"Billingsgate" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the oyster-shops and stands in Massachusetts, I am told, are supplied and kept by natives of Wellfleet, and a part of this town is still called Billingsgate, from the oysters having been formerly planted there; but the native oysters are said to have died in 1770. Various causes are assigned for this, such as a ground frost, the carcasses of black-fish kept to rot in the harbor, and the like; but the most common ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... part I take in party fray, With tropes from Billingsgate's slang-whanging Tartars, I fear no Pope—and let great Ernest play At Fox and Goose with Fox's Martyrs! I own I laugh at over-righteous men, I own I shake my sides at ranters, And treat sham Abr'am saints with wicked banters, ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... "blindness" in her workings. In lighter vein, but winged with the shafts of a caustic humour are Bussy's invectives against courtly practices (I, i, 84-104) and hypocrisy in high places (III, ii, 25-59), while the "flyting" between him and Monsieur is perhaps the choicest specimen of Elizabethan "Billingsgate" that has come down to us. It was a versatile pen that could turn from passages like these to the epic narrative of the duel, or Tamyra's lyric invocation of the "peaceful regents of the night" (II, ii, 158), or Bussy's stately ...
— Bussy D'Ambois and The Revenge of Bussy D'Ambois • George Chapman
... bridesmaid walked on ahead talking lovingly. "I said them words, which you oughter 'ave said, 'cause you ain't got no memory t' speak of. But they ain't my beliefs, but yours, or I'll know the reason why. Jes' you say them now. Swear, without Billingsgate, as you'll allays love, honor an' obey your ...
— The Opal Serpent • Fergus Hume
... the Champion of April 14, "outdid" the journalist in virtuous fury: "Let me say only one word of Lord B. The man is insane. The verses on his private affairs excite in me less indignation than pity. The latter copy is the Billingsgate of Bedlam. ... You yourself seem to labour under some delusion as to the merits of Lord B.'s poetry, and treat the wretched verses, the Fare Well, with far too much respect. They are disgusting in sentiment, ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Vol. 3 (of 7) • Lord Byron
... table. "Will you excuse me, Mr. Savelli, if I leave you? I get up early to attend to my business. I must be at Billingsgate at half-past five to buy my fish. Besides, I have been preventing your talk with our friends. So pray don't go. Good-night, ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke
... Street each return 4; Dowgate, Candlewick, Cordwainers, Cornhill, Queenhithe, Vintry, and Walbrook, 6; Bread Street, Bridge, Billingsgate, Broad Street, Cheap, Coleman Street, Cripplegate Within, and Cripplegate Without, Tower, Langbourn, Castle Baynard, Aldersgate, Aldgate, and Portsoken, 8; Bishopsgate and Farringdon-within, 14; and Farringdon-without, 16. These true representatives ...
— The Corporation of London: Its Rights and Privileges • William Ferneley Allen
... bead being inlaid for the eye, in the Japanese manner; and that the enlarged, deceptive, and popularly pleasing work had been carved on the outside of a great building,—say Fishmongers' Hall,—where everybody commercially connected with Billingsgate could have seen it, and ratified it with a wisdom of the market;—might not the art have been greater, worthier, ...
— Aratra Pentelici, Seven Lectures on the Elements of Sculpture - Given before the University of Oxford in Michaelmas Term, 1870 • John Ruskin
... In the meanwhile, her palpitations had come on dreadfully bad, and so had her neuritis, and she had suffered dreadfully after eating some fish at dinner which she was sure Pennideath, the fishmonger—she always felt that man was an anarchist in disguise—had bought out of the condemned stock at Billingsgate, and none of the doctor's medicines were of the slightest good to her, and she was heartbroken at having to part so suddenly from Leonard, and would I spare half an hour to comfort an old woman who had sent her only ...
— The Red Planet • William J. Locke
... but walked down to the Thames, took a boat, and rowed to Billingsgate. Beauclerk and Johnson were so well pleased with their amusement, that they resolved to persevere in dissipation for the rest of the day: but Langton deserted them, being engaged to breakfast with some young ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... it had no inverted love to feed and embitter it. It was more a thing of his head than his heart, revealing itself mainly in short, acrid speeches, meant to be clever, and indubitably disagreeable. Nor did Hesper prove an unworthy antagonist in their encounters of polite Billingsgate: what she lacked in experience she made up in breeding. The common remark, generally false, about no love being lost, was in their case true enough, for there never had been any between them to lose. The withered rose-leaves have their sweetness yet, but what of the rotted peony? ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald
... country town. Had she a mind to be revenged, Lady Castlewood could have found the way to her rival's house easily enough; and, if she had come with bowl and dagger, would have been routed off the ground by the enemy with a volley of Billingsgate, which the fair ...
— The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. • W. M. Thackeray
... I was obsessed by the immensity, the atmosphere and the mystery of London. Its nomenclature embedded itself in my fancy; Hounsditch and Shoreditch, Billingsgate and Blackfriars; Bishopgate, within, and Bishopgate, without; Threadneedle Street and Wapping-Old-Stairs; the Inns of Court where Jarndyce struggled with Jarndyce, and the taverns where the Mark Tapleys, the Captain Costigans and the Dolly ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson
... great disapproval that a woman should be idle, while men dragged heavy weights about. "White fellow, big-fellow-fool all right," he said contemptuously, when Mac explained that it was generally so in the white man's country. A Briton of the Billingsgate type would have appealed to Jackeroo as a man ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn
... high-bred what billingsgate is to the vulgar; and when one gentleman thinks another gentleman an ass, he does not say it point-blank, he implies it in the politest terms he ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou
... Billingsgate fish merchant kippers are daily increasing in price. It is, of course, too much to hope that they will ever become so dear as to prohibit their use among comedians ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, May 2, 1917 • Various
... asked the reason why, Such base objections she did make, She answered thus scornfully, In words not fit for Billingsgate: 'She might have taken fairer on - Or else be ...
— Ancient Poems, Ballads and Songs of England • Robert Bell
... the well-known figure of Jeanie Deans herself retreating from his gate; while his housekeeper, with arms a-kimbo, fist clenched and extended, body erect, and head shaking with rage, sent after her a volley of Billingsgate oaths. His choler rose in proportion to the surprise, and, perhaps, to the disturbance of his repose. "Hark ye," he exclaimed from the window, "ye auld limb of Satan—wha the deil gies you commission to guide an honest man's ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... I go further, I must tell you that my uncle's house was one of the old houses in Billingsgate. It stood in a narrow, crowded lane, at the western end of Thames Street, close to the river. Few of the houses thereabouts were old; for the fire of London had nearly destroyed that part of the city, but my uncle's house, with ...
— Martin Hyde, The Duke's Messenger • John Masefield
... obtained my first view of real Arab life. Eleven lads—some only nine and ten years of age—lay on the roof of a building. It was a strange sight—the moon seemingly singling out every sleeper for me. Another night we went together over to the Queen's Shades, near Billingsgate. On the top of a number of barrels, covered with tarpaulin, seventy-three fellows were sleeping. I had the whole lot out for ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 26, February 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... philosopher, or statesman, or beauty; now taking deadly offence for some utterly inexplicable reason; writhing with agony under clumsy blows which a robuster nature would have met with contemptuous laughter; racking his wits to contrive exquisite compliments, and suddenly exploding in sheer Billingsgate; making a mountain of every mole-hill in his pilgrimage; always preoccupied with his last literary project, and yet finding time for innumerable intrigues; for carrying out schemes of vengeance for wounded vanity, and for introducing himself into every quarrel that was going on around him. ...
— Alexander Pope - English Men of Letters Series • Leslie Stephen
... five languages, and have not lost them yet, though I write no bill over my door, or set Latin quotations in the front of the 'Review.' But, to my irreparable loss, I was bred but by halves; for my father, forgetting Juno's royal academy, left the language of Billingsgate quite out of my education: hence I am perfectly illiterate in the polite style of the street, and am not fit to converse with the porters and carmen of quality, who grace their diction with the beauties of calling ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IX; • Jonathan Swift
... classic Billingsgate, who had broken her husband's nose with a sledgehammer fist, and swore before the magistrate, that the man hadn't a crease to complain of in her character. We are condemned, Mr. Carling, sometimes to suffer in the flesh for the assurance we receive ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... of my situation; and I was obliged to offer them open defiance. I was made an elector for Van Buren and Adams in the Fourth Indiana District, and entered upon the contest with a will; and from that time forth I was subjected to a torrent of billingsgate which rivalled the fish market. Words were neither minced nor mollified, but made the vehicles of political wrath and the explosions of personal malice. The charge of "abolitionism" was flung at me everywhere, and it is impossible ...
— Political Recollections - 1840 to 1872 • George W. Julian
... surprised to hear that there are many thousands of men and boys who go out to catch the millions and millions of all sorts of fish that are sent to the markets in the large towns of England by railway nearly every day. He had been to Billingsgate Market in Thames Street, and to the new fish-market in Smithfield, and had seen the great piles of cod-fish, and skates, and soles, and plaice, and the boxes and baskets of white fresh herrings, and the beautiful shining mackerel, but he did not ...
— Little Folks (Septemeber 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... trade, into the law again, into an auctioneers, into a brewery, into a stockbroker's, into the law again, into a coach office, into a waggon office, into the law again, into a general dealer's, into a distillery, into the law again, into a wool house, into a dry goods house, into the Billingsgate trade, into the foreign fruit trade, and into the docks. But whatever Tip went into, he came out of tired, announcing that he had cut it. Wherever he went, this foredoomed Tip appeared to take the prison walls with him, and to set them up in such trade or calling; and to prowl ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... whiskered to the eyes, and puffing a volume of smoke from his invisible mouth; and there is a washer-woman, with a basket of clothes weighing a hundredweight. Yonder young fellow, with the dripping sack on his back, is staggering under a load of oysters from Billingsgate, and he has got to wash them and sell them for three a penny, and see them swallowed one at a time, before his work will be done for the day—and behind him is a comely lassie, with a monster oil-glazed sarcophagus-looking ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 438 - Volume 17, New Series, May 22, 1852 • Various
... fresh cargo from the harbor is announced by the clanging of a bell, which is likely to leave all the other booths deserted, while a crowd elbows around the fishmonger. He above all others commands the greatest flow of billingsgate, and is especially notorious for his arrogant treatment of his customers, and for exacting the uttermost farthing. The "Fish" and the "Myrtles" can be sure of a brisk trade on days when all the other booth keepers around the ...
— A Day In Old Athens • William Stearns Davis
... Blessings of Peace, in which a coarse woman is represented as kissing the emperor, who is habited in English military uniform. "There, Sal," says she to her companion, "I can boast of what none of the ——s at Billingsgate can, having kissed the king's emperor of all the Russian bears, and he is the sweetest, modestest, mildest gentleman I ever kissed in all my life." On the other side a huge country gawky shakes hands with the duchess, whose vast bonnet is a study. ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt
... in vain for invectives that bear upon their sulphurous wings an adumbration of his anger. One must sometimes stand speechless before a subject, else burn his lips with blasphemy or befoul them with billingsgate. Two months ago my attention was called to a precious pair of attorneys at San Antonio, Texas, who seem to have not only touched the profoundest depths of subter-brutish degradation, but to have wallowed there like swine in an open sewer, ...
— Volume 10 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... is in open war with me in such a manner as makes her very ridiculous without doing me much harm; my moderation having a very bright pretence of shewing itself" (she wrote to Lady Mar). "Firstly, she was pleased to attack me in very Billingsgate at a masquerade, where she was as visible as ever she was in her own clothes. I had the temper not only to keep silence myself, but enjoined it to the person with me; who would have been very glad ...
— Lady Mary Wortley Montague - Her Life and Letters (1689-1762) • Lewis Melville
... quietly through the crowd from 21st to 32d Street, paying no heed to the hootings, yells, and vile epithets that were hurled from every side. Dirty, ragged women, with dishevelled hair and bloated faces, far exceeded the men in the use of Billingsgate; and the guardians of the law, as they passed through those long lines of demoniacal visages, scowling with hate, and heard their sulphurous invectives, saw what would be their fate if overpowered. It was a conflict having all the horrors of Indian warfare, as poor Colonel O'Brien, tortured ...
— An Original Belle • E. P. Roe
... to Billingsgate, And one cried, "Hoo! Go we hence!" I prayed a barge man, for God's sake, That he would spare me my expence. "Thou scrap'st not here," quoth he, "under two pence; I list not yet bestow any alms deed." Thus lacking Money I ...
— Playful Poems • Henry Morley
... Anglo-Saxon race we find no counterpart of Mr. Dixon. So the question is very pertinent as to what influence has given power to this pale-face shout exciter, this expert player upon men's emotions, this literary (we beg a thousand pardons for seeming billingsgate) demagogue and exotic in Anglo-Saxondom. The irony of fate! Mr. Thomas Dixon, Jr., beyond doubt owes his emotional power to the very race which he ...
— The Hindered Hand - or, The Reign of the Repressionist • Sutton E. Griggs
... and carefully provides for the comfort of her young long ere she lays her fragile egg. Even look at that vulgar-looking beetle, whose coarse form would banish the idea of any rational feeling existing in its brain—the Billingsgate fish-woman of its tribe in coarseness and rudeness of exterior (Scarabaeus carnifex)—see with what quickness she is running backward, raised almost upon her head, while with her bind legs she trundles a large ...
— Eight Years' Wandering in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker
... in America, however unpopular, without being imitated): and every horse, wagon, man-servant, and livery, belonging to every one, was duly chronicled in the Oldport correspondence of the Sewer and the Jacobin, which journals were wont one day to Billingsgate the "mushroom aristocracy of wealth," and the next to play Jenkins for their glorification. Le Roi, who owned no horses, and had given up dancing as soon as he found that there were many of the natives who could out-dance him, and that the late hours ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various
... bait, insects which destroy spawn or which serve as food for fish, etc.—on turning to the left, we find ourselves in the fish market, which will probably vie with the aquaria on the other side in attracting popular attention. This model Billingsgate is to be divided into two parts, the one for the sale of fresh, the other of dried ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 385, May 19, 1883 • Various
... he visited his conversation was serious, grave, and sententious; and, as we have seen, he could quote Scripture with the readiness of a theologian. In the shop, when he had to deal with the lower classes, he showed himself acquainted with their modes of expression, and spoke the Billingsgate of the market-women, which he had acquired in the rue Comtesse d'Artois, treating them familiarly, and they generally addressed him as "gossip Denies." By his own account he easily judged the characters of the various people with ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - DERUES • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... that it would not be the handsome thing to dedicate to one friend any thing containing such matters about another. However, I'll work the Laureate before I have done with him, as soon as I can muster Billingsgate therefor. I like a row, and always did from a boy, in the course of which propensity, I must needs say, that I have found it the most easy of all to be gratified, personally and poetically. You disclaim 'jealousies;' ...
— Life of Lord Byron, With His Letters And Journals, Vol. 5 (of 6) • (Lord Byron) George Gordon Byron
... but there was hardly anybody there, and nothing occurred in the House of Commons but some interchange of Billingsgate between O'Connell and George Dawson. The Duke talks with confidence, and has no idea of resigning, but he does not inspire his friends with the confidence he feels or affects himself, though they talk of his resignation as an event which is ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. II • Charles C. F. Greville
... laden with rich furs, which are speedily transferred to the Hudson's Bay Company's stores in exchange for the goods aforementioned. And many a tough wrangle has the trader on such occasions with sharp natives, who might have graduated in Billingsgate, so close are they at a bargain. Here, too, voyageurs are supplied with an equivalent for their wages, part in advance, if they desire it (and they generally do desire it), and part at the conclusion of their long and ...
— The Young Fur Traders • R.M. Ballantyne
... the parish church of St. Mary on the Woollen Hithe and St. Mary of the Woolchurch Haw. This corner, then near the modern Mansion House, was the north-western corner of the little fort, Dowgate was at the south-western, and Billingsgate at the south-eastern corner, while Mincing Lane, perhaps at Fenchurch Street, completed the rectangle. What formed the defence on this, the eastern side, we have no evidence, but it was probably one of the "shares, rilles, or streames" which so puzzled Stow. The ...
— Memorials of Old London - Volume I • Various
... name for landing-places, as Dowgate and Billingsgate; also in cliffs, as Kingsgate, Margate, and Ramsgate; those in Greece and in Italy are called scala. Also, a ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... room, and cogitated as few people beside Theodore Racksole could cogitate. At 6 a.m. he took a stroll round the business part of his premises, and watched the supplies come in from Covent Garden, from Smithfield, from Billingsgate, and from other strange places. He found the proceedings of the kitchen department quite interesting, and made mental notes of things that he would have altered, of men whose wages he would increase and men whose wages he would reduce. At 7 a.m. he happened to be standing near ...
— The Grand Babylon Hotel • Arnold Bennett
... patron; but this morning my master rose late, still in a horrible bad humor. At noon Raoul arrived, also in a rage. They at once began to dispute, and such a row! why, the most abandoned housebreakers and pickpockets would have blushed to hear such Billingsgate. At one time my master seized the other by the throat and shook him like a reed. But Raoul was too quick for him; he saved himself from strangulation by drawing out a sharp-pointed knife, the sight of which made my master drop him in a ...
— File No. 113 • Emile Gaboriau
... and abuse his actors in a style of whimsical foulmouthedness peculiar to himself—but he would allow no other man living to do it—and while conferring substantial benefits upon them, would blackguard them like a Billingsgate fishwoman. So essentially did he differ from most other managers, that instead of wronging or pinching them, instead of intriguing against them, to run them down with the public, in order to enhance his own consequence, he was their champion, their sincere friend, and the strenuous supporter of their ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 5, May 1810 • Various
... revival meetings make Bedlam seem silent, and reduce to gentle murmurs the camp-meeting excesses with which we are familiar in our own country. They are the most sectarian of all sects. Their vocabulary of Billingsgate and the ribaldry employed by them even against their Buddhist brethren, cast into the shade those of Christian sectarians in their fiercest controversies. "A thousand years in the lowest of the hells is the atonement prescribed by the Nichirenites for the ...
— The Religions of Japan - From the Dawn of History to the Era of Meiji • William Elliot Griffis
... such scenes have their humorous side. It was Daniel O'Connell, I believe, who defeated the female champion of Billingsgate by calmly referring to her as the hypothenuse of a right-angled triangle, which was something utterly beyond her powers of repartee: it was he, at all events, who silenced another virago with the cutting response, "Sure every one ...
— A Tame Surrender, A Story of The Chicago Strike • Charles King
... century, the third Earl of Shaftesbury, in his 'Miscellaneous Reflections,' 1714, refers to notable philosophers and divines 'who can be contented to make sport, and write in learned Billingsgate, to divert the Coffeehouse, and entertain the assemblys at Booksellers' shops, or the more airy ...
— The Book-Hunter in London - Historical and Other Studies of Collectors and Collecting • William Roberts
... the Federal Capital. But the other day, MR. SUMNER, of Massachusetts, made, in his place in the U. S. Senate, one of the most incendiary and inflammatory speeches ever uttered on the floor of either House of Congress! The vocabulary of Billingsgate was exhausted in denouncing all who dared to justify the institution of slavery—using, over and over again, such terms as "hireling, picked from the drunken spew of an uneasy civilization in the form of men," &c. The language made use of was disgraceful to the vile Abolitionist ...
— Americanism Contrasted with Foreignism, Romanism, and Bogus Democracy in the Light of Reason, History, and Scripture; • William Gannaway Brownlow
... my office like a drunken and abusive pirate. If you have nothing for temperate discussion, I will now say good-day to you. Take with you the honors of war, sir. You have outcussed me. I acknowledge your superiority in billingsgate—"—he paused and for an instant his voice mounted, as ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck
... three recalcitrants jumped on the bulwarks, and joined by a dozen others, yelled defiance at the authorities. As the Noa-Noa gradually drew out these cries became more definite, and the honor of France and of all Frenchmen was assailed in the most ancient English Billingsgate. Gestures of frightful significance added to the insults, and these not producing retorts in kind from the second in command and the populace, a shower of limes began ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... after a Nip of Aquavitae, to clear the Cobwebs out of our throats, we went down to Billingsgate, where we saw my old humorous acquaintances, Brandy Sall, the fishwife, and the humorous porter, the Duke of Puddledock; likewise a merry Wag that did porterage work for the Fish Factors in the Market, and thereby seemed to have caught somewhat of the form of ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 3 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... near, we may as well look in for a few moments at the New Coal Exchange opposite Billingsgate Market; a sightly, circular building, of rich interior decoration, that will well repay a visit. It is one of our newest 'lions,' and is certainly a very significant sign and monument of the enormous and swiftly-increasing commercial activity of the country. On the tesselated ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 420, New Series, Jan. 17, 1852 • Various
... men, would turn the world upside down, or have done it already. - But he must have a small share of fortitude indeed, who is put out of countenance by hard speeches without sense and meaning, or affrighted from the path of duty by the rude language of Billingsgate - For my own part, I smile contemptuously at such unmanly efforts: I would be glad to hear the reasoning of Chronus, if he has a capacity for it; but I disregard his railing as I would the barking ...
— The Writings of Samuel Adams, volume II (1770 - 1773) - collected and edited by Harry Alonso Cushing • Samuel Adams
... peculiar friend of feathered folks. So he cocked a knowing head, with a cruel beak full of egg, and flirted a splendid tail at his friend; then swallowed the last morsel and rowed viciously with Laurence and me; for the bluejay is wholly addicted to billingsgate. He paid no attention to the distraught mother-bird, fluttering and crying on a ...
— Slippy McGee, Sometimes Known as the Butterfly Man • Marie Conway Oemler
... of demagogues and the billingsgate of sectionalists lay this elemental fact—a democracy ...
— The Victim - A romance of the Real Jefferson Davis • Thomas Dixon
... vocabulary of Italian billingsgate might be selected from Biagioli. Or see the concluding pages of Nannucci's excellent tract "Intorno alle voci usate da Dante," Corfu, 1840. Even Foscolo could not always refrain. Dante should have taught them to shun such vulgarities. See ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell
... vernacular. vulgar language, obscene language, obscenity, vulgarity. jargon, technical terms, technicality, lingo, slang, cant, argot; St. Gile's Greek, thieves' Latin, peddler's French, flash tongue, Billingsgate, Wall Street slang. pseudology^. pseudonym &c (misnomer) 565; Mr. So-and-so; wha d'ye call 'em^, whatchacallim, what's his name; thingummy^, thingumbob; je ne sais quoi [Fr.]. neologist^, coiner of words. V. coin words, coin ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... influential personage whose own origin was such that Mr. Mackenzie's might have been pronounced aristocratic by comparison. To all such vapourings Mr. Mackenzie responded in the Advocate in kind. He had a large vocabulary of Billingsgate at his command, and as his temper became thoroughly aroused he proved that he could fully hold his own in this sort of wordy warfare. He followed the example of his antagonists, invaded the sanctities of private life, and descended to outrageous personalities. ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... cost him his audience. When he realized this he lost all his self-possession, and, as the Buffalo Courier put it the next day, "went up and down the platform raving like a Billingsgate fishwife." He lost the debate, and the supply of yellow ribbon left in the surrounding counties was purchased that night to be used in the suffrage celebration that followed. My friends still refer to the occasion as "the day we wiped up the earth with Dr. Buckley"; but I do not deserve the implied ...
— The Story of a Pioneer - With The Collaboration Of Elizabeth Jordan • Anna Howard Shaw
... never gave any specimen of his philosophy, but in bearing with Christian patience a severe whipping at the public post) can injure the exalted reputation of this great philosopher? The folly of the Editor of the Centinal, is the more conspicuous, in inserting his billingsgate abuse in a Boston paper, when this town, particularly the TRADESMAN of it are reaping such advantages from Franklin's liberality. The Editor of the Centinal ought to blush for his arrogance in vilifying this TRADESMEN'S FRIEND, by retailing the scurrility ...
— Priestley in America - 1794-1804 • Edgar F. Smith
... get out of hearing from this Billingsgate oratory; and, indeed, to make an end with these authors, except I could call rogue and rascal as fast as they. Let us examine the little reason they produce ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Vol. 7 (of 18) - The Duke of Guise; Albion and Albanius; Don Sebastian • John Dryden
... FREDERICK put it over me all right. Frankly I rather liked the old fellow, his old clothes (there was at least no shining armour swank at Potsdam in those days), his practice of solemnly cutting capers for the benefit of his "reader," though I know not explicitly what a caper is, his Billingsgate language, his real opinion of VOLTAIRE, his charming, if possibly rare, acts of magnanimity, his moderation in war, which was not all hypocrisy. In fact, if you expect an ogre you will be disappointed. He could give the latest Hohenzollern points in a good many directions. I ought, of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152. January 17, 1917 • Various
... a boat to Billingsgate, and Johnson, with Beauclerk, kept up their amusement for the following day, when Langton deserted them to go to breakfast with some young ladies, and Johnson scolded him for leaving his friends "to go ...
— Samuel Johnson • Leslie Stephen
... generally received. The language with which he was assailed was of the most insulting and grossly abusive kind. In those days it was called appalling severity. It reads now like very dreary and very vulgar billingsgate. One example will suffice. The "New York Mirror" was then supposed to be the leading literary paper in New York. It was nominally edited by Morris, Willis, and Fay, though the two last were at that time in Europe. Morris is still remembered by two or three songs he ...
— James Fenimore Cooper - American Men of Letters • Thomas R. Lounsbury
... in bringing forth a hateful brood of pamphlets, malicious scribbles, and billingsgate ribaldry. No generous and impartial person then can blame the present undertaking, which is designed purely for the diversion and merriment of the reader. Pieces of pleasantry and mirth have a secret charm in them to allay the heats and ...
— From Boyhood to Manhood • William M. Thayer
... obscure newspapers, we considered them wholly beneath contempt, but, as the author has chosen to come forward in this public manner, he must expect the lash he so richly merits.... Contemptible slanders.... Vilest Billingsgate.... Has raked all the gutters of our language.... The most pure, upright, and consistent politicians not safe from his malignant venom.... General Cushing comes in for a share of his vile calumnies.... The Reverend Homer Wilbur is ...
— The Biglow Papers • James Russell Lowell
... converse fluently on all occasions, and needed no drawing out, inasmuch as he was always ready to exhibit his powers of conversation. He was not a pious bird—belonging to Slivers, he could hardly be expected to be—and his language was redolent of Billingsgate. So Billy being so clever was quite a character in his way, and, seated on Slivers' shoulder with his black bead of an eye watching his master writing with the rusty pen, they ...
— Madame Midas • Fergus Hume
... what can be proposed better. I answer you right painted cloth, may mean, I give you a true painted cloth answer; as we say, she talks right Billingsgate; that is, exactly such language as is used at Billingsgate. (1773) ...
— Johnson's Notes to Shakespeare Vol. I Comedies • Samuel Johnson
... in which my drolling author is so luxuriant; for though such words have stood me in good stead, I scarce can forbear thinking myself unhappy in having insensibly hoarded up so much gibberish and Billingsgate trash in my memory; nor could I forbear asking of myself, as an Italian cardinal said on another account, D'onde hai tu pigliato tante coglionerie? Where the devil didst thou rake up ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... leading into the Round Staple, at the south-east end of the present King Street." This must have been on the site of the present Great George Street. An attempt was made to establish a fish-market here in competition with Billingsgate, but the pre-established interest was too strong and ...
— Westminster - The Fascination of London • Sir Walter Besant
... below this I went, I cannot clearly call to mind; of distance, as well as of time, I had lost all calculation. I recollect making a circuit to avoid the press of boats waiting for the early dawn by Billingsgate Market, and have a vision of the White Tower against the heavens. But my next impression of any clearness is that of rowing under the shadow of a black three-masted schooner that lay close under shore, tilted ...
— Dead Man's Rock • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... imperfect manner, without the aid of a phonetic alphabet. He is dressed in somebody else's very second best as a coast-guardsman, and gives himself the airs of a stage tar with sufficient success to pass as a possible fish porter of bad character in casual employment during busy times at Billingsgate. His manner shows an earnest disposition to ingratiate himself with the missionary, probably for some ...
— Captain Brassbound's Conversion • George Bernard Shaw
... mathematics, etc., from Mr. Colson. In 1742, Hogarth visited the city, in that celebrated peregrination with his four friends, and played hop-scotch in the courtyard of the Guildhall. Dr. Johnson came here in 1783, and "returned to London by water in a common boat, landing at Billingsgate." ...
— A Week's Tramp in Dickens-Land • William R. Hughes
... about till past ten o'clock, with a great deal of pleasure. Then to Westminster, where I met with Mr. Sheply and Mr. Pinkney at Will's, who took me by water to Billingsgate, at the Salutation Tavern, whither by-and-by, Mr. Talbot and Adams came, and bring a great [deal of] good meat, a ham of bacon, &c. Here we staid and drank till Mr. Adams began to be overcome. Then we parted, ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... half a mark of gain and not above; and so the people of London for one mark of gain"; and the destruction of fish is prevented, but all caught must be sold. It is well known that the custom was to destroy all the fish brought into Billingsgate market above a certain quantity, which led Ruskin to cry out furiously that the real prices of the world were regulated by Rascals, while the fools are bleating their folly of Supply and Demand. One may guess to-day that most ...
— Popular Law-making • Frederic Jesup Stimson
... 'yabber yabber' they would then utter would have raised the envy of the greatest 'Mrs. Moriarty' in the Billingsgate fishmarket." ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... must not be censured for their use of Billingsgate, for the strong aroma of the elixir forced them to tear aside the veil which in Leipsic, as elsewhere, clothes the ugly truth as with a pleasing garment, and to lay bare all the ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... the lifeboat reported to me last year that an American visitor had asked him how, dwelling remote from the railway, the population dealt with its fish. 'My dear man,' said I, 'you should have told him that you get it by Parcels' Post from Billingsgate.' ...
— Corporal Sam and Other Stories • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... expedition, therefore, was agreed upon; and though the weather was unfavorable, and some difficulty was experienced in clearing Billingsgate Point, they reached the weather shore, and there "had better sailing." Yet bitter was the cold, and the spray, as it froze on them, gave them the appearance of being encased in glittering mail. At night their rendezvous was near Great Meadow Creek; ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 11 • Various
... of the characteristics of the girls and boys, develops into surliness in men and billingsgate in women. And I have no doubt that little Diega, the sulkiest and prettiest of the Visayan beauties, in a few years will be gambling at the cock-fights, smoking cigars, and losing her money every Sunday afternoon at Mariana's monte game. Vulgarity ...
— The Great White Tribe in Filipinia • Paul T. Gilbert
... the denizens of those western waters were not the poddlies, coddlings, and shrimps that one is apt to associate with summer resorts by the sea. They were those veritable inhabitants of the deep that figure on the slabs of Billingsgate and similar markets—plaice and skate of the largest dimensions, congers that might suggest the great sea serpent, and ...
— The Eagle Cliff • R.M. Ballantyne
... half the fish were pure silver, the rest violet, emerald green, pure blue, and some red like mullet, with lemon yellow fins, and the colour of the brown men and the women's faded draperies round the glittering haul was delicious. The wrangling, not Billingsgate at all—milder even than Parliamentary—was loud enough, and continuous. I left them taking away the fish in baskets, and freshly minted money never looked so beautiful. How they divided I couldn't tell; ...
— From Edinburgh to India & Burmah • William G. Burn Murdoch
... greater difference in the goodness of eels than of any other fish. The true silver-eel, so called from the bright colour of the belly, is caught in the Thames. The Dutch eels sold at Billingsgate are very bad; those taken in great floods are generally good, but in ponds they have usually a strong rank flavour. Except the middle of summer, they are always in season. If small, they should be curled round and fried, being first dipped into ...
— The Cook and Housekeeper's Complete and Universal Dictionary; Including a System of Modern Cookery, in all Its Various Branches, • Mary Eaton
... to Billingsgate, we have passed the Thames Tunnel; it is one o'clock, and of course people are thinking of being hungry. What a merry place a steamer is on a calm sunny summer forenoon, and what an appetite every one seems to have! We are, I assure you, no less than 170 noblemen ...
— Little Travels and Roadside Sketches • William Makepeace Thackeray
... society. He instituted libel suits against the most prominent editors in the country, among them Horace Greeley and Thurlow Weed. And what is more to the point,—he won his cases. But this did not make him any more popular with the press. When we remember that Billingsgate was an important part of the literary equipment of the critic of Cooper's time, we need not be surprised that Cooper's pugnacity evoked such sweet disinterestedness as Park Benjamin indulged in when he called Cooper "a superlative dolt, and a common mark of scorn ...
— Stories of Authors, British and American • Edwin Watts Chubb
... the best tables in town, and the marker at Hunt's could only give him ten. He had some fashionable acquaintances too, and you might see him walking arm-in-arm with such gentlemen as my Lord Vauxhall, the Marquess of Billingsgate, or Captain Buff; and at the same time nodding to young Moses, the dandy bailiff; or Loder, the gambling-house keeper; or Aminadab, the cigar-seller in the Quadrant. Sometimes he wore a pair of moustaches, ...
— Men's Wives • William Makepeace Thackeray
... have been sent from Perth to London, and Covent Garden has supplied tons of the finer description of vegetables to the citizens of Glasgow; every Saturday five tons of the best fish in season are despatched from Billingsgate to Birmingham, and milk is conveyed in padlocked tins, from and beyond Harrow, at the rate of about one penny per gallon. In articles which are imported into both Liverpool and London, there is a constant interchange, according to the state of the market; thus a penny per pound ...
— Rides on Railways • Samuel Sidney
... quarters; but, instead of being intimidated by his menaces, she set him at defiance, and held forth with such a flow of eloquence, as would have entitled her to a considerable share of reputation, even among the nymphs of Billingsgate; for this young lady, over and above a natural genius for altercation, had her talents cultivated among the venerable society of weeders, podders, and hoppers, with whom she had associated from her tender years. No wonder, then, that she soon obtained ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... libel and pasquinade. But it is a point very little to the praise of either people, that no vindictive notice was taken of any possible personalities, simply because the most hideous license had been established for centuries in tongue license and unmanly Billingsgate. This had been promoted by the example hourly ringing in their ears of vernile scurrility. Verna—that is, the slave born in the family—had each from the other one universal and proverbial character of foul-mouthed eloquence, which heard from infancy, could not but furnish a model almost ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... villain of a Lord Mackrell! Listen to the young woman, you Mackrell, or you'll get Billingsgate! Here's Mr. Jig-and-Reel behind here, says she's done him! By Gosh! ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... so much amazed and concerned at this melancholy tale, that bursting out into tears, and hanging about his brother's neck, he begged him to take a coach and begone to Billingsgate, giving him ten guineas in hand and telling him that his bills should not be protested if he drew within the compass of a hundred pounds from Dieppe, whither he said the ship was bound. West was no sooner out of the street where his brother lived, but he ...
— Lives Of The Most Remarkable Criminals Who have been Condemned and Executed for Murder, the Highway, Housebreaking, Street Robberies, Coining or other offences • Arthur L. Hayward
... thus speaks: "It is no shame with them to pass whole days and nights in drinking; but quarrellings are very frequent amongst them, as are usual amongst folks in that respect, and more often end at daggers drawing than in Billingsgate. It is, however, in such meetings, that alliances and reconciliations are formed. Here they treat of the election of princes. In short, of all affairs, of peace and war. Those opportunities they think most proper, inasmuch ...
— Ebrietatis Encomium - or, the Praise of Drunkenness • Boniface Oinophilus |
