"Widowhood" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... would not tempt God in aught. To govern a land was a serious thing; and he who had little to rule had little to be responsible for before God. He would therefore freely withdraw his claims, and be content with the annuity; then he could remain with his dear mother, and console her in her widowhood. He did not fear that he would ever repent his choice, for he had more pleasure in study than in the pomp of the world; and if he took the government, then must his beloved library be given up for food to the moths ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V1 • William Mienhold
... devoted husband, who was a nephew of the once Governor of the Colony of Massachusetts. He was very wealthy, besides his West India estate—owning a large estate in England. The wonderful piety of this devoted saint, during the long years of her widowhood, ought to humble pigmy Christians, like me, in the dust. Oh, can I ever be saved, if such men and women ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson
... you will promise to marry me within a year of widowhood, I will undertake to get twenty thousand francs for it from Elie Magus; and unless you marry me you will never get a thousand francs for ...
— Cousin Pons • Honore de Balzac
... dowager of Sweden, thought to be amongst the most shining women of the world, was also known for one of the most imperious, revengeful, and relentless, and had got for herself the name of Sigrid the Proud. In her high widowhood she had naturally many wooers; but treated them in a manner unexampled. Two of her suitors, a simultaneous Two, were, King Harald Graenske (a cousin of King Tryggveson's, and kind of king in some district, by sufferance of the late Hakon's),—this ...
— Early Kings of Norway • Thomas Carlyle
... undyed wool, did not become a nun, but, on his advice, retained her secular estate and ministered to the needs of the poor. But instances occur in which vowesses retired from the world and its cares. Elfleda, niece of King Athelstan, having resolved to pass the remainder of her days in widowhood, fixed her abode in Glastonbury Abbey; and as late as July 23, 1527, leave was granted to the Prioress of Dartford to receive "any well-born matron widow, of good repute, to dwell perpetually in the monastery without a habit according to the custom of the monastery." Now and then a widow would ...
— The Customs of Old England • F. J. Snell
... I had seemed to be, inflicted pangs sharper than the vulture's beak or the arrow's barb. If he had left the country, as there was every reason to suppose he had, with this conviction, he never would return; and the loneliness and dreariness of a widowhood more sad than that which death creates, would settle down darkly and heavily on my ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz
... what I would; for she had not spoken about it, but was resolved to live apart from me." This was fairly giving me my discharge, and I thought of taking my measures privately to retire. As I had not, since my widowhood, made any visits but such as were of pure necessity, or charity, there were found too many discontented spirits, who made a party with her against me. The Lord required of me an inviolable secrecy of all my pains, both exterior and interior. There is nothing which ...
— The Autobiography of Madame Guyon • Jeanne Marie Bouvier de La Motte Guyon
... confidence which her husband had placed in her. In the first days of her widowhood, she sent for me, and made her Will. The view she took of her position was so thoroughly sound and sensible, that I was relieved of all necessity for advising her. My responsibility began and ended with shaping her instructions into the proper legal form. Before ...
— The Moonstone • Wilkie Collins
... very different in all respects from those just mentioned, closed in the second year of Dublin's widowhood as a metropolis. It was the career of a young man of four-and-twenty, who snatched at immortal fame and obtained it, in the very agony of a public, but not for him, a shameful death. This was Robert, youngest ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... lady. Sorry am I our paths parted so widely in later years. Her daughter married the Earl of Sussex and her home in late years has been abroad. [July 19, 1909, Mrs. Carnegie and I found my elder-sister friend April last, now in widowhood, in Paris, her sister and also her daughter all well and happy. A great pleasure, indeed. There are no substitutes for the true friends ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Carnegie • Andrew Carnegie
... what can they do? You are the law. With a private citizen, with me, for instance, it would be different. My wife would prepare herself for widowhood." ...
— The Net • Rex Beach
... days, his daughter suggests, and the year of conventional widowhood having expired, Mr. Sedgwick, then at the age of twenty-three, married Miss Pamela Dwight, the mother of his four sons, all successful lawyers, and his three daughters, all exemplary women. The second Mrs. Sedgwick was presumably more ...
— Daughters of the Puritans - A Group of Brief Biographies • Seth Curtis Beach
... your pitiful conduct, your obsequious suppliant, an eleemosynary lady of decrepit widowhood, throws herself at your Excellency's mercy feet with two imbecile childrens of various denominations. For our Heavenly Father's sake, if not inconvenient,— which we have been beneficently bereaved of other paternal description,—we humbly ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... the effect on her aunt. If the Queen of the White Ants had been stout before, what was she now? Whatever her appearance had been in the days of comparative prosperity, with a husband to keep her up to the mark, and a desire to rank with the officers' wives, she had let everything go in widowhood, poverty, and neglect; and as she stood panting in her old shiny black alpaca, the only thing Gillian recalled about her like old times was the black lace veil thrown mantilla fashion over her head; but now it was over a widow's cap, and a great deal rustier than ...
— Beechcroft at Rockstone • Charlotte M. Yonge
... revelation. All at once he thought he guessed at the young woman's real desire, and looking at her out of the corner of his eye, with a heart full of benevolence and of sympathy for her distress, he said: "Oh, I understand perfectly. I know that your widowhood must be irksome to you. You are young and in good health. It is ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... it had happened that I saw the light. . . . My mother died, a year later: and after seven years of widowhood my father married again. My sister Sally—the recipient of those long letters you see me inditing o' nights—is my step-sister, and ...
— Foe-Farrell • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... after her grass widowhood that Minnie's tragedy began. The mill was her ruin. So much grace and good looks could not go, cannot go, does not go unchallenged by the attentions of the men who are put there to run these women's work. The overseer was father of her child, and when ...
— The Woman Who Toils - Being the Experiences of Two Gentlewomen as Factory Girls • Mrs. John Van Vorst and Marie Van Vorst
... a learned female pundit from India, and her object was to interest the women of America in the condition of their unfortunate Hindoo sisters. It appeared that thousands and tens of thousands of them were doomed to early and lifelong widowhood, owing to the operation of cruel caste laws, which condemned even girls betrothed to deceased Brahmins to perpetual celibacy. This fate could only be alleviated by the education and elevation of women. And money was needed for schools, especially for medical schools, which would ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... and countenance: still under sixty, and in perfect health and spirits-as well she might be, having preserved, as well as deserved, the exclusive devotion of her only child during all the years in which her early widowhood had made them all in all to each other. Ten years ago, on his election to a lectureship at one of the London hospitals, the son had set up his name on the brass plate of the door of a comfortable house in a once ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... survived him, have preserved for us in still vivid characters the details of the early training of William Carey. He was the eldest of five children. He was the special care of their grandmother, a woman of a delicate nature and devout habits, who closed her sad widowhood in the weaver-son's cottage. Encompassed by such a living influence the grandson spent his first six years. Already the child unconsciously showed the eager thirst for knowledge, and perseverance in attaining ...
— The Life of William Carey • George Smith
... depict the horrors of the assault. After a few hours of dismay, shriekings and blood, the city was in ashes, and the wretched victims of man's pride and revenge were conducted to the vicinity of Kief, where they reared their huts, and in widowhood, orphanage and penury, commenced life anew. Gleb himself in this foray was taken prisoner, conducted to Kief, and detained there a captive until ...
— The Empire of Russia • John S. C. Abbott
... left England, and before he landed in America his father had departed on a longer journey. The ne'er-do-well had the good grace to send back the little sums of money saved by his mother in her widowhood, and gradually his letters ceased. It was known that he was in Chili, and there was war going on there, and yet the good ...
— Tomaso's Fortune and Other Stories • Henry Seton Merriman
... the door of a church hung in black, he entered: he sought out funerals as other men seek christenings. Widowhood and the grief of others attracted him, because of his great gentleness; he mingled with the friends clad in mourning, with families dressed in black, with the priests groaning around a coffin. He seemed to like to give to his thoughts for text these funereal psalmodies filled with the ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... were still wondering at these sublime words there appeared an aged prophetess whose long years of widowhood had been spent in continual worship; she, too, praised God for the salvation to be accomplished by the Child of Mary and she went forth to speak of him to all who like her "were looking for the redemption ...
— The Gospel of Luke, An Exposition • Charles R. Erdman
... partly with the innocence of the dove, but partly also with the wisdom of the serpent. But in such use as she did make of these only weapons which Providence had given to her, I do not think that she can be regarded as very culpable. During those long years of her young widowhood in which nothing had been wanting to her, her conduct had been free from any hint of reproach. She had been content to find all her joy in her duties and in her love as a mother. Now a great necessity for assistance ...
— Orley Farm • Anthony Trollope
... 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
... months dead, and the entry of the 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
... cruize, as it was termed. Poor Elspeth's apron was thrown over her head, and bitterly did she sob and weep for "her beautiful, her brave,—the very image of her dear Simon Glendinning, the stay of her widowhood and the support of her ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... can see in any spring on which the sun shines,—and yet I could not get the hussy to a promise, or even a cordial willing smile, though she will laugh by the hour. If she has dared to marry in my absence, she'd be like to know the pleasures of widowhood ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper
... comprehended it all. Her home was to pass into other hands: henceforth she was to be counted only as an incumbrance on it. Looking from the misery of the present down the gloom of the future, she could see only widowhood and penury. And whilst the appraisers were performing their ungracious task of overhauling cupboards and drawers, and estimating the value in cash of presents received in her courtship, she, in her quiet despair at this last ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... for whom I have mourned so many years, whom I believed lost to me forever, as did also my daughter, my poor daughter, who, broken-hearted at the tragedy of the 'Cynthia,' still mourns every day for her only child—the joy and consolation at first of her widowhood, but afterward ...
— The Waif of the "Cynthia" • Andre Laurie and Jules Verne
... She attached herself to Lismahago for no other reason but that she despaired of making a more agreeable conquest. At present, if I am not much mistaken in my observation, she would gladly convert the widowhood of Baynard to her own advantage. — Since he arrived, she has behaved very coldly to the captain, and strove to fasten on the other's heart, with the hooks of overstrained civility. These must be the instinctive ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett
... Paris. Humphry Clinker. Eugenie Grandet. Knickerbocker's New York. Charles O'Malley. Harry Lorrequer. Handy Andy. Elsie Venner. Challenge of Barletta. Betrothed (Manzoni's). Jane Eyre. Counterparts. Charles Auchester. Tom Brown's Schooldays. Tom Brown at Oxford. Lady Lee's Widowhood. Horseshoe Robinson. Pilot. Spy. Last of the Mohicans. My Novel. On the Heights. Bleak House. Tom Jones. Three Guardsmen. Monte Christo. Les Miserables. Notre Dame. Consuelo. Fadette (Fanchon). Uncle Tom's Cabin. Woman in White. Love me ...
— How to Form a Library, 2nd ed • H. B. Wheatley
... gesture, humour, caprice and whimsy of mine shall be gold to thee, girl; thou shalt feel all the sweets and wealth of being a fine rich widow's woman. Oh! how my head runs my first year out, and jumps to all the joys of widowhood! If thirteen months hence a friend should haul one to a play one has a mind to see,[A] what pleasure t'will be when my Lady Brumpton's footman called (who kept a place for that very purpose) to make a sudden insurrection of fine wigs in the pit and side-boxes. Then, with a pretty ...
— The Palmy Days of Nance Oldfield • Edward Robins
... Mickleham, February 29, 1793 Have you not begun, dearest sir, to give me up as a lost sheep? Susanna's temporary widowhood, however, has tempted me on, and spelled me with a spell I know not how to break. It is long, long since we have passed any time so completely together; her three lovely children only knit us the closer. The widowhood, however, we expect now quickly ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 3 • Madame D'Arblay
... disgrace than for all his former disreputable conduct, which only passed for good-fellowship. If he had been hanged, or even transported, he would only have been "poor Dan Hewlett," and his wife would have had all the pity due to widowhood; but everybody fought shy of him, and the big lads hooted at him. He could not get work, Judith's pension had failed, and they lived scantily on what Farmer Goodenough allowed Molly to earn, as an old hand, to be kept off the parish. Little Judith was apprenticed to ...
— The Carbonels • Charlotte M. Yonge
... with your quarter of a century's widowhood, still feel as if the waiting time was all sanctified by the thought of the reunion. Oh! what a thought it is: too much almost to think that by His wonderful mercy, one may hope to be with them all, and for ever; to behold the faces of Apostles, and Apostolic ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Spirit, 'Ruah', is mostly feminine. In the meantime let us notice one curious development in the life of this goddess. In the old religion of Greece and Western Asia, she begins as a Maiden, then in fullness of time becomes a mother. There is evidence also for a third stage, the widowhood of withering autumn.[138:1] To the classical Greek this motherhood was quite as it should be, a due fulfilment of normal functions. But to the Gnostic and his kind it connoted a 'fall', a passage from the glory of Virginity to a state of ...
— Five Stages of Greek Religion • Gilbert Murray
... 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
... Mrs. 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 ...
— Nancy McVeigh of the Monk Road • R. Henry Mainer
... I say, the deprecatory, worrying attitude had become second nature with my mother long years before her widowhood, and had lined and seamed her poor forehead and silvered her hair before my Rugby days were over. Bereavement merely gave point to a ...
— The Message • Alec John Dawson
... upon his face and he was moved profoundly. Dick loved his beautiful young mother devoutly, and her widowhood had bound them all the more ...
— The Guns of Shiloh • Joseph A. Altsheler
... gratitude to God; not like the boding of the distant owl, for that tells the profound solemnity of night; not like the hungry lion roaring for his prey, for that tells of death and plunder; not like the distant notes of the clarion, for that tells of blood and carnage, of tears and anguish, of widowhood and orphanage. It can be compared to nothing but a Babel of confusion in which their own folly is worse confounded. And yet, I am sorry to say it, the languages of all ages and nations have been too frequently perverted, and compiled into a heterogeneous mass of abstruse, metaphysical ...
— Lectures on Language - As Particularly Connected with English Grammar. • William S. Balch
... was a stout, elderly female in rusty black, with a very red face, whom, after some frantic groping of memory, I recognised as Mrs. Cudlip, unaltered apparently by her thirty years of widowhood. ...
— The Romance of a Plain Man • Ellen Glasgow
... them, with a very fair result on the 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 to forget. ...
— East of the Shadows • Mrs. Hubert Barclay
... be hooded delicately And use the adornment noble women use I'll mock you with my flown young widowhood, Letting my hair go loose past either cheek In two bright clouds and drop beyond my bosom, Turning the waving ends under my girdle As young glad widows do, and as I did Ere ever you saw me—ay, and ...
— The Atlantic Book of Modern Plays • Various
... hoose. A dairk woman will meet ye at the gate; and she'll have a hand in getting ye the groom's place, wi' a' the gratifications and pairquisites appertaining to the same. And, mebbe, when yer poaket's full o' money, ye'll no' be forgetting yer aunt Chance, maintaining her ain unblemished widowhood—wi' Proavidence ...
— The Lock And Key Library - Classic Mystery And Detective Stories, Modern English • Various
... thus smothering Meilhan with kindnesses she was longing herself to make the most of the fortune which had come to her. From the first days of her widowhood she was constantly writing letters which Mme Lescure carried for her. Euphemie had already begun to talk of remarriage. Her choice was already made. "If I marry again,'' she said, a few days after the death of Lacoste, "I won't take anybody but M. Henri Berens, ...
— She Stands Accused • Victor MacClure
... second or third time, land and possessions held in her name, during her widowhood, immediately became the property of the next husband. For that reason, women, on contemplating a second marriage, and wishing the children by a former husband to have the benefit of their father's holdings, either gave them title to the possessions, ...
— Domestic Life in Virginia in the Seventeenth Century - Jamestown 350th Anniversary Historical Booklet Number 17 • Annie Lash Jester
... of sympathy and regret from all parts of the empire and from many states of the union. The letters and telegrams of condolence which Lady Tilley received during the first days of her widowhood would of themselves fill a volume, showing how widely he was known and respected. The funeral, which took place on the Saturday following his death, was one of the largest ever seen in St. John, and was attended by the Board of Trade, the Loyalist ...
— Wilmot and Tilley • James Hannay
... our subject, we shall make a few observations on the sorrows of widowhood; then glance at the duties of it; and the supports which God hath provided ...
— Sermons on Various Important Subjects • Andrew Lee
... harder by the struggle with ill health. Soon we began to realise that the physical weakness, which all her courage could not overcome, was more than merely her old malady. "What did Frances die of?" Bernard Shaw wrote to me. "Was it of widowhood?" ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... must be a great relief to her overtaxed system after the strain of the last few days. She was soon again calm, and resumed her writing. A letter to her parents, informing them of her secret marriage and sudden widowhood, was next written, and Lina, in her plain bonnet and shawl and closely veiled, set off with the three letters ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... prepared to wait. His hand sought the pocket of his coat, and fingered tenderly a small stone bottle, the fond companion of his widowhood. He pulled it out, uncorked it, and took a long pull; then placed it on ...
— Bob, Son of Battle • Alfred Ollivant
... 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 protectin' ...
— Sweet Cicely - Or Josiah Allen as a Politician • Josiah Allen's Wife (Marietta Holley)
... 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 ...
— Ridgeway - An Historical Romance of the Fenian Invasion of Canada • Scian Dubh
... flames. He had a wife, a young Gaul named Eponina, who was in frantic despair at the rumor; but he had her informed, by the mouth of one of his freedmen, of his place of concealment, begging her at the same time to keep up a show of widowhood and mourning, in order to confirm the report already in circulation. "Well did she play her part," to use Plutarch's expression, "in her tragedy of woe." She went at night to visit her husband in his retreat, and departed at break of day; and at last would not depart at ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume I. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... 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. ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. IV - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... mother would look with horror on such a proposal. A daughter of hers to marry within a twelvemonth of her widowhood!" ...
— White Lies • Charles Reade
... in Liverpool some seven thousand persons are yearly attacked by fever, of whom about five hundred die. Fever usually attacks persons of between twenty and thirty, or those who generally have small families depending on them for support. Hence deaths from fever, by causing widowhood and orphanage, impose a very heavy tax upon the inhabitants of all the large manufacturing towns. Dr. Playfair, after carefully considering the question, is of opinion that the total pecuniary loss inflicted on the county ...
— Thrift • Samuel Smiles
... parlours. While he lived he made a sufficient income, and before his death a formal reconciliation had taken place between the runaway daughter and her north-country parents, from whom she later inherited the money which had supported herself and her daughter throughout the years of her widowhood. ...
— The Independence of Claire • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... Mrs. Perkins had herself fancied Mr. Parker, and now in her widowhood, she felt an unusual interest in the failing health of his wife. No one replied to her remark, and Mrs. Bates continued: "It really used to make my heart ache to see the little forlorn thing sit there in the gallery, fixed up so old ...
— The English Orphans • Mary Jane Holmes
... wherever the arms of Napoleon extended; the dethronement of the Pope, by Gen. Berthier, in 1798; the refusal of some of the powers to permit her to nominate, within their limits, the candidates for ecclesiastical preferment, &c. She is thus made to feel her widowhood,—her divorce from the secular arm,—and has mourned the loss of her most devoted children, who have ...
— A Brief Commentary on the Apocalypse • Sylvester Bliss
... conceive that such gloomy phantoms were sent into the world as withered and decrepit as we behold them now, with sympathies only for pain and grief, to watch at death-beds, and weep at funerals. Even the sable garments of their widowhood appear essential to their existence; all their attributes combine to render them darksome shadows, creeping strangely amid the sunshine of human life. Yet it is no unprofitable task, to take one of these doleful creatures, and ...
— Edward Fane's Rosebud (From "Twice Told Tales") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... taking his two hands and looking straight into his eyes, "swear to me now, in the presence of Lisbeth, my best and only friend, my sister—that you will make me your wife at the end of my year's widowhood." ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... infante Ferdinand, with an annual stipend of fifty thousand ducats, chargeable on the public revenues. To his queen Germaine he left the yearly income of thirty thousand gold florins, stipulated by the marriage settlement, with five thousand a year more during widowhood. [33] The will contained, besides, several appropriations for pious and charitable purposes, but nothing worthy of particular note. [34] Notwithstanding the simplicity of the various provisions of the testament, it was so long, from the formalities and periphrases ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V3 • William H. Prescott
... joys of love resounded; in short, the ruling passions of life figured in rhyme and music in honour of this occasion of death—and as death is the maker of widows, a very animated discussion on the subject of widowhood arose, which afforded great scope for the rustic wits, and was crowned by the song of "Widow Machree" being universally called for by the company; and a fine-looking fellow with a merry eye and large white teeth, which he amply displayed by a wide mouth, poured forth in cheery tones ...
— Handy Andy, Vol. 2 - A Tale of Irish Life • Samuel Lover
... established, his mild monomania. His widowed mother had been for the last two years an inmate of a private asylum for inebriates, through certain habits contracted while washing for the camp in the first year of her widowhood. This had always been a matter of open sympathy to Rough and Ready; but it was a secret reproach hinted at in Atherly, although it was known that the rich Peter Atherly kept his mother liberally supplied, and that both he and his sister "Jinny" or Jenny Atherly visited ...
— Tales of Trail and Town • Bret Harte
... bull Lady Scapegrace had contracted a great affection for me, and would have me to roam about the house with her for hours. She was a clever, intellectual woman, without one idea or sentiment in common with her husband. In this state of mental widowhood she had consoled herself by study, amongst other things; and the history of the family into which she had married afforded her ample materials for reflection and research. She had collected every scrap of writing, every private memorandum, letter, and document that ...
— Kate Coventry - An Autobiography • G. J. Whyte-Melville
... his brother's memory. Not for Fred's sake, but Nettie's, he held his place in the troubled cottage, and assumed the position of head of the family. Hard certainties of experience prevented the doctor's unimaginative mind from respecting here the ideal anguish of sudden widowhood and bereavement. This was a conclusion noways unnatural or surprising for such a life as Fred's—and Edward knew, with that contemptuous hardness into which incessant personal contact with the world drives most men, that neither the wife nor the children were capable of deep or ...
— The Doctor's Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... grass-widowhood which ensued, Mrs. Cluffins's visits formed almost the sole relief to the bare monotony of existence. As a companion the parrot was an utter failure, its language being so irredeemably bad that it spent ...
— Sea Urchins • W. W. Jacobs
... 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, ...
— The Damned • Algernon Blackwood
... him on, Played on his brain as a musician plays Upon the lute. 'Forgive me, dear Sir Lewis, If I am grown too gay for widowhood. But I have pondered for a long, long time On all these matters. I know the world was right; And Spain was right, Sir Lewis. Yes, and you, You too, were right; and my poor husband wrong. You see I knew his mind so very well. I knew his every gesture, ...
— Collected Poems - Volume Two (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... can assuage these bitter tears? The husband,—deepest of all life's bereavements,—perhaps it is he, for whom the funeral wail is now heard. What can time, and dust, and this tomb of earth, minister to her, who sits in the freshness of widowhood? ...
— The Young Maiden • A. B. (Artemas Bowers) Muzzey
... still handsome woman. Yet she wore that peculiar long, limp, formless house-shawl which in certain phases of Anglo-Saxon spinster and widowhood assumes the functions of the recluse's veil and announces the renunciation of worldly vanities and a resigned indifference to external feminine contour. The most audacious masculine arm would shrink from clasping that shapeless void in which the flatness ...
— The Heritage of Dedlow Marsh and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... precocious and neurotic childhood, she united with the Congregational Church when seventeen years of age. At the age of twenty-two she married George Washington Glover, probably the best of her husbands. His death, six months later, was followed by the birth of her only child and a ten years' widowhood. During this time she stayed with her relatives and had long periods of illness, principally of an hysterical character. She then experimented to some extent with mesmerism and clairvoyance. In 1853 she married Dr. Daniel Patterson, an itinerant dentist, ...
— Three Thousand Years of Mental Healing • George Barton Cutten
... withdrawn in solitude to the Trianon at Versailles, as if to mourn his widowhood the appointed and decent time in silence. The spot chosen had a significance with reference to the coming celebrations. For a week he spent his days in the unaccustomed but truly royal occupation of field sports. Once he visited Josephine at Malmaison. The next months he had spent ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... he cast his eyes on his Mother's face—that face so full of intelligence and the mild sorrow of years of widowhood, borne with resigned patience. Her eyes were full of tears, and there was not a smile on her countenance. Joachim's conscience—he knew not why—twinged him terribly. ...
— The Fairy Godmothers and Other Tales • Mrs. Alfred Gatty
... at that time it was a reason for rejoicing at this unexpected turn of affairs. It was but one of many similar cases, and none can more fully realize the blessing of these reliefs than the widow of nearly two-score years, who never previous to widowhood knew the burden of outside work in providing for a large family, which was now added to continued care of the Raisin Institute. Many night plans, for day execution, were made. I soon found sale for forty acres ...
— A Woman's Life-Work - Labors and Experiences • Laura S. Haviland
... charger, which his squires led to the door. "It was the duty of the British female of rank," she said, "to suffer all—ALL in the cause of her sovereign. SHE would not fear loneliness during the campaign: she would bear up against widowhood, ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray
... 1740); and correct Stenzel (iv. 44).]—which enterprise, however, was renounced, no doubt with consent, as the public aspects darkened. Nothing in the way of honor, in the way of real affection heartily felt and demonstrated, was wanting to Queen Sophie in her widowhood. But, on the other hand, of public influence no vestige was allowed, if any was ever claimed; and the good kind Mother lived in her Monbijou, the centre and summit of Berlin society; and restricted herself wisely ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... Brahmans, threatened to overrun all the East. When a married man died, and his beloved wife aspired to the character of a saint, she burned herself publicly on the body of her husband. This was a solemn feast and was called the Funeral Pile of Widowhood, and that tribe in which most women had been burned was the ...
— International Short Stories: French • Various
... of Egypt, Tushratta, King of Mitani. May it be well with thee, may it be well with thy son, may it be well with Tadukhipa, my daughter, thy young companion in widowhood. Thou knowest that I was in friendship with Nimmuria, thy husband, and that Nimmuria was in friendship with me. What I wrote to him and negotiated with him, and likewise what Nimmuria thy husband wrote to me and negotiated with me, thou and Gilia ...
— The Tell El Amarna Period • Carl Niebuhr
... her Lord,[lm] And annual marriage now no more renewed— The Bucentaur[388] lies rotting unrestored, Neglected garment of her widowhood! St. Mark yet sees his Lion[389] where he stood[3.H.] Stand, but in mockery of his withered power, Over the proud Place where an Emperor sued,[ln][390] And monarchs gazed and envied in the hour When Venice was a Queen with an ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... having had very unusual opinions upon that subject), and she fell an easy victim to Shelley's impassioned eloquence, when he urged her to flee with him from an uncongenial home. Shelley appeared to Mary as almost a divine being, and her worshipful love never waned, even during her long widowhood of thirty years' duration. For Shelley, in the whole matter, there seems to be no valid excuse. He deliberately defied the world and the world's ways, and even his memory must bear the fatal consequences. If we allow his genius to excuse his acts, we are setting up a precedent ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold
... the cheek. The eyes, more sunken beneath the brow, appear larger, softer. There is that expression of fatigue which either accompanies impaired health or succeeds to mental struggle and disquietude. But the coldness or pride of mien which was peculiar to Caroline as a wife is gone—as if in widowhood it was no longer needed. A something like humility prevailed over the look and the bearing which had been so tranquilly majestic. As at the approach of her cousin she started from her seat, there was a nervous tremor in her eagerness; ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... that Mrs. Thane married soon after her husband's death. Her second husband was a young French nobleman, many years her junior. He was killed in the war, I think at Verdun. I understand she is now living in this city. Her present name escapes me, but I know that her widowhood has been made endurable by a legacy which happens to be one in name only. In other words, he left her the title ...
— Quill's Window • George Barr McCutcheon
... in widowhood and childlessness; in the hour of death, and in the day of judgment, when each soul must stand alone before its God, one Friend remains, and that ...
— David • Charles Kingsley
... welcome to our vows and us, Most great and universal genius! The drooping West, which hitherto has stood As one in long-lamented widowhood, Looks like a bride now, or a bed of flowers Newly refresh'd both by the sun and showers. War, which before was horrid, now appears Lovely in you, brave prince of cavaliers! A deal of courage in each bosom springs ...
— The Hesperides & Noble Numbers: Vol. 1 and 2 • Robert Herrick
... she made little motions of vanity as she fancied her entrance into Duck Creek parish church on the Sunday after the arrival of the tobacco ship, arrayed in imitation of the Princess of Wales, the news of whose recent widowhood had not yet reached ...
— Duffels • Edward Eggleston
... very natural for you to visit Greece in order to renew early associations!" Many years thereafter Priscilla Cooper, the wife of Robert Tyler and the daughter-in-law of President John Tyler, a daughter of Thomas Apthorpe Cooper and his wife, Mary Fairlie, presided at the White House during the widowhood of ...
— As I Remember - Recollections of American Society during the Nineteenth Century • Marian Gouverneur
... delighted Henry III. Another heart was at the same time gained; the King's sister, Eleanor, who had been left a widow at sixteen by the death of the brave Earl of Pembroke, had, in her first despair, made a vow of perpetual widowhood, and received the ring of dedication from the Archbishop; but at the end of six years all this was forgotten; she fell in love with the handsome Provencal, and prevailed on the King to sanction with his presence a hasty private wedding in St. ...
— Cameos from English History, from Rollo to Edward II • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... which compels humanity in moments of doubt and perplexity to seek this change of observation or superior illumination. Not that Mrs. Wade's disturbance was of a serious character. She had passed the acute stage of widowhood by at least two years, and the slight redness of her soft eyelids as well as the droop of her pretty mouth were merely the recognized outward and visible signs of the grievously minded religious community in which she lived. The mourning she still wore was ...
— Under the Redwoods • Bret Harte
... promised to be heirs of the Crown, rose in a revolt which failed only through the desertion of their head, Earl Richard of Cornwall, who was satisfied with Earl Simon's withdrawal from the Royal Council. The censures of the Church on Eleanor's breach of a vow of chaste widowhood which she had made at her first husband's death were averted with hardly less difficulty by a journey to Rome. It was after a year of trouble that Simon returned to England to reap as it seemed the fruits of his high alliance. He was now ...
— History of the English People, Volume II (of 8) - The Charter, 1216-1307; The Parliament, 1307-1400 • John Richard Green
... the faithful, says she, to avoid repeating what your majesty has already heard from my sister's story, I shall only add, that after my mother had taken a house for herself to live in during her widowhood, she gave me in marriage, with the portion my father left me, to a gentleman that had one of the best estates in this city. I had scarcely been a year married when I became a widow, and was left in possession of all my husband's estate, which amounted to ninety thousand sequins. The ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Volume 1 • Anonymous
... applications were made to succeed him [in the Club], Johnson was deaf to them all. He said, "No, there never could be found any successor worthy of such a man;" and he insisted upon it there should be a year's widowhood in the club, before they ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... with a prince of another, are documents of very high importance. It is considered necessary not only to make very formal provision for the personal welfare and comfort of the wife during her married life, and during her widowhood in case of the death of her husband, but also to settle beforehand the questions of succession which might arise out of the marriage, and to define precisely the rights and powers both of the husband and the wife, in the two countries to ...
— Mary Queen of Scots, Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... years in widowhood, Mrs. Gore married a Mr. Foster, a school-teacher. They lived for a time in a house on the school lands in Jolicure. The schoolmaster did not live long to enjoy his married life. His successor was a Mr. Trites, of Salisbury. He only lived a few ...
— The Chignecto Isthmus And Its First Settlers • Howard Trueman
... window. Her eyes, full of self-pity, gazed with unwonted indifference at the passers-by. How thankful she would have been to have Mr. Delarayne at her side at this critical moment in her life. There were times when she was not unappreciative of the many advantages of widowhood; but this was not precisely the moment when the bright side of her peculiar situation seemed to be conspicuous. With Leonetta home for good, and Cleo still unmarried, she felt the need of help and advice; and it was significant that, as she ...
— Too Old for Dolls - A Novel • Anthony Mario Ludovici
... "thy wife shall be my sister during her widowhood, thy children will never want game, until they can themselves strike ...
— Travels and Adventures of Monsieur Violet • Captain Marryat
... who, as I said before, was married, while she was a virgin, to Alexander, the son of Herod, and brother of Archelaus; but since it fell out so that Alexander was slain by his father, she was married to Juba, the king of Lybia; and when he was dead, and she lived in widowhood in Cappadocia with her father, Archclaus divorced his former wife Mariamne, and married her, so great was his affection for this Glphyra; who, during her marriage to him, saw the following dream: She thought she saw Alexander ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus
... the life of the Hindu woman has been divided into "the three subjections." In childhood she must be subject to her father; in marriage to her husband; in widowhood to her sons or—most miserable of all!—lacking a son, to her husband's kinsmen. Her husband is supposed to stand to her almost in the relation of a god. "No sacrifice is allowed to women apart from their husbands," ...
— Where Half The World Is Waking Up • Clarence Poe
... long martyrdom, all the more hard to bear because it was made up for the most part of small annoyances, petty mortifications, little recurring incessant bitternesses. And now, during the seven years of her widowhood, she had gained a calmer and serener atmosphere, in which she was raised above the possibility of humiliation from the dwarfed natures and malicious hearts in the midst of which she lived. They could hurt her feelings, they could embitter ...
— St. Winifred's - The World of School • Frederic W. Farrar
... to comply with the request, and so they sat on, the boy's red-gold curls making a gleam of brightness on the sombre black garments of widowhood which ...
— Penshurst Castle - In the Days of Sir Philip Sidney • Emma Marshall
... was the wife of a governor-general whom she had wedded in second marriage after a long widowhood. He did not see her often, two or three times a year, that was all. Floating about from one end of Europe to another, they kept up a regular exchange of letters; the prince never took any step without consulting his wife, who usually gave him sound advice. During ...
— Samuel Brohl & Company • Victor Cherbuliez
... there were the sisters Percy, twins in age and appearance, with voices like brook-ripples, and eyes like wood-violets, and feet of Chinese minuteness and French perfection—the darlings and only joys of a mother still beautiful, though sad in her widowhood, and gentle as the dove that ...
— Sea and Shore - A Sequel to "Miriam's Memoirs" • Mrs. Catharine A. Warfield
... may presume to ask such a favour," said the Countess. "I am a Peeress of this nation—mother to one English Earl, and widow, alas, to another! In England I have spent my brief days of happiness, my long years of widowhood and sorrow. France and its language are but to me the dreams of an uninteresting childhood. I know no tongue save that of my husband and my son. Permit me, as the widow and mother of Derby, thus ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... a synagogue, and were the possessors of several schools. At the bottom of the High Street are the Abbey Gardens, so called from their being on the site of an abbey founded by Ealhswith, King Alfred's queen, in which to spend the years of her widowhood. The general plan of the gardens has probably been but little altered since the days when the nuns paced their shady paths in pious meditation. An ancient manuscript of prayers, used by the abbess in the ninth century, is preserved in the ...
— Winchester • Sidney Heath
... Askerton told the history of her life of her first foolish engagement, her belief, her half-belief, in the man's reformation, of the miseries which resulted from his vices, of her escape and shame, of her welcome widowhood, and of her second marriage. And as she told it, she paused at every point to insist on the goodness of him who was now her husband. 'I shall tell him this,' she said at last, 'as I do everything; and then he will know that I have ...
— The Belton Estate • Anthony Trollope
... closed. She has so much to make up for! And who so innocent as she? She does not once realize that she is robbing others of their pleasure. Is she suffering from vertigo or St. Vitus's dance, in her widowhood? ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... uncle of Monte Alloro; and since her return to Pianura she had lived in the dower-house, refusing Odo's offer of a palace in the town. She had first shown herself to the public on the day of the state entry; and now, her year of widowhood over, she was again the consort of a ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... without summoning her before him and giving her a hearing, though he himself had not only committed incest with his brother's daughter but had even caused her death, for she died of abortion during her widowhood. He immediately despatched some of the pontiffs to see that his victim was buried alive and put to death. Cornelia invoked in turns the aid of Vesta and of the rest of the deities, and amid her many cries this was repeated most frequently: "How ...
— The Letters of the Younger Pliny - Title: The Letters of Pliny the Younger - - Series 1, Volume 1 • Pliny the Younger
... light carried him into the service; the conscience was set free from the temporary disturbance; yet the decision brought him to the scaffold; it placed upon his brow the martyr's crown. The worthy wife sadly went into widowhood, and the children into orphanage, through that strong, womanly spirit which could brook no ...
— Sketches of the Covenanters • J. C. McFeeters
... Free-soiler on the poor man's back. Such are the men who leave the pedler's cart, While faring South, to learn the driver's art, Or, in white neckcloth, soothe with pious aim The graceful sorrows of some languid dame, Who, from the wreck of her bereavement, saves The double charm of widowhood and slaves Pliant and apt, they lose no chance to show To what base depths apostasy can go; Outdo the natives in their readiness To roast a negro, or to mob a press; Poise a tarred schoolmate on the lyncher's rail, Or make a bonfire ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... would have saved me from it, Marius," she answered him, her eyes seeming to gaze down into the depths of his. "At La Vauvraye I had hoped to live out my widowhood in tranquil dignity. But—" She let her arms fall sharply to her sides, and uttered ...
— St. Martin's Summer • Rafael Sabatini
... marriage to the Dukes of Norfolk, 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
... twenty-five, 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 ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... to Ireland after her widowhood, but was able, up to the end of her life, to pay a yearly autumn visit to her beloved Scotland. And so, under the rolling Sussex downs, amidst familiar woodlands and villages, full of years, and surrounded by the lore of all those who knew ...
— The Days Before Yesterday • Lord Frederick Hamilton
... as if all her desires had fallen into slumber again, and she had a feeling akin to a determination to remain respectable. As a young girl she had withstood temptation, she had been faithful to her husband; her whole widowhood had hitherto passed without attack.... Well, the long and the short of it was: if he wished to make her his wife she would be very glad, but she would reject any bolder proposal with the same austerity as ... as ... twelve years ...
— Bertha Garlan • Arthur Schnitzler
... 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 ...
— Evolution, Old & New - Or, the Theories of Buffon, Dr. Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck, - as compared with that of Charles Darwin • Samuel Butler
... was in the habit of saying many things from day to day in praise of that good Lord Stapledean, who had so generously thought of her and her widowhood. When she did so Arthur would look grim and say nothing, and his mother would know that he was displeased. "Surely he cannot begrudge us the income," she had once said to her eldest daughter. "Oh, no; I am sure he does not," said Mary; "but, somehow, ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope |
