upon the weak and credulous part of Mankind during the Drawing of the late State-Lottery by letting out what were called Horses and Chances to Women and Children, are wonderful. There was a Gentlewoman, not far from St. Dunstan's Church in Fleet-Street, who having the Misfortune to fall in with the Opinion of many, that the Tickets would still come down to Par, had therefore neglected to provide herself till the Premiums ...
— The Tricks of the Town: or, Ways and Means of getting Money • John Thomson
... on board the Panama ship) there was a Gentlewoman and her Family, the Eldest Daughter, a pretty young woman of Eighteen, newly Married, and had her husband with her. We assigned them the Great Cabin on board the Prize, and none were suffered to intrude amongst them; yet the Husband (we were told) showed evident Marks of a Violent Jealousy, ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 3 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... out of molehills. What Browning's mother unquestionably did give to him, was in the way of training—a very strong religious habit, and a great belief in manners. Thomas Carlyle called her "the type of a Scottish gentlewoman," and the phrase has a very real significance to those who realise the peculiar condition of Scotland, one of the very few European countries where large sections of the aristocracy are Puritans; thus a Scottish gentlewoman ...
— Robert Browning • G. K. Chesterton
... a very pretty woman, and even now she retained a good deal of pleasant middle-aged comeliness. She was somewhat stout, and had grown a little inactive in consequence; but her expression was soft and motherly, and she had the unmistakable air of a gentlewoman. In her husband's eyes she was still handsomer than her daughters; and Dr. Ross flattered himself that he had made the all-important choice of his life ...
— Lover or Friend • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... as you not have enquired what place this was before he had accepted it? Perhaps, as Molly says, it may be in the kitchen; and truly I don't care my daughter should be a scullion wench; for, poor as I am, I am a gentlewoman. And thof I was obliged, as my father, who was a clergyman, died worse than nothing, and so could not give me a shilling of potion, to undervalue myself by marrying a poor man; yet I would have you ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... even, such as Aunt Butson, being received in default of applicants with better title. Also Sir George's father, having once on a time been called upon to depose a caretaker for ill-using the inmates, had replaced her by a gentlewoman; and thinking to safeguard them in future by increasing the dignity of the post, had rebuilt and enlarged the new Mistress's lodgings, and increased her salary by endowment to eighty ...
— Shining Ferry • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... would divert the poor gentlewoman, and not altogether unsuitably, if I were to put her upon furnishing mourning for herself; as it would rouse her, by a seasonable and necessary employment, from that dismal lethargy of grief, which ...
— Clarissa Harlowe, Volume 9 (of 9) - The History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... scene with Margot, in which she calls her a "petty minion,"—pretty language for a young gentlewoman,—"sweeps with unutterable scorn from the room," never, to the reader's huge astonishment, to appear in the story again, and Margot flies with Di Sorno to Grenada, where the Inquisition, consisting apparently of a single monk with a "blazing eye," becomes extremely machinatory. A certain Countess ...
— Certain Personal Matters • H. G. Wells
... preparations yet to make. Mac Fane is to go and hire me the empty house tomorrow. It is furnished; but it must be aired, for I would not have her die a paltry catch-cold death. I would treat her like a gentlewoman in every respect but one; and in that I will have as little compassion on her as ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... names of several of his contemporaries, but she recollected none, except that of Mallet, who, she said, she had often seen walking about in the village, while he was visiting at Bolingbroke House. The unassuming dwelling of this gentlewoman affords another proof of the scattered and unrecorded wealth of Britain, in works of superior art. I found in her retired parlour, a fine historical picture, by Vandyke, for which she said she had been offered 500l. but which she refused to part with, not less ...
— A Morning's Walk from London to Kew • Richard Phillips
... serving-man named William Vavasour, who attended Sir Thomas Tresham, and who, with his elder brother, George Vavasour (whose education Tresham has particularly encouraged), and their sister Muriel (gentlewoman to Lady Monteagle who is the daughter of "Muriel" Lady Tresham) are favoured dependants of the Tresham family, being the children of an old and much valued Catholic servant. Both George and William are confidentially employed by Tresham as amanuenses, in transcribing religious, or treasonable, ...
— The Identification of the Writer of the Anonymous Letter to Lord Monteagle in 1605 • William Parker
... wholesome advice, and looked so friendly, that I could not but be convinced it was the best course I could take; so I accordingly prepared letters to the gentlewoman with whom I had left my money, and a procuration to the ...
— Robinson Crusoe • Daniel Defoe
... isn't there, in educating a girl in high thinking and fine ideals, if she is willing to live in a room that for uncleanliness many a woman in some crowded quarter of a city would consider a disgrace? Such contradiction in mind and surrounding is out of harmony with all one's ideal for a gentlewoman. ...
— A Girl's Student Days and After • Jeannette Marks
... but she did not add the prettiest part of it, and tell how the faces of the young women behind the counters brightened when she came in, nor how gladly all served the young lady who showed them what a true gentlewoman was. ...
— A Garland for Girls • Louisa May Alcott
... we have the sum of sciences,—seven, according to the Florentine mind—necessary to the secular education of man and woman. Of these the modern average respectable English gentleman and gentlewoman know usually only a little of the last, and entirely hate the prudent applications of that: being unacquainted, except as they chance here and there to pick up a broken piece of information, with either grammar, rhetoric, music, [Footnote: Being able to play the piano and admire Mendelssohn ...
— Mornings in Florence • John Ruskin
... chanced, egad, that the devil sent Miss Tea Merchant to Bury to buy apples. She amused herself at playing country gentlewoman while papa worked all week in the city. She saw the cart in the market, and ate three (for she had the health of a barmaid), and bid in the load, and George with it. 'Pon my soul! she did. They found his boots first. And the lady said, before all the grinning Johns and Willums, that since ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... a half square of white linen crossed over her bosom, a gray homespun gown reaching barely to the ankles, with blue homeknit stockings and stout low shoes with a black buckle on the top, Lois Henry was a fine sample of a Quaker gentlewoman. ...
— A Little Girl in Old Philadelphia • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... question happened to be a gentlewoman—descended from gentlewomen—and after Dashboard's ironical introduction, in which the Man from Solano was not spared, she comprehended the situation instantly. To Dashboard's surprise she drew a chair to her side, ...
— Drift from Two Shores • Bret Harte
... I drink a cup of coffee or a cocktail: after they are consumed they are part of me; are they not part of me as I hold the cup or the glass in my hand? Is my coat more characteristic of me than my house—my sleeve-links than my wife or my collie dog? I know a gentlewoman whose sensitive, quivering, aristocratic nature is expressed far more in the Russian wolfhound that shrinks always beside her than in the aloof, though charming, expression of her face. No; not only my body and my personal effects but everything ...
— The "Goldfish" • Arthur Train
... whose carriage is compleat, With a new coachman, footmen, and pages to carry up the meat, With a waiting-gentlewoman, whose dressing is very neat, Who when her lady has din'd, lets the servants not eat; Like a ...
— English Songs and Ballads • Various
... has risked no failures by attempting to delineate that which she has not seen. Her circle may be restricted, but it is complete. Her world is a perfect orb and vital. Life, as it appears to an English gentlewoman peacefully yet actively engaged in her quiet village, is mirrored in her works with a purity and fidelity that must endow them with interest for all time. To read one of her books is like an actual ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke
... proved, to those who had any penetration, that it was his prevailing weakness, and they applied to it with success."[8] And Lord Hervey reports that the Queen remarked of Walpole's mistress, "dear Molly Skerritt": "She must be a clever gentlewoman to have made him believe she cares for him on any other score [but his money]; and to show you what fools we all are in some point or other, she has certainly told him some fine story or other of her love and her passion, and that poor man—avec ce gros corps, ces jambes enflees, et ce vilain ...
— The Life and Romances of Mrs. Eliza Haywood • George Frisbie Whicher
... said, with a queer deliberation. "Some men in my position would have thought nothing about putting bullets through both of you when we met this afternoon—you hit on our secret. But I'm not that sort—I treat you as what you are, a gentlewoman and a gentleman, and no harm whatever shall come to you. Therefore, I feel certain that all I've said and am saying to you will be treated as it ought to be—by you. I daresay you think I'm an awful scoundrel, ...
— Ravensdene Court • J. S. (Joseph Smith) Fletcher
... shrilly that all the market-place could hear her, the weird old gentlewoman took ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... loved the lady Portia's fair waiting gentlewoman, Nerissa, and that she had promised to be his wife, if her lady married Bassanio. Portia asked Nerissa if this was true. Nerissa replied, "Madam, it is so, if you approve of it." Portia willingly consenting, Bassanio pleasantly said, "Then our wedding-feast shall ...
— Books for Children - The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 3 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... difficulties arising from religion, it would seem that, with a perversity not altogether unexampled, Margaret became more anxious to have it consummated. At least, Francis Walsingham writes to Lord Burleigh: "The gentlewoman, being most desirous thereof, falleth to reading of the Bible, and to the use of the prayers used by them ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird
... long together in love and content, till the fair days passed, and trouble came upon this lord. The knights of his realm drew together, and many a time urged that he should put away his friend, and wed with some rich gentlewoman. They would be joyous if a son were born, to come after to his fief and heritage. The peril was too great to suffer that he remained a bachelor, and without an heir. Never more would they hold him as lord, or serve him with a good ...
— French Mediaeval Romances from the Lays of Marie de France • Marie de France
... home is friendly to that Quietness which is the "work of righteousness, and its effect" also. She is the true gentlewoman, who nurtures most faithfully in herself the calm virtues of the domestic walk. Heaven is a tranquil abode; let the soul be attuned for its harmonies by the ...
— The Young Maiden • A. B. (Artemas Bowers) Muzzey
... dresses I could have worn when I had new ones on credit instead, and—and Harris has had double wages to compensate for what a lady's maid thinks her perquisites; even articles I might have given to poor gentlewoman I have been mean enough to sell. Oh, Walter! I have been very wrong; but I have been miserable for at least three years. I have felt as if an iron cage were rising round me—from which you only could free me—and ...
— The Wedding Guest • T.S. Arthur
... the truth on't? If this had not been a gentlewoman, she should have been buried out of ...
— Hamlet • William Shakespeare
... niece to Leonato. Margaret, gentlewoman attending on Hero. Ursula, gentlewoman attending ...
— Much Ado About Nothing • William Shakespeare [Knight edition]
... fingers' ends were sore: and when she could not get bread for her family, she was forced to hire them out at journey-work to her neighbors. Yet in these, her poor circumstances, she still preserved the air and mien of a gentlewoman—a certain decent pride that extorted respect from the haughtiest of her neighbors. When she came in to any full assembly, she would not yield the pas to the best of them. If one asked her, "Are you not related to John Bull?" ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... said that he loved the Lady Portia's fair waiting-gentlewoman, Nerissa, and that she had promised to be his wife if her lady married Bassanio. Portia asked Nerissa if this ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... daughter of the renowned Isabella, who had wrought such great things for Christendom,—promoting the discovery of America, and conquering Granada,—but he was incensed at the mere thought of preferring to her place a private gentlewoman, who would never have been heard of, if Henry had not seen fit to raise her from common life, first to the throne, and then to the scaffold. That was an insult to the whole Austro-Burgundian family, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... was younger," said Miss Spight—she didn't say when she was "young," mark you—"no young gentlewoman's education would have been thought complete without a course of the best poets, ...
— She and I, Volume 1 • John Conroy Hutcheson
... lie in my power to give it. Well, said the lady, I ask the head of the knight that hath won the sword, or else the damosel's head that brought it; I take no force though I have both their heads, for he slew my brother, a good knight and a true, and that gentlewoman was causer of my father's death. Truly, said King Arthur, I may not grant neither of their heads with my worship, therefore ask what ye will else, and I shall fulfil your desire. I will ask none other thing, said the lady. When Balin ...
— Le Morte D'Arthur, Volume I (of II) - King Arthur and of his Noble Knights of the Round Table • Thomas Malory
... out to service. I've got no rich friends to help me up, but, sooner or later, I mean to find a place among cultivated people; and while I'm working and waiting, I can be fitting myself to fill that place like a gentlewoman, as ...
— Work: A Story of Experience • Louisa May Alcott
... her. In the frequent informal social gatherings she was always the life of the occasion, but never did her merriment get down to the level of silliness. Without a suspicion of prudishness there was always with her the natural dignity of the true-born gentlewoman. ...
— The Romance and Tragedy • William Ingraham Russell
... notwithstanding my Assie shamefastnesse I quencht my thirst. And suddenly after, the Theeves returned home carefull and heavy, bringing no burthens with them, no not so much as traffe or baggage, save only a maiden, that seemed by her habit to be some gentlewoman borne, and the daughter of some worthy matron of that country, who was so fair and beautiful, that though I were an Asse, yet I had a great affection for her. The virgin lamented and tare her hair, and rent ...
— The Golden Asse • Lucius Apuleius
... evening when they reached their destination. The school was not far from the sea, and the clergyman who kept it would never have more than thirty boarders; his wife, a sweet-faced gentlewoman, received the boys most kindly, and General Newton came away satisfied that it would prove a happy home as well as a good ...
— His Big Opportunity • Amy Le Feuvre
... know! the thin-faced gentlewoman with a shawl put on like drapery.—Why, as a matter of course, it would be sold among the other things. If you had been rich, you might have bought it, for I remember you said it represented your mother: you see what it is to be ...
— The Professor • (AKA Charlotte Bronte) Currer Bell
... to his master in the first year of his apprenticeship.... But as I was to take a part the next year in the oratorios, I had, for a whole twelvemonth, two lessons per week from Miss Fleming, the celebrated dancing-mistress, to drill me for a gentlewoman (God knows how she succeeded). So we lived on without interruption. My brother Alex. was absent from Bath for some months every summer, but when at home he took much pleasure in executing some turning or clockmaker's work for ...
— Pioneers of Science • Oliver Lodge
... should undertake to wryte in prayse of a gentlewoman, I would neither praise her christal eye, nor her cherrie lippe, etc. For these things are trita et obvia. But I would either find some supernaturall cause whereby my penne might walke in the superlative degree, or els I would undertake to answer ...
— Rhetoric and Poetry in the Renaissance - A Study of Rhetorical Terms in English Renaissance Literary Criticism • Donald Lemen Clark
... result of that education which absorbed the whole glowing mind of a highly gifted parent, a mind rich with adventures, with enthusiasm and tenderness, ought to be pourtrayed in her deportment; while the elegance and delicacy which more particularly distinguish the gentlewoman, would naturally be imbibed from a constant early association with a model of what the chivalrous spirit of the age could form, with all its perfections and its faults; in a situation, too, calculated still more to refine such a character; especially ...
— The Lay of Marie • Matilda Betham
... induce Mr. Waddington and myself to interest ourselves in their behalf, and we made the necessary inquiries, in which we were assisted with great alacrity by the officers of the gaol, and we learned that the parties were, a gentlewoman and her daughter; the mother being arrested for a considerable sum, and being sent into the gaol, the daughter had accompanied her. A polite letter, tendering our humble aid, was sent to the ladies, accompanied with an invitation to dinner. This invitation was accepted, but a difficulty arose, ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 1 • Henry Hunt
... cried Cuddie, interfering and dragging her off forcibly, "dinna deave the gentlewoman wi' your testimony! ye hae preached eneugh for sax days. Ye preached us out o' our canny free-house and gude kale-yard, and out o' this new city o' refuge afore our hinder end was weel hafted in it; and ye hae preached Mr Harry awa to the prison; and ye hae preached twenty punds out ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... by Diana and her mother. He denied that Diana had any claim on him, and spoke of her as though her life was spent in the gutter. But she asked him what sort of gentlewoman it was to whom he gave, as to her he gave, the ring of his ancestors now missing ...
— Beautiful Stories from Shakespeare • E. Nesbit
... town of Alencon, during the lifetime of Charles, the last Duke,(2) there was a Proctor named St. Aignan, who had married a gentlewoman of the neighbourhood. She was more beautiful than virtuous, and on account of her beauty and light behaviour was much sought after by the Bishop of Sees,(3) who, in order to compass his ends, managed the husband so well, that the latter not only failed to perceive the vicious conduct of his ...
— The Tales Of The Heptameron, Vol. I. (of V.) • Margaret, Queen Of Navarre
... have it. Truly, our trade would be brought to a fine pass, if we were bound to humour the fancies of our customers. This man would be taking a liking to a snuff-box that he had inherited; and that gentlewoman might conceit a favourite chemise that ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb IV - Poems and Plays • Charles and Mary Lamb
... time sipped of the Fountain of Hellicon, but drank deeper Draughts of Sack, that Helliconian Liquor, whereby he beggar'd his Purse to enrich his Fancy; writing much against Viciousness, but too vicious in his Life. He had to his Wife a Virtuous Gentlewoman, whom yet he forsook, and betook himself to a high course of Living; to maintain which, he made his Pen mercenary, making his Name very famous for several Books which he wrote, very much taking in his time, and in indifferent repute amongst ...
— The Lives of the Most Famous English Poets (1687) • William Winstanley
... was a distressed gentlewoman. The death of her husband, a warehouse clerk, by acute alcoholic poisoning, seems to have given her her first chance of displaying those strong qualities which ultimately became her chief characteristic. And she was of those to whom ...
— Once Aboard The Lugger • Arthur Stuart-Menteth Hutchinson
... Exeter to visit the heretics in gaol, and in particular to see Agnes Prest before her burning. Mrs. Raleigh began to exhort her to repentance, but the martyr turned the tables on her visitor, and urged the gentlewoman to seek the blessed body of Christ in heaven, not on earth, and this with so much sweet persuasiveness that when Mrs. Raleigh 'came home to her husband she declared to him that in her life she never ...
— Raleigh • Edmund Gosse
... exposed to the certain inconvenience of passing the night, unhoused, in a mountainous country, even if she were permitted to proceed next day, Lady Bellingham sat trembling in her carriage, in which were her waiting-gentlewoman, chaplain, and gentleman-usher, all highly useful to her in their separate departments and joint occupations of submissive flatterers, but all incompetent to advise what was to be done, and incapable of assisting her ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... at the palace gate were asked if they had not seen a princess go out. To this they replied that they had seen nobody go out but a young girl, very meanly dressed, and who had more the air of a poor country wench than a gentlewoman. ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf (Vol 2 of 17) - Folk-Lore, Fables, And Fairy Tales • Various
... sister named Maud, a beautifull ladie, and of vertuous conditions, who was a professed nunne in a religious house, to the end she might auoid the stormes of the world, and lead hir life in more securitie after hir fathers deceasse. This gentlewoman, notwithstanding hir vow, was thought to be a meet bedfellow for the king: wherefore he sent ambassadors to hir brother Edgar, requesting that he might haue hir in mariage. But she refusing superstitiouslie at the first to breake hir professed ...
— Chronicles of England, Scotland and Ireland (2 of 6): England (3 of 12) - Henrie I. • Raphael Holinshed
... the year when the gold and brown of our Ozark Hills is overlaid with a filmy veil of delicate blue haze and the world is hushed with the solemn sweetness of the passing of the summer. And as the old gentlewoman stood there in the open door of that rustic temple of learning, with the deep-shadowed, wooded hillside in the background, and, in front, the rude clearing with its crooked rail fence along which the scarlet sumac flamed, I thought,—as I still think, after all these ...
— The Re-Creation of Brian Kent • Harold Bell Wright
... no comment. She seemed pained as she read and finished with a sigh. Whatever she intended to convey, she conveyed that even if the divinity was not all He should be, if, indeed, He was a person almost primitive, having neither the restraint nor the self-obliteration of a refined gentlewoman, no word of it should ever pass her lips. And so Ellen as a girl never let her mind go quite easily into this reconciling core of life, and talked of it only very rarely and shyly with a few chosen coevals. It wasn't very profitable ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... is now of advanced age. Her Ladyship was vastly amused at the news that had reached her that some chroniclers do insist that she has lost her head. "I have in good sooth lost my teeth," laughed the venerable gentlewoman "but my head is as firmly set upon my shoulders as ever. I do verily believe that it must be some mad piece of waggery of that Prince of good fellows, Sir WALTER RALEIGH. The aged Knight is always up to some of his nonsense!" After playing a game of quoits with Lord BALMARINO ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, Sept. 27, 1890 • Various
... the news of a battle in Palestine lost by the crusaders in which his old acquaintance has fallen a dead man. I will not insult thee, by telling thee how easy it might be to acquire the favour of a gentlewoman in waiting upon a lady of quality; nor do I think it would be difficult, should that be the object of the prize-fighter, to acquire the property of a large baboon like Sylvan, which no doubt would set up as a juggler any Frank who had meanness of spirit to propose to gain ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... forced to be content with that. She was really very charming, he decided as he got into his car. She was such a gentlewoman—she created an atmosphere which belonged to his ...
— The Tin Soldier • Temple Bailey
... may set their hearts at rest for this particular, and leave me there, for I assure them, that Justiniano is of a condition to command over the whole Earth; and that Isabella is of a House, and Gentlewoman good enough, to make Knights of the Rhodes, if she have children enough for it, and that she have a minde thereunto. But setting this jesting aside, and coming to that which regards the Italian names, know that I have put ...
— Prefaces to Fiction • Various
... Expedition set on foot to go and find out Mrs. Fielding; and to be dismally penitent to that excellent gentlewoman; and to bring her back, by force, if needful, to be happy and forgiving. And when the Expedition first discovered her, she would listen to no terms at all, but said, an unspeakable number of times, that ever she should have lived ...
— The Cricket on the Hearth • Charles Dickens
... discern Mrs. Dyer from the other comely gentlewoman who lives up at staircase No. 5; or, if you should make a blunder in the twilight, Mrs. Dyer has too much good sense to be jealous for a mere effect of imperfect optics. But don't try to write the Lord's Prayer, ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... footing—property erects a kind of barrier. You can do a great many things if you're rich which would be severely criticised if you were poor. You can go and come, you can travel alone, you can have your own establishment: I mean of course if you'll take a companion—some decayed gentlewoman, with a darned cashmere and dyed hair, who paints on velvet. You don't think you'd like that? Of course you can do as you please; I only want you to understand how much you're at liberty. You might take Miss Stackpole as your dame de compagnie; she'd keep people off very ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 1 (of 2) • Henry James
... Gentlewoman of this town, had the Cow Pox when very young. She received the infection in rather an uncommon manner: it was given by means of her handling some of the same utensils[1] which were in use among the servants of the family, who had the disease from milking infected cows. Her hands had many ...
— An Inquiry into the Causes and Effects of the Variolae Vaccinae • Edward Jenner
... set up as a wine-merchant—failed—died; ditto his wife, as to the dying part of it. No relation, in fact, left for the squire to make inquiries about but the father's sister—who had behaved, as old Gatliffe said, like a thorough-bred gentlewoman in shutting the door against Mr. Frank in the first instance. So, to cut the matter short, things were at last made up pleasant enough. The time was fixed for the wedding, and an announcement about it—Marriage ...
— After Dark • Wilkie Collins
... Christian Year (similar in plan to Keble's cycle), but also for her nature-lyrics and songs of common life, which are marked by minute realistic detail and refreshing originality of observation and sentiment. This pious gentlewoman, usually so maidenly in her reserve, nevertheless expressed something of the spirit of emancipation in her quiet protest against the narrow conventional limits of the feminine life. But she would have recoiled with horror from the ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... forthwith admitted into a low, vaulted basement, ponderously wrought with intersecting arches, dark and rather chilly, just like what I remember to have seen at Battle Abbey; and, after waiting here a little while, a respectable elderly gentlewoman appeared, of whom we requested to be shown round the Abbey. She courteously acceded, first presenting us to a book, in which ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume I. - Great Britain and Ireland • Various
... over its threshold. Decima went once in a way; but she, never. If she and Stephen Verner met abroad, she was coldly civil to him; she was indifferently haughty to Mrs. Verner, whom she despised in her heart for not being a lady. With all her deficiencies, Lady Verner was essentially a gentlewoman—not to be one amounted in her eyes to little less than a sin. No wonder that she, with her delicate beauty of person, her quiet refinements of dress, shrank within herself as she swept past poor Mrs. Verner, with her great person, her crimson face, and ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood
... In my walks I met other strangers from time to time. Even before my uncle had left me, I had noticed, with half-torpid curiosity, a young lady of very striking appearance, who went about always accompanied by an elderly companion, hardly a gentlewoman, but with something in her look that prepossessed me in her favour. The younger lady always put her veil down when any one approached; so it had been only once or twice, when I had come upon her at a sudden turn in the path, that I had even had a ...
— Curious, if True - Strange Tales • Elizabeth Gaskell
... out, and I drew up a chair and sat by the crib, watching the infant go back to sleep. I was glad to be alone, to have a chance to get myself together. But suddenly I heard a rustle of skirts in the doorway behind me, and turned and saw a white-clad figure; an elderly gentlewoman, slender and fragile, grey-haired and rather pale, wearing a soft dressing-gown. Aunt ...
— Sylvia's Marriage • Upton Sinclair
... proprietor of a glass and china shop, No. 50, Fetter Lane, Fleet Street. This person, who preached among the Calvinists, said that in the winter of 1811 he had assisted in the establishment of a Sunday-school in Windwill Street, Acre Lane, near Clapham. It was under the patronage of a single gentlewoman, of the name of Wilkinson, and principally intended for the neglected and forlorn children of brick-makers and the most abject poor." At the present day Gipsies generally locate in the neighbourhood of brick-yards ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith
... with black fur, and her tawny velvet hood with its gold-set pearl border. She recognised instinctively the presence of a woman whose individuality was almost equal to her own, with the education and bearing of a gentlewoman added to it. Christabel was astonished at the respectful way in which Aunt Tabitha rose and courtesied to the visitors, told them who she was, and that the master of the house was ...
— All's Well - Alice's Victory • Emily Sarah Holt
... Master Courtier, extremity is not to be used in all offices: say, that a gentlewoman were taken out of her bed about midnight, and committed to Castle Angelo, to the tower yonder, with nothing about her but her smock, would it not show a cruel part in the gentleman-porter to lay claim to her upper ...
— The White Devil • John Webster
... Reeves. "She is a young lady of independent fortune. As to her people or immediate relatives, I know nothing at all. I've known her a year or so, and as she never referred to such matters I never inquired. But she's a thorough little gentlewoman, and I'll defend her against any ...
— Vicky Van • Carolyn Wells
... mammas and the aunties may feel perfectly safe for another reason. The earnest, ambitious young gentlewoman you are watching over is not often attractive to the "masher." The clever and promising artist, Miss G——, is not his style. He is not looking for brains, "don't yer know." He fancies No. 3 in the second row, she with the flashing eyes and teeth; or No. 7 in the front row, that ...
— Stage Confidences • Clara Morris
... speech for one so young, and argued an all too intimate acquaintance with those who did not bear the mark patent of "gentlewoman." ...
— Caps and Capers - A Story of Boarding-School Life • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... The chateaux are deserted, and going to decay; no new houses are built, and those of older date are passing rapidly into the possession of a class inferior to those for whom we must suppose them to have been built. Even the old gentlewoman of Babylon has lost much of her splendor, and her robes and pomp are of a description far subordinate to the costume of her more magnificent days. The dresses of the priests were worn and shabby, both at Antwerp and Brussels, and reminded me ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume V (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... with a bitter sneer. "As a gentleman, I am bound to let you play fast and loose with me to your heart's content. You have behaved very honourably to me, Miss Danton, and very much like a gentlewoman. Is it because you have been jilted yourself, that you want the pleasure of jilting another? It is hardly the thing to revenge Reginald Stanford's doings ...
— Kate Danton, or, Captain Danton's Daughters - A Novel • May Agnes Fleming
... of seeing my ward at twenty-one the richest heiress and the truest gentlewoman in the west of England. She did me infinite credit, and I had fulfilled to my friend one of the most sacred trusts a man can receive. Your excellent grandfather Anne—let ...
— Agatha's Husband - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik (AKA: Dinah Maria Mulock)
... Office was kept where they gave passes: thither I went in as plain a way and speech as I could devise, leaving my maid at the gate, who was much a finer gentlewoman than myself. With as ill mien and tone as I could express, I told a fellow I found in the Office that I desired a pass for Paris, to go to my husband. 'Woman, what is your husband, and your name?' 'Sir,' said I, with many courtesies, ...
— Memoirs of Lady Fanshawe • Lady Fanshawe |
