"Billingsgate" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... except to swear around my office like a drunken and abusive pirate. If you have nothing for temperate discussion, I will now say good-day to you. Take with you the honors of war, sir. You have outcussed me. I acknowledge your superiority in billingsgate—"—he paused and for an instant his voice mounted, as he added—"and in ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck
... midst of a bustling community of fishermen and women. There is fish everywhere, both in the sea and on the land, and the flavour of it is in the air; there are baskets, bales, and nets, and there is, it must be added, a familiar ring of Billingsgate in the loud voices that we hear around us. Granville is the great western sea port of France, from which Paris is constantly supplied; and, in spite of the deficiency of railway communication, ...
— Normandy Picturesque • Henry Blackburn
... counties, I went from Stratford to Barking, a large market-town, but chiefly inhabited by fishermen, whose smacks ride in the Thames, at the mouth of their river, from whence their fish is sent up to London to the market at Billingsgate by small boats, of which I shall speak by itself in my ...
— Tour through the Eastern Counties of England, 1722 • Daniel Defoe
... wit: Hear him but talk, and you would swear Obscenity herself was there, And that Profaneness had made choice, By way of trump, to use his voice; That, in all mean and low things great, He had been bred at Billingsgate; 390 And that, ascending to the earth Before the season of his birth, Blasphemy, making way and room, Had mark'd him in his mother's womb. Too honest (for the worst of men In forms are honest, now ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... nature for in his profess he must cringe or snarl, always the undermost dog. Yet he had some liking for the priests, who had been kind to him, and there was always a glow in his heart for the pale wife who dwelt with his child in the attic in Billingsgate. Under happier circumstances Mr. Nicholas Lovel might have shone with ...
— The Path of the King • John Buchan
... might be demanded, as I wished to avoid noise and the necessity of applying to the consul, Mr. Williams. But the fellow became only more outrageous. I then went myself to demand an explanation and was called all the vilest names contained in the Spanish Germania (Billingsgate), whereupon I told him that if he proceeded in this manner I would make a complaint to the authorities through the consul. He then said that if I did not instantly depart he would drag me off to prison, and cause me to be knocked ...
— Letters of George Borrow - to the British and Foreign Bible Society • George Borrow
... philosopher, or statesman, or beauty; now taking deadly offence for some utterly inexplicable reason; writhing with agony under clumsy blows which a robuster nature would have met with contemptuous laughter; racking his wits to contrive exquisite compliments, and suddenly exploding in sheer Billingsgate; making a mountain of every mole-hill in his pilgrimage; always preoccupied with his last literary project, and yet finding time for innumerable intrigues; for carrying out schemes of vengeance for wounded vanity, and for ...
— Alexander Pope - English Men of Letters Series • Leslie Stephen
... from you, eloquent oyster-merchants of Billingsgate, (just ready to be called to the Bar, and quoif'd like your sister-serjants,) that we expect the shortening the time, and lessening the expences of law-suits: For I think you are observ'd to bring your debates to a short issue; and even ...
— The Bickerstaff-Partridge Papers • Jonathan Swift
... Billingsgate not so much by the porters as by the buyers," said a witness at a City inquest last week. A purchaser at this market declares that the language is often provoked by the fish. Only last week he had a heated argument with ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, July 25, 1917 • Various
... instituted libel suits against the most prominent editors in the country, among them Horace Greeley and Thurlow Weed. And what is more to the point,—he won his cases. But this did not make him any more popular with the press. When we remember that Billingsgate was an important part of the literary equipment of the critic of Cooper's time, we need not be surprised that Cooper's pugnacity evoked such sweet disinterestedness as Park Benjamin indulged in when he called ...
— Stories of Authors, British and American • Edwin Watts Chubb
... I will bring thee to the bawds and roysters At Billingsgate, feasting with claret-wine and oysters; From thence shoot the Bridge, child, to the Cranes in the Vintry, And see there the gimblets how they make ...
— Inns and Taverns of Old London • Henry C. Shelley
... an honester and more decent livelihood for Mr. Norton (Daniel De Foe's son of love by a lady who vended oysters) to have dealt in a fish-market, than to be dealing out the dialects of Billingsgate in the Flying-post? ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... these observations—somewhat heavily weighted with barrier billingsgate—Tartar showed his approval by wagging his tail knowingly and by covering the small face bent down to ...
— Mlle. Fouchette - A Novel of French Life • Charles Theodore Murray
... of classic Billingsgate, who had broken her husband's nose with a sledgehammer fist, and swore before the magistrate, that the man hadn't a crease to complain of in her character. We are condemned, Mr. Carling, sometimes to suffer in the flesh for ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... somebody else's very second best as a coast-guardsman, and gives himself the airs of a stage tar with sufficient success to pass as a possible fish porter of bad character in casual employment during busy times at Billingsgate. His manner shows an earnest disposition to ingratiate himself with the missionary, probably for some ...
— Captain Brassbound's Conversion • George Bernard Shaw
... walked on ahead talking lovingly. "I said them words, which you oughter 'ave said, 'cause you ain't got no memory t' speak of. But they ain't my beliefs, but yours, or I'll know the reason why. Jes' you say them now. Swear, without Billingsgate, as you'll allays love, honor an' ...
— The Opal Serpent • Fergus Hume
... These phrases of refinement I must borrow From our next neighbours' land, where, like a chessman, There is a move set down for joy or sorrow, Not only in mere talking, but the press. Man In Islands is, it seems, downright and thorough, More than on Continents—as if the Sea (See Billingsgate) made ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... Mercury of Mr Ebenezer Pleggit. Great was the concussion of the opposing baskets, dire was the crash of many of the vials, and dreadful was the mingled odour of the abominations which escaped, and poured through the wicker interstices. Two ladies from Billingsgate, who were near, indulging their rhetorical powers, stopped short. Two tom cats, who were on an adjacent roof, just fixing their eyes of enmity, and about to fix their claws, turned their eyes to the scene below. Two political antagonists stopped their ...
— Japhet, In Search Of A Father • Frederick Marryat
... Mark, of which there are variations, is sufficiently self-explanatory, although it may be mentioned that for a time he dwelt at the Golden Tun in Creed Lane. Walter Lynne, 1547-50, who was a scholar and an author, had a shop at "Sommer's Key near Billingsgate" and printed about twenty sermons and other religious tracts in octavo, employed the device given as an initial to the present chapter. John Wyghte, or Wight, resembled Singleton somewhat in his facility for running his head against established ...
— Printers' Marks - A Chapter in the History of Typography • William Roberts
... race of writers and a spouting geyser of inconceivable scurrility burst forth. No imagery was too nasty, no epithet too strong, no charge too base to bring against an opponent. The heroic examples of Greek and Roman invective paled before the inexhaustible resources of learned billingsgate stored in the minds of the humanists and theologians. To accuse an enemy of atheism and heresy was a matter of course; to add charges of unnatural vice or, if he were dead, stories of suicide and of the devils hovering greedily over his deathbed, was extremely common. Even crowned ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... for the past three years, reduced to one idea through mental impoverishment, that of murder, having lost the faculty for even the lowest order of reasoning, the poorest of journalists, save for pikemen and Billingsgate market-women, so monotonous in his constant paroxysms that the regular reading of his journal is like listening to hoarse cries from the cells of a madhouse.[3146] From the 19th of August he excites people ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 3 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 2 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... trembling youngster's pardon for detaining him, would proceed to inform him in the "politest and most genteel manner in the world" that he was "the d—-d son of a sea cook,"—subsequently rattaning him furiously, amidst a plethora of expletives before which the worst Billingsgate faded into insignificance. ...
— She and I, Volume 2 - A Love Story. A Life History. • John Conroy Hutcheson
... plainly see 'tis As salt as your parents, Oceanus and Tethys. But had I first known you had sprung from salt water, The Devil for me, should have marry'd the daughter; Besides, you are grown both so lustful and bold, And for all your sweet looks, have a Billingsgate tongue, That is fifty times worse than a fishwoman's hung. If these be the plagues of a beautiful wife, O ease me, Great Jove, of so cursed a life; If La Pies divine, who inhabit the Heavens, Will Whore on like mortals, at sixes and sevens; ...
— The Power of Mesmerism - A Highly Erotic Narrative of Voluptuous Facts and Fancies • Anonymous
... surprised to hear that there are many thousands of men and boys who go out to catch the millions and millions of all sorts of fish that are sent to the markets in the large towns of England by railway nearly every day. He had been to Billingsgate Market in Thames Street, and to the new fish-market in Smithfield, and had seen the great piles of cod-fish, and skates, and soles, and plaice, and the boxes and baskets of white fresh herrings, and the beautiful shining mackerel, but he did not know how great was ...
— Little Folks (Septemeber 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... rich furs, which are speedily transferred to the Hudson's Bay Company's stores in exchange for the goods aforementioned. And many a tough wrangle has the trader on such occasions with sharp natives, who might have graduated in Billingsgate, so close are they at a bargain. Here, too, voyageurs are supplied with an equivalent for their wages, part in advance, if they desire it (and they generally do desire it), and part at the conclusion of their long and ...
— The Young Fur Traders • R.M. Ballantyne
... Penates (with Engravings). 4. Jacques van Artevelde. 5. Literary Relics of James Thomson and Allan Ramsey. 6. A Word upon Wigs. 7. The Income Tax. 8. Paris after Waterloo. 9. Correspondence of Sylvanus Urban: Concealed Lands; Richard of Cirencester; Artifice of a Condemned Malefactor; Billingsgate and Whittington's Conduit. With Notes of the Month; Review of New Publications; Reports of Archaeological Societies, Historical Chronicle, and OBITUARY; including Memoirs of the Earl of Belfast, Bishop Kaye, ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 180, April 9, 1853 • Various
... called a smart lawyer. In my opinion this did not qualify him for his position as judge. A man may be cunning, and so is a fox. He may have the qualities which enable him to browbeat a witness, and so has a bully. He may have great volubility, and so has a Billingsgate fishwife. He may even have considerable legal acumen, and yet be narrow and coarse. A man to be a judge, as you just remarked, should be of a broad, judicial mind, able to look at a case in all its bearings, to sift evidence, balance probabilities, and, ...
— From Wealth to Poverty • Austin Potter
... those western waters were not the poddlies, coddlings, and shrimps that one is apt to associate with summer resorts by the sea. They were those veritable inhabitants of the deep that figure on the slabs of Billingsgate and similar markets—plaice and skate of the largest dimensions, congers that might suggest the great sea serpent, and even ...
— The Eagle Cliff • R.M. Ballantyne
... Billingsgate, according to Sir E.E. COOPER, is much better than it used to be. Fish porters invariably say "Excuse me" before throwing a length of obsolete eel ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, September 22, 1920 • Various
... door of the bathroom opened outwards, and with admirable presence of mind he rushed back, and putting his back against the door and his feet against the wall, imprisoned the corporal. The corporal, in the approved Shop version of Billingsgate, began to blaspheme at the top of his voice, so when the ladies reached the top of the stairs they saw a vision of a cadet with his feet to the wall and his back to a door singing at the top of his voice to drown a ...
— A Student in Arms - Second Series • Donald Hankey
... a torrent of abuse by declaring that Scott has encouraged the lowest panders of a venal press, 'deluging and nauseating the public mind with the offal and garbage of Billingsgate abuse and vulgar slang;' and presently he calls Scott—by way, it is true, of lowering Byron—'one of the greatest teachers of morality that ever lived.' He invents a theory, to which he returns more than once, to justify the contrast. Scott, he says, ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... to Brooks's, but there was hardly anybody there, and nothing occurred in the House of Commons but some interchange of Billingsgate between O'Connell and George Dawson. The Duke talks with confidence, and has no idea of resigning, but he does not inspire his friends with the confidence he feels or affects himself, though they talk of his resignation as an event which ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. II • Charles C. F. Greville
... loose, weak king, was unusually complaisant through the presence of the first gentleman of Europe. As the last of the Georges declared himself in good-humor, so every toady grinned and every courtly flunkey swore in the Billingsgate of that profanely eloquent period that the actress ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... I were at the door, and by 10.32 the tunnel-like walls of the "spite house" resounded with as illuminating a verbal interchange of billingsgate biographies as I have ever listened to. At 10.35 I covered Addicks in a hasty but quite successful retreat which he beat to our cab. Thence to the Hoffman House, where I summoned Parker Chandler to aid in the calming of our raving associate. The ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... cogitated as few people beside Theodore Racksole could cogitate. At 6 a.m. he took a stroll round the business part of his premises, and watched the supplies come in from Covent Garden, from Smithfield, from Billingsgate, and from other strange places. He found the proceedings of the kitchen department quite interesting, and made mental notes of things that he would have altered, of men whose wages he would increase and men whose wages he would reduce. At 7 a.m. he happened ...
— The Grand Babylon Hotel • Arnold Bennett
... Thames from the Tower on the east almost to Billingsgate on the west, and that part of the Tower itself which lies to the westward of the White Tower is held by some to be within this ward. The principal streets and places contained in it are Great Tower Street, part of Little ...
— London in 1731 • Don Manoel Gonzales
... red herring], bought for forty shillings for half a mark of gain and not above; and so the people of London for one mark of gain"; and the destruction of fish is prevented, but all caught must be sold. It is well known that the custom was to destroy all the fish brought into Billingsgate market above a certain quantity, which led Ruskin to cry out furiously that the real prices of the world were regulated by Rascals, while the fools are bleating their folly of Supply and Demand. One may guess to-day that most of the proceedings in the ports of Boston, New York, or ...
— Popular Law-making • Frederic Jesup Stimson
... press groaned in bringing forth a hateful brood of pamphlets, malicious scribbles, and billingsgate ribaldry. No generous and impartial person then can blame the present undertaking, which is designed purely for the diversion and merriment of the reader. Pieces of pleasantry and mirth have a secret charm in them to allay the heats and tumults of our spirits, and ...
— From Boyhood to Manhood • William M. Thayer
... deceiving and insulting their old fathers they do not perhaps exceed the license which, by immemorial prescription, has been allowed to heroines. But they also cheat at cards, rob strong boxes, put up their favours to auction, betray their friends, abuse their rivals in the style of Billingsgate, and invite their lovers in the language of the Piazza. These, it must be remembered, are not the valets and waiting-women, the Mascarilles and Nerines, but the recognised heroes and heroines who ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 2 (of 4) - Contributions To The Edinburgh Review • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... Custom House, one at Billingsgate, one at Queenhith, and one at the Three Cranes; one in Blackfriars, and one at the gate of Bridewell; one at the corner of Leadenhal Street and Gracechurch; one at the north and one at the south gate of the Royal Exchange; one at Guild Hall, and one at Blackwell Hall gate; ...
— A Journal of the Plague Year • Daniel Defoe
... of the best of men, would turn the world upside down, or have done it already. - But he must have a small share of fortitude indeed, who is put out of countenance by hard speeches without sense and meaning, or affrighted from the path of duty by the rude language of Billingsgate - For my own part, I smile contemptuously at such unmanly efforts: I would be glad to hear the reasoning of Chronus, if he has a capacity for it; but I disregard his railing as I would the barking ...
— The Writings of Samuel Adams, volume II (1770 - 1773) - collected and edited by Harry Alonso Cushing • Samuel Adams
... devil would have thee? unless 'twere an oysterwoman to propagate young fry for Billingsgate—thy talent will never recommend thee ...
— The Comedies of William Congreve - Volume 1 [of 2] • William Congreve
... of abuse and 'yabber yabber' they would then utter would have raised the envy of the greatest 'Mrs. Moriarty' in the Billingsgate fishmarket." ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... in the wisdom of the bird. He could converse fluently on all occasions, and needed no drawing out, inasmuch as he was always ready to exhibit his powers of conversation. He was not a pious bird—belonging to Slivers, he could hardly be expected to be—and his language was redolent of Billingsgate. So Billy being so clever was quite a character in his way, and, seated on Slivers' shoulder with his black bead of an eye watching his master writing with the rusty pen, they looked ...
— Madame Midas • Fergus Hume
... choose to descend to Billingsgate," said Sir Francis. "I have my own ideas as to ...
— Kept in the Dark • Anthony Trollope
... century, the third Earl of Shaftesbury, in his 'Miscellaneous Reflections,' 1714, refers to notable philosophers and divines 'who can be contented to make sport, and write in learned Billingsgate, to divert the Coffeehouse, and entertain the assemblys at Booksellers' shops, or the more ...
— The Book-Hunter in London - Historical and Other Studies of Collectors and Collecting • William Roberts
... country's ark to bear? This hateful truckling to misguided power, Combined in palace, temple, hall, and bower, To crush an outcast Queen, with evidence By facts refuted, ridiculed by sense?— Tales that would merit but an equal fate, Told of the veriest wench in Billingsgate! FATHERS! and BRITONS! whence this alien band Of miscreant lechers bribed from sea and land?— By England spurn'd, yet plied with England's gold, Till every scoundrel's stock of oaths was sold; Then hither sent by hirelings vile as they, To pass ...
— The Ghost of Chatham; A Vision - Dedicated to the House of Peers • Anonymous
... time, pretty well master of five languages, and have not lost them yet, though I write no bill over my door, or set Latin quotations in the front of the 'Review.' But, to my irreparable loss, I was bred but by halves; for my father, forgetting Juno's royal academy, left the language of Billingsgate quite out of my education: hence I am perfectly illiterate in the polite style of the street, and am not fit to converse with the porters and carmen of quality, who grace their diction with the beauties of calling names, and curse their neighbour ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IX; • Jonathan Swift
... charge them with all the enormities committed in their name in the West Indies, yet they are to be blamed for not doing more to prevent them. A just and rational censure ought to be expressed on them, while we disapprove the constant billingsgate poured on them officially. It is at the same time true, that their enemies set the first example of violating neutral rights, and continue it to this day: insomuch, that it is declared on all hands, and particularly by the insurance companies, ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... Christian patience a severe whipping at the public post) can injure the exalted reputation of this great philosopher? The folly of the Editor of the Centinal, is the more conspicuous, in inserting his billingsgate abuse in a Boston paper, when this town, particularly the TRADESMAN of it are reaping such advantages from Franklin's liberality. The Editor of the Centinal ought to blush for his arrogance in vilifying ...
— Priestley in America - 1794-1804 • Edgar F. Smith
... who, in another place, even in the most polished courts, would take a high rank for good breeding and gentlemanly education, at these tables make use of language which, I hope, Billingsgate itself would turn from with disgust. It cannot be repeated; neither would it be believed, unless by such as, like myself, have had "confirmation strong," too strong to be rejected, if I did not, at the same time, reject the ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume II (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... incidents of his career, including the destruction of the Spanish Armada." No scandal about Queen Elizabeth, we trust. The Daily News, by the way, is much exercised by Mr. Punch's language towards the enemy, which it describes as being in the Billingsgate vein. In spite of which rebuke, and at the risk of offending the readers of that patriotic organ, Mr. Punch proposes to go on saying just what he thinks of the ...
— Mr. Punch's History of the Great War • Punch
... better governed as regards France, and the stronger as regards all the world beyond, should not throw mud again even though mud be thrown at us. I yield the path to a small chimney-sweeper as readily as to a lady; and forbear from an interchange of courtesies with a Billingsgate heroine, even though at heart I may have a proud consciousness that I should not altogether go to the wall ...
— Volume 1 • Anthony Trollope
... mistress catch him up. "Put him down! put him down this instant! Thomas! Davy! Here, hang him up, I say," cried this over good-natured lady, interspersing her commands with a volley of sixteenth century Billingsgate, and ending by declaring that nothing fared well without her, and hurrying off to pounce down on the luckless damsels who had let their dog play with the embroidery yarn destined to emblazon the tapestry of Chatsworth with the achievements of Juno. ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Richmond, the captain who brought away the three passengers, made it his business for some reason or other, to call at the oyster-house kept by the owner of Joe, and while there, this letter was read and commented on in torrents of Billingsgate phrases; and the trader told the captain that he would give him "two thousand dollars if he would get them;" finally he told him he would "give every cent they would bring, which would be much over $2000," as they were "so ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... parents a good sum. Where would you find any but an accomplished classical scholar to compare the books of the present (or indeed any other) writer to "sardonic divings after the pearl of truth, whose lustre is eclipsed in the display of the diseased oyster;" mere Billingsgate doesn't turn out oysters like these; they are of the Lucrine lake:—this satirist has pickled his rods in Latin brine. Fancy, not merely a diver, but a sardonic diver: and the expression of his confounded countenance on discovering not only a pearl, but an eclipsed pearl, which was in ...
— The Christmas Books • William Makepeace Thackeray
... substandard language, vernacular. vulgar language, obscene language, obscenity, vulgarity. jargon, technical terms, technicality, lingo, slang, cant, argot; St. Gile's Greek, thieves' Latin, peddler's French, flash tongue, Billingsgate, Wall Street slang. pseudology^. pseudonym &c (misnomer) 565; Mr. So-and-so; wha d'ye call 'em^, whatchacallim, what's his name; thingummy^, thingumbob; je ne sais quoi [Fr.]. neologist^, coiner of words. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... sententious; and, as we have seen, he could quote Scripture with the readiness of a theologian. In the shop, when he had to deal with the lower classes, he showed himself acquainted with their modes of expression, and spoke the Billingsgate of the market-women, which he had acquired in the rue Comtesse d'Artois, treating them familiarly, and they generally addressed him as "gossip Denies." By his own account he easily judged the characters of the various people with whom ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... spent their afternoons had also some vinegar in them, especially if they concerned books written by those of the opposition. And other writers, even if they had no political connection, borrowed their manners from those who had. It was the animosities of party politics that set the general tone. Billingsgate that had grown along the wharves of the lower river, was found to be of service in Parliament and gave a spice and sparkle even to a book review. Presently a large part of literary England wore the tags of political preference. Writers were often as clearly distinguished as were the ladies in ...
— There's Pippins And Cheese To Come • Charles S. Brooks
... his actors in a style of whimsical foulmouthedness peculiar to himself—but he would allow no other man living to do it—and while conferring substantial benefits upon them, would blackguard them like a Billingsgate fishwoman. So essentially did he differ from most other managers, that instead of wronging or pinching them, instead of intriguing against them, to run them down with the public, in order to enhance his own consequence, he was their champion, their sincere friend, and the strenuous ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 5, May 1810 • Various
... denounced Sir John Norris as "a fool, liar, and coward" on all occasions, besides overwhelming his brother, Buckhurst, Wilkes, and every other person who took their part, with a torrent of abuse; and it is well known that the Earl was a master of Billingsgate. ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... A complete vocabulary of Italian billingsgate might be selected from Biagioli. Or see the concluding pages of Nannucci's excellent tract "Intorno alle voci usate da Dante," Corfu, 1840. Even Foscolo could not always refrain. Dante should have taught them to shun such vulgarities. ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell
... morning, after a Nip of Aquavitae, to clear the Cobwebs out of our throats, we went down to Billingsgate, where we saw my old humorous acquaintances, Brandy Sall, the fishwife, and the humorous porter, the Duke of Puddledock; likewise a merry Wag that did porterage work for the Fish Factors in the Market, and thereby seemed to have caught somewhat of the form ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 3 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... for his quarrel was never with men, but with falsehood, cant, and misleading tradition, in whomsoever incarnated. Save for this, they were no longer readable, and might be relegated to that herbarium of Billingsgate gathered ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell
... the memory of which sends a trill of admiration through me even to this day. It was a battle worthy of the gods. He was a heaver of coals, quick and ready beyond his kind. During many years sojourn East and South, in the course of many wanderings from Billingsgate to Limehouse Hole, from Petticoat Lane to Whitechapel Road; out of eel-pie shop and penny gaff; out of tavern and street, and court and doss-house, he had gathered together slang words and terms ...
— John Ingerfield and Other Stories • Jerome K. Jerome
... equally profuse of a patriotism as lofty and of personalities as {11} base as Milton's, to those of a whole line of the scholars of the Renaissance who lived with the noblest literature of the world and wrote of each other in the language of Billingsgate fishwives. So the sublimity of his life is wholly that of an irresistible will, set from the first on achieving great deeds and victoriously achieving them in defiance of adverse men and fates. But this is quite compatible with qualities the ...
— Milton • John Bailey
... revealed himself fully; but the public had had a taste of him in recent pamphlets. Baillie, on rumour, reports him as a Socinian; and Edwards, who came into conflict with him in due time, and devotes many consecutive pages of Billingsgate to him in the Second Part of his Gangraena, tells us that he held "many wicked opinions," being "an Hermaphrodite and a compound of an Arminian, Socinian, Libertine, Anabaptist, & c." From the same authority we learn that the Presbyterians had nicknamed him "the great ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... peddlers of many wares—a noisy nuisance. Yet the old cries of London, although doubtless strident and disturbing, have a certain romantic charm of association and tradition. Like the Tower and Billingsgate and Wapping Old Stairs, they were parts of very London, and London was ...
— From the Easy Chair, vol. 1 • George William Curtis
... respecting the libertine life of Grancey; in the course of which she said several strange things respecting the treatment which her lovers had experienced from her. Grancey at length rushed out, and fell to abusing Madame de Bouillon like a Billingsgate. The latter was not silent, and some exceedingly elegant discourse passed between them. Madame de Bouillon made a complaint against Grancey; in the first place, for having listened to her conversation; and in the second, for having insulted her in her own house. Monsieur reproved Grancey; told ...
— The Memoirs of the Louis XIV. and The Regency, Complete • Elizabeth-Charlotte, Duchesse d'Orleans
... people making their purchases in the early mornings, and the congested condition, with the great variety of vegetables, makes it almost as impressive a sight as Billingsgate fish market in London. In the following table we give a list of vegetables observed there and the prices at ...
— Farmers of Forty Centuries - or, Permanent Agriculture in China, Korea and Japan • F. H. King
... Government could not last much longer, but he at least, as far as he could, would keep it full of vigor until the end. She knew, therefore, that the last sitting before the Easter recess had been a storm of words sharp as sword-thrusts—it was before the days of the language of Billingsgate and the behavior of roughs. There were quite a number of gentlemen still in the House of Commons, ...
— Halcyone • Elinor Glyn
... daughter, she fell immediately into the most violent passion, and so irritated and provoked the squire, that neither his patience nor his prudence could bear it any longer; upon which there ensued between them both so warm a bout at altercation, that perhaps the regions of Billingsgate never equalled it. In the heat of this scolding Mrs Western departed, and had consequently no leisure to acquaint her brother with the letter which Sophia received, which might have possibly produced ill effects; but, to say truth, I believe it never once occurred ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... a mile west is Stane Street, striking London-wards from Billingshurst, and we may follow it for a while on our way to Rudgwick, near the county's border. We leave the Roman road (which once ran as straight as might be as far as Billingsgate, but is now diverted and lost in many spots) at the drive to Dedisham, on the left, and thus save a considerable corner. Dedisham, in its hollow, is an ancient agricultural settlement: a farm and feudatory cottages in perfect completeness, an isolated self-sufficing community, lacking nothing—not ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... Sabor, or Sheeta, or any other beast of the jungle been seeking to destroy him, the ape-man would have danced about hurling missiles and invectives at his assailant. He would have insulted and taunted them, reviling in the jungle Billingsgate he knew so well; but now he sat silent out of Tantor's reach and upon his handsome face was an expression of deep sorrow and pity, for of all the jungle folk Tarzan loved Tantor the best. Could he have slain ...
— Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... scenes have their humorous side. It was Daniel O'Connell, I believe, who defeated the female champion of Billingsgate by calmly referring to her as the hypothenuse of a right-angled triangle, which was something utterly beyond her powers of repartee: it was he, at all events, who silenced another virago with the cutting response, "Sure every one knows, ma'am, ye're no better than a parallelogram, ...
— A Tame Surrender, A Story of The Chicago Strike • Charles King
... usual servile surroundings of such small despots. Deriving the only education it ever gets directly from its personal attendants, this young monster of bad temper, bad manners, and bad language becomes precociously proficient in overbearing ways, and voluble in Hindostanee Billingsgate, before it has acquired enough of its ancestral tongue to frame the simplest sentence. It bullies its bhearer; it bangs distractingly on the tom-tom; it surfeits itself to an apoplectic point with pish-pash; it burns its mouth with hot curry, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 5, March, 1858 • Various
... was so much amazed and concerned at this melancholy tale, that bursting out into tears, and hanging about his brother's neck, he begged him to take a coach and begone to Billingsgate, giving him ten guineas in hand and telling him that his bills should not be protested if he drew within the compass of a hundred pounds from Dieppe, whither he said the ship was bound. West was no sooner out of the street where his brother lived, but he ordered the ...
— Lives Of The Most Remarkable Criminals Who have been Condemned and Executed for Murder, the Highway, Housebreaking, Street Robberies, Coining or other offences • Arthur L. Hayward
... I went, I cannot clearly call to mind; of distance, as well as of time, I had lost all calculation. I recollect making a circuit to avoid the press of boats waiting for the early dawn by Billingsgate Market, and have a vision of the White Tower against the heavens. But my next impression of any clearness is that of rowing under the shadow of a black three-masted schooner that lay close under shore, tilted over on her port side in the low water. ...
— Dead Man's Rock • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... alumni of Tonypandy will learn with regret that the University is to lose the services of its Professor of Live Languages, Mr. O. Evans, who is about to assume the responsible and highly-remunerated position of Director of Research to the Billingsgate Fishporters' Self-Help Society. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, January 28th, 1920 • Various
... given place to the plodding tradesman; the clattering of pots and the sound of "harpe and sawtrie," to the din of carts and the accurst dinging of the dustman's bell; and no song is heard, save, haply, the strain of some syren from Billingsgate, chanting the ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving
... mouthings of demagogues and the billingsgate of sectionalists lay this elemental fact—a ...
— The Victim - A romance of the Real Jefferson Davis • Thomas Dixon
... Exeter may become a cardinal, or Colonel Sibthorpe commander of the forces, six weeks before you hear of their promotion. The union between Scotland and England will be again as good as divorced by distance and difficulty of transit. Your fish from Billingsgate will be ancient, and your tailor will be sure to disappoint you of your mourning or your marriage suit. Your commodious carpet-bag must be exchanged for a trunk capacious enough to contain all your "household stuff," except the kitchen range; your utmost speed will amount to difficult stages ...
— Old Roads and New Roads • William Bodham Donne
... was a possession thus acquired, and has been used by me from that time to this. Nor must this retrospective page omit some further reference to J. W. Burgon, Fellow of Oriel and Vicar of St. Mary-the-Virgin. Dean Church called him "the dear old learned Professor of Billingsgate," and certainly his method of conducting controversy savoured (as Sydney Smith said about Bishop Monk) of the apostolic occupation of trafficking in fish. But to those whom he liked, and who looked ...
— Fifteen Chapters of Autobiography • George William Erskine Russell
... that vile jacobin villain drew away a young man of our parish, one Burnett," etc. and in this strain did the woman continue for near an hour; heaping on me every name of abuse that the parish of Billingsgate could supply. I listened very particularly; appeared to approve all she said, exclaiming, "dear me!" two or three times, and, in fine, so completely won the woman's heart by my civilities, that I had not courage enough to undeceive her. ...
— Biographia Epistolaris, Volume 1. • Coleridge, ed. Turnbull
... hair, after the wren fashion, but chiefly did they rattle out their disgust and wrath at the intruders. I have no doubt that, if it could have been interpreted, it would have proven the rankest and most voluble Billingsgate ever uttered. For the wren is saucy, and he has a tongue in his head that can outwag any ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... fresh cargo from the harbor is announced by the clanging of a bell, which is likely to leave all the other booths deserted, while a crowd elbows around the fishmonger. He above all others commands the greatest flow of billingsgate, and is especially notorious for his arrogant treatment of his customers, and for exacting the uttermost farthing. The "Fish" and the "Myrtles" can be sure of a brisk trade on days when all the other booth keepers ...
— A Day In Old Athens • William Stearns Davis
... Awakening was accompanied by no lack of acid jealousies and unchristian recrimination. In almost every sect "New Light" separated from "Old Light," "New Side" from "Old Side," in most unfraternal division. Gilbert Tennant, imitating Whitefield and out-heroding Herod, exhausted ecclesiastical billingsgate in quest of terms to characterize those clergymen—Congregational or Presbyterian or Anglican; those "letter-learned Pharisees," those "moral negroes," those "plastered hypocrites"—who stood out in stiff-necked opposition to revivalist methods of inculcating vital religion. Schism divided the ...
— Beginnings of the American People • Carl Lotus Becker
... 1st, Being universal, it took away all ground for feeling the words of an antagonist as any personal insult; so he had rarely a motive for a duel. 2dly, the anger was thus less acute; yet, if it were acute, then this Billingsgate resource furnished an instantaneous vehicle for expectorating the wrath. Look, for example, at Cicero's orations against Mark Antony, or Catiline, or against Piso. This last person was a senator of the very highest rank, family, connections; yet, in the course of a few pages, does ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v1 • Thomas de Quincey
... into a position of real dignity. Thus, after Fort Sumter, while we still carried the Rebels' mails for them, he wrote steadily through all his working-hours of every day to his Southern correspondents, who were sending him all sorts of Billingsgate. And he wrote them the truth. "It is the only way they see a word of truth," he said. "Look at that newspaper, and that, and that." Till the mails stopped, they had not to blame him, if they were benighted. I wish that series of letters might, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 89, March, 1865 • Various
... Demosthenes to oust 'the Paphlagonian' from Demos' favour by outvying him in his own arts of impudent flattery, noisy boasting and unscrupulous allurement. After a fierce and stubbornly contested trial of wits and interchange of 'Billingsgate,' 'the Sausage-seller' beats his rival at his own weapons and gains his object; he supplants the disgraced favourite, who is driven out of ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al
... are apt to picture it to ourselves, seems to have derived those leading features which it so long retained, from the days when Chaucer, with downcast but very observant eyes, passed along its streets between Billingsgate and Aldgate. Still, here as elsewhere in England the remembrance of the most awful physical visitations which have ever befallen the country must have long lingered; and, after all has been said, it is wonderful that the traces of ...
— Chaucer • Adolphus William Ward
... stated that the table was not responsible for more than ten thousand francs, then Blucher would roar like a lion, and rap out oaths in his native language, which would doubtless have met with great success at Billingsgate, if duly translated: fortunately, they were not heeded, as they were ...
— Reminiscences of Captain Gronow • Rees Howell Gronow
... conceivable thing that will bear moving. Sheep have been sent from Perth to London, and Covent Garden has supplied tons of the finer description of vegetables to the citizens of Glasgow; every Saturday five tons of the best fish in season are despatched from Billingsgate to Birmingham, and milk is conveyed in padlocked tins, from and beyond Harrow, at the rate of about one penny per gallon. In articles which are imported into both Liverpool and London, there is a constant interchange, according to the state ...
— Rides on Railways • Samuel Sidney
... reception, and among the serious presents some grinning Philistine drew his attention to an uncouth club—'a wife-beater' he called it. The flippancy had jarred upon John terribly: this intrusive reminder of the customs of the slums. It grated like Billingsgate in a boudoir. Now that savage weapon recurred to him—for a lurid instant he saw Winifred's husband wielding it. Oh, abomination of his sex! And did he stand there, in his immaculate evening dress, posing as an English gentleman? Even so might some gentleman ...
— Victorian Short Stories • Various
... the good old church, and some queer gables, and a crypt (which was true to itself by being buried up to the spandrels), and one or two corners where saints used to stand, until they were pelted out of them, and where fisher-like men, in the lodging season, stand selling fish caught at Billingsgate. But to Bruntsea itself the great glory of that street was rather of hope than of memory. Bailiff Hopkins had taken out three latticed windows, and put in one grand one of plate-glass, with "finishing" blinds all varnished. And even on a Sunday morning Bruntsea wanted to know what ever the bailiff ...
— Erema - My Father's Sin • R. D. Blackmore
... line of men of letters of the Anglo-Saxon race we find no counterpart of Mr. Dixon. So the question is very pertinent as to what influence has given power to this pale-face shout exciter, this expert player upon men's emotions, this literary (we beg a thousand pardons for seeming billingsgate) demagogue and exotic in Anglo-Saxondom. The irony of fate! Mr. Thomas Dixon, Jr., beyond doubt owes his emotional power to the very race which ...
— The Hindered Hand - or, The Reign of the Repressionist • Sutton E. Griggs
... the one who is now expressing his contempt for the development required a robe of a certain hue, he had to bend his mouth, before he could be exactly understood, to the degrading necessity of asking for "Drowned-rat brown," "Sunstroke magenta," "Billingsgate purple," "London milk azure," "Settling-day green," or the like. In the other signs of mourning they do not come within measurable distance of our pure and uncomfortable standard. "If you are really sincere in your regret for the one who has Passed Beyond, why do you ...
— The Mirror of Kong Ho • Ernest Bramah
... would be plentifully supplied from almost every family in the kingdom. And indeed, to make this hospital of any real benefit, we cannot admit fewer, even at first, than thirty thousand, including the ladies of Billingsgate and Leadenhall market, ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Vol. VII - Historical and Political Tracts—Irish • Jonathan Swift
... farther I was out of danger, the faster I went, till, tired and out of breath, I was forced to sit down on a little bench at a door, and then I began to recover, and found I was got into Thames Street, near Billingsgate. I rested me a little and went on; my blood was all in a fire; my heart beat as if I was in a sudden fright. In short, I was under such a surprise that I still knew not wither I was going, or ...
— The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Famous Moll Flanders &c. • Daniel Defoe
... there? I give it as a specimen of guide-English. These are the people that make life a burthen to the tourist. Their tongues are never still. They talk forever and forever, and that is the kind of billingsgate they use. Inspiration itself could hardly comprehend them. If they would only show you a masterpiece of art, or a venerable tomb, or a prison-house, or a battle-field, hallowed by touching memories or historical reminiscences, or ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... three of us, she flew into a whirlwind of passion, and screamed French that I was glad to find I could not wholly understand. Her dialect must come from the worst class of Parisian thieves. I should have been glad to understand less than I did. Every now and then she interrupted this Billingsgate, and seemed to think that her dignity required a loftier style, and she poured out on us whole pages of cheap melodrama. She began by flinging her fur cap and cloak on the floor and striking a stage attitude. She wanted to know who we were; ...
— Esther • Henry Adams
... act of fornication with a boatman, and committed by Justice Wrathful, which has, it seems, put a stop to the diversions of the theatre of Blackheath. But there goes down another Diana and a patient Grissel next tide from Billingsgate.[105] ...
— The Tatler, Volume 1, 1899 • George A. Aitken
... Bahna's profession and changed their religion with the hope of improving their social status. The Telis are generally considered to be quarrelsome and talkative, and the Bahnas or Dhunias have the same characteristics. If one man abusing another lapses into Billingsgate, the other will say to him, 'Hamko Julaha Dhunia neh jano,' or 'Don't talk to me as if I was a Julaha or ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume II • R. V. Russell
... a Billingsgate fish merchant kippers are daily increasing in price. It is, of course, too much to hope that they will ever become so dear as to prohibit their use among comedians ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, May 2, 1917 • Various
... call one another rogues and miscreants, in the most approved Billingsgate, through the medium of the newspapers, which are a sort of safety-valve to let off all the bad feelings and malignant passions floating through the country, without any dread of the horsewhip. Hence it is the commonest thing in the world to hear one editor abusing, ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... and the Reverend J. G. Packer had simply lost his reckoning as to longitude and time. There was a violent scene between father and son, and the boy being too big to chastise was simply handed a few pages of Billingsgate. ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 9 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Reformers • Elbert Hubbard
... westerly direction leading into the Round Staple, at the south-east end of the present King Street." This must have been on the site of the present Great George Street. An attempt was made to establish a fish-market here in competition with Billingsgate, but the pre-established interest was too strong ...
— Westminster - The Fascination of London • Sir Walter Besant
... ask very odd questions. But you cannot learn too early this fact, that irony is to the high-bred what Billingsgate is to the vulgar; and when one gentleman thinks another gentleman an ass, he does not say it point-blank: he implies it in the politest terms he can invent. Lord Hautfort denies my right of free warren over a trout-stream that runs through his lands. I don't care a rush ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... prevalent odour is of honeysuckle. The aged coxswain of the lifeboat reported to me last year that an American visitor had asked him how, dwelling remote from the railway, the population dealt with its fish. 'My dear man,' said I, 'you should have told him that you get it by Parcels' Post from Billingsgate.' ...
— Corporal Sam and Other Stories • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... (though not of mine), and that it would not be the handsome thing to dedicate to one friend any thing containing such matters about another. However, I'll work the Laureate before I have done with him, as soon as I can muster Billingsgate therefor. I like a row, and always did from a boy, in the course of which propensity, I must needs say, that I have found it the most easy of all to be gratified, personally and poetically. You disclaim 'jealousies;' but I would ask, as Boswell did of Johnson, 'of whom could you be jealous?'—of ...
— Life of Lord Byron, With His Letters And Journals, Vol. 5 (of 6) • (Lord Byron) George Gordon Byron
... dishonorably acquired, and that their publication was an outrage on private ownership. Incidentally, he painted Hutchinson as a true patriot and savior of his country; and called Franklin an incendiary, a traitor, a hypocrite, who should find a fitting termination of his career on the gallows. This billingsgate was heaped upon him before an unusually full meeting of the lords of the privy council, the highest court of appeal; and they laughed and cheered, while the venerable envoy of the colonies stood "conspicuously erect," ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne
... not the great or the frequent business of the human mind. . . . We are perpetually moralists: we are geometricians only by chance"; or that in which he expresses his contempt for Dryden exchanging Billingsgate with Settle: "Minds are not levelled in their powers, but when they are first levelled in their desires"; or the pregnant commonplace with which he prefaces his derision of the artificial love-poems which Cowley ...
— Dr. Johnson and His Circle • John Bailey
... answer you right, in the stile of the painted cloth. Something seems wanting, and I know not what can be proposed better. I answer you right painted cloth, may mean, I give you a true painted cloth answer; as we say, she talks right Billingsgate; that is, exactly such language as is used at Billingsgate. (1773) ...
— Johnson's Notes to Shakespeare Vol. I Comedies • Samuel Johnson
... we may as well look in for a few moments at the New Coal Exchange opposite Billingsgate Market; a sightly, circular building, of rich interior decoration, that will well repay a visit. It is one of our newest 'lions,' and is certainly a very significant sign and monument of the enormous and swiftly-increasing commercial activity of the country. On the tesselated wooden ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 420, New Series, Jan. 17, 1852 • Various
... were clamouring to be served and there was no Hannah to wait upon them. Mrs. Fenton, her eyes flashing fire, was bustling up and down between the rows of boxes and denouncing the truant waitress in vigorous Billingsgate. ...
— Madame Flirt - A Romance of 'The Beggar's Opera' • Charles E. Pearce
... Paphlagonian steward, Cleon, and supplant him in the favor of their testy bean-fed old master, Demos (or People). At the close, Demos recovers his wits and his youth, and is revealed sitting enthroned in his glory in the good old Marathonian Athens of the Violet Crown. The prolongation of the billingsgate in the contest between Cleon and the sausage-seller grows wearisome to modern taste; but the portrait of the ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... reasoning; and, when their cause was sunk in court and parliament, they might at least hedge in a stake amongst the rabble: for to their ignorance all things are wit which are abusive; but if Church and State were made the theme, then the doctoral degree of wit was to be taken at Billingsgate: even the most saint-like of the party, though they durst not excuse this contempt and vilifying of the government, yet were pleased, and grinned at it with a pious smile; and called it a judgment of God against the hierarchy. Thus sectaries, we may see, were born with teeth, foul-mouthed and scurrilous ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol I - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... could only express myself like you! But I have an infernally absurd jargon—half the language of men of the world and of letters, half of Billingsgate. ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists - Volume II. • John Morley
... us via Billingsgate, and are full of interesting matter. Captain Fitz-Flammer is in prison at Boulogne, for some trifling misunderstanding with a native butcher, about the settlement of an account; but we trust no time will be lost by our government in demanding ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, September 5, 1841 • Various
... suppose alludes to Johnson; but surely you do not equal the compiler of a dictionary to a genuine poet? Is a brickmaker on a level with Mr. Essex? Nor can I hold that exquisite wit and satire are Billingsgate; if they were, Milles and Johnson would be able to write an answer to the "Epistle." I do as little guess whom you mean that got a pension by Toryism: if Johnson too, he got a pension for having abused pensioners, and yet took one himself, which ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume II • Horace Walpole
... lying round them, warming themselves at their own fires. Sheep, beautiful sheep with tinkling bells hung round their necks, were chewing the cud in peace and happiness. But notwithstanding it was the hour of repose, the tongues of the female travellers were making a clatter which all the women of Billingsgate could not rival, and together with the squalling of brats innumerable, completely spoiled the emotions, which the wild and pleasing scene around them would otherwise have awakened in their breasts. The sheep here are regarded with as much partiality, and treated much in ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... names, Powers with whom, after all, if the map of Europe cannot be altogether cancelled, we must, even according to the admission of the most anti-continental politicians, maintain some international intercourse. I doubt whether these sallies of raillery—these flowers of Billingsgate—are calculated to soothe, any more than to adorn; whether, on some occasion or other, we may not find that those on whom they are lavished have not been utterly unsusceptible of feelings of ...
— Selected Speeches on British Foreign Policy 1738-1914 • Edgar Jones
... Hotel, that is, baths, be introduced into the fo'c's'les of Grand Banks fishing vessels; to keep an eye on the activities of our Bureau of Fisheries; to hymn a praise to the monumental new Fish Pier at Boston; to glance at conditions at the premier fish market of the world, Billingsgate; to herald the fish display at the Canadian National Exhibition at Toronto, and, ...
— Walking-Stick Papers • Robert Cortes Holliday
... fish, oysters etc. were formerly much cheaper during the summer than during the winter, at Ostend and Scheveningen, because during winter they could be sent to a distance. At Billingsgate market, in the mackerel season, fish cost per hundred 48 to 50 shillings at 5 o'clock in the morning, 36 shillings at 10 o'clock, and 24 shillings in the afternoon. (H. Schulze, Nat-OEkonomische Bilder ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher
... it be done. By the treatment I got from the men in charge, one would take them to be a gang of copperheads. Seeing that they were going to refuse me admission to the car, I began to call them off in no gentle manner. My billingsgate caused a crowd to gather. I informed the trainmen and the people assembled that if I could have a squad of my regiment there for a very few minutes, I would go in that car, or that train would be a wreck. I soon had the sympathy of the lookers on, and some of them suggested that ...
— Personal Recollections of the War of 1861 • Charles Augustus Fuller
... 23. I have been thirteen days at Rochester, and am just now returned. I came back by water in a common boat twenty miles for a shilling, and when I landed at Billingsgate, I carried my budget myself to Cornhill before I could get a coach, and was not much incommoded' Ib. ii.294. See ante, iv.8, ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 4 (of 6) • Boswell
... outrageous libel and pasquinade. But it is a point very little to the praise of either people, that no vindictive notice was taken of any possible personalities, simply because the most hideous license had been established for centuries in tongue license and unmanly Billingsgate. This had been promoted by the example hourly ringing in their ears of vernile scurrility. Verna—that is, the slave born in the family—had each from the other one universal and proverbial character of foul-mouthed eloquence, which heard from infancy, could not but furnish ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... was a lurking sympathy with the men engaged in a trade with which his earlier years had been so intimately associated that made Captain Cockburn suggest that it was because the Dutchmen brought such large quantities of fish into Billingsgate that the English fishermen found their work unprofitable, and were accordingly driven to devote themselves to smuggling. But from evidence in other documents it would certainly seem that Cockburn was speaking the truth and ...
— King's Cutters and Smugglers 1700-1855 • E. Keble Chatterton
... a thoroughness that Mugridge had not forgiven, for words followed and evil names involving smirched ancestries. Mugridge menaced with the knife he was sharpening for me. Leach laughed and hurled more of his Telegraph Hill Billingsgate, and before either he or I knew what had happened, his right arm had been ripped open from elbow to wrist by a quick slash of the knife. The cook backed away, a fiendish expression on his face, the knife ...
— The Sea-Wolf • Jack London
... opening the window of his bedroom, beheld, to his great astonishment, the well-known figure of Jeanie Deans herself retreating from his gate; while his housekeeper, with arms a-kimbo, fist clenched and extended, body erect, and head shaking with rage, sent after her a volley of Billingsgate oaths. His choler rose in proportion to the surprise, and, perhaps, to the disturbance of his repose. "Hark ye," he exclaimed from the window, "ye auld limb of Satan—wha the deil gies you commission to guide an honest man's daughter ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... ... his Majesty's troops; and unlawfully and wickedly to encourage his Majesty's subjects in the said Province of Massachusetts to resist and oppose his Majesty's Government." He said the advertisement was "a false, wicked, malicious, scandalous, and seditious libel;" "full of ribaldry, Billingsgate, scurrility, balderdash, and impudence;" "wicked is a term too high for this advertisement;" "its impudence disarmed its wickedness." In short, Mr. Horne was accused of "resisting an officer," obstructing the execution of ...
— The Trial of Theodore Parker • Theodore Parker
... translates "'Urrah"Une Megere: Lane terms it a "vulgar word signifying a wicked, mischievous shrew." But it is the fem. form of 'Urrdung; not a bad name for a daughter of Billingsgate. ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... of silver herring being disentangled from the nets and counted into baskets, which were carried on the heads of the stalwart, scaly fishwomen, and packed with salt and ice in innumerable barrels for Billingsgate and other great markets; or else the sales by auction of huge cod and dark-gray dog-fish as they lay helpless all of a row on the wet flags amid a crowd of sturdy mariners looking on, with their hands in their pockets and their ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... makes men deny these systems; perhaps, however, if he had suppressed his negation, he would have more closely aproximated the truth. Doctor Bentley, in his Folly of Atheism, has let loose the whole Billingsgate of theological spleen, which he has scattered about with all the venom of the most filthy reptiles: if he and other expounders are to be believed, "nothing is blacker than the heart of an atheist; nothing is more false than his mind. ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 2 • Baron D'Holbach
... through with your billingsgate,' she finally said, 'you will take yourself off my steps before you are ejected. You! to presume to criticise me! You, that are so low in the scale of being, you can no more understand my feelings and motives than a jellyfish ...
— Marm Lisa • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... mouth of the Straits we were hailed by a British patrol boat, whose choleric commander bellowed instructions at us, interlarded with much profanity, through a megaphone. The captain of the Padova could understand a few simple English phrases, if slowly spoken, but the broadside of Billingsgate only confused and puzzled him, so, despite the fact that he had no pilot and that darkness was rapidly descending, he kept serenely on his course. This seemed to enrage the British skipper, who threw over his wheel and ran directly across our bows, very much as one polo player ...
— The New Frontiers of Freedom from the Alps to the AEgean • Edward Alexander Powell
... and ear. The Nichirenites have been well called the Ranters of Buddhism. Their revival meetings make Bedlam seem silent, and reduce to gentle murmurs the camp-meeting excesses with which we are familiar in our own country. They are the most sectarian of all sects. Their vocabulary of Billingsgate and the ribaldry employed by them even against their Buddhist brethren, cast into the shade those of Christian sectarians in their fiercest controversies. "A thousand years in the lowest of the hells is the atonement prescribed by the Nichirenites for the priests ...
— The Religions of Japan - From the Dawn of History to the Era of Meiji • William Elliot Griffis
... London eels came from Holland even in the days of London salmon. In a very old print of the City, with traitors' heads by the dozen on London Bridge, "Eale Schippes," exactly like the Dutch boats lying at this moment off Billingsgate, are shown anchored in the river. Besides the estuary fish which naturally come up river, dace and roach began to come down into the tideway, and during the whole summer the lively little bleak swarmed round Chiswick Eyot. Later in the year the roach and dace were seen off Westminster, and ...
— The Naturalist on the Thames • C. J. Cornish
... These phrases of refinement I must borrow From our next neighbours' land, where, like a chessman, There is a move set down for joy or sorrow Not only in mere talking, but the press. Man In islands is, it seems, downright and thorough, More than on continents—as if the sea (See Billingsgate) made even the ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... words of cant in which my drolling author is so luxuriant; for though such words have stood me in good stead, I scarce can forbear thinking myself unhappy in having insensibly hoarded up so much gibberish and Billingsgate trash in my memory; nor could I forbear asking of myself, as an Italian cardinal said on another account, D'onde hai tu pigliato tante coglionerie? Where the devil didst thou rake up all ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... not understand this important secret, much less French privateers. I can only liken the clamour that was now going on in the Dawn's lee-gangway, to that which is raised by Dutch fish-women, on the arrival of the boats from sea with their cargoes. To talk of Billingsgate in comparison with these women, is to do the Holland and Flemish ladies gross injustice, English phlegm being far more silent than Dutch phlegm. No sooner was my proposition made than it was accepted by acclamation, and the privateersmen began to pour into the boat, heels ...
— Miles Wallingford - Sequel to "Afloat and Ashore" • James Fenimore Cooper
... Jaggernaut—that one strange day in the year, when ill castes meet, when all distinction of castes and ranks is forgotten—the abomination of mixing them all together permitted, for their sins no doubt—high caste and low, from the abandoned Paria to the Brahmin prince, from their Billingsgate and Farringilon Without, suppose, up to their St. James's, Street and Grosvenor Square, mingle, mingle, ye who mingle may, white spirits and grey, black spirits and blue. Now, pray look around: is not this Jaggernaut ...
— Helen • Maria Edgeworth
... Frankly I rather liked the old fellow, his old clothes (there was at least no shining armour swank at Potsdam in those days), his practice of solemnly cutting capers for the benefit of his "reader," though I know not explicitly what a caper is, his Billingsgate language, his real opinion of VOLTAIRE, his charming, if possibly rare, acts of magnanimity, his moderation in war, which was not all hypocrisy. In fact, if you expect an ogre you will be disappointed. He could give the latest Hohenzollern points in a good ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152. January 17, 1917 • Various
... power of her lungs and the vigor of her invective, but she seemed bent upon apprising the whole commonwealth of Connecticut of the fact that she was vastly displeased with the person she was addressing, who was certainly not Flynn. Amid sounds of a scuffle and the continuous outpouring of billingsgate the light over the garage door flashed on suddenly and disclosed Flynn in the act of precipitating himself into the fray. Elsie had grasped, and was stoutly clinging to a tall man who was trying to free himself of her muscular embrace. Her cries meanwhile included some of the raciest ...
— Lady Larkspur • Meredith Nicholson
... the weather improved, and the fishermen began to look anxiously out for the steamer which was to convey their fish to market, but none was to be seen. Although a number of steamers run between Billingsgate and the Short Blue fleet, it sometimes happens that they do not manage to find the fleet at once, and occasionally a day or more is lost in searching for it—to the damage of the fish if the weather be warm. It seemed as if a delay of this kind, had happened on the occasion ...
— The Young Trawler • R.M. Ballantyne
... fulfilment? The arrival of the Lieutenant; the menaced proceedings in a certain court; the departure of the fair but frail culprit. And yet Pott with an ineffable effrontery that would do credit to a fishwife in and from Billingsgate, clamours about this Pickwick and his virtues, and drops his maudlin tears upon his coffin! Why was he not there to give his hand to Mr. Lothario W—-le, who, we understand, was also present? By the way, we have received the following lines from a ...
— Pickwickian Studies • Percy Fitzgerald
... obscurity not much above the highest reached by the churches, and a December more years before the War then it would be amusing to count. There was enough of the sun in that morning to light my way down Mark Lane, across Great Tower Street to Billingsgate. I was on my way to sea for the first time, but that fortune was as incredible to me as the daylight. And as to the daylight, the only certainty in it was its antiquity. It was a gloom that was not only because the year was exhausted, but because ...
— London River • H. M. Tomlinson
... revenged, Lady Castlewood could have found the way to her rival's house easily enough; and, if she had come with bowl and dagger, would have been routed off the ground by the enemy with a volley of Billingsgate, which the fair person always ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Billingsgate You of a morn must not be late, But your donkey drive at a slashing rate, And first be if you can. From short pipe you must your bacca blow And if your donkey will not go, To lick him you must not be slow But well his hide ...
— Musa Pedestris - Three Centuries of Canting Songs - and Slang Rhymes [1536 - 1896] • John S. Farmer
... or abuse. Billingsgate is the market where the fishwomen assemble to purchase fish; and where, in their dealings and disputes, they are somewhat apt to leave decency and good manners a ...
— 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue • Captain Grose et al.
... personage whose own origin was such that Mr. Mackenzie's might have been pronounced aristocratic by comparison. To all such vapourings Mr. Mackenzie responded in the Advocate in kind. He had a large vocabulary of Billingsgate at his command, and as his temper became thoroughly aroused he proved that he could fully hold his own in this sort of wordy warfare. He followed the example of his antagonists, invaded the sanctities of private life, and descended to outrageous personalities. The persons ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... I me to Billingsgate, And one cried, "Hoo! Go we hence!" I prayed a barge man, for God's sake, That he would spare me my expence. "Thou scrap'st not here," quoth he, "under two pence; I list not yet bestow any alms deed." Thus lacking Money I could ...
— Playful Poems • Henry Morley
... 'Tis well Charles Stuart is not on the throne, or she would outdo any Castlemaine that ever ruled him. And 'tis well that Louis is in France and that Maintenon keeps him sober. She might retrieve her house's fortunes and rule at Court a Duchess; but what decent man will look at her with her Billingsgate and her breeches? A nice lady she would make for a gentleman! Any modest snub-nosed girl would be better. There is scarce a week passes she does not set the country by the ears with some fury or frolic. One time 'tis clouting a Chaplain till his nose ...
— His Grace of Osmonde • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... long, but walked down to the Thames, took a boat, and rowed to Billingsgate. Beauclerk and Johnson were so well pleased with their amusement, that they resolved to persevere in dissipation for the rest of the day: but Langton deserted them, being engaged to breakfast with some young ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell |
