"Great-aunt" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... "I do," returned his great-aunt. "Many a man has climbed a wall on my account before to-day, Marquis, and remember I'm only just—seventy-one, and growing younger every ...
— The Amateur Gentleman • Jeffery Farnol et al
... at a school for two years, having lost her father and mother, and old Madam Winthrop had adopted her, in a sort of way, being her great-aunt, and was to ...
— The Strange Cases of Dr. Stanchon • Josephine Daskam Bacon
... entry into college life abundantly fulfilled the expectations held of him. The head of his college wrote to his great-aunt (the wife of the Under Secretary of State) "... he has something in him of what men of Old called prophecy and we term genius ...", old Dr. Biddlecup the Dean asked the boy to dinner, and afterwards ...
— On Nothing & Kindred Subjects • Hilaire Belloc
... of old spavined furniture which would bring about tu'pence at public sale. Some of it was your great-aunt's. All of it has been in the family from time immemorial; and its peculiar and considerable value, your aunt and her neighbours are agreed, resides in the esoteric fact that it is the kind of thing ...
— Walking-Stick Papers • Robert Cortes Holliday
... confess myself, after having waded through Latin adjectives and anatomical illustrations enough to make a ghost of Hercules. I devoted two days to researches in genealogical pathology, and was rewarded for my pains by discovering myself to be the possessor of one great-aunt who had died of heart disease at the advanced age of ...
— Men, Women, and Ghosts • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... at the Imperial College the third finger of her left hand was adorned with a very fine old ring with dark blue sapphires that had once belonged to a great-aunt of Manning's. ...
— Ann Veronica • H. G. Wells
... companion to her great-aunt was that of reading the newspaper aloud, and she prided herself on ...
— The Lodger • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... David Mag the Younger, of Copperfield House. The third made nearer approach to what the destinies were leading him to, and transformed Mr. David Mag into Mr. David Copperfield the Younger and his great-aunt Margaret; retaining still as his leading title, Mag's Diversions. It is singular that it should never have occurred to him, while the name was thus strangely as by accident bringing itself together, that the initials were but his own reversed; ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... "Gregory Aglonby, a colonel in the Revolutionary forces;" "Red-haired Edmund, as we call him, because the others are all dark;" "Colonel Everard Buller Aglonby, who represented this county in the House of Burgesses for thirty years, and his wife, who was a Calvert,—a great-aunt, a woman of extraordinary piety, who reduced herself from a condition of affluence to comparative poverty by the manumission of ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, September, 1885 • Various
... relative of grandmother's and he was a Poet. He was just beginning to be famous. He was VERY famous afterward. He came into the orchard to write a poem, and he fell asleep with his head on a bench that used to be under grandfather's tree. Then Great-Aunt Edith came into the orchard. She was not a Great-Aunt then, of course. She was only eighteen, with red lips and black, black hair and eyes. They say she was always full of mischief. She had been away and had just come home, and she didn't ...
— The Story Girl • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... George Byron, 'nee' Frances Levett, Byron's great-aunt, widow of the Hon. George Byron, fourth brother of William, fifth ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Letters and Journals, Vol. 1 • Lord Byron, Edited by Rowland E. Prothero
... Mrs Spurrell, "this ile as my great-aunt gave me, as they said was a white witch, with all her charrums, is right sovereign! Why, I did Jenny Truman's Sally with it when her arm ...
— The Carbonels • Charlotte M. Yonge
... assistants). He was curious to see what we were having, and cautioned us against throwing any rice after our bride and 'groom. "But how absurd, you ricky person!" chipped in Popsy, Lady Ramsgate, who, of course, is Juno's great-aunt. "We never throw rice at our wedding-people! That's only done by the outlying tribes of barbarians." It was a pity she attracted his notice, for he was down on her directly for having on a toque almost entirely ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, June 20, 1917 • Various
... motion ever higher and higher and more gayly, and the tremulous shadows along the wall ran to their hiding-places—oh! how quickly I arose overwhelmed with admiration for I recollect that I had been sitting at the feet of my great-aunt Bertha (at that time already very old) who half dozed in her chair. We were near a window through which the gray night filtered; I was seated upon one of those high, old-fashioned foot-stools with two steps, so convenient for little children who can from that vantage ground ...
