"Widowhood" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the change in him. Anne was recollecting that Colonel Musgrave had somewhat pointedly avoided her since her widowhood. He ...
— The Rivet in Grandfather's Neck - A Comedy of Limitations • James Branch Cabell
... last rite paid to the Seminole dead is at the end of four moons. At that time the relatives go to the To-hop-ki and cut from around it the overgrowing grass. A widow lives with disheveled hair for the first twelve moons of her widowhood. ...
— The Seminole Indians of Florida • Clay MacCauley
... only yet ascending the ladder; and, when he died, he had hardly begun to realise the golden prospects which he had seen before him. This had happened some fifteen years before our story commenced, so that the two girls hardly retained any memory of their father. For the first five years of her widowhood, Mrs Dale, who had never been a favourite of the squire's, lived with her two little girls in such modest way as her very limited means allowed. Old Mrs Dale, the squire's mother, then occupied the Small House. But when old Mrs Dale died, the squire offered the place rent-free to ...
— The Small House at Allington • Anthony Trollope
... wife and children to Him who had bestowed them, as intrusted blessings, which he had dearly valued, and now as tenderly regretted. Resolved to pass the rest of his days in widowhood, he made Mrs. Mellicent superintendant of his household and director of his daughter's feminine accomplishments. She also undertook to supply the place of Mrs. Beaumont in the parish, but in the task of managing the humours and improving the inclinations of the lower ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... beauty and the leader of fashion for years. Now that she is past fifty that character is no longer possible to her. But she might have assumed another—less showy, perhaps, but surely far more touching. With her whitening hairs she might have worthily worn the triple dignity of her widowhood, her maternity and her misfortune. She has chosen instead, with a weakness unworthy of the part that she has played on the wide stage of contemporary history, to clutch vainly after the fleeting shadow of her vanished charms. A head loaded with false yellow hair, a face covered with paint ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, August, 1878 • Various
... sitting bird of her eggs, or destroy her tender young, and she immediately sets out in quest of a male, who is no laggard when he hears her call. The same is true of ducks and other aquatic fowls. The propagating instinct is strong, and surmounts all ordinary difficulties. No doubt the widowhood I had caused in the case of the woodpeckers was of short duration, and chance brought, or the widow drummed up, some forlorn male, who was not dismayed by the prospect of having a large family of half grown birds on ...
— A Book of Natural History - Young Folks' Library Volume XIV. • Various
... the repose of the soul of her husband and the prosperity of her son, and asked permission to carry away two coffers with her clothes and ornaments, probably things which she had left in the castle before her widowhood, and that means of conveyance might be provided for these possessions to Leith, where she was to embark. This simple request was easily granted, and the two coffers carried out of the castle, and conveyed by "horss" to the ship in which she herself embarked with her ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... mentioned as ill,—the worthy soul's better feelings struggled up to the surface, and she grieved for the doomed invalid, until a tear or two came forth and found their way down a channel worn for them since the early days of her widowhood. ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... loved liberty, was not unprotected, and her late husband's sister—a Mrs. Tell—had lived with her all through the years of her widowhood. Mrs. Tell, too, was a rich widow, tall, and of imposing aspect, but easy-tempered and rather lazy. She was past sixty, and looked a majestic matron, with her white hair and lace cap. Katherine's whims did not annoy her in the least, and she had taken quite ...
— A Vanished Hand • Sarah Doudney
... but open in intimacy, in whom the qualities of administrator and politician overlay the detachment of sensitive reflection, she came to judge men and events by principles drawn from deep feelings and wide surveys; and in the long years of her widowhood, possessing still great natural vitality and vivacity of feeling, she continued open to the influences of an altered time, delighting and astonishing many who might have expected to find between her and them the ghostly barrier ...
— Lady John Russell • Desmond MacCarthy and Agatha Russell
... widow of the great and useless traveller, Comte de C——n, to whom his relatives pretend that she was never married. Upon his death-bed he acknowledged her, however, for his wife, and left her mistress of a fortune of three hundred thousand livres a year. The first four years of her widowhood she passed in lawsuits before the tribunals, where the plaintiffs could not prove that she was unmarried, nor she herself that she was married. But Madame Napoleon Bonaparte, for a small douceur, speaking in her favour, the consciences of the juries, ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... people alike for granted. But she had lived, and as an animal she was superb! I looked again into her healthy face and speaking eyes, with their bitter knowledge of good and evil, their scorn of scorn, their redeeming honesty and candour. The contrast was complete in every detail except the widowhood of both women; but I did not pursue it any farther; for once more there was but one woman in my thoughts, and she sat near me under a red parasol—clashing so humanly with the ...
— No Hero • E.W. Hornung
... sign was when Mrs. Barton—a widow of some sixty odd years, with some pretensions to breeding, but who had been virtually driven from several villages where she had located since her widowhood, owing to inaccuracy of speech, beside which the words of the Village Liar and the Emporium were quite harmless—contracted inflammatory rheumatism by chaperoning her daughters' shore party and first wetting her lower half in clamming and then the ...
— People of the Whirlpool • Mabel Osgood Wright
... my dear mother's health broke. She never recovered her terror and anxiety of those days which ended so fatally for me, then a bride scarce six months married, and died in my father's arms ere my own year of widowhood was over. ...
— The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. • W. M. Thackeray
... ruined her life and Herbert's, were now going to attack her son and rob him of his rights. They should not do it if she could help it. Never! Mary Vernon had been a high-spirited girl, and, although those who had only known her through her widowhood would have taken her for a gentle and quiet woman, whose thoughts were entirely wrapped up in her boy, the old spirit was alive yet, as with head thrown back, and an angry flush on her cheeks, she declared to herself that ...
— One of the 28th • G. A. Henty
... papers. Among the metrical gems is Conradin, a fine battle-piece, by Mr. Charles Swain; an Every-day Tale, by Montgomery—one of "the short and simple annals of the poor," written in behalf of a Society for relieving distressed females in the first month of their widowhood, to save their little households from being broken up before they can provide means for their future maintenance: and Far-off Visions, by Mary Howitt. The prose gem of the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, - Issue 573, October 27, 1832 • Various
... Towers, Frances told me, had been made during Mabel's year of widowhood abroad—an organ put into the big hall, the library made livable and re-catalogued—when it was permissible to suppose she had found her soul again and returned to her normal, healthy views of life, which included enjoyment and play, literature, music and the arts, without, however, ...
— The Damned • Algernon Blackwood
... unlucky, for she might not wed again so soon after her widowhood, and he was under orders for the war, and had no permission for such dalliance from his master, the King of Castille. So he sailed away towards Harfleur, after many protestations of affection on each side, during an eclipse of the sun which came ...
— The Story of Rouen • Sir Theodore Andrea Cook
... collection, which I have requested Mr. James, and other of my friends, to see safely brought from Burcote, and placed in the library. Sir Francis Vere hath sent me this year his accustomed annual gift of ten pounds. The Lady Mary Vere, wife to Sir Horace Vere, in the time of her widowhood (for so she is desired it should be recorded), being called Mrs. Hoby, of Hales, in Gloucestershire, hath given twenty pound. (He then enumerates about 15 other donations, and thus goes on:) Thus I thought meet to observe my yearly custom, in acquainting the University with the increase of their ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... married to a young man of the Ping family, whose name was Khang. By this marriage I became related to your excellent patron; but my husband died soon after our wedding, and I have chosen this solitary place to reside in during the period of my widowhood." ...
— Some Chinese Ghosts • Lafcadio Hearn
... hard-faced man and a decidedly attractive woman—brunette. There's a suggestion of repressed widowhood about her. It's the gown, probably. I am not yet in my dotage, and I had seen ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... Scorn, Despite Rush, Docility Rye-grass, Changeable Saffron, Shun Excess Sage, Domestic Virtue Sainfoin, Agitation St. John's Wort, Animosity Salvia, Blue, Wisdom Salvia, Red, Energy Saxifrage, Mossy, Affection Scabious, Unfortunate Love Scabious, Sweet, Widowhood Scarlet Lychnis, Brilliant Eye Shinus, Religious Enthusiasm Sensitive Plant, Sensitiveness Senvy, Indifference Shamrock, Light-heartedness Snakesfoot, Horror Snapdragon, "No." Snowball, Bound Snowdrop, Hope Sorrel, Wild, Wit Ill-timed Sorrel, ...
— Cole's Funny Picture Book No. 1 • Edward William Cole
... Grecian temple, according to the approved method of the time of Louis XIV. A statue of the wife of Coeur de Lion was once to be seen here, but has long disappeared. That princess resided in this part of Falaise, at one period of her widowhood, and contributed greatly to ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello
... no longer," she said, sternly, "you are no more my son than he was, if you can leave me, in my loneliness and widowhood, ...
— Under False Pretences - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... her family for two years after his death, and acting on the advice of her friends, she came back to this country bringing all her children with her. This involved her in years of struggle and anxiety to bring them up creditably, which she managed to do. During all these years of widowhood and stress she was mentally well, and latterly she described her life as a happy one surrounded as she was by an affectionate and well doing family. She had been brought up in a puritan household. Her father and her husband had been deeply and consistently religious though strict in their ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10
... made, else you might have fancied Mrs. Drabdump had always been a widow. Nature had given her that tall, spare form, and that pale, thin-lipped, elongated, hard-eyed visage, and that painfully precise hair, which are always associated with widowhood in low life. It is only in higher circles that women can lose their husbands and yet remain bewitching. The late Mr. Drabdump had scratched the base of his thumb with a rusty nail, and Mrs. Drabdump's foreboding that he would die of lockjaw had not prevented her wrestling day and night with ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... The world indeed, loves its own and treats them with consideration, especially in the matter of passing follies, and after it had been plain to society that Orsino had fallen under Maria Consuelo's charm, he had heard no more disagreeable remarks about her origin nor the circumstances of her widowhood. But he remembered what had been said before that, when he himself had listened indifferently enough, and he guessed that ill-natured people called her an adventuress or little better. If anything could have increased the suffering which this intuitive knowledge caused him, it was ...
— Don Orsino • F. Marion Crawford
... became a widow, I always saw her with her pale hue, as long as I had the honour of seeing her in France, and Scotland, where she had to go in eighteen months' time, to her very great regret, after her widowhood, to pacify her kingdom, greatly divided by religious troubles. Alas! she had neither the wish nor the will for it, and I have often heard her say so, with a fear of this journey like death; for she preferred a hundred times to dwell in France as a dowager ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... she was with those torturing reflections, and while the first wild burst of grief was yet rolling down her cheeks, she determined to begin her lone, young widowhood by instantly writing to him and bidding him hope. In this epistle, all the nobility of her true heart and nature blazed forth so transcendently, and with such fierce, womanly fervor, that the moment it reached the hands of the young soldier the light was re-kindled within him, and ...
— Ridgeway - An Historical Romance of the Fenian Invasion of Canada • Scian Dubh
... have expected it.' He was going to add, 'And is he dead?' but he checked himself. Her dress unmistakably suggested widowhood; and she had said she ...
— A Changed Man and Other Tales • Thomas Hardy
... Roehampton, who had the reputation of being somewhat difficult on this head, always accepted the invitations. The crowning social incident, however, was when Lord Roehampton opened his own house for the first time since his widowhood, and received the Neuchatels at a banquet not inferior to their own. This was a great triumph for Lady Montfort, who thought the end ...
— Endymion • Benjamin Disraeli
... ranks. They broke and fled in disorder, followed by the death-phalanx of the Carocium, who cut them down in multitudes, and drove them back in complete disorder and defeat. For two days the emperor was mourned as slain, his unhappy wife even assuming the robes of widowhood, when suddenly he reappeared, and all was joy again. He had not been seriously hurt in his fall, and had with a few friends escaped in the tumult of the defeat, and, under the protection of night, made his way with ...
— Historical Tales, Vol 5 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality, German • Charles Morris
... mourning for its dead; The streets were black with widowhood; While orphaned children begged for bread, And Rachel, for the brave and good, Mourned, ...
— The Mistress of the Manse • J. G. Holland
... whispered, "that Lucille is anxious to be won back? She loves intrigue, excitement, the sense of being concerned in important doings. Besides—you must have heard what they say about her—and Brott. Look at her now. She wears her grass widowhood lightly enough." ...
— The Yellow Crayon • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... for those provinces where cohabitation is delayed, these figures mean in other provinces a cruel wrong to the children of the weaker sex, a doubly cruel wrong when to premature marriage may be added girl widowhood. The Census Report declares that in the lower strata of Hindu society there has been a rapid extension of child marriage and prohibition of the marriage of widows within the last two or three generations, although at the low age of 10, fewer girls are reported married than ...
— New Ideas in India During the Nineteenth Century - A Study of Social, Political, and Religious Developments • John Morrison
... never ordinated two such dissimilar ideas. And why should you deplore your altered circumstances, my dear lady? Your widowhood, if I may take the liberty to speak on such a subject, is, though I suppose a sadness, not perhaps an unmixed evil. For though your pecuniary troubles have been discovered to the world and yourself by it, your happiness in marriage was, as you have confided to me, not great; and you are ...
— Two on a Tower • Thomas Hardy
... striven to extract from this accident something of the austerity of widowhood; but her mourning only made her deviation more public, she was a widow whose husband was awkwardly alive. She had not prowled about the Continent on the classic lines; she had come back to London to take her chance. But London would give her no chance, would have nothing ...
— The Chaperon • Henry James
... is worn for a year, during which modest women will not marry. Some tribes confine the symbol to widowhood, others extend it to all male relations; a strip of white cotton, or even a white fillet, instead of the usual blue cloth, is used by ...
— First footsteps in East Africa • Richard F. Burton
... Spain—the Isabella that made the voyages of Columbus possible—had another name, or not, we do not inquire. How many of us stop to think that the married name of the English Victoria—that great and good queen—was 'Victoria Wettin,' and that for the years of her widowhood she was in ...
— A Little Miss Nobody - Or, With the Girls of Pinewood Hall • Amy Bell Marlowe
... cold. The goddess who loves the fair young god, and mourns him with passionate grief, until her wailings and prayers recall him from his deathlike trance, is Nature herself, loving, bountiful, ever productive, but pale, and bare, and powerless in her widowhood, while the sun-god, the spring of life whence she draws her very being, lies captive in the bonds of their common foe, grim Winter, which is but a form of Death itself. Their reunion at the god's resurrection in spring is ...
— Chaldea - From the Earliest Times to the Rise of Assyria • Znade A. Ragozin
... easy life in double harness wi' Will Blanchard. But, as I used to say in my church-gwaine days, 'God tempers the wind to the shorn lamb.' Be it as 'twill, I dare say theer 's many peaceful years o' calm, black-wearin' widowhood afore 'e yet, for chaps like him do shorten theer days a deal by such a tearin', high-coloured, passionate way ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... tablet since the day the stonemasons had fixed it in place; and that was close upon eight years ago. On the morrow, her pious duty fulfilled, she had taken post for Plymouth, there to embark for America; and the intervening years had been lived in widowhood at Eagles until the outbreak of the Revolution had forced her, early in 1775, to take shelter in Boston, and in the late fall of the year to sail back to England. For Eagles, though unravaged, had passed into the hands of the "rebels"; and Ruth, though ...
— Lady Good-for-Nothing • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... It is possible that her thoughts were back with those persevering young aristocrats of her second widowhood. Certainly, if she had sometimes displayed a touch of the pirate in her dealings with man, man, it must be said in fairness, had not always shown his best ...
— The Prince and Betty - (American edition) • P. G. Wodehouse
... young woman, who is wet nurse to the mistress of the inn where I lodge, receives only twelve dollars a year, and pays ten for the nursing of her own child. The father had run away to get clear of the expense. There was something in this most painful state of widowhood which excited my compassion and led me to reflections on the instability of the most flattering plans of happiness, that were painful in the extreme, till I was ready to ask whether this world was not created to exhibit every possible combination ...
— Letters written during a short residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark • Mary Wollstonecraft
... be my share of love in this world, married so?" asked Vesta. "To love is the globe itself to a woman, her youth the mere atmosphere thereof, her widowhood the perfume of that extinguished star; and all my mind has been alert to discover the image I shall serve, the bright youth ready for me, looking on one after another to see if it might be he, and suddenly you hold between me and my faith a paper with my father's obligations, ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend
... irony of fate than to be absolutely convinced of the widowhood of her you love and to be unable, practically, to establish ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various
... prolonged widowhood of the mistress of Raynham. People were surprised to find that a woman in the golden prime of womanhood and beauty could be constant to the memory of a husband old enough to have been her father. But in due time society learned to accept the fact as a matter of course, and Lady Eversleigh ...
— Run to Earth - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... court of Rome with a violence that has never been surpassed. St. Francis so surely believed that the Church had become unfaithful to her mission that he could speak in his symbolic language of the widowhood of his Lady Poverty, who from Christ's time to his own had found no husband. How could he better have declared his ...
— Life of St. Francis of Assisi • Paul Sabatier
... they are seamen, and die abroad on board the merchants' ships they were employed in, or are cast away and drowned, or taken and die in slavery, their widows shall receive a pension during their widowhood. ...
— An Essay Upon Projects • Daniel Defoe
... And all the things that had been. She bow'd down And wept in secret; and the reapers reap'd, And the sun fell, and all the land was dark. Then Dora went to Mary's house, and stood Upon the threshold. Mary saw the boy Was not with Dora. She broke out in praise To God, that help'd her in her widowhood. And Dora said, "My uncle took the boy; But, Mary, let me live and work with you: He says that he will never see me more." Then answer'd Mary, "This shall never be, That thou shouldst take my trouble on thyself: And, now I think, he shall not have the boy, For ...
— Standard Selections • Various
... and, naturally enough, it set her weeping, for, she sobbed, it made her feel, for a minute, that she had lost her widowhood and that, after the shower, ...
— Humorous Ghost Stories • Dorothy Scarborough
... mourns her lord; And, annual marriage now no more renewed, The Bucentaur lies rotting unrestored, Neglected garment of her widowhood! St. Mark yet sees his lion where he stood Stand, but in mockery of his withered power, Over the proud place where an Emperor sued, And monarchs gazed and envied in the hour When Venice was a queen with an ...
— Childe Harold's Pilgrimage • Lord Byron
... her as in the play I saw when last I was in London, King Richard wooed the widow of him he had slain, following her husband's corse to the grave? Nay then, nay then, man, I meant it not awry. But to ask a woman within one week of her widowhood, ...
— Standish of Standish - A story of the Pilgrims • Jane G. Austin
... console her that the law didn't forgit her in her widowhood. No; the law is quite thoughtful of wimmen by spells. It sez it protects wimmen. And I spoze that in some mysterious way, too deep for wimmen to understand, it ...
— Samantha on the Woman Question • Marietta Holley
... to fascinate and reap adoration. To the lover whom she chose when she was five and twenty she remained faithful for more than fifteen years, as faithful as she might have been to a husband; and when he died her grief was intense, it was like real widowhood. Six months later, however, having met Count Gerard de Quinsac she had again been unable to resist her imperative need of adoration, and an intrigue ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... Isabella, silent and pale, shrouded in the sable robes of widowhood—that painful garb which, in its voiceless eloquence of desolation, ever calls for tears, more especially when it shrouds the young; her beautiful hair, save two thick braids, concealed under the linen coif—sat Marie, lovely indeed still, but ...
— The Vale of Cedars • Grace Aguilar
... has already been remarked, had much vivacity and sportive humour, with very engaging frankness of temper and manners. Early in her widowhood she was rallied in a large company upon Dr. Darwin's passion for her, and was asked what she would do with her captive philosopher. 'He is not very fond of churches, I believe,' said she, 'and even if he would go there for my sake, I shall scarcely follow ...
— Evolution, Old & New - Or, the Theories of Buffon, Dr. Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck, - as compared with that of Charles Darwin • Samuel Butler
... town school who were designing to enter the Church, receive them into her family amongst her own children, and when their courses were completed, bestir herself to procure them benefices—an indication of the possession of influence outside her own home. He goes on to say that when widowhood came to her, she refused to think of a second marriage, and almost rejoiced to be released from the bonds of matrimony, because she found herself free to practise her liberality. But we must not lay too much stress on these latter utterances. They ...
— The Age of Erasmus - Lectures Delivered in the Universities of Oxford and London • P. S. Allen
... circumstances the rejection of the beneficiary's claim on the ground stated is held, under present rulings of the Pension Bureau, to have been erroneous, and such claim can now be favorably adjudicated upon proof of continued widowhood of the applicant and the lack of other means of support than ...
— Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Volume 8, Section 2 (of 2): Grover Cleveland • Grover Cleveland
... the man she belonged to or the one she loved was about to die; whatever her widowhood might be, she felt that her mourning would be brief; young, beautiful, surrounded by all the privileges of rank and fortune, life was closing around her, and left but one pathway open, which was full of blood; she would have to bathe her feet ...
— Gerfaut, Complete • Charles de Bernard
... learnt, through a letter received that very day, that Mr. Bolster has led Miss Plank to the altar, or she has led him—it don't make much difference. Anyway, she has walked offen the Plank of widowhood, and settled down onto a Bolster ...
— Samantha at the World's Fair • Marietta Holley
... domesticities of her week-days, which on ceremonies and Sabbath was changed for a more solemn black. But in her wardrobe there were two such gowns, one of which was apparently blacker than the other, nearer to a guise of widowhood,—more fit, at any rate, for general funereal obsequies. There are women who seem always to be burying someone; and Mrs. Bolton, as she went forth to visit her daughter, was fit to bury any one short ...
— John Caldigate • Anthony Trollope
... for the sake of recommending that branch of education for our young females, as likely to be of more use to them and their children, in case of widowhood, than either music or dancing, by preserving them from losses by imposition of crafty men, and enabling them to continue, perhaps, a profitable mercantile house, with establish'd correspondence, till a son is grown up fit to undertake and go on with it, to the lasting ...
— The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin • Benjamin Franklin
... daughter, who had married Earl Gilbert, lived at Rufford in her widowhood. This lady inherited a considerable share of her mother's ambition and lack of scruple. In a quarrel with Sir Thomas Stanhope, a Nottinghamshire knight from whom are descended three earldoms, she dispatched a servant with ...
— The Dukeries • R. Murray Gilchrist
... more repining, more fault-finding than Leah. By sorrow and trial, Leah may have learned submission; and the dearest earthly hopes disappointed—all her affections as a wife crushed and despised—in her hour of grief, and in the desolation of a widowhood of hate, she may have sought and found that love which never faileth, which ...
— Notable Women of Olden Time • Anonymous
... so," said the boy,—"the uncommoner the better. In fact, I shouldn't call it a wedding at all. It seemed more like taking a first degree in widowhood." ...
— The Adventures of Captain Horn • Frank Richard Stockton
... red velvet bag. With the velvet gown enveloping the whole, it was conveyed to Lady Ralegh's house in a mourning coach which she had sent. It was embalmed; and she kept it ever by her for the twenty-nine years of her widowhood. Bishop Goodman of Gloucester, who, though King James's poor-spirited apologist, admired Ralegh, relates that he had seen and kissed it. On Lady Ralegh's death the charge of it descended to Carew Ralegh. It has been stated, and has been denied, that it was buried with him at ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing
... whole. If I had been a man in a novel I should of course have gone to the New Forest, and lived the simple life in sandals and few clothes, subsisting mainly on nuts; but as I was a woman in real life, with an honest contempt for what some one has called the widowhood of the unsatisfied, I settled down here. For reasons of my own I wanted to be in this part of the world. To me there is ever a healing strength in wide spaces, and Bessmoor has been my best friend. And if the leaves of memory make a rustling at times, I am glad of it. I do not want ...
— East of the Shadows • Mrs. Hubert Barclay
... the expressions of love. There must have been some pang when she reflected that the cruel wrong which she had inflicted on him had probably hurried him to his grave. As a widow, in the first solemnity of her widowhood, she was wretched and would see no one. Then she returned to England and shut herself up in a small house at Brighton. Lady Linlithgow offered to go to her, but she begged that she might be left to herself. For ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... belonged to her grandmother, and mother, and aunts, and great-aunts, you can fancy what a wonderful array there was. Her own wedding-dress was among them, and all the coloured silks and satins she had possessed before her widowhood. And more wonderful even than the dresses were a few, not very many, for indeed no room or wardrobe would have held very many, bonnets, or 'hats,' as I think they were then always called. Huge towering constructions, with feathers sticking straight up on the top, like ...
— Grandmother Dear - A Book for Boys and Girls • Mrs. Molesworth
... they will not spare. Haply, had but one daring soul stood forth To rally them and lead them to revenge, When my great father fell, they had replied! Alas! our foe alone stood forward then. And thou, my mother, hadst thou made a sign— Hadst thou, from thy forlorn and captive state Of widowhood in these polluted halls, Thy prison-house, raised one imploring cry— Who knows but that avengers thou hadst found? But mute thou sat'st, and each Messenian heart In thy despondency desponded too. Enough of this!—Though ...
— Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... the monarch's throne These men contending stood, A woman crossed the floor, who wore The weeds of widowhood. ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For, Book Two • Various
... his doctor pretended to play chess together, but little more than a half-century had elapsed since the fille a la cassette stood before the Grand Marquis and refused to wed. Yet she had been long gone into the skies, leaving a worthy example behind her in twenty years of beautiful widowhood. Her son, the heir and resident of the plantation at Cannes Brulees, at the age of—they do say—eighteen, had married a blithe and pretty lady of Franco-Spanish extraction, and, after a fair length of life divided between campaigning under the brilliant young Galvez and raising unremunerative ...
— The Grandissimes • George Washington Cable
... had this to console her anyway,—that the law didn't forget her in her widowhood. No: the law is quite thoughtful of wimmen, by spells. It says, the law duz, that it protects wimmen. And I s'pose in some mysterious way, too deep for wimmen to understand, it was ...
— Sweet Cicely - Or Josiah Allen as a Politician • Josiah Allen's Wife (Marietta Holley)
... father and husband had taken so little account, which had been of so little profit to her so far in her course through circumstance, had come to her aid. The names and lists of the books that had passed through her hands, during those silent years of her widowhood, lived beside her stern old father, would astonish even Manisty were she to try and give some account of them. And first she had read merely to fill the hours, to dull memory. But gradually there had sprung up in her that inner sweetness, that ...
— Eleanor • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... life for herself and all who surrounded her. If any woman should feel with justice that she has reached the Afterwards, and has done with her active career, it should be the woman who has just settled down after her husband's death to the humbler house provided for her widowhood apart from all her old occupations and responsibilities. But in reality there was no such sentiment in her mind. "You'll in your girls again be courted." She had hanging about her the pleasant reflection of that wooing, never put into words, with which Dick Cavendish ...
— A Country Gentleman and his Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... of women is one of distinct inferiority; a woman is always subject to the men of her family—before marriage to her father, during marriage to her husband, in widowhood to her son; these states being known as "the three obediences." Sons who do not, however, honour their mothers outrage public opinion. Polygamy is tolerated, secondary wives being sometimes provided by the first wife when she is growing old. Secondary ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various
... own age about thirty. Her motives for such a match could be little understood at the distance of forty years, but she had so well nursed and pleased Mr. Hollis that at his death he left her everything—all his estates, and all at her disposal. After a widowhood of some years she had been induced to marry again. The late Sir Harry Denham, of Denham Park, in the neighbourhood of Sanditon, succeeded in removing her and her large income to his own domains; but he could not succeed in the views of ...
— Memoir of Jane Austen • James Edward Austen-Leigh
... affected by the death of the man who had done her every despite, but who had, nevertheless, taught her the mystery of life and given her her children, to be distressed at this proposal in the first hours of her widowhood. ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... are conscious that a portion of their being has gone with the departed, whithersoever he has gone" [Footnote: "drippings with a Chisel," in Vol. II. of the Twice-Told Tales.] But the most perfect example of his sympathy with this sorrow of widowhood is that brief, concentrated, and seemingly slight tale, "The Wives of the Dead," [Footnote: See The Snow Image, and other Twice-Told Tales.] than which I know of nothing more touching and true, more exquisitely proportioned and dramatically wrought out among ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop
... this, urged her very strongly to tell the cardinal to throw the man into the water. To which the queen said "Amen." Then the lover sent quickly to his lady a letter in a plate of cucumbers, to advise her of her approaching widowhood, and the hour of flight, with all of which was the fair citizen well content. Then at dusk the soldiers of the watch being got out of the way by the queen, who sent them to look at a ray of the moon, which frightened her, behold the servants raised the grating, and caught ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac
... many a year has pass'd, Though we are still so young, since we have met Which I have borne in widowhood of heart. ...
— The Life of Lord Byron • John Galt
... Widowhood would not have left her so abject and so helpless. If her husband's body had lain dead before her there, she could have stood beside it, and declared herself consoled by the immortal presence of his spirit. But to attend this deathbed of her belief and of her ...
— The Helpmate • May Sinclair
... she was in that state in which alone a woman ceases to be a dependant—widowhood. Lord Roseville, who had been dead about two years, had not survived their marriage many months; that period was, however, sufficiently long to allow him to appreciate her excellence, and to testify his sense of it: the whole of his unentailed property, which was very large, he ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... one, The stay and comfort of my widowhood, A dear good boy!—when first he went to sea I felt what it would come to,—something told me I should be childless soon. But tell me Sir If it be true that for a hurt like his There is no cure? please God to spare his life Tho' he be blind, yet I should be so thankful! I can remember ...
— Poems, 1799 • Robert Southey
... we shall make a few observations on the sorrows of widowhood; then glance at the duties of it; and the supports which God hath ...
— Sermons on Various Important Subjects • Andrew Lee
... in a day—this gathering about her of so brilliant and delightful a society. She had lived many years at Walpole Lodge, ever since her widowhood, and was now quite an old lady. In her early life she had written several charming books—chiefly biographies of distinguished men whom she had known, and even now she occasionally put pen again to paper, and sent some delightful social essay or some pleasantly ...
— Vera Nevill - Poor Wisdom's Chance • Mrs. H. Lovett Cameron
... the river Tigris, far above where it washes the lofty city of the Faithful, lived Nouri, in poverty and widowhood, whose employment it was to tend the worm who clothes the richest and the fairest with its beautiful web. Her husband, who was a guard to the caravans of the merchants, lost his life in an engagement with the wild Arabs, and left the poor woman no other means of ...
— Eastern Tales by Many Story Tellers • Various
... perhaps from the prisons by the Bridge of Sighs, rise the accents of woe, as at the time when the tambourine was heard in the gay gondolas, and the golden ring was cast from the Bucentaur to Adria, the queen of the seas. Adria! shroud thyself in mists; let the veil of thy widowhood shroud thy form, and clothe in the weeds of woe the mausoleum of ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... must not look at anybody's wife except your neighbour's,—if you go to the next door but one, you are scolded, and presumed to be perfidious. And then a relazione or an amicizia seems to be a regular affair of from five to fifteen years, at which period, if there occur a widowhood, it finishes by a sposalizio; and in the mean time it has so many rules of its own that it is not much better. A man actually becomes a piece of female property,—they won't let their Serventi marry until there is a vacancy for themselves. I ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. IV - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... annals, how peaceful the changes in our constitutional system, brought about orderly in due form of law, how purely domestic the saddest events of our internal history! We wept with our Sovereign in her early widowhood, a bereavement to the people as well as to the Queen; we trembled with her when the shadow of death hung over her eldest son, rejoicing with her when it passed away; we shared her grief for two other of her children, inheritors of the ...
— Great Britain and Her Queen • Anne E. Keeling
... strangely I never knew till the other day that Mrs. Ogilvie had lost a child. There was only one boy with her when we knew her at Juarez; and, although she was in deep mourning at the time, we knew, of course, that she was in the first year of her widowhood. But we had no idea, as I was telling Mrs. Wrottesley the other day, that Mrs. Ogilvie ...
— Peter and Jane - or The Missing Heir • S. (Sarah) Macnaughtan
... City showed that physical disability was present in three out of four families, and unemployment was responsible in two out of three cases. In nearly half the families there was found defect of character, and in a third of the cases there was widowhood or desertion or overcrowding. Added to these were old-age incapacity, large families, and ill adjustment to environment due to recent arrival in ...
— Society - Its Origin and Development • Henry Kalloch Rowe
... Wallmoden turned now into an adjoining room, where the duke's sister, the Princess Sophie, was holding a little court. The princess had married the younger son of a princely house, but had been a widow now for years, and had lived since her widowhood at her brother's court, where she was by no means a favorite. The duchess was beloved for her gentleness and kind heartedness, by all who came in her way, but her elderly sister-in-law was disliked heartily for her arrogance and acerbity. They ...
— The Northern Light • E. Werner
... daughter of the high constable of Naples, and married to the Marquis of Pescara. Early left a widow, she abandoned herself to sorrow. That fidelity which made her refuse the hand of princes in her youth, rendered her incapable of a second attachment in her widowhood. The solace of her life was to mourn the loss and cherish the memory of Pescara. After passing several years in retirement, Vittoria took up her residence at Rome, and became the intimate friend of the distinguished men of her time. Her verses, though deficient in poetic fancy, are ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... due to the clash of antagonistic principle. The merit, indeed, is largely accidental; and we shall miss the real fashion in which it came to be established unless we remark the vicissitudes through which it has passed. The foreign birth of the first two Hanoverians, the insistent widowhood of Queen Victoria, these rather than deliberate foresight have secured the elevated nullification of the Crown. Yet the first twenty-five years of George III's reign represent the deliberate effort of an obstinate man to stem the ...
— Political Thought in England from Locke to Bentham • Harold J. Laski
... the aged Brahmanas, and her father-in-law, and mother-in-law, she stood before them with joined hands, concentrating her senses. And for the welfare of Savitri, all the ascetics dwelling in that hermitage, uttered the auspicious benediction that she should never suffer widowhood. And Savitri immersed in contemplation accepted those words of the ascetics, mentally saying,—So be it!—And the king's daughter, reflecting on those words of Narada, remained, expecting the hour and ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... McVeigh's widowhood had not spoilt, and that was her motherly instincts in the handling of a baby, and the room seemed brighter and more hopeful from the moment she began to rock, singing a lullaby in a strange, ...
— Nancy McVeigh of the Monk Road • R. Henry Mainer
... who held it for generations and then sold it. Of Bess of Hardwick's building enterprises it may be added that she built Hardwick Hall, "more glass than wall" (according to an old rhyme), in 1587. The Earl died in 1590, and the Countess had another long widowhood of 17 years. Her second son, William Cavendish, was created Baron Cavendish and his great-grandson ...
— The Portland Peerage Romance • Charles J. Archard
... her feeble-minded husband. Towards the end of 1560 this had gone so far that secret preparations seem to have been made for immediately anticipating the St Bartholomew of twelve years later. But the sudden death of Francis and the widowhood of Mary changed the whole situation. The new King was in the power, not of the Guises, but of his mother, Catherine de Medici; and Mary of Scots would now have to accept a second or a third place in Paris. But in Europe, and in ...
— John Knox • A. Taylor Innes
... to go along with me to St. Bartholomew's, to hear one Mr. Sparks, but it raining very hard we went to Mr. Gunning's and heard an excellent sermon, and speaking of the character that the Scripture gives of Ann the mother of the blessed Virgin, he did there speak largely in commendation of widowhood, and not as we do to marry two or three wives or husbands, one after another. Here I met with Mr. Moore, and went home with him to dinner, where he told me the discourse that happened between the secluded members and the members of the ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... preceding day shows how extremely ill-timed was this communication from a gentleman with whom Sir Walter had never had any intimacy. This was not the only proposition of the kind that reached him during his widowhood.—J.G.L. ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... us ever since, tells us that Gormlai was present at his burial and chanted a funeral ode. Her long widowhood was a period of disconsolate mourning. At length it is said she had a dream or vision, in which King Nial appeared to her in such life-like shape that she spread her arms to embrace him, and thus wounded her ...
— The Glories of Ireland • Edited by Joseph Dunn and P.J. Lennox
... Byron never doubted his salvation. Ever before her, during the few remaining years of her widowhood, was the image of her husband, purified and ennobled, with the shadows of earth for ever dissipated, the stains of sin for ever removed; 'the angel in him,' as she expressed it, 'made perfect, according to its ...
— Lady Byron Vindicated • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... probably, indicate the speaker's widowhood, Which left her like 'a boat floating about ...
— The Shih King • James Legge
... and aggressively healthy offspring, were always in evidence. And there was Mrs. Larrabbee. What between wealth and youth, independence and initiative, a widowhood now emerged from a mourning unexceptionable, an elegance so unobtrusive as to border on mystery, she never failed to agitate any atmosphere she entered, even that of prayer. From time to time, Hodder himself was uncomfortably aware of her presence, ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill |
