"Tatterdemalion" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... playing the great lord during the week he had spent at Voiron, and had known how to command a certain deference and regard. That this tatterdemalion, with the haughty voice, should demand to see him at that hour of the night, with such scant unconcern of how far he might incommode the great Monsieur Rabecque, earned for him too a certain measure of regard, though still alloyed ...
— St. Martin's Summer • Rafael Sabatini
... writes a contemporary, "to see the great man tackle a tramp. Then he scented the battle from afar, bearing down on the enemy with a quivering nostril. If the nomad happened to be a gypsy he was courteously addressed. But were he a mere native tatterdemalion, inclined to be truculent, Borrow's coat was off in a moment, and the challenge to decide there and then who was the better man flung forth. I have never seen such challenges accepted, for Borrow was robust ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins
... Comte d'Esgrignon, cannot make his appearance at court like a tatterdemalion," he continued after a pause, marked by a sigh; "he must be equipped. Alas! for these two hundred years we have had no retainers. Ah! Chevalier, this demolition from top to bottom always brings me back to the first hammer stroke delivered by M. de Mirabeau. The one thing needful ...
— The Collection of Antiquities • Honore de Balzac
... to people in the carriages and on foot, inviting to drink, pretending themselves to be intoxicated, and spilling the beer or water on the right hand and left; crowds of castanet-players and dancers, in every variety of laughable, grotesque, and most frequently tatterdemalion costume, beating drums, and so on—making a horrible din. Sometimes, in the midst of all this wild confusion, a kind of French courtier would come mincing along, in old-fashioned costume, leading a lady, also in antique attire, and, gazing on the right hand and the left ...
— Celebrated Women Travellers of the Nineteenth Century • W. H. Davenport Adams
... likely tending some helpless tatterdemalion, and moving about like a clever nurse. He is strong—so strong. He pulled a man through a wave with one hand while he held the rigging with the other, and the man told me that it was enough to tear the strongest man ...
— A Dream of the North Sea • James Runciman
... his arrival, seemed in some confusion, as if a catastrophe had happened in the family; and the servants clustered together in the hall, and were unable, or perhaps not altogether anxious, to suppress their merriment at the tatterdemalion figure of the secretary. He passed them with as good an air of dignity as he could assume, and made directly for the boudoir. When he opened the door an astonishing and even menacing spectacle presented itself to his eyes; for he beheld the General ...
— New Arabian Nights • Robert Louis Stevenson
... thoroughfares that lead to the scene of the performance are blocked with carriages: lamp-posts and telegraph posts, to which eager spectators cling like monkeys, rise above the dense crowd; and, while a tatterdemalion band of the old style, in gaudy garb of vermilion and yellow, bangs and tootles away on drums and trumpets of an antique pattern, the procession of barefooted soldiers in brilliant uniforms steps briskly along to the lively strains of a modern military band ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... sigh now to think of the cheer which burst from that tatterdemalion crew. Who were they to fight the bone and sinew of the King's navy in a rotten ship of an age gone by? And who was he, that stood so straight upon the quarter-deck, to instil this scum with love and worship and fervour to blind ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... and I proposed that his friends should take you for a lodger. Instantly the Padre's face grew dark, as I had maliciously foreseen it would. It was out of the question, he said. Then let them starve, said I, for I have no sympathy with tatterdemalion pride. Thereupon we separated, not very content with one another; but yesterday, to my wonder, the Padre returned and made a submission: the difficulty, he said, he had found upon inquiry to be less than he had feared; ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume XXI • Robert Louis Stevenson |
