"Dowager" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Dowager Margaret of Burgundy, widow of Duke Charles the Bold and sister of Edward IV., was implacably hostile to Henry, and her court was the gathering place of dissatisfied Yorkist intriguers. Within his realms, Ireland, where the ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes
... his. They fell on Helene near the door, white and fair, her face lit up with some new and sweet feeling as she laughed with the little old governess dressed up in ancient brocades from a chest in the garret, the dowager Marquise of the proverb just played. And a little further, in the shadow of the doorway, stood Angelot in powdered wig, silk coat, and sword, looking like a handsome courtier from a group by Watteau, and his eyes ...
— Angelot - A Story of the First Empire • Eleanor Price
... walked back into the kitchen with the fixed smile of a man who is thinking of a pretty girl. The black dowager in the kitchen received him in silence, with her thick lips pouted. When Peter observed it, he felt slightly amused ...
— Birthright - A Novel • T.S. Stribling
... answer was an exposition of a formal theory as to the relations of physical science to Holy Writ. This answer was further amplified in the "Authority of the Scripture," addressed in 1614 to Christina of Lorraine, Dowager Grand-Duchess of Tuscany, an able and acute defence of his position. A year later another monk laid Galileo's letter to Castelli before the Inquisition, whereupon the philosopher was summoned by Pope Paul V. to the palace of Cardinal Bellarmine, and there warned against ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various
... prepare for a heavy blow—that you, Napoleon, had secretly applied to the Emperor Alexander for the hand of his sister, and that only the resistance of the dowager prevented you from accomplishing ...
— Napoleon and the Queen of Prussia • L. Muhlbach
... not help admiring the prudence and tact of this old dowager, and of course it was not for me to make objections. Ere I well knew how, I was alone with a flat candlestick, which is not the most sympathetic of companions, and stood studying the snuff in a frame of mind between triumph and chagrin. All had gone well with my flight: the masterful ...
— St Ives • Robert Louis Stevenson
... to be exchanging drolleries with the young dowager of France, who, sooth to say, giggled in a very unqueenly manner at jokes which made the grave Spanish-born queen draw up her stately head, and converse with a lady on her other hand—an equally stately lady, somewhat older, with the straight ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte M. Yonge
... entered the drawing-room in full character; that is to say, with Elizabethan stateliness on the part of the dowager, and an easy grace and dignity on the part of the young lady that had a nameless something about it that suggested conscious superiority. The dresses of both ladies were exceedingly rich, as to material, but as notably modest as to color and ornament. ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... house, in Brecknockshire. In gratitude for the smiling patience with which she listened to him, his Grace of V—fixed his glass to look at the Alhambra, and had just pronounced it to be 'Well!—very well!' when the Dowager Lady Chatterton made a terrible discovery—a discovery that filled Lady Clonbrony with astonishment and indignation—Mr. Soho had played her false! What was her mortification when the dowager assured her that these identical Alhambra hangings had not only been shown by Mr. Soho to the Duchess ...
— The Absentee • Maria Edgeworth
... which he appears to have at least partially accomplished. For now the black muzzle of Pug is but seldom to be seen protruded from carriage-window, biding his time for a snap at the first kid-gloved finger that wags within range of his overlapping tusks in waving salutation to his dowager mistress,—for, of the dowagers, above all, he was one of the chronic calamities. Oftener, now, are the well-combed whiskers and moustaches of Skye Dog to be recognized, dropping over the drawing-room window-sill, or framed, like a portrait by Landseer, in the panelled sash of the barouche, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... my most serious tone, "is a woman, perhaps the most formidable woman now living, not even excepting the Dowager ...
— The International Spy - Being the Secret History of the Russo-Japanese War • Allen Upward
... Dr. Fuller, whom I sent to a tavern with Mr. Edw. Pickering, while I and the rest went to see the Queen, who used us very respectfully: her hand we all kissed. She seems a very debonaire, but a plain lady. In a coach we went to see a house of the Princess Dowager's [Mary, daughter of Charles I.] in a park about a mile from the Hague, where there is one of the most beautiful rooms for pictures in the whole world. She had here one picture upon the top, with these words, dedicating it to the memory ...
— The Diary of Samuel Pepys • Samuel Pepys
... when of sufficient age, should marry her uncle Miguel, and so save Portugal from the danger of a contested succession. Before renouncing the crown of Portugal, Pedro granted a Constitution to that country. A Regency had already been appointed by King John, in which neither the Queen-dowager nor Miguel ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... maist things; an' I was tellt that same nicht hoo at the denner-table Leddy Carline relatit the haill adventur', an' owned, fat was true aneuch, that the fush had fairly bestit her. Weel, amo' the veesitors at the Castle was the Dowager Leddy Breadanham; an' it seemed that whan Leddy Carline was through wi' her narrateeve, the dowager be tae gie a kin' o' a scornfu' sniff an' cock her neb i' the air; an' she said, wha but she, that she didna hae muckle opingin o' Leddy ...
— Camps, Quarters, and Casual Places • Archibald Forbes
... danced with each other. When they had exhausted the resources they brought with them, they had generally a few dances to spare for friends of the same standing with whom they were most intimate. Ellinor came with her father, and joined an old card-playing dowager, by way of a chaperone—the said dowager being under old business obligations to the firm of Wilkins and Son, and apologizing to all her acquaintances for her own weak condescension to Mr. Wilkins's foible in wishing to introduce his daughter ...
— A Dark Night's Work • Elizabeth Gaskell
... Gunpowder Plot, Digby was a political creature, and during the Civil War he was imprisoned for several years. When freed, Digby left England to settle in France. Spending much time at the court of the Queen Dowager, who had been instrumental in securing his release, and exposed to the vigorous intellectual currents of Paris and Montpellier, Digby labored upon a treatise of greater scientific substance and merit than his more famous work on "the powder of sympathy." ...
— Medical Investigation in Seventeenth Century England - Papers Read at a Clark Library Seminar, October 14, 1967 • Charles W. Bodemer
... attracted the attention of the Manchu Court. The circumstances in Peking at that time were peculiar. The famous old Empress Dowager, Tzu-Hsi, after the Japanese war, had greatly relaxed her hold on the Emperor Kwanghsu, who though still in subjection to her, nominally governed the empire. A well- intentioned but weak man, he had surrounded himself with advanced scholars, led by the celebrated Kang Yu Wei, who ...
— The Fight For The Republic In China • B.L. Putnam Weale
... Nailles pretty freely. As they crossed the Parc Monceau to reach their carriage, which was waiting for them on the Boulevard Malesherbes, they made the young people, Giselle and Fred, walk ahead, that they might have an opportunity of expressing themselves freely, the old dowager especially, whose toothless mouth never lost an opportunity of smirching the character and ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... past a look of alarm had not left the face of the nun in charge of the wardrobe. But these considerations only amused the girls, and now, delighted at the novelty of her garments, the Minister strutted about the stage complaining of the temper of the Dowager Queen. 'Who could help it if the King wouldn't marry? Who could make him leave his poetry and music for a pretty face if he didn't care to do so? He had already refused blue eyes, black eyes, brown eyes. However, ...
— Muslin • George Moore
... against the forces of Aguinaldo. With such an awful weapon as Tap-Key has invented the Chinese government might defy the allied powers with impunity and even regain the territory captured by Japan. The young Emperor could doubtless put to flight the august but doughty dowager, as well as his beloved relative, Prince Tuan, and rule his flowery kingdom in peace and harmony, while Li Hung Chang would lose his head, metaphorically, if not literally, in favor of Tap-Key, future lord ...
— Said the Observer • Louis J. Stellman
... 22nd or 23rd, at two o'clock in the morning, he will set fire to the brandy storehouse, the barracks, and the public buildings, except the Foundling Hospital. [Footnote: This establishment, founded by the dowager empress, had been patronized by Napoleon. The governor General Toutelmine, had been one of the agents of his communications with St. Petersburg.] He will have the palace of the Kremlin set on fire. ...
— Worlds Best Histories - France Vol 7 • M. Guizot and Madame Guizot De Witt
... Grey were now to be conveyed to London, for which purpose they set out on the 11th, and arrived in the vicinity of the metropolis on the 13th of July. In the meanwhile, the queen dowager, who seems to have behaved with a uniformity of kindness towards her husband's son that does her great honour, urgently pressed the king to admit his nephew to an audience. Importuned, therefore, by entreaties, and instigated by the curiosity which Monmouth's mysterious expressions, ...
— A History of the Early Part of the Reign of James the Second • Charles James Fox
... about our house than I could wish. She is not by the same mother as him and my Lord Aresfield. Her father married a great heiress for his second wife, whose father had made a great fortune by victualling the army in the war time. Not that this Dowager Countess, as they call her, is a bit like the real quality, so that it is a marvel how my Lady can put up with her; only money-bags will make anything go down, more's the pity, and my Lady is pressed, you ...
— Love and Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Miss," said Class 60, H, approaching Selma, "would you like to visit the home of the gnomes,—to call, in fact, on the Queen Dowager of ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. V, August, 1878, No 10. - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... time-server. He is the clerk and tool of Sir Giles Overreach. When Marrall thinks Wellborn penniless, he treats him like a dog; but as soon as he fancies he is about to marry the wealthy dowager, Lady Allworth, he is most servile, and offers to lend him money. Marrall now plays the traitor to his master, Sir Giles, and reveals to Wellborn the scurvy tricks by which he has been cheated of his estates. ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... picture of an evening at Lady Cork's: "A few days after my arrival in London, and while my little book, The Wild Irish Girl, was running rapidly through successive editions, I was presented to the countess-dowager of Cork, and invited to a rout at her fantastic and pretty mansion in New Burlington street. Oh, how her Irish historical name tingled in my ears and seized on my imagination, reminding me of her great ancestor, 'the father of chemistry ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878. • Various
... of telepathy the Dowager Duchess of Markheim, dwelling in one corner of that gloomy old fortress which had sheltered so many generations of the family, learned of the danger threatening her nephew it would be impossible to say. She had been skilled for many ...
— Affairs of State • Burton E. Stevenson
... services for a time in a room at the hotel. He then got together an influential committee, with the Honourable Sir Henry Dymoke, the Queen’s champion, at their head, {14a} and they raised a sum of money, to which, among others, the Queen and the Dowager Queen Adelaide {14b} contributed, sufficient at first to erect a school and school-house, where the services were temporarily conducted; and finally for the Church of St. Andrew and the vicarage, which were erected in 1847, the church ...
— Records of Woodhall Spa and Neighbourhood - Historical, Anecdotal, Physiographical, and Archaeological, with Other Matter • J. Conway Walter
... sign the petition was the Dowager Lady Elizabeth Russell; the second was none other than George Cary, Lord Hunsdon, at the time the patron of Burbage's company of actors.[308] It is not surprising, therefore, that as a result of this petition the Lords of the Privy Council ...
