"Debutante" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... there was more than one of Theodore's daughter, the last of the Melroses. Leslie had been a wide-eyed, sturdy little girl who carried a perpetually surprised, even a babyish expression into her teens, but her last pictures showed the debutante, the piquant and charming eighteen-year-old, whose knowingly tipped hat and high fur collar left only a glimpse of pretty and pouting ...
— The Beloved Woman • Kathleen Norris
... Penny Postage, at the Bath Club, just across Dover Street from Brown's. He lunched at the Ritz with Marjorie Bowen and Miss Bisland. In the afternoon he sat for photographs at Barnett's, and made one or two calls. He could no more resist these things than a debutante ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... ambassador with a diva from the opera, exchanging the latest gossip from the chancelleries for intimate news of the world behind the scenes. There, the author of the latest novel talking literature to the newest debutante. Truly one may say that Mrs ...
— The Little Warrior - (U.K. Title: Jill the Reckless) • P. G. Wodehouse
... neglect the morning issues, if you are going to mention any. In to-morrow's Star there will be a portrait of Edyth four columns wide and eight inches high. I'll expect such expressions as 'beautiful society girl,' 'a recent debutante,' 'heiress to the vast fortune of the late structural steel king,' 'charming manner and brilliant mind.' And at those odd times when they are not praising her gowns, her wealth or her good looks, they'll be rather worse than insinuating that she knows ...
— Ashton-Kirk, Investigator • John T. McIntyre
... especially, a very beautiful and accomplished girl who was quite the most popular debutante of the London season. ...
— My Memories of Eighty Years • Chauncey M. Depew
... transpired, was not only an authority on musical comedies and pony ballets, but he was equally well posted on dogs, and a debutante across the table appealed to him for advice in breeding an Airedale bitch she had purchased at the last show. The discussion that followed was sufficiently frank to embarrass the aristocratic Airedale herself had she been present, ...
— The Auction Block • Rex Beach
... and worse," our other self responded, "as when in the german the fair debutante sees the leader advancing toward her with a splendid and costly favor, only to have him veer abruptly off to bestow it on some fat elderling who is going to give the next ball. But Mr. Pulitzer, though ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells
... "I wear my hair parted on one side like a debutante to give me a head-start on all the knowing and subtle and wicked people I have to put up with. While they are trying to break the ice with an ingenue, I'm ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... The young debutante, in a heavy elaborate satin gown, stood with a fixed and anguished smile upon her face, squeezing the fingers of each guest in a highly elevated position, and saying in a tone and accent entirely unlike her old girlish ...
— 'Lizbeth of the Dale • Marian Keith
... note that strikes more clearly on the brain of the debutante's mother than on the ear of that interesting person herself. A girl starting in life feels all the world is before her where to choose. She gives, indeed, too little thought to the subject. She comes fresh from the schoolroom ...
— How to Marry Well • Mrs. Hungerford
... her debutante year had been marred by the only unhappy experience of her life—the disgrace of her brother and his leaving home. She dated the beginning of a certain thoughtful habit of mind from that time, and a dissatisfaction with the brilliant life society offered ...
— The Light of Western Stars • Zane Grey
... certain spiritual exhilarants that nullify caution, warning the presence of danger. The boy with his first pay envelope, the lover who has just been accepted, the debutante on the way to her first ball; the impetus that urges us to rush in ...
— The Drums Of Jeopardy • Harold MacGrath
... successes. I was an utterly devastating debutante and you were a prosperous musician just commissioned in ...
— Flappers and Philosophers • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... remembered him, among those who had not yet lost that old-fashioned art, were very few—a young girl here and there, over whom he had been absent-mindedly sentimental; a debutante or two who had adored him from a distance as a friend of elder sister or brother; here and there an old, old lady to whom he had been considerate, and who perhaps remembered something of the winning charm of the ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... answered, forgetting to add the polite "with pleasure," which years ago had been taught at the convent as the suitable reply for a debutante to a ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... The appearance of a debutante was an event, and its announcement brought out a large crowd; the presumption of a provincial artist in selecting a role in which to rival a great favorite had excited general ridicule, and an unusually large audience had assembled, expecting to witness an ignominious ...
— Women of Modern France - Woman In All Ages And In All Countries • Hugo P. Thieme
... party. Now, this prince, upon whose financial operations be continual increase, had no reason, nor had the others, his friends, to put himself out for the sake of one Briton more or less, but he rested not till he had accomplished all in my behalf that a mother could think of for her debutante daughter. ...
— American Notes • Rudyard Kipling
... when we most admired Mr. Blake we also again admired Miss Mary Taylor; and it was at Brougham's, not at Burton's, that we rendered her that tribute—reserved for her performance of the fond theatrical daughter in the English version of Le Pere de la Debutante, where I see the charming panting dark-haired creature, in flowing white classically relieved by a gold tiara and a golden scarf, rush back from the supposed stage to the represented green-room, followed by thunders of applause, and throw herself upon the neck of the broken-down ...
— A Small Boy and Others • Henry James
... cake was dough indeed. Now her pride was shame. She did not want to be a film queen. She did not want to work for any sum a week. She wanted to be a debutante and a ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... no goddess, but Circe, masquerading at the dance given in honour of the fair debutante, Summer, puts ...
— Whirligigs • O. Henry
... would have been: "Here's an end of my good times before they've begun!" but I'm sure there was no place in Pat's mind for her own grievances. I fancied that she'd even forgotten those dresses for the debutante who might now never "debut," and the birthday car which might appropriately be named the "White Elephant." Indeed I hoped she would forget, so that Jack might pay the duty and escape protests or gratitude. But the girl had a more practical ...
— The Lightning Conductor Discovers America • C. N. (Charles Norris) Williamson and A. M. (Alice Muriel)
... amateur theatricals had been concerned for their daughters' safety. And now Phil interested him—this new Phil in city clothes. The antics of Phil, the tomboy of Main Street, had frequently aroused his indignation; Phil, a debutante in an evening gown that he pronounced a creation of the gods, was worthy of serious attention. She was, he averred, Hermione, Rosalind, Portia, Beatrice, combined in one ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson
... had time to upset anything over here, mother. It's only been going on a couple of weeks. You ought to go away, dearest, for a good long snooze in the country. You'll be as young as a debutante by the ...
— From the Housetops • George Barr McCutcheon
... people!" thought the debutante, whom they had encouraged and applauded; "some perhaps are a little odd, but how much cordiality and warmth there is among them! It is catching. This is the sort of atmosphere in ...
— Jacqueline, v3 • Th. Bentzon (Mme. Blanc)
... amuses us. But what is there about a white skin more lovely than a black one, and why thrill over blue eyes and neglect the brown ones? What is the rationale for the admiration of slimness as against stoutness? Indeed, there are races who would turn with scorn from our slender debutante[1] and worship their more buxom heavy-busted and wide-hipped beauties. The only "rational" beauty in face and figure is that which stands as the outer mask of health, vigor, intelligence and normal procreative ...
— The Foundations of Personality • Abraham Myerson
... no conscience. She began to gad about the bush. In her girlish days she wore short frocks, as it were, having had her wings clipped, but the next spring she went into society, was a debutante, wore a dress of black and white satin which shone in the sun, and she grew so vain and flighty, and strutted about so, that it was really ridiculous to watch her. She began also to stay out late in the evening, which was very improper, and before going to bed Philip would go under ...
— The Book of the Bush • George Dunderdale
... unmistakably feminine kiss, surreptitiously delivered, roused Cappy from his meditations. He opened his eyes and beheld his daughter Florence, a radiant debutante of twenty, and the sole prop of her eccentric ...
— Cappy Ricks • Peter B. Kyne
... four of us, and we were all tired, for one reason or another; Grandmother because she was eighty, and it's a strenuous matter to live eighty years; my Aunt because she had been desperately ill; C. C. because she had nursed my Aunt back to comparative health, and I because I had been a debutante that winter, and every one knows that that is the hardest work of all. We went as far south as the train would take us, and settled ourselves at Coronado to bask in the sunshine until the tiredness was gone and we became a band of explorers, with the world before ...
— The Smiling Hill-Top - And Other California Sketches • Julia M. Sloane
... Selwyn's first encounter with the Ruthvens. A short time afterward at the opera Gerald dragged him into a parterre to say something amiable to one of the debutante Craig girls—and Selwyn found himself again ...
— The Younger Set • Robert W. Chambers
... the most intricate troubles and most annoying episodes of his life and his reign have been in a large measure due to the press, inasmuch as they were either originated or envenomed by the newspapers. William is as nervous about what the papers will say as a young debutante on the stage. Not only does he keep an anxious watch upon the utterances of all German editors, but he ordains a vigilant scrutiny of the articles printed in foreign countries from the pens of correspondents stationed in Berlin, ...
— The Secret Memoirs of the Courts of Europe: William II, Germany; Francis Joseph, Austria-Hungary, Volume I. (of 2) • Mme. La Marquise de Fontenoy
... induce the native boys and Chinese who were supposed to clean it up to do so properly. We also helped to put up cots and to hang mosquito nettings, and at night we lay and listened to the most vociferous concert of bull frogs, debutante frogs, tree toads, katydids, locusts, and iku lizards that ever murdered the sleep of the just. We also left an open box of candy on the table of the dormitory which we had preempted, starting therewith another ...
— A Woman's Impression of the Philippines • Mary Helen Fee
... so new—so wonderful—" Miss Snow breathed, "I'm a debutante, you know, and I have scarcely butterflied out of my chrysalis yet. How splendid the Leathershams are. He has a heart of gold. Oh, he is such a good man, he says his life motto is the Golden Rule." "And Mrs. Leathersham?" ...
— Ptomaine Street • Carolyn Wells
... better." He wanted to "show what he could do," and he was beginning well. Though the Enchantress Isis had had a past under other owners, she looked as if this were her maiden trip, and she was as beautifully decorated as a debutante for her first ball. Her paint was new and gleaming white; her brass and nickel glittered like jewellery; and even those who thought nothing quite good enough for them, uttered admiring "Ohs!" as they trooped ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson
... delicious kind (whose name we forget) that is the palest possible cream color—almost white. We have seen apples of strange shapes, something like a pear (sheepnoses, they call them), and the Maiden Blush apples with their delicate shading of yellow and debutante pink. And what a poetry in the names—Winesap, Pippin, Northern Spy, Baldwin, Ben Davis, York Imperial, Wolf River, Jonathan, Smokehouse, Summer Rambo, Rome Beauty, ...
— Mince Pie • Christopher Darlington Morley
... to one or two dances during the week—a thing he had not done lately. Then he went to several more; also to a number of debutante theatre parties and to several suppers. He rather liked being with his own sort again; the comfortable sense of home-coming, of conventionalism, of a pleasant social security, appealed to him after several months' irresponsible ...
— Athalie • Robert W. Chambers
... of the Mounted Police, born in dear old Lunnon. It is always interesting to note the different things of which people are proud. Old men boast of their age and young ones of their youth. The fat woman in the side-show is arrogant over her avoirdupois; the debutante glories in her slender waist; and the globe-trotter triumphs in the miles he has travelled. Wyllie claimed distinction in never having left Chipewyan. This Mounted Policeman, who stretches out on the scow, plumes himself ...
— The New North • Agnes Deans Cameron
... spoke to Miss Baker, but not often. Kenneth's friendships were mysteries; his family had not the most remote idea where he went when he went out every evening, or where he was when he did not come home. Sometimes he spoke out in sudden, half-amused praise of some debutante, she was a "funny little devil," or "she was the decentest kid in this year's crop," and perhaps he would follow up this remark with a call or two upon the admired young girl, and Ella would begin to tease him about her. But the debutante and her mother immediately lost their ...
— Saturday's Child • Kathleen Norris
... had allowed her to wear her gold locket for the occasion, walked down the aisle and took her seat near the stage, feeling as conspicuous and self-conscious as any debutante entering a ...
— Georgina of the Rainbows • Annie Fellows Johnston
... illustrious client has placed her piteous case in my hands. It is the Lady Eva Blackwell, the most beautiful debutante of last season. She is to be married in a fortnight to the Earl of Dovercourt. This fiend has several imprudent letters—imprudent, Watson, nothing worse—which were written to an impecunious young squire in the country. They would suffice to ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes • Arthur Conan Doyle
... the more general opinion when she declared that even a debutante would know that men like Ferdy Wickersham and Mr. Keith did not fall in love with unknown governesses. That sort of thing would do to put in books; but it did not happen in real life. They might visit them, but—! After which she proceeded ...
— Gordon Keith • Thomas Nelson Page
... skill endeavor to retain the appearance of youth. I knew her history. I knew how her feet had moved—it always seems to me so futilely—through miles and miles and miles of dance on polished floors and her mouth in millions of false smiles. She had been debutante, belle, coquette, old maid. Marbury had married her when wrinkles already were at her chin and her hands had taken on the dried look which no fight against age can truly conceal; then after six years of longing for new hopes in life she ...
— The Blue Wall - A Story of Strangeness and Struggle • Richard Washburn Child
... masterly description in one phrase of all he could have done for the ill-starred debutante who had been hungry in the wrong place, Cecil lounged out of the club to drive with half a dozen of his set to a water-party—a Bacchanalian water-party, with the Zu-Zu and her sisters for the Naiads and the Household for ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... enjoying every minute of life; clad always in the most down-to-the-moment styles. He imagined her as popular, colorful, a wonderful companion for a happy, festive mood; a street that looked upon her companion streets as a debutante looks upon ...
— Spring Street - A Story of Los Angeles • James H. Richardson
... the apparent easiness of the thing. She is powerfully built, and her muscles are master of coordination, such as would be the envy of multitudes of men, and with all this power, she is as simple in her manner and appearance as is the young debutante at her coming out function. You are impressed with her sweetness and refinement, first of all, and the utter lack of show about her, as also with her brother who is a dapper young man of the very English type, who works with ...
— Adventures in the Arts - Informal Chapters on Painters, Vaudeville, and Poets • Marsden Hartley
... part of their time there would stamp them for what they were—persons not yet to be included among the really fashionable group. The really fashionable maintained large homes which they occupied when they came to town to have dental work done or to launch a debutante daughter into society; the rest of the year they usually were elsewhere. It ...
— Sundry Accounts • Irvin S. Cobb
... were others, in throngs, leaving—young, eager-faced fellows, with a scattering of the usual "dancing" men on whom everybody could always count, and a few middle-aged gentlemen and women of the younger married set to give stability to what was, otherwise, a debutante's affair. ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers
... O'Hara ignored Gabriella, and turned his alert questioning glance on the little seamstress. Fanny had sauntered up the walk to join the group—Fanny in all the glory of her yellow curls, and her "debutante slouch "—and he bowed gravely to her without the faintest change of expression. If he admired Fanny's beauty and pitied Miss Polly's plainness, there was no hint of it in the indifferent look he turned from the girl to ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow
... us, leaving the young man standing alone at the piano. He was of an age perhaps a year or two older than Reginald Blake. It was evident that, whatever Miss Betty might think, he had eyes for no one else but the pretty debutante. He even seemed to be regarding Kennedy sullenly, as if he ...
— The War Terror • Arthur B. Reeve
... done, and he had a long, new, shiny, freshly sharpened lead pencil sticking out of the breast pocket of his coat. He tried to come in smartly with a businesslike air, but it wouldn't have fooled a blind man, because he was as nervous as a debutante. It struck me as one of the funniest things—and one of the most ...
— The Escape of Mr. Trimm - His Plight and other Plights • Irvin S. Cobb
... debutante, decadence, decapitate, deciduous, declivity, decompose, decorous, dedicatory, deduction, deferential, deficiency, deglutition, dehiscence, delectable, delete, deleterious, delineate, deliquescent, demarcation, demimonde, demoniac, denizen, denouement, deprecate, depreciate, derelict, derogatory, ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... way, I don't want him at all. There's Philip and Kenneth now; they've always been so nice. But lately they've taken to making sheep's eyes at me and flinging out bits of foolishness here and there that make me tired! A debutante's life is not a ...
— Patty's Suitors • Carolyn Wells
... down arm-in-arm—James with Imogen, the debutante, because his pretty grandchild cheered him; Soames with Winifred; Emily with Val, whose eyes lighting on the oysters brightened. This was to be a proper full 'blowout' with 'fizz' and port! And he felt in need ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... When the Lady is Asked to Dance "Cutting In" Dancing Positions When the Guest Does Not Dance Public Dances A Plea for Dancing The Charm of Dress in Dancing At the Afternoon Dance Gentlemen at the Dance Dress for the Ball Dress of the Debutante Wraps at the Ball Ball Dress for Men For the Simple ...
— Book of Etiquette • Lillian Eichler
... was informed of her cousin's plan in her behalf she was half wild with delight. "I may consider myself a debutante," she said. "Oh, Cousin Sophy! how shall ...
— The Earth Trembled • E.P. Roe
... The Debutante lifted her big blue eyes a little towards the ceiling, with the upward glance that stands for innocence. She said nothing, waiting for a cue as to what to ...
— Further Foolishness • Stephen Leacock
... disappointed in the appearance of the women in the shopping crowds on Broad Street; for, as every one knows, Richmond has been famous for its beauties. In vain I looked for young women fitted to inherit the debutante mantles of such nationally celebrated beauties as Miss Irene Langhorne (Mrs. Charles Dana Gibson), Miss May Handy (Mrs. James Brown Potter), Miss Lizzie Bridges (Mrs. Hobson), and Miss Sally Bruce (Mrs. Arthur ...
— American Adventures - A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' • Julian Street
... affects the fair debutante at a court presentation, he beheld the confusing labyrinth of counters, department aisles and shelves, which combine in such a depressing suggestion of intellectual plethora and transient futility in ...
— The Flaw in the Sapphire • Charles M. Snyder
... purpose in his mind, he had married a daughter of this class, whose only dower was her birth, and whose only covetable possession her place among her kind. And this effort had failed, entirely. Sophia Blashkov, a quiet, gentle, blue-blooded, little debutante, had found herself utterly unequal to the task either of forcing a place in those glittering, scornful ranks for her black-blooded, much-condemned husband, or of keeping her own, now that she bore his ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... the rocky, half-broken trail she picked her way as daintily as any debutante tiptoeing down a great stairway to the ballroom. Life had been easy for Mary since that thousand-mile struggle to overtake Canby, and now her sides were sleek from good feeding and some casual twenty miles a day, which was no more to ...
— Riders of the Silences • Max Brand
... now, when Sylvia was laboring over her books in the very beginning of her college life, Eleanor Hubert was a finished product, a graduate of an exclusive, expensive girls' boarding-school in New York, and a that-year's debutante in La Chance society. Her name was constantly in the items of the society columns, she wore the most profusely varied costumes, and she drove about the campus swaying like a lily beside the wealthiest undergraduate. Sylvia's ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... had gone to war. Humpty Dumpty and the March Hare wheeled out the Home Guards. Said the Debutante to her Soldier Boy in the moonlight, "To Hell with the chaperone, War is War...." Somebody lost Eighty Hundred Billion Dollars trying to build aeroplanes out of Flypaper and a new kind of Cement. And the Press, slapping Fright Wig No. 7 on its bald ...
— Erik Dorn • Ben Hecht
... she made good, or not? In a moment, however, she knew that all was well, for a storm of applause and clapping of hands filled the air. Lumley, from his place in the wings, beamed approval. His enterprise was to be rewarded. The debutante was a success. No doubt about it. She should have a contract from him before any other manager should step in and snap ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham
... whose fortune came from great department stores, in which young girls worked for two dollars and a half a week, and eked out their existence by prostitution. And this was the summer that Warfield's youngest daughter was launched, and for her debutante dance they built a ballroom which cost thirty thousand dollars—and was torn down the ...
— The Moneychangers • Upton Sinclair
... between eight and nine was occupied with "manners." The girls took turns in coming gracefully downstairs, entering the drawing-room, announced by Claire du Bois in the role of footman, and shaking hands with their hostesses—Conny Wilder, as dowager mama, and towering above her, as debutante daughter, Irene McCullough, the biggest girl in the school. The gymnasium teacher who assigned the roles, had a sense of humor. An appropriate remark was expected from each guest, the weather ...
— Just Patty • Jean Webster
... attractive Debutante knew two Young Men who called on her every Thursday Evening, and brought ...
— Fables in Slang • George Ade
... began to take off her riding-habit. Quickly she dressed Clara, superintending all the details of her disguise as carefully as though she were the costumer of a new debutante. When Clara was dressed she was so nearly of the same size and shape of Capitola that from behind no one would have suspected ...
— Capitola's Peril - A Sequel to 'The Hidden Hand' • Mrs. E.D.E.N. Southworth
... class or provincial limitations as is the news story, and none is more unwavering in its elimination of slang. Newly coined words, it is true, are admitted more readily into news stories than into magazine articles, but slang itself is barred. One may not write of the "glad rags" of the debutante, or the "bagging" of the criminal, or the "swiping" of the messenger boy's "bike." One may not even employ such colloquialisms as "enthuse," "swell" (delightful), "bunch" (group). But one may use such new coinages as burglarize, home-run, and diner rather freely. ...
— News Writing - The Gathering , Handling and Writing of News Stories • M. Lyle Spencer
... deeply to respect her, and Una, who had never had the debutante's privilege of ordering men about, who had avoided Henry Carson and responded to Walter Babson and obeyed chiefs in offices, was now at last demanding that privilege. She developed feminine whims and desires. She asked Mr. Schwirtz to look for her handkerchief, ...
— The Job - An American Novel • Sinclair Lewis
... a debutante just out of school Who can rule with a smile what a king could not rule, From young Harry, her prince, to myself, her poor fool! Come, tell ...
— When hearts are trumps • Thomas Winthrop Hall
... October to polish up the little silver name plate. It is the custom in our neighbourhood (so one observes through drawing room windows) to have reading lamps with rosy pink shades and at least two beautiful daughters of debutante age. I hope I am not unjust, but our street looks to me like the kind of place where people take warm baths, in a roomy old china tub, on Sunday afternoons. After that, they go downstairs and play a hymn on ...
— Pipefuls • Christopher Morley
... store almost every day, as her husband had been before her, to advise and be available for consultation, whether it was the buying of a gold teething ring for the newest member of the family, an engagement ring for the latest debutante, a watch for "son," attaining his majority, or perhaps new gold ...
— The Diamond Cross Mystery - Being a Somewhat Different Detective Story • Chester K. Steele
... While it seemed to him that the average debutante spent every hour of her day thinking and talking about what the great world had mapped out for her to do during the next hour, any girl who made a living directly on her prettiness ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... amenable. She was glad that she was tall and beautiful, not merely because such physical gifts added to the colour and agreeableness of life, but because hers gave comfort and happiness to her mother. To Mrs. Vanderpoel, to introduce to the world the loveliest debutante of many years was to be launched into a new future. To concern one's self about her exquisite wardrobe was to have an enlivening occupation. To see her surrounded, to watch eyes as they followed her, to hear her praised, was to feel something ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... open door the half dozen women trailed out, Natalie in white, softly rustling as she moved, Mrs. Haverford in black velvet, a trifle tight over her ample figure, Marion Hayden, in a very brief garment she would have called a frock, perennial debutante that she was, rather negligible Mrs. Terry Mackenzie, and trailing behind the others, frankly loath to leave the men, Audrey Valentine. Clayton Spencer's eyes rested on Audrey with a smile of amused toleration, ...
— Dangerous Days • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... spellbound by this, and by the eloquence of the young barrister until the end of the speech, when he had hastened to Judge Merlin and demanded the name and the history of the debutante. ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... She's had a gay winter so far, but not a happy one. She's no debutante any more, you know; she's an 'old girl' in her fifth season. That's what the society girls get by coming out at eighteen. Now I, who am only a year out of college and who never 'came out' in my life, am as keen at the game of being grown up as if I were just putting ...
— Under the Country Sky • Grace S. Richmond
... underestimated the persistency of these rejuvenated venerables. They were not satisfied—wanted to know more about the girls; and the next day in deep but joyous simplicity, half a dozen old men asked their married daughters and close friends at the clubs what family of Brown a certain debutante belonged to; who was the father of Miss Jones; and how long had the family of Miss Robinson lived in the city, together with a lot of amazing questions. And failing to derive even the remotest satisfaction ...
— Jane Cable • George Barr McCutcheon
... girl! A debutante, going to a party again, after enforced confinement at home, couldn't be gayer about it. I knew you loved your work, but I didn't know you loved it ...
— Mrs. Red Pepper • Grace S. Richmond
... "that all this is a grim parody on the past when women did the waiting until it was men's pleasure to make the next move. I suppose that my recent appraisement parallels the social inspection of a debutante—that my present hunger is paying for the wistful intellectual starvation to which men once doomed your sex; that my isolation represents the isolation from all that was vital in the times when women's opportunities were few and restricted; that my probation among you symbolises the toleration ...
— The Gay Rebellion • Robert W. Chambers
... tried to speak, but he could not. He stared at his hostess, who smiled the smile of the budding debutante. His own open-mouthed astonishment was reflected in the faces of Carolina and Hope Georgia as they observed their father's expression. He forgot he was in Washington. He did not know he was a Senator. The fact that he had ever even thought of making a speech ...
— A Gentleman from Mississippi • Thomas A. Wise
... least doubt his skill, and obeyed him in everything as faithfully as she would have done, had he been personally a favourite with her. "Allow me to express my great delight and my strong admiration for the young debutante. As far as Miss O'Mahony is concerned the word failure may be struck out of the language. And no epithet should be used to qualify success, but one in the most superlative degree. Allow me to—" And he attempted to raise her hand to his lips, and to express his homage in a manner certainly not unusual ...
— The Landleaguers • Anthony Trollope
... embodiment and form? Ah, there is the secret! Rumours go abroad that the inexhaustible Paisiello, charmed with her performance of his "Nel cor piu non me sento," and his "Io son Lindoro," will produce some new masterpiece to introduce the debutante. Others insist upon it that her forte is the comic, and that Cimarosa is hard at work at another "Matrimonia Segreto." But in the meanwhile there is a check in the diplomacy somewhere. The Cardinal is observed to be out of humour. He has said publicly,—and the words ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... my attention was of Miss Violet Winslow, an heiress to a moderate fortune, a debutante well known in New York and at Tuxedo ...
— Guy Garrick • Arthur B. Reeve
... the picture of the beautiful princess on the hill of glass, in a book of Judith's, and besides, she had once been a real debutante, of the kind that Judith liked to read about in novels, before the Honourable Joe brought her from Boston to Green River. Judith liked to look at her better than any one here ...
— The Wishing Moon • Louise Elizabeth Dutton
... ideal solution will be when every individual woman in the world extends her mothering to include every young thing she comes in contact with; one doll for her own child and another doll for the ashman's little girl, one dimity for her own debutante, and another just as dainty for the seventeen-year-old who brings ...
— The Rich Mrs. Burgoyne • Kathleen Norris
... looks like a scared rabbit, and I heard her say only a week ago she'd rather die than be a debutante. But she'll get on. Her mother will corral the men and compel them to come in and pay her ...
— The Man in Lonely Land • Kate Langley Bosher
... in mid-December. Carlisle, recuperating from a gay debutante rout on the evening preceding, remained in bed. By this time the "season" was well under way: all signs promised an exceptionally gay winter, and Carlisle was, as ever, in constant demand. She had meant to spend the morning in bed anyway, and ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... of Consuelo was assured when she appeared for the first time in Gluck's "Ipermnestra." The debutante was at once self-possessed and serious, receiving the applause of the audience without fear or humility. For her art itself, and not the results of art, were the main thing, and her inward satisfaction in her performance ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VII • Various
... half she had lived in Paris with her aunt she had dined mostly in her room. Such cafes as this she had seen only occasionally from a cab on her way to the opera. As she stood at the entrance to the big room, which sparkled like a diamond beneath a light, she was as dazed as a debutante entering her first ballroom. The head waiter, after one glance at Monte, was bent upon securing the best available table. Here was an American prince, if ever he had ...
— The Triflers • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... commonly takes the form of an afternoon tea or reception to which her mother invites all of her friends as well as the younger set. The debutante receives with her mother and wears an elaborate frock of light material and color, made high in the neck and with elbow sleeves. Long white gloves are worn, and her hair is more elaborately arranged than it was during her school-girl period. ...
— The Handy Cyclopedia of Things Worth Knowing - A Manual of Ready Reference • Joseph Triemens
... heart of every season since 1871, these Germans have become famous wherever the light fantastic toe of aristocracy trips and eke is tripped. They are the badge of quality, and the test of it, the sure scaling-rod by which the frightened debutante may measure herself at last, to ask of her mirror that night, with who can say what tremors: "Am I a success?" Over these balls strangers go mad. They come from immense distances to attend them, sometimes with superciliousness; ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... The Debutante's name was Myrtle. Her Parents were very Watchful, and did not encourage her to receive Callers, except such as were known to be Exemplary Young Men. Fred and Eustace were a few of those who escaped the Black List. Myrtle always appeared to be ...
— Fables in Slang • George Ade
... a big little hoss made good all over. He ain't never started yet, but he's been propped for two months. He's by Edgemont. First dam, Cora, by Musketeer. Second dam, Debutante, by Peddler. Third dam, Daisy Dean, by Salvation. Fourth dam, Iole, by Messenger. He's registered as Hamilton, ...
— Blister Jones • John Taintor Foote
... week in the town; but into that week was packed perhaps rather more than the allowance of new impressions and excitement of one sort and another that go to make up the record of her first season in town for the average human debutante. The cynic might protest that many a modern debutante is as certainly put up for sale to the highest bidder of the town season as Jan was. Well, at least the thing is a good deal more carefully wrapped up and veiled, and a great deal more time is ...
— Jan - A Dog and a Romance • A. J. Dawson
... Bud to Debutante to Ingenue to Fawn to Broiler to Kiddykadee back in 1880, he was a famous Beau with skin- tight Trousers, a white Puff Tie run through a Gold Ring and a Hat lined with Puff Satin, the same as ...
— Knocking the Neighbors • George Ade
... used, and a wide range of fashion is permitted. The gown is cut short-sleeved and decollete, and the dancing shoes are of satin or very fine kid. Jewels are worn but sparingly by young women in their first season in society. The costume of a debutante at her first ball ...
— The Etiquette of To-day • Edith B. Ordway
... I am ridiculous, what of her and the other women of her age who, for some unknown reason, fatuously suppose they can renew their lost youth? Occasionally luck gives me a debutante for a partner when I go out to dinner. I do my best to entertain her—trot out all my old jokes and stories, pay her delicate compliments, and do frank homage to her youth and beauty. But her attention ...
— The "Goldfish" • Arthur Train
... the young debutante appeared. She was received with a chilling silence, broken only by a few faint claps from some half dozen good-natured persons, in consideration of her youth and beauty. In defiance of her prepossessing appearance, the audience seemed determined ...
— The Duke's Prize - A Story of Art and Heart in Florence • Maturin Murray
... I came, the Ferrises gave me a beautiful dinner, and I wore evening dress for the first time in two years, and was as thrilled as a debutante at her first ball! It was so good to see cut glass and silver, and to hear dear silly worldly chatter that I grew terribly frivolous. Plates were laid for twenty, and who do you suppose was on my right? The severe young purser ...
— Lady of the Decoration • Frances Little
... by any novel social situation. She had witnessed so many situations and such complicated ones that the merely conventional were, in her eyes, relatively insignificant and irrevelant. There would be for her none of the debutante's sense of awkwardness or insufficiency. Again she reminded him of the rustic little princess, unaware of alien customs, and ready to learn and to ...
— Tante • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... forgot all her three years of training, and her success as a debutante, and became the grave, shy thing she had been to him when he first saw her, looking up with awed delight into the face she had seen in her dreams for so long, and yet might ...
— The Girl from Montana • Grace Livingston Hill
... there are doing all the men's work and getting better wages at it than the men ever did. After the war they'll never go back to their tatting and prattle. I'm going to your shipyard and have a look-in, but not the way a pink debutante follows a naval officer over a battle-ship, staring at him and not at the works. I'm going on business, and if I like ship-building, I may take ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes
... impossible. I cannot abide to let wine stand and wait; and champagne— watch it, how it protests!" He filled her glass and refilled his own. "By the way," he added, sinking his voice, "one is permitted to congratulate a debutante?" ...
— Lady Good-for-Nothing • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... Gard answered. "Haven't had time to bother. By the way, Mahr, what sort of a girl is the little debutante daughter of Mrs. Marteen—you know her, don't you?" He was watching Mahr keenly, and fancied he detected a shifty glance at the mention of the ...
— Out of the Ashes • Ethel Watts Mumford
... been free for the past month or two, and watching this pretty debutante of love going from table to table, I asked myself the question whether it would not be worth my while to make a bargain with her to live with me for some time. I am here relating to you one of ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume IV (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... a short sojourn there, he came to the banks of the Volga, in his native country, and began to write stories for the local papers. A happy chance made him meet Korolenko, who took a great interest in the "debutante" writer. "In the year 1893-1894," writes Gorky, "I made the acquaintance of Vladimir Korolenko, to whom I owe my introduction into 'great' literature. He has done a great deal for me in teaching ...
— Contemporary Russian Novelists • Serge Persky
... popular women of the court who had been pleased to show their patronage by attendance, did not in the least eclipse her own less pretentious self. People besieged Madame Dulac for introductions, and to her own surprise the debutante found herself enjoying all the gay nothings, the jests, the bright sentences tossed about her and forming a foundation for compliments delicately veiled, and the flattering by word or glance that was as the breath of life to ...
— The Bondwoman • Marah Ellis Ryan
... Sleep! Does a debutante go to sleep at her first ball? Sleep in such good company, the company of this captain who was smiling all the while with his eyes; smiling at his mud house, at the hardships in the trenches, and, I hope, at having a guest who ...
— My Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... too old, Kitty," said Patty, earnestly, "but truly everybody thinks I'm a society lady. They don't even look on me as a debutante." ...
— Patty's Friends • Carolyn Wells
... "The debutante, be she whom she may, should feel flattered by such an unexampled assemblage of all ...
— Edmond Dantes • Edmund Flagg
... towel; their hair was arranged in enormous pompadours and topped with "lingerie" or beflowered hats. Their blouses were "peek-a-boo" and cut low, their skirts high; slender or plump, they wore exaggerated straight front corsets, high heels and ventilated stockings. They practiced the debutante slouch and ...
— The Sisters-In-Law • Gertrude Atherton
... governs fashionable life, Bar Harbor became the fashion. Everybody could see its preeminent attractions. The word was passed along by the Boudoir Telephone from Boston to New Orleans, and soon it was a matter of necessity for a debutante, or a woman of fashion, or a man of the world, or a blase boy, to show themselves there during the season. It became the scene of summer romances; the student of manners went there to study the "American girl." The ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... own dress. It was not the nervous glance of the debutante, but the practised flash of experienced eyes which see ...
— With Edged Tools • Henry Seton Merriman
... dingy little hand, with some tawdry rings. Raymond never liked close quarters; neither in those days, nor ever after, did he care to come decisively to grips with actual life. "Keep off!" was what his look said to the offender. The poor, puzzled little debutante quickly stepped back, and we all regained the street. Raymond was trembling with ...
— On the Stairs • Henry B. Fuller
... seemed eager that they should enjoy what was evidently their first Browning. She studied the old faces, the hard faces, the faded faces, the painted cheeks and powdered necks; she read the tragedy behind the drooping head of some debutante, the triumph in the high laugh of another. There was poor Connie Fox, desperately eager and amiable, dancing with the youngest men and the oldest men, glittering and jolly in her dingy blue silk; and Connie's mother, who was her chaperon, a little fluttering fool of a woman, ...
— The Story Of Julia Page - Works of Kathleen Norris, Volume V. • Kathleen Norris
... inspected every debutante for ten years? You don't expect me to advertise for an ideal, do ...
— The Tracer of Lost Persons • Robert W. Chambers
... heart, that soothed her angry humility. The sudden sincere admiration, the involuntary tribute to her charm, was new to her, but the instinct of countless generations made it as plain and as much her prerogative as if she had been the most successful debutante. She was not, then, an object of pity, to be treasured for the sake of the old days; other men, too—the impulse outstripped thought, but she caught up ...
— A Reversion To Type • Josephine Daskam
... by any Jehu who ever handled the ribbons. So there in readiness lay the hired dress-suit, the Major's gleaming linen, and the other necessaries of evening attire. Coogan leisurely donned the unaccustomed plumage, paying as much attention to his toilet as a debutante when arraying herself for her first cotillion. After struggling into a remarkably obstinate shirt he selected the highest collar he could find, put it on, and admiringly surveyed the general effect in a cracked ...
— The Statesmen Snowbound • Robert Fitzgerald
... to 1917 each oncoming debutante was taught by her mother to give unto the genus, married man, her most impersonal manner, lest she provoke his "undesirable attentions." If poaching was done, it was from behind a tree. Unmarried girls knew that their place was not ...
— Nonsenseorship • G. G. Putnam
... person should have been engaged specially for the part of Ortrud, which she had never studied, and that she should have been considered as my chosen representative of that part, was a little hard on her and on me. Please do not turn me into the "father" of this DEBUTANTE, whose interest I should have considered better if I had arranged her first appearance in some piece by Verdi or Donizetti, or indeed anything but LOHENGRIN. But enough of such stuff, although I am grieved to see Herr A., the tenor of the ...
— Correspondence of Wagner and Liszt, Volume 2 • Francis Hueffer (translator)
... stalls and boxes, anywhere but in the servants' hall. Oh, for the ready-made cravat that hitched to the collar- button! And then there was that servant's low turned-down collar, glossy as celluloid. He felt as diffident in his bare throat as a debutante feels in her first decollete ball-gown, not very well covered up, as it were. And, heaven and earth, how appallingly large his hands had grown, how clumsy his feet! Would the colonel expose him? Would he keep silent? This remained to ...
— The Man on the Box • Harold MacGrath
... and fifty years of age if a day. Oliver was not surprised to find Thom craning his neck at the window. He remembered the story they told of this perennial beau—of how he had been in love with every woman in and around Kennedy Square, from Miss Clendenning down to the latest debutante, and of how he would tell you over his first toddy that he had sown his wild oats and was about to settle down for life, and over his last—the sixth, or seventh, or eighth—that the most adorable woman in town, after a life devoted to her service, had thrown him over, and that henceforth ...
— The Fortunes of Oliver Horn • F. Hopkinson Smith
... pantaloon, columbine; punchinello^; pulcinello^, pulcinella^; extra, bit- player, walk-on role, cameo appearance; mute, figurante^, general utility; super, supernumerary. company; first tragedian, prima donna [Sp.], protagonist; jeune premier [Fr.]; debutant, debutante [Fr.]; light comedian, genteel comedian, low comedian; walking gentleman, amoroso^, heavy father, ingenue [Fr.], jeune veuve [Fr.]. mummer, guiser^, guisard^, gysart^, masque. mountebank, Jack Pudding; tumbler, posture master, acrobat; contortionist; ballet dancer, ballet girl; chorus singer; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... favor to me, will you begin by trying to stand up straight, please? That debutante slouch would kill ...
— Emma McChesney & Co. • Edna Ferber
... to the elevators, constantly squirming more inextricably into the heart of the press, elbowed and shouldered and politely walked upon, not only fore and aft, but to port and starboard as well, by dame, dowager, and debutante, husband, lover, and esquire, patricians, celebrities and the commonalty (a trace, as the chemists say), P. Sybarite at length found himself only a layer or two removed from the ...
— The Day of Days - An Extravaganza • Louis Joseph Vance
... while Harriet and the children chattered. Nina was full of excited anticipation. Francesca's tea to-morrow, and the box-party on Friday, and a new gown for each- Nina fancied herself already a popular and lovely debutante. Harriet imagined that she saw something of a brother's pity in Ward's eyes as he watched her. Ward himself looked his best in his evening black, and several years ...
— Harriet and the Piper - (Norris Volume XI) • Kathleen Norris
... look different—your gown is wonderfully becoming, and what lovely slippers!" Mrs. Plunkett inspected the aged debutante with kindly eyes. "But remember, my dear, we mustn't let frivolities like this divert our attention from the cause. A bit more of the good fight and we shall ...
— The Wrong Twin • Harry Leon Wilson
... delight. 'There will be a perfect inundation to-morrow night from Prague and Vienna to see me even in so miserable a part as Michiella,' she said. 'Here I am supposed to be a beginner; I am no debutante there.' ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... and Helen was full of mirth and laughter till we were fairly on board the steamer in New York harbor, when she threw herself on her father's breast with a gesture of utter abandonment that would have made the fortune of a debutante on any stage in the world. It was so unlooked-for that we all broke down, and Mr. St. Clair was strongly inclined to take her home with him. But so sudden was she in all her moods that his foot had scarcely touched the shore before she was ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 86, February, 1875 • Various
... that much of the magnificent performance of the debutante and her companion, in the thrilling scene between the Duke and Duchess of Ferrara and the young Captain Gennaro, was lost to ...
— Edmond Dantes • Edmund Flagg
... that dances held today are somewhat more elaborate than those of three or four decades ago, possibly as a response to increasing awareness and pride in the fact of Indianness. Certainly every girl expects to have her dance, just as a debutante expects to have a coming-out party. When death in the family made it inadvisable to hold a dance on a girl's first menstrual period, everyone agreed that it was indeed a shame. The girl went through her four-day fast and a small party was held for ...
— Washo Religion • James F. Downs
... Hepplewhite. The chief reason for his niceness was his entire satisfaction with himself and the padded world in which he dwelt, where he was as protected from all shocking, rough or otherwise unpleasant things as a shrinking debutante from the coarse universe of fact. Being thus shielded from every annoyance and irritation by a host of sycophants he lived serenely in an atmosphere of unruffled calm, gazing down benignly and with a certain condescension from the rarefied altitude of his Fifth Avenue windows, ...
— Tutt and Mr. Tutt • Arthur Train
... this way it caught merely the persistent efforts of a beautiful debutante who had not yet felt the blight of Broadway to melt the cynicism of one who suffered it more and more acutely each moment. Her hand fluttered on his sleeve and her left eye continuously beguiled him from under the overhanging curl. As often as he thought it desirable he put the bored ...
— Merton of the Movies • Harry Leon Wilson
... Hildreth was easily my choice already ... Darrie was lovely, but talked like a debutante from morning ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp |
