I used to set them down as half-pay officers, dowagers of narrow income, elderly maiden ladies, and other people of respectability, but small account, such as hang on the world's skirts rather than actually belong to it.

'Conceive to yourself 150 or 200 people met together dressed in the extremity of the fashion, painted as red as Bacchanals...ten or a dozen card-tables crammed with dowagers of quality, grave ecclesiastics and yellow admirals.' Memoirs, i.242.

I recollect no conversation of the next day, worth preserving, except one saying of Dr. Johnson, which will be a valuable text for many decent old dowagers, and other good company, in various circles to descant upon.

However, it is a terrible blow to the Irish, for I suppose all our dowagers now will be for marrying Patagonians.'

Why did he not Marry? 'Dowagers as Plenty as Flounders.

Why did he not Marry? 'Dowagers as Plenty as Flounders.

The 'prettiest bauble' possible, as he called Strawberry Hill, 'set in enamelled meadows in filigree hedges,' was surrounded by 'dowagers as plenty as flounders;' such was Walpole's assertion.

"' The duchess was, therefore, one of the dowagers, 'thick as flounders,' whose proximity was irritating to the fastidious bachelor.

The Hatchgoose Pythonesses did not wish to be women, but very bad imitations of men; and therefore he considered himself absolved from all knightly duties toward them: but toward these Peris of the west, and to the dowagers who had been Peris in their time, what adoration could be too great?

The party was given chiefly for Betty, that she might have plenty of partners at the New Year ball; and although these were mostly young people, there was also a goodly sprinkling of dames and dowagers, who smiled approvingly when Betty was presented to them, before seating themselves at the all-absorbing card-tables.

After the death of Mrs. Hudgins, family intimates, wives of physicians, bankers' wives and other Fayetteville dowagers continued periodically to come to see Adeline.

Ah! dowers and dowagers again!

I set off at day break for London; plunged into the tiresome details of legateeship; and after a fortnight's toil, infinite weariness, and longings to breathe in any atmosphere unchoked by a million of chimneys, to sleep where no eternal rolling of equipages should disturb my rest, and to enjoy society without being trampled on by dowagers fifty deep, I saw my cottage roof once more.

I have seen dowagers at watering-places in a fever of anxiety about their rank and their consequence!

From his position behind the dowagers' chairs he could catch bits of conversation from both ends of the table.

There were many as wise as the doctor, as elegant as Freya, and many venerable ones with famous names, winning the confidence that illustrious dowagers inspire.

ROTHES, Countess Dowagers of, ii. 136, n. 3. ROTHES, Lady, Bennet Langton's wife, ii. 77, n. 1, 142, 146; iii. 104, 368; iv. 8, n. 3, 146, 159, n. 3, 240.

Already careful dowagers are having themselves packed in chintz or old newspapers, and fathers of feminine families are beginning to emerge from the lurking places in which they had sought refuge with their cheque-books.

On our estate not twenty miles from herethere is a little house called the Dower Housea house where the dowagers of the family have generally resided.

Here, antique dowagers and faded spinsters are all gay, laughing, rouged, and indulgentso that 'bating the subtraction of teeth and addition of wrinkles, the disparity between one score and four is not so great: "Gay rainbow silks their mellow charms enfold, Nought of these beauties but themselves is old.

"It's the old dowagers of the Faubourg St. Germain, and your La Rochefoucauld, more than all the rest, who tell you these wonderful stories; but you worry me to death with them.

Dowagers as plenty as flounders inhabit all around, and Pope's ghost is just now skimming under my window by a most poetical moonlight.

If medicine, I am to have half-a-dozen dowagers, always ailing and never ill, put under my charge the moment I can add M.D. to my name; not to speak of certain mysterious hints of an introduction at court, and an appointment of physician extraordinary to Her Majesty.

His lank frame leaned over the footlights and he wound and unwound his long, thin fingers, while his lips sneered and his sharp black eyes gleamed venom as he instructed business men, bankers, smart young officers, lorgnetted dowagers and sweet-faced girls, in the duty of hating with the whole heart and the whole mind.

With him she lived for many years a poetic and untrammelled existence, and, when she died, many dowagers sent wreaths as tokens of their sorrow at the loss of an admirable woman.