— Shakespearean Playhouses - A History of English Theatres from the Beginnings to the Restoration • Joseph Quincy Adams
... clung to their neighbours for support. Three or four, however, standing in gloomy recesses, appeared to be on the point of toppling forward. The solitary gas lamp illumined one which was snowy with a fresh coat of whitewash, suggesting some flabby broken-down old dowager, powdered and bedaubed in the hope of appearing young. Then the others stretched away into the darkness, bruised, dented, and cracked, greeny with the fall of water from their roofs, and displaying such an extraordinary variety ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola
... balanced for some time the passion to which Nemours had given birth in the bosom of the Duchess de Chatillon, and the jealousy of Nemours failed to expel Cambiac. The Duchess kept fair with him as the man who had obtained the greatest sway over her relation, the Princess-dowager de Conde. The condescension of the Duchess de Chatillon towards this intriguing and licentious priest procured her, on the part of the Princess-dowager, a legacy of more than a hundred thousand crowns in Bavaria, ...
— Political Women, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Sutherland Menzies
... seated in the drawing-room of an ancient chateau in Brittany,—the Countess Dowager de Gramont and Count Tristan, her only son,—a mansion lacking none of the ponderous quaintness that usually characterizes ancestral dwellings in that locality. The edifice could still boast of imposing grandeur, especially if classed among "fine ruins." Within and without were ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... debut it was. A dowager duchess, a great protectress of the arts, who never bought a picture or a statue but who entertained at her table painters and sculptors of renown, finding in this an inexpensive pleasure and a certain distinction as an illustrious lady, wished to make Renovales' acquaintance. He ...
— Woman Triumphant - (La Maja Desnuda) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... desecration to engage in any public business. If this failed, and an ultimatum were pressed with truly savage contempt for all that is sacred and refined, it might be well next to consider the health even of the sublime Emperor himself (or, perhaps better, that of the select and ever-present Dowager Empress); but should the barbarians still advance, and, setting the usages of civilised warfare at defiance, threaten an engagement in the midst of this unparalleled calamity, there will be no alternative but to have a formidable rebellion in the Capital. All the barbarian powers will then assemble ...
— The Mirror of Kong Ho • Ernest Bramah
... up now," I says; and Billy Corliss says, "Why, there's a chance for housekeeping ingenious! Let's be social! 'Sure Mike!' says the dowager duchess, wishing to be democratic. Why, look here!" he says. "What right's a chimney got to ...
— The Belted Seas • Arthur Colton
... for him, but this had not been done. The old man was most anxious to vote, but could only do so were a carriage sent for him, and in less than two hours the poll would close. My brother Ernest, and my sister-in-law, the present Dowager Duchess of Abercorn, were at home, and realising the vital importance of every vote, they went at once up to the stables, only to find that every available man, horse, or vehicle was already out, conveying voters to the poll. The ...
— Here, There And Everywhere • Lord Frederic Hamilton
... exhibition of the Inns of Court in honour of the King and Queen, February, 1634. Lawes, as a Court musician, took a leading part in this representation, and became in request on similar occasions. The person intended to be honoured by the "Arcades" was the dowager Countess of Derby, mother-in-law of the Earl of Bridgewater, whose father, Lord Keeper Egerton, she had married in 1600. The aged lady, to whom more than forty years before Spenser had dedicated his "Teares of the Muses," ...
— Life of John Milton • Richard Garnett
... he attended the Court leve, and was presented to the Duke of Orleans, the Regent, and his mother, the Dowager Duchess. ...
— History of the Moravian Church • J. E. Hutton
... and seventy years the Manchurians furnished the rulers for the whole Chinese Empire. The Empress Dowager was a Manchu. Born in a humble home, at the age of sixteen she became a concubine of the Emperor. She was so diligent in study and self-improvement that she was elevated to the position of first concubine and later became the mother of the Emperor's ...
— Birdseye Views of Far Lands • James T. Nichols
... protector was compelled to return to England, without following up the fruits of victory, in consequence of cabals at court. His brother, Lord Seymour, a man of reckless ambition, had married the queen dowager, and openly aspired to the government of the kingdom. He endeavored to seduce the youthful king, and he had provided arms ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord
... exigent! What magical attracts and graces, That can redeem from Scire facias! From bonds and statutes can discharge, And from contempts of courts enlarge! 1040 These are the highest excellencies Of all your true or false pretences: And you would damn yourselves, and swear As much t' an hostess dowager, Grown fat and pursy by retail 1045 Of pots of beer and bottled ale; And find her fitter for your turn; For fat is wondrous apt to burn; Who at your flames would soon take fire, Relent, and melt to your desire, 1050 ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... contrary to treaties subsisting between the sovereigns, and to the mutual amity which had so long been maintained by the subjects of both states. Margaret had interest enough to get his application rejected; on pretence that Philip had no authority over the demesnes of the duchess dowager. And the king, in resentment of this injury, cut off all commerce with the Low Countries, banished the Flemings, and recalled his own subjects from these provinces. Philip retaliated by like edicts; but Henry knew, that so mutinous a people as the Flemings would not long bear, in ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part C. - From Henry VII. to Mary • David Hume
... I went down to Aldershot to the Flat Races!!! As we went along, tightly packed in a carriage full of ladies in what may be termed "dazzling toilettes," pretty girls and Dowager Mammas everywhere!—and as we ran past the familiar "Brookwood North Camp," where white "canvas" shone among the heather (and the heather, the cat heather, oh SO bonny! with here and there a network of the red threads of the dodder, so thick that it looked like ...
— Juliana Horatia Ewing And Her Books • Horatia K. F. Eden
... to go," his mother had said carpingly, "but if he once goes he'll stay; Yessney throws almost as much a spell over him as Town does. One can understand what holds him to Town, but Yessney—" and the dowager had shrugged ...
— The Chronicles of Clovis • Saki
... stature, at least, by excesses of apparent devotion. Lady Charlotte believed herself beloved at last. She was about to strike thirty; and Rumour, stalking with a turban of cloud on her head,—enough that this shocking old celestial dowager, from condemnation had passed to pity of the dashing lady. Beloved at last! After a while there is no question of our loving; but we thirst for love, if we have not had it. The key of Lady Charlotte will come in the course of events. She was at the doubtful hour ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... "I never go crazy over it myself and it seems too old for a girl; the sort of thing for a dowager to wear on state occasions. Now, let us ...
— The Girls at Mount Morris • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... to retrieve his fortune in various shapes, long before he could have any idea of want or difficulty. He thought he should have it in his power, at any time, to make a prize of a rich heiress, or opulent widow; his ambition had already aspired to the heart of a young handsome duchess dowager, to whose acquaintance he had found means to be introduced; or, should matrimony chance to be unsuitable to his inclinations, he never doubted, that, by the interest he might acquire among the nobility, he should be favoured with some lucrative post, that would ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... Now faire Hippolita, our nuptiall houre Drawes on apace: foure happy daies bring in Another Moon: but oh, me thinkes, how slow This old Moon wanes; She lingers my desires Like to a Step-dame, or a Dowager, Long withering out a yong ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... every parish read, nailed to the church doors, a paper signed Henry R., setting forth that Lady Catherine of Spain, heretofore called Queen of England, was not to be called by that title any more, but was to be called princess dowager, and so to be held and esteemed. The triumph of Anne was to last but ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XI. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... but friends never remark upon such things. There was old Mrs. Beriah Dagon—dowager Mrs. Dagon, she was called—aunt of Mr. Newt, who never said, "I see the Magots have hired a hackney-coach from Jobbers to make calls in. They quarreled with Gudging over his last bill. Medora Magot has turned her last year's silk, which is a little stained ...
— Trumps • George William Curtis
... has tired out the patience of her relatives and friends. Molly and Chris Gaverick got the hump over Willoughby Maule—who would have done well enough if he had only had more money. Old Eliza'—so Lady Tallant irreverently styled the Dowager Countess of Gaverick—'told me herself that she was going to wash her hands of Biddy. I shouldn't wonder if she didn't leave her a penny. And, after all, it was her own fortune, and she has a horde of needy relatives. She will consider that she has done her duty to the Gavericks if she lets Chris ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed
... the marquise, her daughter, who was barely six years old, had remained in the charge of the dowager Marquise de Ganges, who, when she had attained her twelfth year, presented to her as her husband the Marquis de Perrant, formerly a lover of the grandmother herself. The marquis was seventy years of age, having ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - THE MARQUISE DE GANGES—1657 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... feature in introducing young girls to present them first in private audience to Margherita, and then later to Queen Elena at the Court of the Quirinale. Surely no girl could be given a lovelier idea of womanhood than that embodied in the Dowager Queen. When the poet Carducci died in the early months of 1907, Margherita sent beautiful messages of consolation to his family, and, later, to his home city of Bologna she sent ...
— Italy, the Magic Land • Lilian Whiting
... concerning the Danish succession. This intricate problem continued to vex the souls of diplomats. Lord Palmerston, when interrogated about it, said that there were only three persons who understood the Danish succession. One was the Queen Dowager of Denmark, the second was God Almighty, and the third was a German professor, but he had gone mad. While attempting to settle the terms of the succession the five great Powers and Sweden signed a treaty guaranteeing the integrity ...
— A History of the Nineteenth Century, Year by Year - Volume Two (of Three) • Edwin Emerson
... continue to be a Gorgeous Girl," Mary finished, quietly. "No terrible fate will overtake her, nothing occur to rouse or develop her abilities. She will remain young and apparently childish until she suddenly reaches the stately dowager age overnight. Gorgeous Girls are like gypsies—they should either be very young and lissom or old, crinkled, and vested with powers of fortune-telling—the middle stage is impossible. I realized this morning that I've been fooling myself, all the heart in ...
— The Gorgeous Girl • Nalbro Bartley
... Princes. The Natives here are reckon'd expert Seamen; especially in Whale fishing. Here is a fine Bridge of Wood; in the middle of which is a Descent, by Steps, into a pretty little Island; where is a Chapel, and a Palace belonging to the Bishop of Bayonne. Here the Queen Dowager of Spain often walks to divert herself; and on this Bridge, and in the Walks on the Island, I had the Honour to see that ...
— Military Memoirs of Capt. George Carleton • Daniel Defoe
... of morbid and unnatural life spent in the hidden chambers of the old house; and it was only the devotion of his wife and of his son which kept the thin and flickering flame of his life alight. She whom I had known as the play actress of Anstey Cross became the dowager Lady Avon; whilst Boy Jim, as dear to me now as when we harried birds' nests and tickled trout together, is now Lord Avon, beloved by his tenantry, the finest sportsman and the most popular man from the north ...
— Rodney Stone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... as our gloves. To our surprise the manners of the man were quite in keeping with his becoming dress. I was enchanted with his appearance, and so were my men, though no one could speak to him but Nasib, who told us he knew him before. He was the brother of the dowager queen of Uganda, and, along with a proper body of officers, he had been sent by Mtesa, the present king of Uganda, to demand the daughter of Suwarora, as reports had reached his king that she was surprisingly beautiful. They had been here more than a year, during which time this beautiful ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke
... can not) imagine, Ye, who have kept your chastity when young, While some more desperate dowager has been waging Love with you, and been in the dog-days stung By your refusal, recollect her raging! Or recollect all that was said or sung On such a subject; then suppose the face Of a young downright beauty in ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... year 239, the First August Emperor's (real) father, for his own spying purposes, got a sham eunuch appointed to a post in the service of the ex-concubine made over, as explained in the last chapter, to the First Emperor's father; by the dowager-queen, as she then was, the supposed eunuch had two sons. When subsequently this dangerous person revolted, the First August Emperor's own real eunuchs took part in opposing his murderous designs.—It must be mentioned ...
— Ancient China Simplified • Edward Harper Parker
... about it. Such were the auspices under which our good sovereign was educated to administer the affairs of the realm. His mother wanted to make him pious. She would not allow him to associate with other boys because they would corrupt his morals. Lord Bute advised the princess dowager to keep the prince tied to ...
— Daughters of the Revolution and Their Times - 1769 - 1776 A Historical Romance • Charles Carleton Coffin
... goodness and kindness, her unselfish, unassuming womanliness and devout resignation to sorrow and suffering, did more than gain and keep the heart of her bluff, eccentric sailor-prince. They secured for her the respectful regard of the nation among whom she dwelt, whether as Queen or Queen-dowager. The Archbishop of Canterbury could say of her, after her husband's death, "For three weeks prior to his (King William's) dissolution, the Queen sat by his bedside, performing for him every office which a sick man could require, ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen V.1. • Sarah Tytler
... or countess dowager descends to mingle with a person of obscure birth, does she not then degrade herself? and is she not effectually degraded? And will any duchess or ...
— Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded • Samuel Richardson
... carried in procession to the beating of a deafening gong, and mandarins go by hundreds to the Emperor and the Dowager Empress, with congratulatory addresses. Their robes are gorgeously embroidered and are sometimes heavy with gold. After this, they ...
— Threads of Grey and Gold • Myrtle Reed
... all her property. The widow is rather a bore and the brother is quite a bear, but Margaret Rivers who, to save her sister from poverty, marries a man she does not love, is a cleverly conceived character, and Lady Lyons is an admirable old dowager. The book can be read without any trouble and was probably written without any trouble also. The style ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... the dank turf, and reeked off the flanks and nostrils of the shivering horses, and clung with clammy paws to frosted hats and dripping boughs. A soulless, skyless, catarrhal day, as if that bustling dowager, old mother Earth—what with match-making in spring, and fetes champetres in summer, and dinner-giving in autumn—was fairly worn out, and put to bed with the influenza, under wet blankets and ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... seemed the most natural thing; and Flint dashed at once into a jesting, somewhat daring tone, which she took quite in good part, and when her attention was claimed by the bald-headed broker on the other side, his neighbor on the left, a double-chinned dowager, with a pearl necklace half hidden in the creases of her neck and a diamond aigrette in her hair, proved no less garrulous if ...
— Flint - His Faults, His Friendships and His Fortunes • Maud Wilder Goodwin
... years ago. His rule is severe if not just, and it has all the prestige of secresy. As the Amharas say, the "belly of the Master is not known:" even the Gerad Mohammed, though summoned to council at all times, in sickness as in health, dares not offer uncalled-for advice, and the queen dowager, the Gisti Fatimah, was threatened with fetters if she persisted in interference. Ahmed's principal occupations are spying his many stalwart cousins, indulging in vain fears of the English, the Turks, and the Hajj Sharmarkay, ...
— First footsteps in East Africa • Richard F. Burton
... Dra[vs]kovi['c] who wrote in German, for such was the spirit of the time, his Exhortation to Croatian Maidens that they should be truly Croatian—well, in this gentleman's house at Zagreb Ljudevit Gaj recites some verses he has written for a dowager. They are in Slav. The audience is inclined to be amused. Of course they know something of the language because, like Anastasius Gruen in the Slovene country, they talk it to the servants. But among themselves in Croatia the upper classes prefer to ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 1 • Henry Baerlein
... peculiarity of these French men and women—their astonishing proficiency in les arts d’agrément. Every Frenchwoman of any pretensions to fashion backs her beauty and grace with some art in which she is sure to be proficient. The dowager Duchesse d’Uzés is a sculptor of mark, and when during the autumn Mme. de Trédern gives opera at Brissac, she finds little difficulty in recruiting her troupe from among the youths and maidens under her roof whose musical education has been thorough enough ...
— The Ways of Men • Eliot Gregory
... courtiers and noble friends," said their Queen, "it's time we all scooted home to luncheon. My queen-dowager mother likes me to be on time for meals. Also, my majesty and my royal sand piper can't come back to play this afternoon. But shall this court meet ...
— Marjorie at Seacote • Carolyn Wells
... burning in the castle of Blois, around the inanimate body of Gaston of Orleans, that last representative of the past; whilst the bourgeois of the city were thinking out his epitaph, which was far from being a panegyric; whilst madame the dowager, no longer remembering that in her young days she had loved that senseless corpse to such a degree as to fly the paternal palace for his sake, was making, within twenty paces of the funeral apartment, her little calculations of ...
— Ten Years Later - Chapters 1-104 • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... sentence by us given, and others of our Council, nobility, and judges, against the former Queen of Scotland, bearing the name of Mary, daughter and heiress of James v, King of Scotland, commonly called Queen of Scotland and Dowager of France, which sentence all the estates of our realm in our last Parliament assembled not only concluded, but, after mature deliberation, ratified as being just and reasonable; considering also the urgent prayer and request of our subjects, begging us and pressing us to proceed to the publication ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - MARY STUART—1587 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... the charity would be local—a point of the greatest importance. Queen Eleanor also continued her predecessor's rule that the patronage of the Hospital should remain in the hands of the Queens of England for ever; when there was no Queen, then in the hands of the Queen Dowager; failing in her, in those of the King. This rule still obtains. The Queen appoints the Master, Brothers, and Sisters of the House of Shams in Regent's Park, just as her predecessors appointed those of St. ...
— As We Are and As We May Be • Sir Walter Besant
... known even then as the Middle Kingdom, was a mere patch on the empire of to-day. It lay, almost lozenge-shaped, between the 34th and 40th parallels of latitude north, with the upper point of the lozenge resting on the modern Peking, and the lower on Si-an Fu in Shensi, whither the late Empress Dowager fled for safety during the Boxer rising in 1900. The ancient autocratic Imperial system had recently been disestablished, and a feudal system had taken its place. The country was divided up into a number of vassal states of varying size and importance, ruled each by its own baron, who swore allegiance ...
— The Civilization Of China • Herbert A. Giles
... of the king on the left. On the other side is the palace of the crown prince. There is the foreign office, and on the other side lives the queen dowager." ...
— Up The Baltic - Young America in Norway, Sweden, and Denmark • Oliver Optic
... grandson and brother of the 1st and 2nd earls of Abercorn, his father having died vita patris. I therefore doubt that the inscription has been miscopied. "He was," Douglas says, "resident at Rome, on the part of the Queen Dowager;" but this could hardly ...
— Notes and Queries 1850.02.23 • Various
... This china is now at Castle Goring, and, with the whole of the family documents, is in the possession of the Dowager Lady Burrell.] ...
— The Huguenots in France • Samuel Smiles
... they told me that they were members of the Big Sword or Big Fist Society, commonly known as Boxers, and asked me to join them. I agreed to do so; if I had refused we should not be alive now. Then they told me that the Empress Dowager, Tsi-Hsi, and most of the mandarins were supporting them, and had approved of their plan to destroy every European and native Christian in the land. I asked when the rising was likely to take place, and was told that, as far as they knew, ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various
... Comus, were written for members of the same noble family, the former in honour of the Countess Dowager of Derby, and the latter in honour of John, first Earl of Bridgewater, who was both her stepson and son-in-law. This two-fold relation arose from the fact that the Earl was the son of Viscount Brackley, the Countess's second husband, ...
— Milton's Comus • John Milton
... thought, but not exactly now. A moment would come in which it might be easier than at present. He would be able to assure her when he went up to dress for dinner, that he had meant no harm. They were going out to dine at the house of a lady of rank, the Countess Dowager of Milborough, a lady standing high in the world's esteem, of whom his wife stood a little in awe; and he calculated that this feeling, if it did not make his task easy would yet take from it some of its difficulty. Emily would be, not exactly cowed, by the prospect of Lady Milborough's ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope
... Mrs. Kemble, and tell her that the Queen Dowager sent for me to go and pay her a visit yesterday. For goodness' sake, Harriet, don't misunderstand me, I am only in joke! I live among such very matter-of-fact persons that I really tremble for an hour after every piece of nonsense ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... dowager collects "her dear five hundred friends" to parade before the fresh young heirs her wax-light lovely daughters—when all is glory, gallopade, and Gunter—when Rubini warbles smallest, and Lablanche is heard as thunder on ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... the game, aren't you? I saw you working to-day. We always speak of these black-velvet parts as dowager bits. Just excuse me. I see a friend of mine——" The friend of mine would be a willow wand with golden curls, and what Harrietta rather waspishly called a Gunga Din costume. She referred to that Kipling ...
— Gigolo • Edna Ferber
... admit that the Chinese Government, viz., the Empress Dowager, is also responsible for the present state of affairs in China. She was deceived by Prince Tuan, the great anti-foreign leader, who represented to her that the Boxers possessed a most remarkable power, by the exercise of which they were able to close the mouths of ...
— The American Missionary — Volume 54, No. 4, October, 1900 • Various
... The wise dowager lodges hard by, having resisted an invitation to be in the same house; she comes to that house to assist the young wife with her experience, and to be welcome—not to interfere every minute, and ...
— Christie Johnstone • Charles Reade
... the most prominent was a slim, tall, elderly lady, with large, dark, soft eyes, that spoke of a vanished youth and beauty from her heavily wrinkled face. She was the Dowager Lady Dalrymple, and acted toward the rest of the party in the multifarious capacity of chaperon, general, courier, guide, ...
— The American Baron • James De Mille
... be delighted to meet them," said the prince. "But tell me," he added with studied carelessness as if it had only just occurred to him, though the question he was about to ask was the chief motive of his visit, "is it true that the Dowager Empress wants Baron Funke to be appointed first secretary at Vienna? The baron by all accounts is ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... framed oval mirrors and chandeliers—the dancing-room set round with raised benches. After the pattern of Ridotto rooms abroad, there were the card-rooms and tea-rooms, where Mr. Pickwick played whist with Miss Bolo. We note the sort of Adam or Chippendale chair on which the whist Dowager is sitting with ...
— Pickwickian Studies • Percy Fitzgerald
... a dowager, at once became her own, if only she could be assured that no girl of her acquaintance owned a set as costly, and upon all occasions it appeared to be her intention to wear more jewelry than any other ...
— Randy and Her Friends • Amy Brooks
... opinion is in favor of the latter—particularly as a son may bear his father's name, so there will be two Mrs. Octavius Browns. No lady wishes to be known as "old Mrs. Octavius Brown," and as we do not use the convenient title of Dowager, we may as well take the alternative of the Christian name. We cannot say "Mrs. Octavius Brown, Jr.," if the husband has ceased to be a junior. Many married ladies hesitate to discard the name ...
— Manners and Social Usages • Mrs. John M. E. W. Sherwood
... this time a young Princess, the fourth child of a late Emperor. She had great promise of beauty, and was guarded with jealous care by her mother, the Empress-Dowager. The Naishi-no-Ske, who had been at the Court from the time of the said Emperor, was intimately acquainted with the Empress and familiar with the Princess, her daughter, from her very childhood. This person now recommended the Emperor to see the Princess, ...
— Japanese Literature - Including Selections from Genji Monogatari and Classical - Poetry and Drama of Japan • Various
... used for his relief all the power which was left them,—that of remonstrating with his oppressors. Two arzees, or petitions, were presented to the Council, of which we shall first call your Lordships' attention to one from the dowager princess of Benares, in favor of her child and of ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. XI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... had been the pretty little country house of their common grandmother, the late Dowager-Duchess of Coburg, and found King Leopold and Queen Louise awaiting them there. He also was an honoured son of Coburg, pleased to be present on such a proud day for the little State. He and his queen ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen, (Victoria) Vol II • Sarah Tytler
... Miss de Laine to the dowager duchess of Soho, who was passing through Paris on her way to England; "you would hardly believe that Poppa knew her father when he was one of the richest ...
— Tales of Trail and Town • Bret Harte
... strong hand. Therefore, I should say we will build a castle rather than a chateau, for such I am sure will be the style of all the Norman buildings here, until England settles down to peace and quiet. I would not disturb this house, Wulf; it is doubtless dear to you, and will, moreover, serve as a dowager-house or as an abode for a younger son. We will fix on a new site altogether, and there we will rear a castle worthy of the estate. By the way, I have spoken to the king of your betrothal to my daughter, and he is highly pleased. He says that it is his earnest wish that his Norman nobles shall marry ...
— Wulf the Saxon - A Story of the Norman Conquest • G. A. Henty
... Ministry; but it rained, and Mrs. Vanhomrigh was nigh, and I took the opportunity of paying her for a scarf she bought me, and dined there; at four I went to congratulate with Lord Shelburne, for the death of poor Lady Shelburne dowager;(52) he was at his country house, and returned while I was there, and had not heard of it, and he took it very well. I am now come home before six, and find a packet from the Bishop of Clogher, with one enclosed ...
— The Journal to Stella • Jonathan Swift
... I will not anticipate her solemn communication. It will be partly apologetical, I suppose; for we begin to think our retreat rather unroyal, and that, like the wicked, we have fled when no man pursued. This idea afflicts my mother, who, as a Queen-Dowager, a Queen-Regent, a heroine, and a woman in general, would be extremely mortified to think that her precipitate retreat hither had exposed her to the ridicule of the islanders; and she is disconcerted and out of humour accordingly. In the meanwhile, my ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... assembled on the night of June 3. The list of "fashionables" he handed to the reporters resembled an extract from the pages of Messrs. Burke and Debrett. Thus, the Royal Box was graced by the Queen Dowager, with the King of Hanover and Prince Edward of Saxe-Weimar for her guests; and, dotted about the pit tier (then the fashionable part of the house) were the Duke and Duchess of Wellington, the Marquess ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham
... difficulty in finding a name for a river which fell into Clarence Strait; it was at once, therefore, honoured with that of Adelaide, after her most gracious Majesty the Queen Dowager. The bay that receives its waters was called after Vice-Admiral Sir Charles Adam. The remaining part of the south side of Clarence Strait, together with the islands in the western entrance of it, gave ample, though not such interesting employment as the exploration of the Adelaide, ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 1. • J Lort Stokes
... no good come of his interrogatories, hath set me at large; tho' I continue under his eye, to wit, with a dowager of his acquaintance, a Mistress Finch. Wee dwell in a private house midway down St. Thomas his street, in Redcliffe: and she hath put a dismal dress upon me (Jack, 'tis hideous), but otherwise uses me not ill. But take care of thyself, my deare friend: ...
— The Splendid Spur • Arthur T. Quiller Couch
... stage, there would have been the danger, too, of my thirsting for it, even with a Dowager Lady for a stepmother. The nostalgia of the boards is a disease your love might not have warded off. You are well rid of both ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... the story over which the Chinese in all the Empire laughed within their sleeves? Her Majesty, the Empress Dowager, was on most friendly terms with the wife of the Minister of the United States of America, and on one occasion gave her as a gift a set of combs enclosed within a box of silver. The foreign lady was delighted, and did not see the delicate sarcasm hidden within the present. Combs— the ...
— My Lady of the Chinese Courtyard • Elizabeth Cooper
... forget that there is an exception. She may speak to a child alone. [She rises.] Strammfest, you have been dandled on my grandmother's knee. By that gracious action the dowager Panjandrina made you a child forever. So did Nature, by the way. I order you to speak to me alone. Do you hear? I order you. For seven hundred years no member of your family has ever disobeyed an order from a member of ...
— Annajanska, the Bolshevik Empress • George Bernard Shaw
... he was outrageously familiar. He ceased to "Highness" her, laughed at her jokes and in turn provoked her to merriment. The meal came to an end too soon for him, but not too soon for the nodding dowager nor the silent, contemplating priest, who had worn through his period of saintly abstraction and had ...
— The Book of All-Power • Edgar Wallace
... sister without attempting to console her. Probably she might be of opinion, that even the worst intelligence which could be received from Flanders might not be without some touch of consolation; and that the Dowager Lady Forester, if so she was doomed to be called, might have a source of happiness unknown to the wife of the gayest and finest gentleman in Scotland. This conviction became stronger as they learned from inquiries made at headquarters, that ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... by his own seeking, among the crowd of gentlemen knighted by James I. on his accession; and in 1604 he added fortune to his new dignity by marrying Alice Barnham, "a handsome maiden," the daughter of a London alderman. He had before addressed the dowager Lady Hatton, who had refused him and bestowed her ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... London squares there was a house upon the broad doorsteps of which Lord Coombe stood oftener than upon any other. The old Dowager Duchess of Darte, having surrounded herself with almost royal dignity, occupied that house in an enforced seclusion. She was a confirmed rheumatic invalid, but her soul was as strong as it was many years before, when she had given its support to Coombe in his unbearable hours. ...
— Robin • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... In 1713 the drama of Cato appeared, and was received with acclamation by both Whigs and Tories, and was followed by the comedy of the Drummer. His last undertaking was The Freeholder, a party paper (1715-16). The later events in the life of A., viz., his marriage in 1716 to the Dowager Countess of Warwick, to whose son he had been tutor and his promotion to be Secretary of State did not contribute to his happiness. His wife appears to have been arrogant and imperious; his step-son the Earl was a rake and unfriendly to him; while in his public capacity ...
— A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature • John W. Cousin
... ceremony was performed by the good priest, and Don Juan de Gamboa gave away the bride; but it was agreed among the parties that this marriage also should be kept secret, until he knew the result of the malady under which the duchess-dowager was labouring; for the present, therefore, it was determined that Cornelia should return to Bologna with her brother. All was done as thus agreed on; and when the duchess-dowager died, Cornelia made her entrance into Ferrara, rejoicing the eyes of all who ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... juncture the Queen Dowager of France, Catherine de Medici, dispatched Signor Baccio del Bene on a mission to our duke. The signor and I were intimate friends, and he told me that the queen had a strong desire to finish the sepulchral monument to her husband, King Henry, ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IX. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... on a sofa in a whirlwind of silk and lace, and becomes, in her own majestic way, "perfectly charming." She makes the most affectionate inquiries about Lady Holchester, about the Dowager Lady Holchester, about Julius himself. Where have they been? what have they seen? have time and change helped them to recover the shock of that dreadful event, to which Lady Lundie dare not more particularly allude? Julius answers resignedly, and a little absently. He makes ...
— Man and Wife • Wilkie Collins
... cousin and heir, Richard de Lacorfe, on the day the said Richard shall marry. Now Richard is a de Lacorfe with the hereditary Gorndyke blood and nose acquired on the distaff side. This conspicuous organ inflames the anger of George's grandmother, the dowager, steeped as she is in the history and prejudices of the family, while other members of the august circle harbour unkind thoughts about ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, January 12, 1916 • Various
... genius, and her lofty reason inspired profound respect in the Russians, who distrust their own imagination, and wish to have it directed with wisdom. Close to Czarskozelo is the palace of Paul I., a charming residence, as the empress dowager and her daughters have there placed the chefs-d'oeuvrefc of their talents and good taste. This place reminds us of that admirable mother and her daughters, whom nothing has been able to turn ...
— Ten Years' Exile • Anne Louise Germaine Necker, Baronne (Baroness) de Stael-Holstein
... conversation happened to turn on the difficulty of breeding Nova-Scotia Sheep in this country—says a young Lady in company[, "]I have known instances of it[—]for Miss Letitia Shepherd, a first cousin of mine, had a Nova-Scotia Sheep that produced her Twins.["—"]What!["] cries the old Dowager Lady Dundizzy (who you know is as deaf as a Post), ["]has Miss Letitia Shepherd had twins["]—This Mistake—as you may imagine, threw the whole company into a fit of Laughing—However 'twas the next morning everywhere reported ...
— The School For Scandal • Richard Brinsley Sheridan
... off our hands,' said her grandmother, the old queen-dowager. 'Come now, let me adorn you like your other sisters!' and she put a wreath of white lilies round her hair, but every petal of the flowers was half a pearl; then the old queen had eight oysters fixed on to the princess's tail to show ...
— Stories from Hans Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen |
