"Soubrette" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... wildest dissipations have consisted in a surreptitious cigarette and glass of beer, neither of which he enjoyed, but both of which he pretended to revel in for the sake of being "mannish,"—will talk knowingly of "the latest soubrette," "a jolly little ballet-dancer," "the wicked ways of this world," and "the dens of iniquity in our large cities." Dickens tells us that "when Mr. Feeder spoke of the dark mysteries of London, and told Mr. Toots that he was going to observe it himself closely ...
— The Secret of a Happy Home (1896) • Marion Harland
... his brother, Baron Frederick, a not disagreeable sportsman and bon vivant; their sister, the Canoness, a not too theatrical old maid; and Frederick's daughter, Amelie, though pert and not too good-natured, the most human creature of them all, albeit with the humanities of a soubrette rather than of a great lady. But what shall one say of Albert of Rudolstadt, the heir, the betrothed of Amelie (this fact excusing much in her), and, when Consuelo has joined the circle at Porpora's recommendation ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... with the promptness of a soubrette after an "exit speech," and Win was left to sip her stale coffee or spend what remained of her "off time" in the rest room ...
— Winnie Childs - The Shop Girl • C. N. Williamson
... course of as many days, Mr. Esmond had to warn the royal young adventurer of some imprudence or some freedom. He received these remonstrances very testily, save perhaps in this affair of poor Lockwood's, when he deigned to burst out a-laughing, and said, "What! the soubrette has peached to the amoureux, and Crispin is angry, and Crispin has served, and Crispin has been a corporal, has he? Tell him we will reward his valor with a pair of colors, ...
— The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. • W. M. Thackeray
... taken to Theatricals. As we are only two women, my husband takes the part of a soubrette, and, in order to do that, he has shaved off his mustache. You cannot imagine, my dear Lucy, how it changes him! I no longer recognize him-by day or at night. If he did not let it grow again I think I should no longer love him; he looks so ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... Drew, then promise me That as soon as I am free I may sit in the first entrance As Lamb always lets me do. And watch you fume and fret While the innocent soubrette Takes the centre of the stage a— Way from ...
— Adventures and Letters • Richard Harding Davis
... To each of these worthy old people the artist had given a pair of hectic pink cheeks. Gran'ma Brewster especially, simpering down at you from the labyrinthian scrolls of her sextuple gold frame, was rouged like a soubrette and further embellished with a pair of gentian-blue eyes behind steel-bowed specs. Pinky—and in fact the entire Brewster household—had thought these massive atrocities the last word in artistic ornament. By the time she reached ...
— O Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1919 • Various
... chasing homeward to grab off a few wasteful hours of Slumber, he would see People of the Lower Classes going out to the Parks with Picnic Baskets, or lined up at the Vaudeville Palaces, or watching a hard-faced Soubrette demonstrate something in a ...
— Ade's Fables • George Ade
... "Cette soubrette, qui est la meme dont je me suis servi depuis pour tirer de la tour de Segovie le seigneur de Santillane, ayant envie de rendre service a Don Ignacio, engagea sa maitresse a demander pour lui un benefice an Duc de Lerme. Ce ministre ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 344, June, 1844 • Various
... unfortunate future father-in-law was done for. What a diabolical machine! What a terrible, swift, relentless answer had been returned when, out of space, this misguided gentleman had, by mistake, summoned his own affinity! And what an affinity! A saucy soubrette who might easily have just stepped from the ...
— The Green Mouse • Robert W. Chambers
... hush. One heard now! The pause was marked, intentional, before there came toward the footlights, in their most relentless glare, a girl with gladness and joy in her very walk. Neither a heavy German peasant girl nor a French soubrette. No dreary, timid, maedchen, but a glad young soul conscious of nothing save joy, with the beauty in her face of youth and power as she looked at the gay throng of the fair. Then, with the gaze of the entire house upon her, her eyes encountered those of Faust. There ...
— Katrine • Elinor Macartney Lane
... home: she hurries to her apartment, she falls in a sweet reverie, her head leans upon her hand. Her soubrette, a pretty and chattering Swiss, whose republican virtue had been corrupted by Paris, as Rome by Corinth, endeavours to divert Mer lady's ennui: she excruciates her beautiful mistress with tattle about ...
— The Young Duke • Benjamin Disraeli
... where they would, everybody talking to everybody, and vast familiarity established between perfect strangers under the guise of barter. The Queen's stall was held by Ladies Howe and Denbigh, with her three prettiest maids of honour, Miss Bagot dressed like a soubrette and looking like an angel. They sold all sorts of trash at enormous prices, and made, I believe, four or five thousand pounds. I went on Monday to hear Lushington speak in the cause of Swift and Kelly. He spoke for three hours—an excellent speech. I sat by Mr. Swift all the time; he is not ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. II • Charles C. F. Greville
... on my record, either. In my time I've stood up in the ring and put out my man for two thirds of the gate receipts. I ain't so proud of that now as I was once; but I ain't never had any call to be ashamed of the way I done it. What's more, no soubrette ever had a chance to call herself Mrs. Shorty McCabe, and I never let 'em put my name over the door of any ...
— Shorty McCabe • Sewell Ford
... before them; while she who had so well personated the part quietly resumed her seat without the least sign of merriment, as grave as possible. Most striking had been the transition from the calm, lady-like person, to the gay, loquacious soubrette; and not less so the sudden extinction of vivacity and resumption of well-bred decorum. This little scene for a few moments charmed everybody out of themselves, and gave a new ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie
... tower; and Lord Hildebrand may be seen any midnight in the great hall, playing football with his own head. So says Motley the jester, who affords the comedy element of the play, with the help of a fat friar who guzzles sack and stuffs venison pasties, and a soubrette ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... charms was too much even for his admirers. The mental juxtaposition of the seedy poet and the piquant actress in her frills and furbelows set the whole cafe rocking with laughter. Pinchas took it as a tribute to his ingenious method of drawing the soubrette-serpent's fangs. ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill
... Pritchards to become an actress. Moreover, she feared that Elsie's capability did not point to what is called the legitimate drama; it looked from the first as if she would make straight for vaudeville and, perhaps, never go further. After her training she might fill a soubrette's part acceptably for a few years, but Miss Pritchard sighed when she tried to look beyond that. To her it seemed like a limited outlook with a closed door blocking the way at a point long before the age when one's career should have ...
— Elsie Marley, Honey • Joslyn Gray
... call with alacrity. The man did not exist in Dawson who would not have been flattered by the notice of Lucille Arral, the singing soubrette of the tiny stock company that performed nightly ...
— Smoke Bellew • Jack London
... by the Imperial German Embassy in Washington to finance her artistic activities. So, you see, I was not far wrong in forwarding her divorce papers to Germany and refusing to transmit her newspaper correspondence to America. She was a paid soubrette ...
— Fighting For Peace • Henry Van Dyke
... car. Naturally. A glittering affair; in colour a bright blue, with pale blue leather straps and a great deal of gold fittings, and wire wheels. Eva said it was the kind of thing a soubrette would use, rather than an elderly business man. You saw him driving about in it, red-faced and rather awkward at the wheel. You saw him, too, in the Pompeian room at the Congress Hotel of a Saturday afternoon when doubtful and roving-eyed matrons in kolinsky capes ...
— Cheerful—By Request • Edna Ferber
... verses prefixed, in one of which Scudery bids the stars retire for the sun has risen. The scene is laid in Paris, and some presentation of contemporary manners is made in La Galerie du Palais and La Place Royale. It was something to replace the nurse of elder comedy by the soubrette. The attention of Richelieu was attracted to the new dramatic author; he was numbered among the five garcons poetes who worked upon the dramatic plans of the Cardinal; but he displeased his patron by his imaginative independence. ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... a soubrette trilling snatches of her topical song as she creamed off her make-up, came to them through the sulky gloom of the corridor. Behind the closed door of Miss De Voe's dressing room, the gabble of the pink satin ponies was like hash in the chopping. Overhead, moving scenery ...
— Defenders of Democracy • The Militia of Mercy
... a soubrette, whose chief stock-in-trade had been her large dark eyes and shapely legs, uttered a desperate scream, and threw herself at the ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... the footlights that have been burning all day in a singularly effective manner. Of the nineteen competitors, the deepest impression is made by M. Barral, who plays a scene from L'Avare magnificently; by Mademoiselle Carriere, who reveals herself as a sparkling and intelligent soubrette; and by Mademoiselle Sisos, a genuine comedienne, only sixteen years of age and as pretty as a peach. It is six o'clock when the last competitor has said his say, and then the jury retire to deliberate respecting the awards. What a flutter there must be among the young ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, October, 1877, Vol. XX. No. 118 • Various
... Russian officers. These soldiers from the Steppes. These bearded men. These Russians. They sat silent and watchful. They applauded little. The programme left them cold. The Trick Cyclist. The Dashing Soubrette and Idol of Belgravia. The Argumentative College Chums. The Swell Comedian. The Man with the Performing Canaries. None of these could rouse them. They were waiting. Waiting. Waiting tensely. Every muscle taut. Husbanding their strength. ...
— The Swoop! or How Clarence Saved England - A Tale of the Great Invasion • P. G. Wodehouse
... years was to take the roles of premiere amoureuse, of soubrette, and the travestis; Silvia, who later married Joseph Baletti, and performed for forty-two years the roles of second amoureuse; and Violette, the charming soubrette, with one or two others of less consequence.[58] The characters are those of the old commedia dell'arte. However, written plays had now begun to take the place of the improvisation of the ...
— A Selection from the Comedies of Marivaux • Pierre Carlet de Chamblain de Marivaux
... L3, 10s. a week. In a "boiled-down" version she played twice nightly for L5 a week, and found four dresses, two hats, an evening cloak, besides the shoes, stockings, gloves, etc., incidental to a well dressed part. Another soubrette on a salary of L2, 5s. paid her fare both on joining and leaving the company, and was obliged to provide two dresses, one evening dress and cloak, ...
— Women Workers in Seven Professions • Edith J. Morley
... of their scenes they had a soubrette called Flossie. The soldier that took this part was clever and made a fine appearing and chic girl. We immediately fell in love with her until two days after, while we were on a march, we passed Flossie with her ...
— Over The Top • Arthur Guy Empey
... Punch To roaring Richard with his camel-hunch; Adore its heroines, those immortal dames, Time's only rivals, whom he never tames, Whose youth, unchanging, lives while thrones decay (Age spares the Pyramids-and Dejazet); The saucy-aproned, razor-tongued soubrette, The blond-haired beauty with the eyes of jet, The gorgeous Beings whom the viewless wires Lift to the skies in strontian-crimsoned fires, And all the wealth of splendor that awaits The throng that enters ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... apartment. A few seconds elapsed, and then another and more imperious bell of less volume seemed to him a notification to the maid that her delay in opening the door was displeasing to her mistress. A moment later, a waiting-woman, of middle age, and too well trained to dress like a "soubrette" of comedy, opened the ...
— The Lesser Bourgeoisie • Honore de Balzac
... prima donna, an "American girl from Paris," as the Mexican papers had it, being brought in only as necessary adjuncts. Another important female part was taken by Albert Bazaine, who was turned into a superb soubrette. ...
— Maximilian in Mexico - A Woman's Reminiscences of the French Intervention 1862-1867 • Sara Yorke Stevenson
... spotless purity ablaze with the immortal fire of genius—has gone mad with joy over a dirty tale of bawdry that might have been better told by a cheap reporter bordering on the jimjams. Has the American nation suddenly declined into intellectual dotage— reached the bald-head and dizzy soubrette finale in the ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... Knickerbocker, Jr. The Bottle and the Bird The Man Who Worked with Dana on the "Sun" A Democratic Hymn The Blue and the Gray It is the Printer's Fault Summer Heat Plaint of the Missouri 'Coon in the Berlin Zoological Gardens The Bibliomaniac's Bride Ezra J. M'Manus to a Soubrette The Monstrous Pleasant Ballad of the Taylor Pup Long Meter To DeWitt Miller Francois Villon Lydia Dick The Tin Bank In New Orleans The Peter-Bird Dibdin's Ghost An Autumn Treasure-Trove When the Poet Came The Perpetual Wooing My Playmates Mediaeval Eventide Song Alaskan Balladry Armenian ...
— John Smith, U.S.A. • Eugene Field
... to 'take a hand.' Madame de Mourairef was graciously pleased to order her to do so. We shuffled, cut, and played; and when midnight came, and it was necessary to retire, I felt almost afraid to examine into my own heart, lest I might find that the soubrette appeared to me at least as high-bred as ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 435 - Volume 17, New Series, May 1, 1852 • Various |
