"Gentlewoman" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... mean little cabin on our coast some time ago while a trained nurse from New York washed a sick baby and taught the mother how to save the poor little mite's life. It was that gentlewoman's ministry for Jesus Christ. For the privilege she was paying her own expenses and receiving no salary. If ever I realized the Master standing by in my life it was then and there in the semi-darkness of that hut. That kind of ministry never fails to grip the laboring man. An hour later, ...
— What the Church Means to Me - A Frank Confession and a Friendly Estimate by an Insider • Wilfred T. Grenfell
... interest, and had no patience for any one who did, the two did not always see eye to eye. Perhaps if Maria had been more unbending, things might have turned out differently; but Methodism in its severest aspects was not more severe than Maria Farringdon. She was a thorough gentlewoman, and extremely clever; but tenderness was not counted among her excellencies. George would have been fond of almost any woman who was pretty enough to be loved and not clever enough to be feared; but his cousin ...
— The Farringdons • Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler
... genuine Russian gentlewoman of the olden times; she ought to have lived two centuries before, in the old Moscow days. She was very devout and emotional; she believed in fortune-telling, charms, dreams, and omens of every possible kind; she believed in the prophecies of crazy people, ...
— Fathers and Children • Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev
... and drew herself up unconsciously. "You do not understand, Rita," she said gravely. "This was her prince, the son of her sovereign; she was a simple Scottish gentlewoman. When he was flying for his life, she was able to befriend him, and to save his life at peril of her own; but when that was over, there was no more need of her, and she went back to her home. What should she have done in France, ...
— Three Margarets • Laura E. Richards
... then hath not his head well boiled, for his eyes are as red as a mazer made of an alder-tree. The thigh of this leveret is good for those that have the gout. To the purpose of the truel,—what is the reason that the thighs of a gentlewoman are always fresh and cool? This problem, said Gargantua, is neither in Aristotle, in Alexander Aphrodiseus, nor in Plutarch. There are three causes, said the monk, by which that place is naturally refreshed. Primo, because the water runs all along by ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... new extremity; the pains of child-bearing came upon her, before she could make any provision for her delivery, but providence interposed on their behalf at this time also: While she travailed in the night-season, and the good man knew not where to apply for a midwife, a gentlewoman came early in the morning riding to the door, and having sent her servant back with the horse, with orders when to return. She went in, and asked the maid of the house, How her mistress was, and desired access to her, which she obtained; she first ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie
... us'd to preach up before he was marry'd, that I you'd not forbear rubbing up the Memory of them. But he gave a very good-natur'd turn to his Change of Sentiments, by alleging that who ever brings a poor Gentlewoman into so solitary a place, from all her Friends and acquaintance, wou'd be ungrateful not to use her and all that belongs to her with ...
— Woman's Life in Colonial Days • Carl Holliday
... time, while pastor of the Hollis Street Church, and visited the Holy Land, in devout pilgrimage; and though he lost his first wife, the mother of all his children, and a most worthy gentlewoman, but the other day, and married another superior woman after a brief widowhood, his last days have been, I should say, most emphatically his best days; for he has lectured through the length and breadth of the land on Temperance, and, after enduring all ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 110, December, 1866 - A Magazine of Literature, Science, Art, and Politics • Various
... the rather presumed humbly to offer unto your Honour the dedication of this little poeme, for that the noble and vertuous gentlewoman of whom it is written was by match neere alied, and in affection greatly devoted, unto your Ladiship. The occasion why I wrote the same was as well the great good fame which I heard of her deceassed, as the particular goodwill which I bear unto her ...
— The Poetical Works of Edmund Spenser, Volume 5 • Edmund Spenser
... the second rate of even colonial gentility, however, bore away the prize of beauty and grace; for after all, the clothes, however elegant, that are not worn habitually, can only embarrass and cramp the native movements; and, as Mademoiselle Clairon remarks, "she who would act a gentlewoman in public, must be one in ...
— Journal of a Voyage to Brazil - And Residence There During Part of the Years 1821, 1822, 1823 • Maria Graham
... he said, with a bitter sneer. "As a gentleman, I am bound to let you play fast and loose with me to your heart's content. You have behaved very honourably to me, Miss Danton, and very much like a gentlewoman. Is it because you have been jilted yourself, that you want the pleasure of jilting another? It is hardly the thing to revenge Reginald ...
— Kate Danton, or, Captain Danton's Daughters - A Novel • May Agnes Fleming
... imposition.] I got in and stood by the two Queenes and the Duchesse of York, and just behind my Lady Castlemaine, whom I do heartily admire; and good sport to see how most that did give their ten pounds did go away with a pair of globes only for their lot, and one gentlewoman, one Mrs. Fish, with the only blanke. And one I staid to see draw a suit of hangings valued at 430l. and they say are well worth the money, or near it. One other suit there is better than that; but very many lots of three and four-score pounds. I observed ...
