"Rubicund" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... dotted over with green fields and groups of trees. Raoul had been there about ten minutes, during five of which he was lost in reverie, when there appeared within the circle comprised in his rolling gaze a man with a rubicund face, who, with a napkin around his body, another under his arm, and a white cap upon his head, approached him, holding paper, ...
— Twenty Years After • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... Central Europe last autumn, but he never mentioned Josef on his return. Harris? Well, one would scarcely call Harris a businessfriend. Filmer? No, Filmer is too selfish, I fear, to do me so good a turn. Ah, of course! Kelly, dear old burly rubicund Kelly, with his unfailing memory for an address and his delightfully abbreviated style. And he goes everywhere too: the very man. I can almost hear him saying it: "Then there's Johnson, my staunch ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, May 20, 1914 • Various
... visit to Cadurcis, when Lady Annabel was sitting alone, a postchaise drove up to the hall, whence issued a short and stout woman with a rubicund countenance, and dressed in a style which remarkably blended the shabby with the tawdry. She was accompanied by a boy between eleven and twelve years of age, whose appearance, however, much contrasted with that of his mother, for he was pale and slender, with ...
— Venetia • Benjamin Disraeli
... course, heralded by a flourish of silver trumpets, was borne in by liveried servants walking two and two, with rubicund marshals strutting in front and behind, bearing white wands in their hands, not only as badges of their office, but also as weapons with which to repel any impertinent inroad upon the dishes in the journey from the kitchen to the hall. Boar's heads, enarmed ...
— Sir Nigel • Arthur Conan Doyle
... walk warily, and not stir up strife," quoth the rubicund prior, who looked at once a benevolent and a strong-willed man. "We will pray for the restoration—the permanent restoration of the good king; but we must avoid stirring up the hearts of his subjects in such a way as ...
— In the Wars of the Roses - A Story for the Young • Evelyn Everett-Green
... on deck to satisfy himself that all was going on properly, the mate stepped forward to attend to some duty. As the former's rubicund visage disappeared beneath the ...
— Charley Laurel - A Story of Adventure by Sea and Land • W. H. G. Kingston
... are drunk, Hubschle, you are exceedingly shrewd, and for that reason, I pardon your impertinence. Your rubicund nose has scented the matter correctly. The ambassador has demanded his passports already. But go now. Take this dispatch to the second courier and tell him to carry it immediately to the French embassy. As for yourself, you must hasten to the commander of Vienna, and take this paper to him. ...
— LOUISA OF PRUSSIA AND HER TIMES • Louise Muhlbach
... is a gaunt figure, with a hatchet face, spare of flesh. Our Little Man is a chubby lad, standing about four foot ten in his stockinged feet, rubicund and corpulent, and he wears a mackintosh with a very mackintoshy smell in all weathers. He never did a day's work, and he never means to try, but he is a genius at getting it out of others. Some say he is of Swiss origin, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, October 27, 1920 • Various
... laden with the spoils of the shrubberies—holly, mistletoe, and evergreens—ruthlessly plundered under cover of the darkness. A couple of days before "the day," the sergeant-major enters the barrack-room, a smile playing upon his rubicund features. We all know what his errand is and he knows right well that we do; but he cannot refrain from the customary short patronising harangue, "Our worthy captain—liberal gent you know—deputed me—what ...
— Camps, Quarters, and Casual Places • Archibald Forbes
... asylum reunions. No one could exceed him in the respect he showed to a coroneted head, even when cracked; and a bishop under his charge was always secured, as far as possible, from the least whisper of heretical conversation. He possessed besides a pleasant rubicund countenance and an immaculate wardrobe. He was further fortunate in having in his assistants, Dr Escott and Dr Sherlaw, two young gentlemen whose medical knowledge was almost equal to the affability of their manners and the excellence of their ...
— The Lunatic at Large • J. Storer Clouston
... peculiar pleasure was the little thick-shaded garden which adjoins the convent and commands from its massive artificial foundations an enchanting view of the lake. Part of it is laid out in cabbages and lettuce, over which a rubicund brother, with his frock tucked up, was bending with a solicitude which he interrupted to remove his skullcap and greet me with the unsophisticated sweet-humoured smile that every now and then in Italy does so much to ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... young man, not more than thirty-two or three years of age, though he lacked the ultra robust and rubicund appearance which is typical of so many Englishmen of his class at this period of life. A heavy bout of blackwater fever acquired on service in West Africa, which would have killed anyone of weaker constitution, had robbed his face ...
— The Yellow God - An Idol of Africa • H. Rider Haggard
... which happened shortly after the proposed elopement, and which cannot be passed over without mention, was a call from Squire Hennion on Mr. Meredith. The master of Boxely opened the interview by shaking his fist within a few inches of the rubicund countenance of the master of Greenwood, and, suiting his words to the motion, he roared: "May Belza take yer, yer old—" and the particular epithet is best omitted, the eighteenth-century vocabulary being more expressive ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... Chief-Justice are unmatched in literature. The knight stands royally forth in them, clothed with his entire panoply of agile intellect, robust humour, and boundless comic effrontery. But the arrogant and expeditious Falstaff of The Merry Wives—so richly freighted with rubicund sensuality, so abundant in comic loquacity, and so ludicrous in his sorry plights—is a much less complex person, and therefore he stands more level than the real Falstaff does with the average comprehension of mankind. ...
— Shadows of the Stage • William Winter
... follows. A rubicund Mexican priest is the celebrant, while two old Mexicans in modern dress, and a Pueblo Indian in a red blanket, are acolytes. When the host is elevated, an Indian at the door beats a villainous drum and four musket shots are discharged. After the services are concluded, a procession ...
— My Native Land • James Cox
... grape-spurt, a vine-splash, a tossed tress, flown vaunt 'tis! Suffer my singing, Gipsy of Seasons, ere thou go winging; Ere Winter throws His slaking snows In thy feasting-flagon's impurpurate glows! The sopped sun—toper as ever drank hard - Stares foolish, hazed, Rubicund, dazed, Totty with thine October tankard. Tanned maiden! with cheeks like apples russet, And breast a brown agaric faint-flushing at tip, And a mouth too red for the moon to buss it, But her cheek unvow its vestalship; Thy mists enclip Her steel-clear circuit illuminous, Until ...
— Poems • Francis Thompson
... old coach swayed to and fro, with its dignified elderly gentlemen and rubicund Lord Mayor, rejoicing in countless turtle feeds—for, reader, it was Sir ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... the window. There he saw as he looked out upon the lawn something that interested him; that caused a grin to fasten itself upon his rubicund countenance. Phil, under a fire of snowballs from a group of boys who were waiting with their Christmas sleds for a chance to hitch to a passing vehicle, gained Amzi's gate, ducked behind the fence to gather ammunition, rose and delivered her fire, ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson
... man wrong in this, for I believe he had hurried things really to please me. His face had lengthened considerably by this time, and its rubicund hue declined. ...
— Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood • George MacDonald
... and ascending for hours through open pasture lands, arrived at some rocks interspersed with stunted ilex, where a lamb was roasting for our dinner. The meridian sun had long ere this pierced the clouds that overhung our departure, and the sight of the lamb completely irradiated the rubicund visage of the plethoric clerk. A low round table was set down on the grass, under the shade of a large boulder stone. An ilex growing from its interstices seemed to live on its wits, for not an ounce of soil was visible for its subsistence. Our ride gave us a sharp ...
— Servia, Youngest Member of the European Family • Andrew Archibald Paton
... with a laugh on its rubicund face; Methinks, by the way, it's in pretty good case, For a spirit unblest with a body; "On the claret bee's-wing," says the sprite, "I regale; But I'm ready for all—from Lafitte down to ale, From Champagne ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 14, - Issue 400, November 21, 1829 • Various
... Ralph Nickleby's clerk. A tall man of middle age, with two goggle eyes (one of which was fixed), a rubicund nose, a cadavarous[TN-41] face, and a suit of clothes decidedly the worse for wear. He had the gift of distorting and cracking his finger-joints. This kind-hearted, dilapidated fellow "kept his hunter and hounds once," but ran through his fortune. He discovered a plot of old Ralph, which ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... looked as rubicund, as jovial, as cynical as ever. But few cast him more than a passing glance. Then they gave an audible gasp, induced by an ingenuous compound of amazement, disappointment, and admiration. They had been prepared to forgive, to endure, to make every allowance. The poor thing could no more help ...
— Sleeping Fires • Gertrude Atherton
... the innkeeper, a portly man with rubicund face, "but monsieur can have a table for his refreshment, and he will not find the ...
— My Sword's My Fortune - A Story of Old France • Herbert Hayens
... incident happened that day at dinner. Grandpapa, like a great many other persons in Finland, being a vegetarian, had gone to the rubicund and comfortable landlord that morning and explained that he wanted vegetables and fruit for his dinner. At four o'clock, the time for our mid-day meal, we all seated ourselves at table with excellent appetites, the Judge ...
— Through Finland in Carts • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... the expectant multitude are greeted by the sight of an immense car decked with many-coloured festoons and drawn by four horses. Mounted on the car is a huge chair, on which sits enthroned the majestic figure of the Carnival, a man of stucco about nine feet high with a rubicund and smiling countenance. Enormous boots, a tin helmet like those which grace the heads of officers of the Italian marine, and a coat of many colours embellished with strange devices, adorn the outward ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... stood looking out of the window, against which came sweeping the great volumes of mist. I glanced out also. Not only was the sea invisible, but even the brow of the cliffs. When he turned towards me, as I passed him, I saw that his face had lost much of its rubicund hue, and looked troubled ...
— The Vicar's Daughter • George MacDonald
... have furnished a whole century of poets with similes; and in the posy-bed under the front windows were tulips of Chinese awkwardness and splendor, beds of pinks spicy as all Arabia, blue hyacinths heavy with sweetness as well as bells, "pi'nies" rubicund and rank, hearts-ease clustered against the house, and sticky rose-acacias, pretty and impracticable, not to mention the grenadier files of hollyhocks that contended with fennel-bushes and scarlet-flowered beans for the precedence, and the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... tool that grows keener with constant use. For a long while he used to console himself, when driven from home, by frequenting a kind of perpetual club of the sages, philosophers, and other idle personages of the village; which held its sessions on a bench before a small inn, designated by a rubicund portrait of His Majesty George the Third. Here they used to sit in the shade through a long lazy summer's day, talking listlessly over village gossip, or telling endless sleepy stories about nothing. But it would have been worth any statesman's money to have heard ...
— The Short-story • William Patterson Atkinson
... but a dim consciousness of two men riding round the store-wing and dismounting. One of the two remained in the background screened by the trails of native cucumber overhanging the veranda end. The other—a wiry, powerful figure in uniform, with a rubicund face, black bristling moustache and beard and prominent black eyes, reminding one of the eyes of a bull—walked forward and spoke with an air of ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed
... neat little cottage, some five miles from town, Lived a pretty young maiden, by name Daphne Brown, Like a butterfly, pretty and airy: In a village hard by lived a medical prig, With a rubicund nose, and a full-bottomed wig, Apollo, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 13, No. 375, June 13, 1829 • Various
... angle of rail may be pushed in or pushed back that shall send the train to one of two places five hundred miles asunder: it may depend upon whether he shall take or not take that half-crown, whether, thirty years after, he shall be taking the chair, a rubicund baronet, at a missionary society meeting, and receive the commendations of philanthropic peers and earnest bishops, or be laboring in chains at Norfolk Island, a brutalized, cursing, hardened, scourge-scarred, despairing wretch, without a hope for this life or the other. Oh, how much may turn upon ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 48, October, 1861 • Various
... Dollard, Rubicund, musclebound, hairynostrilled, hugebearded, cabbageeared, shaggychested, shockmaned, fat-papped, stands forth, his loins and genitals tightened into a pair of ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... the library in the same deliberate way, and turned up the gas. Mr. Frayling came hurrying down, fat and fussy, and puffing a little, but cheerfully rubicund upon the success of the day's proceedings, and apprehending nothing untoward. When he saw his son-in-law he opened his eyes, stopped short, turned ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... hand, had followed the hint of his father's figure in his make-up, and appeared as a rubicund old gentleman, large in the waist, bald, with an apoplectic tendency, a wheezy asthmatic voice, and ...
— The Old Folks' Party - 1898 • Edward Bellamy
... absurd pictures remain in my memory, when better ones pass away by the score. There is a picture of Venus, combing her son Cupid's head with a small-tooth comb, and looking with maternal care among his curls; this I shall not forget. Likewise, a picture of a broad, rubicund Judith by Bardone,—a widow of fifty, of an easy, lymphatic, cheerful temperament, who has just killed Holofernes, and is as self-complacent as if she had been carving a goose. What could possibly have stirred up this ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... court was in session and Hal sat for a while in the court-room, watching Judge Denton. Here was another prosperous and well-fed appearing gentleman, with a rubicund visage shining over the top of his black silk robe. The young miner found himself regarding both the robe and the visage with suspicion. Could it be that Hal was becoming cynical, and losing his faith in his fellow man? What ...
— King Coal - A Novel • Upton Sinclair
... good victuals! It is a great promoter of innocence. And I thought how many of the poor, half-starved, cadaverous wretches who crowded into the dock in all their emaciated wretchedness and rags would, under other conditions, have become as portly and rubicund and as moral as the row of worthy aldermen who sat looking at them with contempt from their ...
— The Humourous Story of Farmer Bumpkin's Lawsuit • Richard Harris
... the heat of the Revolution of July had engendered and incubated a multitude of journals, great and little, bounding with young blood and health—journals whose editors and writers did not desire better sport than to attack the Constitutionnel at right and at left, and to tumble the dear, fat, rubicund, old gentleman, head over heels. Among these was the Charivari, which incontinently laughed at the whole system of the establishment, from the crapulous, corpulent, and Voltairien Etienne, down to the lowest printer's devil. The metaphors, the puffs, ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... not shout when he saw him, did not even shake hands, to say nothing of thumping the little man upon the back. The broad and rubicund face of East Wellmouth's leading politician and dealer in real estate wore not a grin but a frown, and when he and Galusha came together at the gate he did not speak. Galusha spoke first, which was unusual; very ...
— Galusha the Magnificent • Joseph C. Lincoln
... months before. "I begin to think," he remarked often, "that by continuing this life, as simple as that which a bird leads flying from bough to bough, I am to grow stout and elderly, and go on getting gray, rubicund, with an amplitude of white waistcoat, until I am seventy years of age or so. My father and mother each died young, but both by accident as it were: the habit of both families was of long life and great strength. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December 1878 • Various
... nearly had the pleasure of killing a man with laughing: and this in the most literal sense. American lecturers have often dreamed of doing this. I nearly did it. The man in question was a comfortable apoplectic-looking man with the kind of merry rubicund face that is seen in countries where they don't have prohibition. He was seated near the back of the hall and was laughing uproariously. All of a sudden I realised that something was happening. The man had collapsed sideways on to the floor; a little group of men gathered about him; they lifted ...
— My Discovery of England • Stephen Leacock
... standing where she was. In a little while the heavy door opened, and a portly, rubicund man came out with a smile on his face. He broke into a laugh, when halfway across the room, as if the memory of what he had heard were too much for his gravity. The doorkeeper slipped into the room, and there was a silent, anxious interval. Then ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... to come was Courtecuisse, in whom you would scarcely have recognized the once jovial forester, the rubicund do-nothing, whose wife made his morning coffee as we have before seen. Aged, and thin, and haggard, he presented to all eyes a lesson that no one learned. "He tried to climb higher than the ladder," was what his neighbors said when others ...
— Sons of the Soil • Honore de Balzac
... crows along the North Parade. There is always a great shew of the clergy at Bath: none of your thin, puny, yellow, hectic figures, exhausted with abstinence, and hardy study, labouring under the morbi eruditorum, but great overgrown dignitaries and rectors, with rubicund noses and gouty ancles, or broad bloated faces, dragging along great swag bellies; the emblems of sloth ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett
... leading out of the New Kent Road, a little way from the Elephant and Castle; and the caravanserai bearing the title of the Jolly Butchers is an unpretending beershop, with no outward and visible signs of especial joviality. On entering I met mine host, rubicund and jolly enough, who politely pioneered me upstairs, when I reported myself as in quest of the linnets. The scene of contest I found to be a largish room, where some twenty or thirty most un-Arcadian looking gentlemen were ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies
... stood astonished at the change he saw upon the strong man of rubicund countenance, and his heart filled with compassion. The factor was sitting up in bed, looking very white and worn and troubled. Even his nose had grown thin and white. He held out his hand to him, and said to his wife, "Tak the door to ye, Mistress Crathie," indicating ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 20, August 1877 • Various
... proved to be a rubicund, rather portly gentleman, with white side whiskers and an air of urbane courtesy that set her at her ease at once. She told him who she was, hopefully, and was delighted to find that he placed ...
— The Ivory Snuff Box • Arnold Fredericks
... the 1st of February, had succeeded in committing frightful ravages upon Allied commerce and seriously threatened to starve the British Isles. Admiral Sims was two years older than Pershing and as typical a sailor as the former was soldier. With his bluff and genial, yet dignified, manner, his rubicund complexion, closely-trimmed white beard, and piercing eyes, no one could have mistaken his calling. Free of speech, frank in praise and criticism, abounding in indiscretions, he possessed the capacity to make the warmest friends and enemies. ...
— Woodrow Wilson and the World War - A Chronicle of Our Own Times. • Charles Seymour
... experiment of Matthews, who began the diary of an invalid and ended with that of a gourmand. I fear that these kindly geniuses would sometimes feel a twinge of chagrin at seeing their elaborate delicacies in process of being devoured by the most rubicund people in the house. But it matters not; it is the sending and getting that are the dainties. Amid all these niceties, however, the office of nurse might certainly be made a sinecure; and just at this point her labors are really quite arduous; ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 109, November, 1866 • Various
... based upon friendship, and whose most persistent interrogations had been touched with a quiet and sober tact which contrasted pleasantly with Mr. Lawrence's dictatorial manner. That genial and rubicund person was now seen approaching with Sir John, and suggested that they 'ought ...
— Peter and Jane - or The Missing Heir • S. (Sarah) Macnaughtan
... half pleased, half sulky, wholly puzzled. Then one of the speakers rose. At first sight the preacher looked like anything but an apostle; his plump, rounded body gave no hint of asceticism, and his merry, pure eye twinkled from the midst of a most rubicund expanse of countenance. He looked like one who had found the world a pleasant place, and Jim gruffly described him as a "jolly old bloke." But the voice of this comfortable, suave-looking missionary by no means matched his appearance. ...
— The Chequers - Being the Natural History of a Public-House, Set Forth in - a Loafer's Diary • James Runciman
... persecution does not stop at one single person; it extends to the last person of the family, if the course be not interrupted by cutting off the head or opening the heart of the ghost, whose corpse is found in his coffin, yielding, flexible, swollen, and rubicund, although he may have been dead some time. There proceeds from his body a great quantity of blood, which some mix up with flour to make bread of; and that bread eaten in ordinary protects them from being tormented by the spirit, which ...
— The Phantom World - or, The philosophy of spirits, apparitions, &c, &c. • Augustin Calmet
... me. In her eyes I'm an immoral woman. If I were an immoral woman I could have made her husband fall in love with me ...if I'd cared to. And, indeed, I did care to. There's someone who's pleased with himself," she thought, as she saw a fat, rubicund gentleman coming towards her. He took her for an acquaintance, and lifted his glossy hat above his bald, glossy head, and then perceived his mistake. "He thought he knew me. Well, he knows me as well as anyone in the world knows me. I don't know myself. I know my ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... sedate original of my father's rather garish copy) was a panelled chamber, hung round with rubicund portraits of the male O'Neills from the early ones of the family who had been Lords of Ellan down to the "bad Lord Raa," who had sworn at my ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... climate serves one the same in regard to jokes as in food. One is never satiated with them, and there are no morbid, worn distinctions of taste—an old one, an exceedingly mild one, have all the convulsive power of the keenest flash from less healthy and rubicund intellects. ...
— Vesty of the Basins • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... soon accomplished. His Excellency's footman mounted the horse, and Sir Asinus entered the chariot and found himself opposite an elderly gentleman, very richly clad, and with a smiling and rubicund face which seemed to indicate a love of the best living. This gentleman was Francis Fauquier, Governor of his Majesty's loyal colony of Virginia; and he seemed to be no stranger to the ...
— The Youth of Jefferson - A Chronicle of College Scrapes at Williamsburg, in Virginia, A.D. 1764 • Anonymous
... needed, in order to be identified at the bank. He wrote to me from 24 George Street, Hanover Square, and told me he delighted in London, and wished he could spend a year there. He enjoyed floating about, in a sort of unknown way, among the rotund and rubicund figures made jolly with ale and port-wine. He was greatly amused at being told (his informants meaning to be complimentary) "that he would never be taken for anything but an Englishman." He called Tennyson's "Charge of ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields
... stood in two rows, lengthening course by course, awaiting the coming of the absentees. And thus it was that when Mr. Bulliwinkle, fat, bald, and rubicund, made his appearance, the proceedings were suspended until he had imbibed his share, glass by glass, beginning with the cocktails and ending temporarily with Madeira. Then Mr. Bulliwinkle suddenly became profoundly grave, ...
— Double Trouble - Or, Every Hero His Own Villain • Herbert Quick
... against one of the posts of the piazza to have his laugh out. When he did, however, recover the power of speech, he wiped his eyes and looked around till they rested on Madame Nathalie, when, with his white napkin held up like a shield beside his rubicund visage, he spluttered, ...
— Captain Brand of the "Centipede" • H. A. (Henry Augustus) Wise
... at five, crowded the men, ay, and the women and children, of Rangeley and thereabout. They came as the winds and waves come when forests and navies are rended and stranded. Horse, foot, and charioteers, they thronged toward the rubicund fountain of education. From houses that lurked invisible in clearings suddenly burst forth a population, an audience ardent with patriotism, eager for politics even from a Cockney interpreter, and numerous enough to stir electricity in a speaker's mind. Some of the matrons brought ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... his crown; his forehead was high, his eyebrows scanty, his eyes, grey and sly, with a downward tendency, his nose was slightly aquiline, his mouth rather large—a kind of sneering smile played continually on his lips, his complexion was somewhat rubicund. ...
— Isopel Berners - The History of certain doings in a Staffordshire Dingle, July, 1825 • George Borrow
... was of the short, stout, bald-headed type, sometimes called aldermanic. It was plainly to be seen that his was a jocund nature, and the awe which he felt in this dreadful presence of death, though clearly shown on his rubicund face, was evidently a rare emotion with him. He glanced round the room as if expecting to see everything there materially changed, and though he looked toward the figure of Mr. Crawford now and then, ...
— The Gold Bag • Carolyn Wells
... see him now before me, with his jolly red face, twinkling black eyes, and rubicund nose. No thin, weasel-faced Yankee was he, looking as if he had lived upon 'cute ideas and speculations all his life; yet Yankee he was by birth, ay, and in mind, too; for a more knowing fellow at a bargain never crossed the lakes ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... good nature, and from a kindly feeling for Palmer, gave a dinner at Carlton House, when a fair trial was to be given to his claret. A select circle of gastronomes was to be present, amongst whom was Lord Yarmouth, well known in those days by the appellation of "Red-herrings," from his rubicund whiskers, hair, and face, and from the town of Yarmouth deriving its principal support from the importation from Holland of that fish; Sir Benjamin Bloomfield, Sir William Knighton, and Sir Thomas Tyrwhitt, were also ...
— Reminiscences of Captain Gronow • Rees Howell Gronow
... she said, as she looked round with childlike curiosity at the great hearth, the oak rafters, and the yokels with their elaborate smocks and jovial, rubicund, British countenances. ...
— The Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy
... really very comfortable here," said he, after scattering these greetings with a cackle of loud laughter that hardly moved the rubicund muscles ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac
... the King with that flame-face of his Was something exceedingly horrid; The rain, as it fell on his flight, gave a fizz Like unbottled champagne, and went off with a whizz As it sprinkled his rubicund forehead. ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., October 25, 1890 • Various
... which gave a cognomen to Ovid,[8] and the one to which the celebrated violoncello player, Cervetto, owed the sobriquet of Nosey. This epithet reminds me of another nose of theatrical notoriety, whose rubicund tint, when it interfered with the costume of a sober character which its owner was enacting, was moderated by his wife, who, with laudable anxiety to keep down its "rosy hue," was constantly behind the scenes ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 13 Issue 367 - 25 Apr 1829 • Various
... law—there was nothing of the pettifogger about him: somewhat under middle size, and somewhat rotund in person, he was always dressed in a full suit of black, never worn long enough to become threadbare. His face was rubicund, and not without keenness; but the most remarkable thing about him was his head, which was bald, and shone like polished ivory, nothing more white, smooth and lustrous. Some people have said that he wore false calves, probably because his black silk stockings ...
— George Borrow in East Anglia • William A. Dutt
... of them, who had a red face and a large carbuncle on his nose, which served to distinguish him from his companions, who though they had both very rubicund ...
— Wild Wales - Its People, Language and Scenery • George Borrow
... her two visitors. De Batz, well content with the result of this evening's entertainment, wore an urbane, bland smile on his rubicund face. Armand, somewhat serious and not a little in love, made the hand-kiss with which he took his leave last as long as ...
— El Dorado • Baroness Orczy
... his watch out as I came up to him. He had a chubby, rubicund face with reddish brown eyes—previously I had seen him only against the light. "One moment, sir," said I as he turned. He stared. "One moment," he said, "certainly. Or if you wish to speak to me for longer, and it is not asking ...
— The First Men In The Moon • H. G. Wells
... vicar, with avowedly no qualification for his profession, placidly playing chess with his mother, stroking his dogs, and dipping into Greek tragedies; there is the excellent Martin Poyser at the Farm, good-natured and rubicund; there is his wife, somewhat too sharply voluble, but only in behalf of cleanliness and honesty and order; there is Captain Donnithorne at the Hall, who does a poor girl a mortal wrong, but who is, after all, such a nice, good-looking fellow; there are Adam and Seth Bede, the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 108, October, 1866 • Various
... at Dick, his rubicund visage purpling. But it was not Dick who had laughed. Nor any one ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, October, 1930 • Various
... outlook from the window, which presented a happy combination of grange scenery with marine. Upon the irregular slope between the house and the quay was an orchard of aged trees wherein every apple ripening on the boughs presented its rubicund side towards the cottage, because that building chanced to lie upwards in the same direction as the sun. Under the trees were a few Cape sheep, and over them the stone chimneys of the village below: outside these lay the tanned sails of a ketch or smack, and the violet waters of the bay, seamed ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy
... dinner's put back; For though the board's deckt, and the napery, fair As the unsunned snow-flake, is spread out with care, And the Dais is furnished with stool and with chair, And plate of orfeverie costly and rare, Apostle-spoons, salt-cellar, all are there, And Mess John in his place, With his rubicund face, And his hands ready folded, prepared to say Grace, Yet where ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... Western genealogist,—yet Fortune had a higher gratification to bestow. For, in His Worship, the Most Primordial, the High Senior Governour and Primitive Patriarch of all Sextons, Colonel Prowley soon discovered a relative of his own. Sir Joseph Barley, a rubicund old knight, and the Most Primordial in question, after an elaborate investigation and counter-investigation, a jockeying of the wits of very old women, and a raid into divers registers, scrolls, schedules, archives, and the like,—Sir Joseph Barley, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various
... not content with their own success in cheating, they throw discredit upon honest folk. How many a faithful pocket-piece has been pulled out by its disappointed owner and actually set wrong to make it agree with one of these rubicund old sinners? Such is the overpowering effect of impudent assurance ...
— The Patient Observer - And His Friends • Simeon Strunsky
... daughter of the GROSSE KURFURST, and so very fat and rubicund, had a Son once: he too is mentionable in his way,—as a milestone (parish milestone) in the obscure Chronology of those parts. Her first husband was the Duke of Courland; to him she brought an heir, who became Duke in his turn,—and was the final ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. VIII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... misgivings as to the future to a man of quicker perceptions than Mr. Wheelwright—but fortunately his wife was the earliest riser. It happened that as his spouse was exchanging some rather undignified jokes with the milkman, a jolly son of Erin came along, whose rubicund visage kindled with a thousand smiles as his eyes rested ...
— Ups and Downs in the Life of a Distressed Gentleman • William L. Stone
... it appeared, was an uncle. Father dead, mother divorced and leading a pleasant existence amongst the capitals of Europe. The uncle, although maintaining a decent appearance of grief, was obviously, at heart, relieved to be rid of his nephew so easily. Poor Carfax! For so rubicund and noisy a person he left strangely little mark upon the world. Within a fortnight the college had nearly lost account of his existence. He lent to Sannet Wood a sinister air that caused numberless undergraduates to cycle out in that direction. Now and again, when conversation ...
— The Prelude to Adventure • Hugh Walpole
... it is,' said Havill, who was also present, in the tone of one who, though sitting in this rubicund company, was not of it. 'I could have told you the truth of it any day these last ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... landscapes of ancient date on the walls; with a very old lady in lofty cap and faded silk gown in the chimney corner, where she had sat on her little stool as a girl more than half a century before, and with a hearty, rubicund host presiding over a mighty bowl of wassail, something smaller than an ordinary washhouse copper, in which the hot apples would "hiss and bubble with a rich look and a jolly sound that were perfectly irresistible". Or when the carpet was up, the candles burning brightly, and family, guests, ...
— Dickens-Land • J. A. Nicklin
... George of Brunswick, at Hanover, in Seventeen Hundred Nine, was George Frederick Handel, six feet one, weight one hundred eighty, rubicund, rosy, and full of romp, aged twenty-four. George of Brunswick was to have the felicity of being King George the First of England, and already he was straining his gaze ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Musicians • Elbert Hubbard
... to come, when the veracious history of my famous deeds is made known, the sage who writes it, when he has to set forth my first sally in the early morning, will do it after this fashion? 'Scarce had the rubicund Apollo spread o'er the face of the broad spacious earth the golden threads of his bright hair, scarce had the little birds of painted plumage attuned their notes to hail with dulcet and mellifluous harmony the ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... edged tool that grows keener with constant use. For a long while he used to console himself, when driven from home, by frequenting a kind of perpetual club of the sages, philosophers, and other idle personages of the village, which held its sessions on a bench before a small inn, designated by a rubicund portrait of his Majesty George the Third. Here they used to sit in the shade through a long, lazy summer's day, talking listlessly over village gossip, or telling endless, sleepy stories about nothing. But it would have been worth any ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving
... Pompley's face was red in ordinary hours, no epithet sufficiently rubicund or sanguineous can express its color at this appeal. "The man's mad," he said at last, with a tone of astonishment that almost concealed his wrath, "stark mad! I take his child!—lodge and board a great, positive, hungry child! Why, sir, many and ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various
... Trew, cap now at the back of his head, and his rubicund face bearing indications of seriousness, pointed out that the girl was in a berth in Great Titchfield Street, which he described as not so dusty, earning twenty-five shillings a week, and with Saturday ...
— Love at Paddington • W. Pett Ridge
... the talk in the dining room fell flat, and looking up William Wetherell perceived a portly, rubicund man of middle age being shown to his seat by the headwaiter. The gentleman wore a great, glittering diamond in his shirt, and a watch chain that contained much fine gold. But the real cause of the silence was plainly in the young woman who walked beside him, and whose effective ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... reached the house we found Daddy lying on the steamer chair. He was engaged in deep converse with our skipper, who left at once. The doctor only remained a few minutes, and then Susie appeared, her rubicund face framed in the mighty antlers of my quarry. ...
— Sweetapple Cove • George van Schaick
... looked quite as gay as usual; but he blinked nervously, and his first glance was a questioning one in the direction of Duvillard, as if he wished to know how the latter bore the fresh thrust directed at him by Sagnier. And when he saw the banker looking perfectly composed, as superb, as rubicund as usual, and chatting in a bantering way with Rosemonde, he also put on an easy air, like a gamester who had never lost but had always known how to compel good luck, even in hours of treachery. And by way of showing his unconstraint of mind he at once addressed the Baroness on managerial matters: ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... he proved to be. As we left his house we met in the street two or three of the "evicted" tenants, whom he introduced to me. One of these, Mr. Loughlin, was the holder of farms representing a rental of L94. A stalwart, hearty, rotund, and rubicund farmer he was, and in reply to my query how long the holdings he had lost had been in his family, he answered, "not far from two hundred years." Certainly some one must have blundered as badly as at Balaklava to ...
— Ireland Under Coercion (2nd ed.) (2 of 2) (1888) • William Henry Hurlbert
... tall and thin; Mrs B. was short and stout. The face of the manager and proprietor of Blewcome's Royal Menagerie was sallow and cadaverous. The face of his spouse was rubicund to a degree. In fact, in everything, the pair were admirably suited, according to the principle, that the more unlike two people are, the better they will agree; and they led a very prosperous "Jack Sprat and his wife" sort of life, roaming from place to place, with their caravans ...
— Wilton School - or, Harry Campbell's Revenge • Fred E. Weatherly |