— The Story of a Child • Pierre Loti
... feet square, and the persons most continuously in it, not counting those who are in transit, are the Padrona Angela; the Padrona Angela's daughter, Signorina Rita; the Signorina Rita's temporary suitor; the suitor's mother and cousin; the padrona's great-aunt; a few casual acquaintances of the two families, and somebody's baby: not always the same baby; any baby answers the purpose and adds to the confusion and ...
— Penelope's Postscripts • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... of my maternal grandmother—a great-aunt, you know. She has a comfortable little place down at Dorking, and I can get free quarters there whenever I like; so as you don't particularly want me just now, I think I'll run down to her ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... of Brighton Pier until she has departed, then slither quietly down the banisters, open the street door and gallop. If I am pushed directly into the abattoir I shake the dentist warmly by the hand, ask after his wife and children, his grandfather and great-aunt, and tell him I have only dropped in to tune the piano. If that is no good I try to make an appointment for an afternoon this year, next year, some time, never. If that too is useless and he insists on putting me through it there and then, I take every ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, January 14, 1920 • Various
... have so brave a wife. Indeed, some of these Irish dames were quite capable of defending both their rights and their privileges against assailants belonging to what is called the "stronger sex." Sir Jonah Barrington's great-aunt, Mrs. Elizabeth Fitzgerald, and her husband held the castle of Moret against the O'Cahils, who claimed it as having been originally theirs and taken from them by another Elizabeth, the queen of England. They were repulsed with ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 20, August 1877 • Various
... marry a wife. He would have married her whether he had enough to live on or not. She was an artist, and she was twenty when Perry met her. We had been spending a month in Maine, on an island as charming as it was cheap. Rosalie was there with a great-aunt and uncle. She was painting the sea on the day that Perry first saw her, and she wore a jade-green smock. Her hair was red, drawn back rather tightly from her forehead, but breaking into waves over her ears. With ...
— The Gay Cockade • Temple Bailey
... stamp from Mrs. Dangerfield. He did not tell her of the splendid scheme he was promoting; he only said that he had thought he would write to Aunt Amelia. Mrs. Dangerfield was pleased with him for his thought: she wished him to stand well with his great-aunt, since she was a rich woman without children of her own. She did not, indeed, suggest that the letter should be shown to her, though she suspected that it contained some artless request. She thought it better that the Terror ...
— The Terrible Twins • Edgar Jepson
... for him—Langeais is stingy enough, and he does not care a rap for anyone but himself; he will have a separation; he will stick to your money, and leave you poor, and consequently you will be a nobody. The income of a hundred thousand livres that you have just inherited from your maternal great-aunt will go to pay for his mistresses' amusements. You will be bound and gagged by the law; you will have to say Amen to all these arrangements. Suppose M. de Montriveau leaves you——dear me! do not let us put ourselves in a passion, my dear niece; a man does not leave a woman ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac
... proposing to pay neighbouring savages to come in and fight the invaders, others saying it would be cheaper to compromise with a large sum, but the most part agreeing that the wisest thing would be for the Archon and his great-aunt to go out to the fleet in a little boat and persuade the enemy's admiral (as they could surely easily do) that while most human acts were of doubtful responsibility and not really wicked, yet the invasion, ...
— On Something • H. Belloc
... my plans from the first. For instance, Marion, the central figure in the plot, went away suddenly to nurse a sick great-aunt. William now became so engrossed with Gladys that he talked of very little else. Thus Henry and I would have avoided him at this stage, if possible; it was not possible, however, to avoid him. We saw more of him than ever. ...
— Our Elizabeth - A Humour Novel • Florence A. Kilpatrick
... of the winter of 1822, Paul de Manerville made a formal request, through his great-aunt, the Baronne de Maulincour, for the hand of Mademoiselle Natalie Evangelista. Though the baroness never stayed more than two months in Medoc, she remained on this occasion till the last of October, in order to assist her nephew through the affair and play the part of a mother to him. After ...
— The Marriage Contract • Honore de Balzac
... by sight and reputation. Her name was Mrs. Conover; she lived down at the fishing village; she was a great-aunt of Mrs. Anderson; and she drank ...
— Rilla of Ingleside • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... absolutely no attention to the tone of my reply or its curtness. He did not refer to Dorinda again. She might have been my wife or my great-aunt for ...
— The Rise of Roscoe Paine • Joseph C. Lincoln
... was, I think, in '88 That Luck or Providence or Fate Assumed the more material state Of Aunt (or Great-Aunt) Alice, And took (the weather being fine And Bill, the eldest, only nine) Three of us by the Brighton line To ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Feb. 26, 1919 • Various
... upon Queen Natalie when she called on us, a beautiful girl, somewhat too full-bosomed for an unmarried one, like my great-aunt, Catharine, who became the wife of that upstart, Jerome Napoleon. At home we have her picture, and mother, who was rather skinny as a girl, never failed to point out that it was painted before Queen Catharine's marriage, ...
— Secret Memoirs: The Story of Louise, Crown Princess • Henry W. Fischer
... child and your aunt was a little girl. We lived in a little house, in a suburb of Saint-Omer. Our parents led a peaceful, retired life, until they were discovered by an old lady named Madame Cornouiller, who lived at the manor of Montplaisir, twelve miles from town, and proved to be a great-aunt of my mother's. By right of relationship she insisted that our father and mother come to dine every Sunday at Montplaisir, where they were excessively bored. She said that it was the proper thing to have a family dinner on Sunday ...
— Putois - 1907 • Anatole France
... romance which was to show 'the poetry of modern life,' something, he said, as Aurora Leigh does. There is much personal detail in it, the red hawthorn, for instance, and he used to talk to me of the old house at Tunbridge, where his great-aunt lived, and where he spent much of his time when a child. He remembered the gipsies there, and their caravans, when they came down for the hop-picking; and the old lady in her large cap going out on the lawn to do battle with the surveyors who had come to mark out a railway across it; and ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... of a story. I had a great-aunt who was worth a lot of money, and who was eccentric. She was in a way fond of me when I was a child, and used to have me at the house a good deal. I confess I didn't like it much. Things went by rule, and the rules were often pretty ...
— The Puritans • Arlo Bates
... bruised with the carrying of harness. Let armour cease, and the long robe bear sway! At least it must be so for the whole space of the succeeding year, if I be married; as yesterday, by the Mosaic law, you evidenced. In what concerneth the breeches, my great-aunt Laurence did long ago tell me, that the breeches were only ordained for the use of the codpiece, and to no other end; which I, upon a no less forcible consequence, give credit to every whit, as well as to the saying of the fine fellow Galen, who in his ninth book, Of the Use and Employment of ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... anything useful. It had not been their fault so much as their misfortunes that they were dying in what was to them real poverty; and the pathetic letters ended with the declaration that, after its mother's death, the child Dorothy would be safely convoyed to its great-great-aunt's door and left to her to be 'fairly dealt with.' It was all quite simple and direct; the commonplace story of ...
— Dorothy's Travels • Evelyn Raymond
... memory, and a very hazy one it is, mixed up with some story or other about a parrot, is of having seen my grandmother, the Duchesse d'Orleans-Penthievre, at Ivry. After that I recollect being at the Chateau of Meudon with my great-aunt, the Duchesse de Bourbon, a tiny little woman; and being taken to see the Princesse Louise de Conde at the Temple, and then I remember seeing Talma act in Charles the Bold, and the great impression his gilt cuirass made ...
— Memoirs • Prince De Joinville
... bore us straight back to Castleman Hall, and to all the scenes of her young ladyhood! If only Lady Dee could have revised this book of Veblen's, how many points she could have given to him! No details had been too minute for the technique of Sylvia's great-aunt—the difference between the swish of the right kind of silk petticoats and the wrong kind; and yet her technique had been broad enough to take in a landscape. "Every girl should have a background," had been one of her maxims, and Sylvia had to have a special phaeton to drive, ...
— Sylvia's Marriage • Upton Sinclair
... her husband to invite Mrs. Goodriche to their house until the chimney should be repaired; but Mr. Fairchild was doubtful whether this message should be delivered, when he heard that Miss Bessy was to remain with her great-aunt. After a little thought, however, he gave the message, stating his difficulty at the ...
— The Fairchild Family • Mary Martha Sherwood
... Propriety,' said Jane, 'you are already assuming all the dignity of my Aunt Marianne, and William's Aunt Marianne—oh! and of little Henry's Great-aunt Marianne. Now,' she added, laughing, 'can ...
— Scenes and Characters • Charlotte M. Yonge
... of the cathedral bell-ringer; bring it with vinegar and potatoes,' I said, bitterly. Then I began to ponder on my great-aunt ...
— In Search of the Unknown • Robert W. Chambers
... mentioned my great-aunt, who was a slave in Dr. Flint's family, and who had been my refuge during the shameful persecutions I suffered from him. This aunt had been married at twenty years of age; that is, as far as slaves can marry. She had ...
— Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl - Written by Herself • Harriet Jacobs (AKA Linda Brent)
... kindly, called her his dawtie, and made her sit down by him on a three-legged creepie, talking to her as if she had been quite a child, while she, capable of high converse as she was, replied in corresponding terms. Her great-aunt was confined to her bed with rheumatism. Supper was preparing, and Annie was not sorry to have a share, for indeed, during the summer, her meals were often scanty enough. While they ate, the old man kept helping her to the best, talking to her all ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald
... one other little instance of my sufferings from this cause. I was again invited out; this time to a lunch party, specially to meet the friend of a friend of mine. The very morning of the day it was to take place I received a telegram stating that my great-aunt had died suddenly in California. Now people don't usually care much about their great-aunts. They can bear to be chastened in this direction very comfortably; but I did care about mine. She had been very kind to me, and though the width ...
— The Wit of Women - Fourth Edition • Kate Sanborn
... We have graves of our own, our family has. Why my uncle Podger has a tomb in Kensal Green Cemetery, that is the pride of all that country-side; and my grandfather's vault at Bow is capable of accommodating eight visitors, while my great-aunt Susan has a brick grave in Finchley Churchyard, with a headstone with a coffee- pot sort of thing in bas-relief upon it, and a six-inch best white stone coping all the way round, that cost pounds. When I want ...
— Three Men in a Boa • Jerome K. Jerome
... got ready for the move by selling off his little bit of live stock, all except Rory, the old black pony, who had a very large head and a white face like a grotesque mask, and with whom he would not have parted on the most tempting terms. As for his great-aunt Moggy, when she heard of this arrangement, she resigned herself to her fate, which was obviously the Union away at Moynalone. What else should become of her, since she was past field-work, and nobody could expect Ody now to be bothered with keeping her idle, and he with scarce a penny to his name ...
— Strangers at Lisconnel • Barlow Jane
... of the eighteenth century was converted and enlarged into a dower-house for my mother's grandmother, but was occupied when first I knew it by my great-aunt, her daughter, an old Miss Margaret Froude. To judge from a portrait done of her in her youth by Downman, she must have been then a very engaging ingenue; but when I remember her she looked a hundred and fifty. She was, indeed, when she died very nearly a hundred, and her house and its ...
— Memoirs of Life and Literature • W. H. Mallock
... evidently forgave the wilful Tranquil, for, on the death of Charles, she and her husband left Scotland and settled with her mother at Wren's End. She had two children, Janet, the great-aunt who left Jan Wren's End, and James, Jan's grandfather, who was sent to Edinburgh for his education, and afterwards became a Writer to the Signet. He married and settled in Edinburgh, preferring Scotland to England, and it was with his knowledge and consent that Wren's End ...
— Jan and Her Job • L. Allen Harker
... great deal of trouble in the course of my life," he said, regretfully, shaking his head. "I have sometimes wished I could avoid it, but that is impossible. Ahem! When my great-aunt's grandmother rashly and inopportunely changed me into a robin, I was having a little flirtation with a little creature who was really quite attractive. I might have decided to engage myself to her. She was very charming. Her name was ...
— Little Saint Elizabeth and Other Stories • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... didn't understand the objection to the hair-oil; he used it to make the hair sit down on his head. [Raleigh, it should be said, had a most irrepressible bunch of curls on his head.] He wore kid gloves on Sunday because he had had a pair given him by his great-aunt Jane Ann. He maintained the Sixth was ...
— The Fifth Form at Saint Dominic's - A School Story • Talbot Baines Reed
... had been born with Bostonian prejudices strong within her. She had made her children familiar, in their very nursery days, with the great names of their ancestors. Cornelia, when a plain, distinguished-looking child of six, was aware that her nose was "all Slocumb," and her forehead just like "great-aunt Hannah Maria Rand Babcock's." Austin learned that he was a Phelps in disposition, but "the image of the Bonds and the Baldwins." The children often went to distinguished gatherings composed entirely of their near and distant kinspeople, ate their porridge from silver bowls a ...
— Poor, Dear Margaret Kirby and Other Stories • Kathleen Norris
... than he. Casanova had that in front of him when he set out to be immoral, on ne peut plus, in seven volumes octavo. There simply were not enough vices to go round. He ended, therefore, by being a dull as well as a dirty dog. "Take back your bonny Mrs. Behn," said Walter Scott's great-aunt to him after a short inspection, "and if you will take my advice, put her in the fire, for I found it impossible to get through the very first novel." The nemesis of the pornographer: he can't avoid boring you ...
— In a Green Shade - A Country Commentary • Maurice Hewlett
... young lady, with a grateful eye-shot, vanished round the corner. But the force of her appeal had been a little blunted; for the young man was not only destitute of sisters, but of any female relative nearer than a great-aunt in Wales. Now he was alone, besides, the spell that he had hitherto obeyed began to weaken; he considered his behaviour with a sneer; and plucking up the spirit of revolt, he started in pursuit. The reader, if he has ever plied the fascinating trade of the noctambulist, will not be unaware ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 5 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... whom we formerly mentioned. He had been intended for a merchant, but he would never settle to business; and at last ran away from the counting-house where he had been placed, and went into the army. He was an idle, extravagant young man: his great-aunt was by fits very angry with him, or very fond of him. Sometimes she would supply him with money; at others, she would forbid him her presence, and declare he should never see another shilling of hers. This had been her latest determination; ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... was not of the blood that takes opinions second-hand. Upon his mother's side he was the grandson of one of the great anti-slavery agitators. The sister of this man, Gray's great-aunt, had stood beside him on the platform when there was danger in it; and after the Negro was freed and enfranchised, she had devoted a long life to the cause of woman suffrage. The mother who bore him died young. She left him to the care of a conservative father, but the blood ...
— The Power and the Glory • Grace MacGowan Cooke
... it is spelt, perhaps more properly, in some old maps of Hertfordshire; a farm-house,—delightfully situated within a gentle walk from Wheathampstead. I can just remember having been there, on a visit to a great-aunt, when I was a child, under the care of Bridget; who, as I have said, is older than myself by some ten years. I wish that I could throw into a heap the remainder of our joint existences, that we might ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... she had been reared differently than the poor old woman to whom she gave the name of grandmother, but who is reality was but a distant great-aunt. ...
— An Iceland Fisherman • Pierre Loti
... come for you this evening!' and she betakes herself to her toilette as a cat licks its whiskers over a saucer of milk. All right. Come, now, let us go into the question, young man; all between ourselves, you know. We have a papa and mamma down yonder, a great-aunt, two sisters (aged eighteen and seventeen), two young brothers (one fifteen, and the other ten), that is about the roll-call of the crew. The aunt brings up the two sisters; the cure comes and teaches the boys Latin. Boiled chestnuts are oftener on the table than white bread. Papa makes ...
— Father Goriot • Honore de Balzac
... Louis, in his praiseworthy effort not to be reserved with him, found he had been confessing that he had not only been again making a fool of himself, but, what was less frequent and less pardonable, of his father likewise. He limped out at the window, and was presently found by his great-aunt, reading what he called a raving novel, to see how he ought to have done it. She shook her head at him, and told him that he was not ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. I) - or, The Clue of Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... passing through and told him whatever unusual had happened in the neighborhood. The uncle found out that neither Salo nor his sister had the slightest remembrance of their parents. The boy's earliest memory went back to an estate in Holstein where they had lived with an elderly great-aunt, his grandmother's sister. They were about five or six years old when the aunt died, after which they were sent to Hanover ...
— Maezli - A Story of the Swiss Valleys • Johanna Spyri
... speak plainly. In the matter of love I am untaught. I have never loved but my great-aunt. But I am quite certain that, under any circumstances, ...
— The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan - The 14 Gilbert And Sullivan Plays • William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan
... twenty. And when each summer the young Molly went to Dunbarton, New Hampshire, to pay her established family visit to the last survivors of her connection who bore the name of Stark, no word that she heard in the Dunbarton houses pleased her so much as when a certain great-aunt would take her by the hand, and, after looking with fond intentness at her, pronounce: "My dear, you're getting more like the General's wife ...
— The Virginian - A Horseman Of The Plains • Owen Wister
... long time before she spoke of her past life; but when she found that Petie had no sharp-eyed mother at home, only a deaf great-aunt who asked no questions, she began to give him little glimpses of the circus world, which filled him with awe and rapture. It was hardly a real circus, only a little strolling troupe, with some performing dogs, and a few trained horses and ponies, and two tight-rope dancers; then ...
— Marie • Laura E. Richards
... of letters bound up in tape, which was sealed at the ends. The tape had, however, been eaten by moths, and the letters liberated from it. Female curiosity prompted me to read them, and they gave me a full exposition of our great-aunt's early history.' ...
— Tales for Young and Old • Various
... coming in the front gate," she explained, as he nodded familiarly to the men and bent to kiss the old woman's cheek. "Cousin Hetty, just look at Elly in that night-cap of Great-aunt Pauline's. Doesn't she look the image of that old daguerreotype of Grandmother? See here, Mark, who said you could trail that sword out here? That ...
— The Brimming Cup • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... manner, and he took hold of her hand and led her away ... and while he was leading her away, the adventure seemed to come to an end ... the picture dissolved ... and he could not see any more. Once, indeed, he had kissed his dream-woman ... he had kissed her exactly as he had kissed his great-aunt, Miss Clotworthy, who was famous for the fact that she had attended a Sunday School in Belfast as pupil and teacher for fifty-seven years without a break ... and the dream-woman had taken the kiss in the unemotional manner in which she took hold of his hand when he led ...
— The Foolish Lovers • St. John G. Ervine
... boy," returned the old lady, "he's got the Nichols' head for figgerin'. Yes, Nancy's great-aunt though she was six years and two months younger'n Nancy's mother. Wall, as I was sayin', she went off to Virginny to teach music. She was prouder'n Lucifer, and after a spell she married a southerner, rich as a Jew, and then she never took no more notice of her ...
— 'Lena Rivers • Mary J. Holmes |