— The Diary of Samuel Pepys • Samuel Pepys
... sense of degradation and inferiority, and who gives evidence that he considers himself a man, and expects the treatment due to a man, will secure politeness and respect from every true gentleman and gentlewoman in the world. The man who shies, and suspects, and envies, and is full of petty jealousies, and is always afraid that he shall not get all that is due to him in the way of polite attention, and manifests a feeling of great uncertainty and ...
— Lessons in Life - A Series of Familiar Essays • Timothy Titcomb
... The wives, I have heard tell, were kindly to him, for he was a jocose carl; but the weans little respected his grey hairs, and used to jeer him as auld Father Paternoster, for even to the last he adhered to his beads. It was thought, however, by a certain pious protestant gentlewoman of Irvine, that before his death he got a cast of grace; for one day, when he had been carried over to beg in that town, she gave him a luggie of kail ower het, which he stirred with the end of the ebony crucifix at his girdle, thereby showing, as she said, ...
— Ringan Gilhaize - or The Covenanters • John Galt
... to Leonato. Beatrice, niece to Leonato. Margaret, gentlewoman attending on Hero. Ursula, gentlewoman attending ...
— Much Ado About Nothing • William Shakespeare [Knight edition]
... associations. Disposing amongst the boys the few shillings I had left in my pocket, I jumped on board the packet-ship Europe, without cross or coin, saving only a couple of luck-pennies, the one an American gold eagle, the present of an amiable gentlewoman; the other a crooked sixpence, suspended by a crimson ribbon, the offering of a fair "maid of the inn," given to me on the very eve of sailing-day with many kind wishes, all of which ...
— Impressions of America - During the years 1833, 1834 and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Tyrone Power
... profession with whom she had dealings. While recording her eccentricities, and conceding that occasionally her language was more forcible and idiomatic than tasteful or refined, Dibdin hastens to add that "she owned an excellent heart, with much of the appearance and manners of a gentlewoman." Grimaldi was not less prompt in expressing his complete satisfaction in regard to his engagements with "the manageress." Dibdin wrote the epitaph inscribed above her grave in the cathedral yard of Rochester. A few lines may be extracted, but it must be said that the composition ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... for him to reason like this. The countess-dowager ensconced herself in a corner of the Hartledon state-pew, and from her blinking eyes looked out upon the Ashtons. Anne, with her once bright face looking rather wan, her modest demeanour; Mrs. Ashton, so essentially a gentlewoman; the doctor, sensible, clever, charitable, beyond all doubt a good man—a feeling came over the mind of the sometimes obtuse woman that of all the people before her they looked the least likely to enter on the sort of lawsuit spoken of by Maude. But never a doubt ...
— Elster's Folly • Mrs. Henry Wood
... middle-class gentlewoman who understands anything about cookery, or who really cares for it as a scientific art or domestic necessity, there are ten thousand who do not; yet our mothers and grandmothers were not ashamed ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous
... begged the visitor to be seated. "Lord, Madam," says she, "you catch us very unfit for company; but so kind a heart needs no excuse, and I will be candid with you. We are of birth and breeding like yourself." ('Twas a skilful compliment and the lady simpered.) "And therefore, as a gentlewoman of quality, you shall understand my grief when I present myself as my Lord Viscount Mayo's daughter, and add that I have not the wherewithal to clothe or feed these innocents! You are yourself too young to be a mother, Madam" (again the lady simpered), "yet will comprehend ...
— The Ladies - A Shining Constellation of Wit and Beauty • E. Barrington
... court, his excuses were accepted, and that tract granted him where afterwards stood Belles Demoiselles Plantation. A man cannot remember every thing! In a fit of forgetfulness he married a French gentlewoman, rich and beautiful, and "brought her out." However, "All's well that ends well;" a famine had been in the colony, and the Choctaw Comptesse had starved, leaving nought but a half-caste orphan family ...
— Old Creole Days • George Washington Cable
... amours, which certainly were neither suitable to the lustre of his actions nor the grandeur of his life; for Marion de Lorme, one of his mistresses, was little better than a common prostitute. Another of his concubines was Madame de Fruges, that old gentlewoman who was so often seen sauntering in the enclosure. The first used to come to his apartment in the daytime, and he went by night to visit the other, who was but the pitiful cast-off of Buckingham and Epienne. The two confidants introduced ...
— The Memoirs of Cardinal de Retz, Complete • Jean Francois Paul de Gondi, Cardinal de Retz
... which a certain number of men and women, members of the church of Hernhut, find shelter. Not that the inmates of these well-regulated abodes are all paupers. On the contrary, you meet in the Schweister-house persons belonging to every class of life, from the decayed or friendless gentlewoman down to the poor worn-out laundress; and the state of the Broder-house is, in every respect, the same. But one roof covers them all, and though their treatment beneath it may vary a little in regard to ...
— Germany, Bohemia, and Hungary, Visited in 1837. Vol. II • G. R. Gleig
... time horses were used as a mode of conveyance so much more than carriages that almost every gentlewoman had her own steed, and Miss Cochrane, being a skilful rider, was possessed of a well-managed palfrey, on whose speed and other good qualities she had been accustomed to depend. One morning after she had bidden her father farewell, long ere the inhabitants of Edinburgh were astir, ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various
... informal social gatherings she was always the life of the occasion, but never did her merriment get down to the level of silliness. Without a suspicion of prudishness there was always with her the natural dignity of the true-born gentlewoman. ...
— The Romance and Tragedy • William Ingraham Russell
... Duke of Leeds shall marry'd be To a fine young Lady of high Quality How happy will that Gentlewoman be In his ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... apprehensive that the commissioners would proceed. It seems they threatened to go on. I wrote them on the subject, but I have not heard the event. I am at this place, on my way to a superior court in Bergen. If possible, I shall wait on the good gentlewoman. At Bergen I shall inquire into the state of the matter. It will, indeed, turn up of course. You shall soon hear from me again. Adieu. May health and happiness ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis
... to do my critic the justice of remarking that what she said looks worse on paper than it sounded from her lips; for she was a gentlewoman, and the tone has much to do with the impression made by the intellectual contents of ...
— Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood • George MacDonald
... little woman in black, well past middle age. Her face and dress spoke of years of economy, even of privation, but her manner was plainly that of a woman of gentle breeding and former luxury. She was precisely of the type of decayed gentlewoman that one meets often in the city, especially at ...
— The Ear in the Wall • Arthur B. Reeve
... continued the old gentlewoman, you have till Friday to recruit your strength, and make the necessary dispositions for the interview. While the good old gentlewoman was telling her story, I felt my illness decrease, or rather, by the time she had done, I found myself perfectly well. ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Volume 1 • Anonymous
... It is a pleasure to me to think that Roger and Colin came together apropos of the boy's thoughtful generosity towards Miss MacKelpie. The old soldier will be a good friend to him, or I am much mistaken. With an old lawyer like me, and an old soldier like him, and a real old gentlewoman like Miss MacKelpie, who loves the very ground he walks on, to look after him, together with all his own fine qualities and his marvellous experience of the world, and the gigantic wealth that will surely be his, that young ...
— The Lady of the Shroud • Bram Stoker
... fine company! Oh lord! I'll try this door (door in the back scene) and I should be half afraid she kept out of the way because she was asham'd of me, only I know aunt has no pride—not a bit of the gentlewoman about her. ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 6, June 1810 • Various
... working-day and Monday the holyday of preachers. It happened that Anno Dom. 1640, Jan. 23, crossing Humber in a Barrow boat, the same was sandwarpt, and he was drowned therein (with Mrs. Skinner, daughter to Sir Edward Coke, a very religious gentlewoman) by the carelessness, not to say drunkenness of the boatmen, to the great grief of all good men. His excellent comment upon St. Peter is daily desired and expected, if the envy and covetousness of private persons for their own use deprive not the ...
— Andrew Marvell • Augustine Birrell
... the vengeance which it communicates. We mentioned the attendant figure—not that he is conscious of her presence. She is mysterious, veiled, a masked mystery—a walking tale of plague, woe, and desolation—a wandering, lonely, decayed gentlewoman: we read her history in her look, and in her walk. Her relations have all been smitten, swept away by the pestilence; her mind is made callous by utter misery; she wanders about careless, without any motive; a childish curiosity may be her pleasure, any incident to divert thoughts that make ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 334, August 1843 • Various
... "improper" birth. Anne was the daughter of Anne Hyde, a simple gentlewoman, legitimately, but vexatiously, married by James II. when Duke of York. Anne, having this inferior blood in her veins, felt herself but half royal, and Josiana, having come into the world quite irregularly, drew closer attention to the incorrectness, ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... widow, when she is noe longer soe young and fair as she was a score of years ago, we know what that's a sign of. And when an Ipswich butcher's son takes on him the state of my lord pope, we know what that's a sign of. Nay, if a young gentlewoman become dainty at her sizes, and sluttish in her apparel, we ... as I live, here comes John Heron with a ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various
... a waitress, but I never have done general housework," she answered with the voice of a gentlewoman, which somehow angered the hawk, who had trained herself to get the advantage over people and keep it or ...
— The Mystery of Mary • Grace Livingston Hill
... discovers that the succession of the legitimate children 'is ordered by reason, and is the will of heaven from eternity.' Cardinal Ippolito de' Medici founded his claim to the lordship of Florence on the fact that he was perhaps the fruit of a lawful marriage, and at all events son of a gentlewoman, and not, like Duke Alessandro, of a servant girl. At this time began those morganatic marriages of affection which in the fifteenth century, on grounds either of policy or morality, would have had no meaning ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt
... small charge, sir; I thank God my father left me wherewithal: if it please you, sir, I have a great mind to this gentlewoman here, ...
— The London Prodigal • William Shakespeare [Apocrypha]
... "My dear boy, of course I have!" (She wiped away a few tears with a gentlewoman handkerchief of lace and thin linen. Carl crossed the room and kissed her pale-veined, silvery old hand. Abashed, he subsided on the couch, and, trying to look as ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... mother's income. I owe everything to her care of me. Edith, in dressing-jacket and petticoat, comes in through the tower, swiftly and determinedly, pamphlet in hand, principles up in arms, more of a bishop than her father, yet as much a gentlewoman as her mother. She is the typical spoilt child of a clerical household: almost as terrible a product as the typical spoilt child of a Bohemian household: that is, all her childish affectations of ...
— Getting Married • George Bernard Shaw
... all," Imogen thought, summing it up in terms at once generous and apt, "she has behaved like the gentlewoman that she is. With all her littlenesses, all her lacks, mama is essentially that." And the sweetest moments of self-justification were those in which her heart really ached a little for "poor mama," moments in which she wondered whether the love that had come to her, ...
— A Fountain Sealed • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... do?—and why don't you speak to your old friend? You charming rogue, you know I remember you no bigger than your fan. And what mischief have you been about—eh? What mischief have you been about, I say, young gentlewoman? Turning all the pretty fellows' heads, I warrant you—eh!—turning their heads?' And he used to talk this sort of talk very slowly, and to hold their hands all the while, and even after this talk was exhausted, and grin sleepily, and wag his head, looking with a glittering, unpleasant ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... landlord into all manner of outlays for damp walls, cold bathrooms, and other like matters: I have furthermore bought at least three hundred and twenty-seven household utensils which suddenly came to be absolutely necessary to our existence: I have moreover hired a colored gentlewoman who is willing to wear out my carpets, burn out my range, freeze out my water-pipes, and be generally useful: I have also moved my family into our new home, have had a Xmas tree for the youngsters, have ...
— Sidney Lanier • Edwin Mims
... Prynne (Hester). Handsome, haughty gentlewoman of English birth, married to a deformed scholar, whom she does not love. She comes alone to Boston, meets Arthur Dimmesdale, a young clergyman, and becomes his wife in all except in name. When her child is born she is condemned to stand in the pillory, holding it in her arms, to be reprimanded ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... gentlewoman was now so great that she was unable to articulate; and when her fury reached the most impotent stage, ...
— The Four Canadian Highwaymen • Joseph Edmund Collins
... at the "Green Man" just before journeying with Dr. Johnson to Scotland, and was greatly pleased by the manners of the landlady, for he described her as a "mighty civil gentlewoman" who curtseyed very low as she gave him an engraving of the sign of the house, under which she had written a polite note asking for a recommendation of the inn to his "extensive acquaintance, and her most grateful thanks for his patronage and her ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... with such an unexpected Repulse, said he, from a capricious Court-Lady, I am determin'd to marry some substantial Citizen's Daughter. He pitch'd accordingly upon Azora, a young Gentlewoman extremely well-bred, an excellent Oeconomist, and one, whose ...
— Zadig - Or, The Book of Fate • Voltaire
... her down to the yaird and cutts at the root of a tree, making signs that it would fall and kill her. That not being understood by her or any of them, she takes the journey—the dumb lass holding her to stay. When the young gentlewoman is there at Hamilton, a few days after, her sister and she goes forth to walk in the park, and in their walking they both come under a tree. In that very instant they come under it, they hear it shaking ...
— Folk Lore - Superstitious Beliefs in the West of Scotland within This Century • James Napier
... sung. After supper each one could occupy himself as he wished, indoors or walking abroad, or "passing the time with good discourse." At eight o'clock there was more singing to the organ, followed by prayers, and then the children, after asking the "old gentlewoman's" blessing, ...
— Little Gidding and its inmates in the Time of King Charles I. - with an account of the Harmonies • J. E. Acland
... went in the country, that he had been heard to say while they were quarrelling, 'Why can't you be quiet, there's none so many of you.' Benoni, or the child of sorrow, I knew when I was a school-boy. His mother had been deserted by a gentleman in the neighbourhood, she herself being a gentlewoman by birth. The circumstances of her story were told me by my dear old dame, Ann Tyson, who was her confidante. The lady died broken-hearted. In the woods of Alfoxden I used to take great delight in noticing the habits, tricks, and physiognomy of asses; and I have no doubt that I was ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... repute as a maker of verses, and a liberality that led him to assist his gifted son in following his bent. From his father Robert inherited his literary tastes and his vigorous health; in his father he found a critic and companion. His mother was described by Carlyle as a type of the true Scotch gentlewoman. Her "fathomless charity," her love of music, and her deep religious feeling reappear in ...
— Browning's Shorter Poems • Robert Browning
... sir," she spoke with frigid dignity, "to tell me that you are some day perchance to be my husband. The fulfilment lies with the gods. But to-day the strategus Democrates knows our customs too well to thrust himself upon an Attic gentlewoman who finds herself alone ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... veneer, and the other has no refinement at all. And as with the world, so with the stage. In the middle class are found the truer gentlewomen. Women of the drama must of necessity be gentlewomen, the refinement must be innate, or they would fail utterly. An actress who is a gentlewoman can with her art stoop to portray sin, but an actress who is a common woman cannot rise to portray a refinement of which her coarse nature has no conception. Mrs. Kendal a woman who is as the wife of Caesar, can become a "Second Mrs. Tanguery" before the footlights. But Lizzie Annadale's ...
— Volume 10 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... extremity the poor young woman was reduced; how her mistress was starved to death, and died on board that unhappy ship we met at sea, and how the whole ship's company was reduced to the last extremity. The gentlewoman, and her son, and this maid, were first hardly used as to provisions, and at last totally neglected and starved—that is to say, brought to the last extremity of hunger. One day, being discoursing with her on the ...
— The Further Adventures of Robinson Crusoe • Daniel Defoe
... seated but a short time when another door opened, and a comely gentlewoman entered, ushered by a little Indian girl. The age of the lady appeared to be about the same as that of the knight, and, to judge from her complexion, she was not of English extraction. Her features, though ...
— The Knight of the Golden Melice - A Historical Romance • John Turvill Adams
... loveliness of the girls of Cork. There is a graceful charm about them before which the most inveterate bachelor succumbs. The accents of the Siren singers were never so insinuating and caressing as the Munster brogue as it slips off the tongue of a gentlewoman. Blue eyes predominate, but are excelled in lustre by what Froude has been pleased to call "the cold grey eyes of the dark Celt of the south of Ireland." Edmund Spencer, when he was not busy "undertaking" Rapparees, or smoking Raleigh's ...
— The Sunny Side of Ireland - How to see it by the Great Southern and Western Railway • John O'Mahony and R. Lloyd Praeger
... killed, we find none of those appear who were the likeliest in the world to be alarmed; and the noise of swords is made to draw only two poor women thither, who were most certain to run away from it. Upon Lucia and Marcia's coming in, Lucia appears in all the symptoms of an hysterical gentlewoman:— ...
— Lives of the Poets: Addison, Savage, and Swift • Samuel Johnson
... neighbourhood. She was in want of a lady's-maid, and it occurred to the housekeeper that Margaret might suit her. This was not quite what her parents would have chosen, but they allowed her to go and see the lady. Margaret was delighted with the benevolent-looking gentlewoman; and she, on her part, was quite charmed with Margaret. It was true she knew nothing of the duties of the office; but the present maid, who was leaving on the best of terms, would soon initiate her into its mysteries. And David and Janet ...
— David Elginbrod • George MacDonald
... prunella waist, the skirt shot in colors and the kerchief on the head, which formed the Norman costume of the women seen through the cottage doors. Her silk stockings and buckled slippers marked a desire to be the gentlewoman. Her dark eyes struck one as clever. Her first husband had been the butler of the Marquis de Beauharnois when that nobleman was Governor of Canada, and she had never ceased to look back upon the recollections of high life stored away in those ...
— The False Chevalier - or, The Lifeguard of Marie Antoinette • William Douw Lighthall
... said Miss Spight—she didn't say when she was "young," mark you—"no young gentlewoman's education would have been thought complete without a course of the best poets, such as ...
— She and I, Volume 1 • John Conroy Hutcheson
... wife of Governor Bradstreet, with her eight children, had found time for study and writing, and about 1650 had a volume of verse published in London entitled "The Tenth Muse. Several poems compiled with a great variety of wit and learning. By an American Gentlewoman." And she makes ...
— A Little Girl in Old Boston • Amanda Millie Douglas
... interrogating him. Was she there to-day? Everything spoke mutely of her, the wall-paper she had prized for its ancient quaintness, the furniture in the lines of grace she loved. At that desk she had sat, slender figure of the gentlewoman of a time older than her own. Was her presence so etched in impalpable tracery on the air that he ought to feel it? Was she aching with defeated hopes because she might almost be expecting him, not ...
— Old Crow • Alice Brown
... often gave her cause; and if, until the great repentance, she thought more lightly of "spouse-breach" than Lancelot did, that is not uncharacteristic of women.[38] In fact, she is a very perfect (not of course in the moral sense) gentlewoman. She is at once popular with the knights, and loses that popularity rather by Lancelot's fault than by her own, while Gawain, who remains faithful to her to the bitter end, or at least till the luckless slaughter of his brethren, declares at the beginning that she is the fairest ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... her youth, might have sat to an illustrator of Scott or Bulwer. Even now you could see she had come as near being romantically beautiful as was consistently proper for such a timid, gentle little gentlewoman as she was. Reduced, by her husband's insolvency (coincident with his demise) to "keeping boarders," she did it gracefully, as if the urgency thereto were only a spirit of quiet hospitality. It should be added in haste that she ...
— Beasley's Christmas Party • Booth Tarkington
... suffering the death to which she was sentenced. She sent her last message to the king, and acknowledged the obligations which she owed him, in thus uniformly continuing his endeavors for her advancement: from a private gentlewoman, she said, he had first made her a marchioness, then a queen, and now, since he could raise her no higher in this world, he was sending her to be a saint in heaven. She then renewed the protestations of her innocence, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part C. - From Henry VII. to Mary • David Hume
... question happened to be a gentlewoman—descended from gentlewomen—and after Dashboard's ironical introduction, in which the Man from Solano was not spared, she comprehended the situation instantly. To Dashboard's surprise she drew a chair to her side, made the Man from Solano sit ...
— Drift from Two Shores • Bret Harte
... in the house, little Neddy, the son of Benjamin Hetfalusy's daughter, the son of that once so haughty gentlewoman, ...
— The Day of Wrath • Maurus Jokai
... put upon the weak and credulous part of Mankind during the Drawing of the late State-Lottery by letting out what were called Horses and Chances to Women and Children, are wonderful. There was a Gentlewoman, not far from St. Dunstan's Church in Fleet-Street, who having the Misfortune to fall in with the Opinion of many, that the Tickets would still come down to Par, had therefore neglected to provide ...
— The Tricks of the Town: or, Ways and Means of getting Money • John Thomson
... everything, but he could not look her in the face or answer readily when she spoke. This man, so debonair and masterful among his fellows, was put all out of countenance by a wearied girl. I do not suppose he had spoken to a gentlewoman for ...
— Salute to Adventurers • John Buchan
... replied; "but it is you, you vile seducer of youth, who lead me into such follies. But I will be on my guard against my own weakness. I do not well know if the Wandering Jew is supposed to have a wife, but I should be sorry a decent middle-aged Scottish gentlewoman should be suspected of identity ...
— Chronicles of the Canongate • Sir Walter Scott
... all one; I received not one farthing of assistance from anybody, was hardly asked to sit down at the two sisters' houses, nor offered to eat or drink at two more near relations'. The fifth, an ancient gentlewoman, aunt-in-law to my husband, a widow, and the least able also of any of the rest, did, indeed, ask me to sit down, gave me a dinner, and refreshed me with a kinder treatment than any of the rest, but added the melancholy part, viz., that she would have helped ...
— The Fortunate Mistress (Parts 1 and 2) • Daniel Defoe
... of Elizabeth's fellow-workers were born labour serfs; plain, morose girls, but most of them corresponded to what the nineteenth century would have called a "reduced" gentlewoman. But the ideal of what constituted a gentlewoman had altered: the faint, faded, negative virtue, the modulated voice and restrained gesture of the old-fashioned gentlewoman had vanished from the earth. Most of her companions showed ...
— Tales of Space and Time • Herbert George Wells
... maid; beau, belle; monk, nun; gander, goose; administrator, administratrix; baron, baroness; count, countess; czar, czarina; don, donna; boy, girl; drake, duck; lord, lady; nephew, niece; landlord, landlady; gentleman, gentlewoman; peacock, peahen; duke, duchess; hero, heroine; host, hostess; Jew, Jewess; man-servant, maid-servant; sir, madam; wizard, witch; marquis, marchioness; widow, widower; heir, ...
— Graded Lessons in English • Alonzo Reed and Brainerd Kellogg
... them, to take off their lady-major uniforms, stop driving tractors and wearing overalls, and with the precious knowledge of the experience they would evolve quite a new-old standard, as charming as lavender and lace and as old as Time—the gentlewoman! They would no longer accentuate their ugliness with that unlovely honesty of the feminist which has been quite as distressing as the impossible Victorian lack of honesty and everlasting concealment of vital things. They would no longer be feminists or ladies, but ...
— The Gorgeous Girl • Nalbro Bartley
... coffee time now. The soldiers were lingering politely about with their tin cups in hand—not too expectantly, so as to assure the ladies that if by any chance there was no coffee they would not be disappointed. The gentlewoman in attendance had recently come from a canteen near the front where soup is made and often eight thousand bowls of it served in a day. The skin of her arms and hands is, I fear, permanently unlovely from the ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy
... replied her son, "I consider your expression of the least ceremonious: Miss Home I should certainly have said, in venturing to speak of the gentlewoman to whom ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... Hither came Cyril, and yawning 'O hard task,' he cried; 'No fighting shadows here! I forced a way Through opposition crabbed and gnarled. Better to clear prime forests, heave and thump A league of street in summer solstice down, Than hammer at this reverend gentlewoman. I knocked and, bidden, entered; found her there At point to move, and settled in her eyes The green malignant light of coming storm. Sir, I was courteous, every phrase well-oiled, As man's could be; yet maiden-meek I prayed Concealment: she demanded who we ...
— The Princess • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... and Lady Geraldine, whom he pronounces to be perfect women of fashion, and says they are in high repute in the equerry's room at Court. He was quite indignant against certain pretenders to fashion. I told him the remark of a friend of ours, that a gentleman or gentlewoman cannot be made under two generations. "In less than five, madam, I think it scarcely ...
— The Life And Letters Of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... deficient in justice, but do not show why. The deficiency is to be explained only in the super- abundance of emotional life. This superabundance clarifies a number of facts of their daily routine. We have, of course, to make a distinction between the feeling of a gentlewoman, of a peasant woman, and of the innumerable grades between the two, but this distinction is not essential. Both noble and proletarian are equally unjust, but the rich emotion restores a thousand ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... I'll make her the best husband in the world, and Lady O'Trigger into the bargain!—But we must get the old gentlewoman's ...
— The Rivals - A Comedy • Richard Brinsley Sheridan
... by doing every thing throughout the day with a jerk and a toss.—Dancing, unless it be done quietly and gracefully, without the fatal results of a shining face, and red neck and arms, it is far better to forbear altogether, it being a very superfluous quality in a gentlewoman; whereas to please by all honest means is her proper calling and occupation. A high degree of positive grace is very rare, especially in northern climates, where the form is degraded and spoiled by ligatures and by cold; but every woman may attain to negative ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 10, No. 274, Saturday, September 22, 1827 • Various
... granted; and the valet mounts the dickey— That gentleman of lords and gentlemen; Also my lady's gentlewoman, tricky, Trick'd out, but modest more than poet's pen Can paint,—'Cosi viaggino i Ricchi!' (Excuse a foreign slipslop now and then, If but to show I 've travell'd; and what 's travel, Unless it teaches ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... German manners might shock the sensitive nerves of the Bath aristocrats, she took two lessons a week for a whole twelvemonth (she tells us in her delightfully straightforward fashion) "from Miss Fleming, the celebrated dancing mistress, to drill me for a gentlewoman." Poor Carolina, there she was mistaken: Miss Fleming could make her into no gentlewoman, for she was born one already, and nothing proves it more than the perfect absence of false shame with which in her memoirs she tells us all these graphic little details of ...
— Biographies of Working Men • Grant Allen
... Inverness to Moy, Mackenzie, who had been advised of Huntly's intentions, despatched a messenger - John Mackenzie of Kinnock - to Inverness, to ask his Lordship to be as favourable as possible to his sister, Mackintosh of Mackintosh's wife, and to treat her as a gentlewoman ought to be treated when he came to Moy, and that he (Colin) would consider it as an act of personal courtesy to himself. The messenger delivered his message, to which Huntly replied, that if it were his good fortune, as he doubted not it would be, to apprehend her ...
— History Of The Mackenzies • Alexander Mackenzie
... to kiss the white and delicate hand of the gentlewoman who sends her boy to the war, for its owner knows as well as I do (or ought to) all that is involved in this colossal struggle. But to the toil-worn, coarse-handed mother I go on bended knees; nothing intellectual comes ...
— The Red Planet • William J. Locke
... aloof smile. Somewhere was the impression of a gentlewoman. She did not mean to be abrupt. She was ...
— The Wind Bloweth • Brian Oswald Donn-Byrne
... affected me to the Quick, to have seen a learned Divine, after a tedious and painful Free-School Institution, and expensive University Education, struggling, upon a poor Pension or Salary of Forty Pounds a Year, to maintain an honest Gentlewoman, Children, and Servants, (and really with some Decency of Hospitality) sedulously discharging, at the same Time, the different Duties of the pastoral Function; when a foreign Fidler shall run away with tripple ...
— An Essay on the Antient and Modern State of Ireland • Henry Brooke
... to offend one gentleman by refusing to dance with him, and then accepting the offer of another. Such things, done by frivolous girls, injure a young man's feelings unnecessarily, and prove that the young lady has not had the training of a gentlewoman. A young man should not forget if he has asked a young lady for the german. He must send her a bouquet, and be on hand to dance with her. If kept away by sickness, or a death in his family, he must send her a note before ...
— Manners and Social Usages • Mrs. John M. E. W. Sherwood
... subdeacon, and as some write, he was bishop of Winchester: but howsoeuer the matter stood, or whether he was or not, sure it is, that shortlie after he was absolued of his vowes by authoritie of pope Leo, and then maried a proper gentlewoman named Osburga, which was his butlers daughter. He was of nature courteous, and rather desirous to liue in quiet rest, than to be troubled with the gouernment of [Sidenote: Wil. Malm.] manie countries, so that contenting himselfe with the kingdome of Westsaxons, he permitted his brother Adelstan ...
— Chronicles (1 of 6): The Historie of England (6 of 8) - The Sixt Booke of the Historie of England • Raphael Holinshed
... snow and the low arch of dun vapor—there was the stifling oppression of that gentlewoman's world, where everything was done for her and none asked for her aid—where the sense of connection with a manifold pregnant existence had to be kept up painfully as an inward vision, instead of coming from without in claims that would have shaped her ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... home is friendly to that Quietness which is the "work of righteousness, and its effect" also. She is the true gentlewoman, who nurtures most faithfully in herself the calm virtues of the domestic walk. Heaven is a tranquil abode; let the soul be attuned for its harmonies by the quiet measures ...
— The Young Maiden • A. B. (Artemas Bowers) Muzzey
... "There was a gentlewoman at my house on a visit, and I asked her if she had got the sum of twenty pounds in her pocket, telling her at the same time how much I wanted it. She told me she had not; if she had, I should have it. A few hours after, the same woman was coming into my study, but ...
— The Wonders of Prayer - A Record of Well Authenticated and Wonderful Answers to Prayer • Various
... the most of knowing her—it was all sufficient, even in the absence of other reasons, to deter her from undertaking the journey. But in the party proposed by the Duke it was all very different. He was a gentleman, besides being a peer, and he was an old friend. His sister was a kind-hearted gentlewoman of narrow views but broad humanity; and not least, the yacht was sure to be perfection, and she would be the honoured guest. She would be sorry to leave Baden for some reasons; she liked Claudius very much, and he made her feel that she was leading an intellectual life. ...
— Doctor Claudius, A True Story • F. Marion Crawford
... on, without bit or bridle, while vindicating her injured honor from this foul aspersion, quite forgetting her own theory in the redundancy of her practice! There never was, by her own account, such a discreet, amiable, well-spoken, benevolent, and virtuous gentlewoman! And how the cruel Captain continued to laugh at, and quiz, and draw her out: until Juliet, in order to cause a diversion in her aunt's favor, pinched her favorite black cat's ear. But this stratagem ...
— Mark Hurdlestone - Or, The Two Brothers • Susanna Moodie
... sooner saw, but believing she had cast it up, she presently found herself eased of her pain. I myself knew a gentleman, who having treated a large company at his house, three or four days after bragged in jest (for there was no such thing), that he had made them eat of a baked cat; at which, a young gentlewoman, who had been at the feast, took such a horror, that falling into a violent vomiting and fever, there was no possible means to save her. Even brute beasts are subject to the force of imagination ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... of that numerous class of females, whose society can raise no other emotion than surprise at there being any men in the world who could like them well enough to marry them. She had neither beauty, genius, accomplishment, nor manner. The air of a gentlewoman, a great deal of quiet, inactive good temper, and a trifling turn of mind were all that could account for her being the choice of a sensible, intelligent man like Mr. Allen. In one respect she was admirably fitted to introduce ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... was a respectable gentlewoman like personage of about fifty-four, of a grave, authoritative and somewhat severe aspect; but with the remains of very extraordinary personal beauty which she had once possessed in an eminent degree. She was somewhat above the middle size, of an erect, firm, full figure, her hair now ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various
... and I drew up a chair and sat by the crib, watching the infant go back to sleep. I was glad to be alone, to have a chance to get myself together. But suddenly I heard a rustle of skirts in the doorway behind me, and turned and saw a white-clad figure; an elderly gentlewoman, slender and fragile, grey-haired and rather pale, wearing a ...
— Sylvia's Marriage • Upton Sinclair
... our offices were thronged with clients of all sexes, ages, conditions, and nationalities. The pickpocket on his way out elbowed the gentlewoman who had an erring son and sought our aid to restore him to grace. The politician and the actress, the polite burglar and the Wall Street schemer, the aggrieved wife and stout old clubman who was "being annoyed," each awaited ...
— The Confessions of Artemas Quibble • Arthur Train
... voice of another minister of the gospel while she was asserting the religious character of the Temperance Reform! Reverend for what? For his charity; manifested by low cries and insulting gestures, to a gentlewoman who stood there firm yet meek, before him! Strange that he, of all, should thus seek a bad eminence in outraging the decencies of social life; for unless report is false, John Chambers owes whatever position he may have to woman. ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... said. "You who turn to the world the frozen mask of a Union Street boarding-house landlady, who are a gentlewoman by every instinct and training, and a girl at heart? Who ...
— The Case of Jennie Brice • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... salute, little impressed with the honour done her, but recognizing that she was in the presence of a gentlewoman. She took the laird's seat at his invitation, and, leaning forward, gazed wearily at ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... Sally, there must be something between you and the gentlewoman the name of which was on your tongue's end so often, while you were down in the fever; and I am glad to the heart that you have happened on her again so unexpectedly: though I can see no good ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... gentlemen," we must feel detestation for them. Juliet's nurse is not the only disloyal servant. Shylock's servant, Launcelot Gobbo, helps Jessica to deceive her father, and Margaret, the Lady Hero's gentlewoman, brings about the disgrace of her mistress by fraud. Olivia's waiting-woman in "Twelfth Night" is honest enough, but she is none too modest in her language, but in this respect Dame Quickly in "Henry IV." can easily rival her. Peter Thump, when forced to a judicial combat ...
— Tolstoy on Shakespeare - A Critical Essay on Shakespeare • Leo Tolstoy
... note: The lord Edmond was the prince his brother.] and the lord Iohn Voisie, And doe you also faithfully loue your Lord and prince? Who answered both, Yea vndoubtedly. Then sayth he, take you away this gentlewoman and lady (meaning his wife) and let her not see her lord and husband, till such time as I will you thereunto. Whereupon they tooke her from the princes presence, crying out, and wringing her hands. Then sayd they vnto her, Be you contented good ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries - of the English Nation. v. 8 - Asia, Part I. • Richard Hakluyt
... conscious of the presence of visitors. Mrs. Hardy was sitting opposite his mother by the wide fireplace—the tall, white-haired gentlewoman in whose society he always felt himself transformed suddenly into a sort of saintly fellowship with the remarkably gentlemanly little boys whose acquaintance he made in the books provided by the chapel library. At the table sat Gable, the grey, chubby-faced third-class scholar whom Joel Ham had forgiven ...
— The Gold-Stealers - A Story of Waddy • Edward Dyson |
