"Backstair" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... all been despatched, the wedding veil disinterred, and the best Brussels and Honiton safely disposed in a box, when an extremely dilapidated and much-inked collection of school-books had been routed out of the backstairs cupboard (commonly called Erebus) and duly packed, when a selection of lighter literature had been made with a view both to Valetta and Lilian; when Gillian had shown all she could to Mrs. Mount, visited all the animals, gone round the garden, and made ...
— Beechcroft at Rockstone • Charlotte M. Yonge
... who had the courage to regard the welfare of the people before that of their titular ruler. Leaving his cloak in the gallery by way of diverting suspicion, on 11 November, 1647, the King "passed by the backstairs and vault to the waterside" and so made good his escape, and fled in a fashion that made any reconciliation ...
— Hampton Court • Walter Jerrold
... Boat-race, or The Battle of the Blues.' Fancy waking up here after a heavy night. I suppose the designer was found 'guilty, but insane.' Another two cupboards? Thanks. That's fifty-nine. And yet another? Oh, no. The backstairs, of course. As before, approached by a door which slides to and fro with a gentle rumbling noise, instead of swinging. The same warranted to jam if opened hastily. Can't you hear Falcon on the wrong side with a butler's tray full of glass, wondering why he was born? Oh, and the bijou spiral ...
— Jonah and Co. • Dornford Yates
... by the backstairs to the servants' room, crossed himself before the ikon, wiped his beard which was covered with icicles, turned up the skirts of his coat, took out of his pocket a leather purse, and out of the purse eight roubles and fifty kopeks, and handed the change to Eugene Mihailovich. Carefully ...
— The Forged Coupon and Other Stories • Leo Tolstoy
... says, 'Upon recollection the King remembered he was at Sommerset House himself, at the very time he swore the murder was committed: . . . his having been there at that time himself, made it impossible that a man should be assaulted in the Court, murder'd, and hurryd into the backstairs, when there was a Centry at every door, a foot Company on the Guard, and yet nobody see or knew anything of it.* Now evidence was brought that, at 5 P.M. on Saturday, October 12, the Queen decided to be 'not ...
— The Valet's Tragedy and Other Stories • Andrew Lang
... demand if they had stayed to wash the dishes, Hen replied that they thought they might just as well: there weren't many, and the water was nice and hot. And Chas, hearing the clatter from aloft, had slipped down the backstairs in his suspenders, and lent a hand with the wiping. Mrs. Cooney chided, saying the dishes should have been left for Hortense, to-morrow morning before breakfast. She asked Hen whether Chas knew that his white vest had come in with the wash, and though Hen ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... covered a skeleton, so meagre and angular was the form beneath it. Yet she must have been pretty and shapely once. What corrosive had destroyed the feminine outlines? Was it trouble, or vice, or greed? Had she loved too well? Had she been a second-hand clothes dealer, a frequenter of the backstairs of great houses, or had she been merely a courtesan? Was she expiating the flaunting triumphs of a youth overcrowded with pleasures by an old age in which she was shunned by every passer-by? Her vacant gaze sent a chill through ...
— Father Goriot • Honore de Balzac
... fact, was what is called in a regiment "a smart soldier," which means to say "a clean soldier." And still, one of his most important occupations was to brush his things. The son of peasants, without patronage, fortune or backstairs influence, he had raised himself, a rare and difficult thing nowadays; therefore he was proud of himself, and would say to anyone who would listen to him: "I am the son of my ...
— The Grip of Desire • Hector France
... to him, was an age of public degradation. Religion was vanishing from the life of the people; politics were a petty question of party jealousy; literary taste was falling to the level of alehouse wit and backstairs scandal; the youth of the nation were completing their education, when fifteen or sixteen years old, by a course of the Town, and then qualifying for a graduate's degree in like knowledge, by a foreign ...
— Henry Fielding: A Memoir • G. M. Godden
... with turkey and beer in the kitchen, was led by the backstairs up to Vera's very boudoir, that being the only suitable room. And there she waited. She was a woman of about forty-five; fat, unfair (in the physical sense), and untidy. Of her hands the less said the better. She had probably ...
— The Matador of the Five Towns and Other Stories • Arnold Bennett |
