"Billingsgate" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... 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 ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou
... Forsythe," said Sampson, interrupting the flow of billingsgate. "We'll omit prayers and flowers at this funeral. ...
— The Wreck of the Titan - or, Futility • Morgan Robertson
... peerages, baronetcies, regiments, frigates, embassies, governments, commissionerships, leases of crown lands, contracts for clothing, for provisions, for ammunition, pardons for murder, for robbery, for arson, were sold at Whitehall scarcely less openly than asparagus at Covent Garden or herrings at Billingsgate. Brokers had been incessantly plying for custom in the purlieus of the court; and of these brokers the most successful had been, in the days of Charles, the harlots, and in the days of James, the priests. From the palace which was the ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... made such a course advisable. He walked to and fro in his room, and 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. ...
— The Grand Babylon Hotel • Arnold Bennett
... 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
... note was put into my hands, which had been delivered open at my lodgings, on the preceding night, after I had retired to bed. This detestable composition contained a challenge from Mister Cleary, together with a great deal of vulgar Billingsgate abuse. I inquired who delivered it, and I was informed that between twelve and one o'clock, about two hours after I was in bed and asleep, some one knocked at the door, which was opened by my female servant, upon which three fellows rushed ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 3 • Henry Hunt
... ashamed to contrast the quiet, gentlemanly, liberal way these volunteers spoke of us and our cause, with the rabid, fanatical, abusive violence of our own female Secession declaimers. Thank Heaven, I have never yet made my appearance as a Billingsgate orator on these occasions. All my violent feelings, which in moments of intense excitement were really violent, I have recorded in this book; I am happy to say only the reasonable dislike to seeing my country subjugated has been confided to the public ear, when necessary; ...
— A Confederate Girl's Diary • Sarah Morgan Dawson
... law-givers, running to and fro the London streets, one bawling 'Ink or pens, ink or pens!', another 'Boots or shoes, boots or shoes to mend!', a third 'Fine Seville oranges, fine lemons!', whilst Mrs. Cromwell exchanges Billingsgate with a crowd of jeering boys, must have caused the house ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. I (of 6) • Aphra Behn
... debates; she did not answer back. This intense conviction which admits of no parley was one of the secrets of her power. For many years the Billingsgate Calendar was directed at her upon every ...
— Little Journeys To The Homes Of Great Teachers • Elbert Hubbard
... 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, indeed, etc., ...
— Walking-Stick Papers • Robert Cortes Holliday
... 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 Ladies. Johnson scolded him for 'leaving his social friends, to go and sit with a set of ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell
... October the new Coal Exchange, opposite Billingsgate, was to have been opened by the Queen in person. A slight illness—an attack of chicken-pox—compelled her Majesty to give up her intention, and forego the motherly pleasure of seeing her two elder children, the Prince of Wales and the Princess Royal, make their first appearance ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen, (Victoria) Vol II • Sarah Tytler
... 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 ...
— The Memoirs of the Louis XIV. and The Regency, Complete • Elizabeth-Charlotte, Duchesse d'Orleans
... 1581; Singleton was pardoned. His 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 ...
— Printers' Marks - A Chapter in the History of Typography • William Roberts
... 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 ...
— Musa Pedestris - Three Centuries of Canting Songs - and Slang Rhymes [1536 - 1896] • John S. Farmer
... 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 ...
— Esther • Henry Adams
... of such proof. Here was I thoroughly alarmed for my safety, and extremely anxious to get rid of my tormentors. Yet, not for a single moment now, could I close my mental ears to their horrid clangor of threats and imprecations; for, throwing off all restraint, they flooded me with Billingsgate. They cursed and damned me, and all persons, things, and ideas esteemed by me, in the most approved style. Indeed, the swearing exceeded anything I ever heard on the Mississippi and Alabama river boats, when forced, for lack of room, to sleep on the floor of the saloon, almost ...
— Continental Monthly, Volume 5, Issue 4 • Various
... United States, and the 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 in such ...
— Volume 1 • Anthony Trollope
... of speech common enough among the Grecian housekeepers at the celebration of the Eleusinian mysteries. I have omitted not a few of the bad words, and forborne the repetition of that voluminous eloquence poured out, after the Billingsgate fashion, equally upon myself, her daughter, and husband. During the vituperation she still kicked and scuffled; my face suffered, and my eyes narrowly escaped. But I grasped her firmly; and when her husband, my worthy ...
— Confession • W. Gilmore Simms
... 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 ...
— The Religions of Japan - From the Dawn of History to the Era of Meiji • William Elliot Griffis
... BILLINGSGATE, a fish-market in London, below London Bridge; also a name given to low, coarse language ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... Pilot discharged a volley in return with admirable promptitude. Robarts retorted, the other rough customer rejoined, and soon all Billingsgate thundered on the Agra's quarter-deck. Finding, to his infinite disgust, his visitor as great a blackguard as himself, and not to be outsworn, Robarts ordered him to quit the ship on pain of being ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... the mouthings of demagogues and the billingsgate of sectionalists lay this elemental fact—a democracy against ...
— The Victim - A romance of the Real Jefferson Davis • Thomas Dixon
... 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, 22, for mention ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 4 (of 6) • Boswell
... embodied in them; for it follows of necessity, that no man can be distinguished from another by his discourse, when every man is ranting, swaggering, and exclaiming with the same excess: as if it were the only business of all the characters to contend with each other for the prize at Billingsgate; or that the scene of the tragedy lay in Bethlem. Suppose the poet should intend this man to be choleric, and that man to be patient; yet when they are confounded in the writing, you cannot distinguish them from one another: for the man who was called ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. 6 (of 18) - Limberham; Oedipus; Troilus and Cressida; The Spanish Friar • John Dryden
... for landing-places, as Dowgate and Billingsgate; also in cliffs, as Kingsgate, Margate, and Ramsgate; those in Greece and in Italy are called scala. Also, a ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... I was obsessed by the immensity, the atmosphere and the mystery of London. Its nomenclature embedded itself in my fancy; Hounsditch and Shoreditch, Billingsgate and Blackfriars; Bishopgate, within, and Bishopgate, without; Threadneedle Street and Wapping-Old-Stairs; the Inns of Court where Jarndyce struggled with Jarndyce, and the taverns where the Mark Tapleys, the Captain Costigans ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson
... 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
... ensued a slanging match 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 and phrases, and they came back to him now, and he ...
— John Ingerfield and Other Stories • Jerome K. Jerome
... 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
... hundred years ago, 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
... 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 "process" whereby the American Provinces were ...
— The Trial of Theodore Parker • Theodore Parker
... word on is French, and the French have a right to use it, because they are a democracy. And when a Frenchman says "one" he does not mean himself, but the normal citizen. He does not mean merely "one," but one and all. "On n'a que sa parole" does not mean "Noblesse oblige," or "I am the Duke of Billingsgate and must keep my word." It means: "One has a sense of honour as one has a backbone: every man, rich or poor, should feel honourable"; and this, whether possible or no, is the purest ambition of the republic. But when the Eugenists say, "Conditions must be altered" or "Ancestry ...
— Eugenics and Other Evils • G. K. Chesterton
... Demosthenic force outgo, And baldest jests of foul-mouth'd Cicero. Right in the midst great Ate keeps her stand, And from her sovereign station taints the land. Hence Pulpits rail; grave Senates learn to jar; Quacks scold; and Billingsgate ...
— The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 • Charles Lamb
... 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 to make a man forget ...
— From Boyhood to Manhood • William M. Thayer
... may 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 ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... 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
... 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 for sterling truth in open day. Monstrous fatuity! ...
— The Ghost of Chatham; A Vision - Dedicated to the House of Peers • Anonymous
... 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' obey your ...
— The Opal Serpent • Fergus Hume
... along the 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 Tower ...
— London in 1731 • Don Manoel Gonzales
... disapproval that a woman should be idle, while men dragged heavy weights about. "White fellow, big-fellow-fool all right," he said contemptuously, when Mac explained that it was generally so in the white man's country. A Briton of the Billingsgate type would have appealed to Jackeroo as a man ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn
... 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; ...
— The Bickerstaff-Partridge Papers • Jonathan Swift
... retinue in the country town. Had she a mind to be 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 ...
— The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. • W. M. Thackeray
... 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.
... forgotten the name of that Sidrophel who lately discovered that the fixed stars were not single stars, but appear in the heavens like soles at Billingsgate, in pairs; while a second astronomer, under the influence of that competition in trade which the political economists tell us is so advantageous to the public, professes to show us, through his superior telescope, that the apparently single stars are really three. Before such wondrous mandarins ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan
... pit-a-pat when she entered the hot, frowsy, greasy air of the coffee house. Customers 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
... near, 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 ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 420, New Series, Jan. 17, 1852 • Various
... Mayflower company came too, leaving traces of themselves in such names as Blackfriars Brook, Billingsgate, and Houndsditch—names which they brought from ...
— The Old Coast Road - From Boston to Plymouth • Agnes Rothery
... 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, ...
— The Christmas Books • William Makepeace Thackeray
... misapplication, perversion, profanation, desecration; injury, maltreatment, mistreatment, outrage, offense; invective, contumely, reproach, scurrility, opprobrium, tirade, billingsgate, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... 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 this TRADESMEN'S FRIEND, ...
— Priestley in America - 1794-1804 • Edgar F. Smith
... 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 ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... fishfag 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 ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... 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 ...
— Victorian Short Stories • Various
... so called by one Wotton, who in the year 1585 kept an academy for the education and perfection of pickpockets and cut-purses: his school was near Billingsgate, London. As in the dress of ancient times many people wore their purses at their girdles, cutting them was a branch of the light-fingered art, which is now lost, though the name remains. Maitland, from Stow, gives the following ...
— 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue • Captain Grose et al.
... religion, unless it be the compliment which he has paid them, by placing all the imaginable felicity of Paradise in their embraces. I took no notice of the virago. I find it's no use. I was glad, however, to hear she was not Touarick, and only a Billingsgate Mooress of the place. I am also happy to tell my fair readers, she was not fair but very ugly. A large party of people followed me home, hooting me, to give them something to eat. This rabble fancies they have the right to insult ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... 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
... must not be censured for their use of Billingsgate, for the strong aroma of the elixir forced them to tear aside the veil which in Leipsic, as elsewhere, clothes the ugly truth as with a pleasing garment, and to lay bare all the ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... to vote for American-born citizens and Protestants: which is as much our right, as it is the right of these foreign Catholics to vote against and proscribe American Protestants. For this, you and your villainous associates exhaust the whole vocabulary of Billingsgate upon the American party. What is their offence? Why, they simply place certain questions before persons desiring to act with them, which they think, at least, may affect the national welfare, and before the people of the Union, ...
— Americanism Contrasted with Foreignism, Romanism, and Bogus Democracy in the Light of Reason, History, and Scripture; • William Gannaway Brownlow
... upon the soup, Mr. Osborne made a few curt remarks respecting the fish, also of a savage and satirical tendency, and cursed Billingsgate with an emphasis quite worthy of the place. Then he lapsed into silence, and swallowed sundry glasses of wine, looking more and more terrible, till a brisk knock at the door told of George's arrival ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... that, they are a going for to erbolish all the eight Water Companys, and manage it all theirselves; and then, not content with that, they are a going to take all the Meet Markets, and the Fish Markets, includin Ancient Billingsgate, and the Fruit and Wegeral Markets; and then, just to fill up sum of their lezzur time, they are a going to erbolish the Thames Conserwaters, and manage the River theirselves; and then, as they think as them little trifles ain't quite enuff for 'em, they are a going to ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 104, January 7, 1893 • Various
... table. "Will you excuse me, Mr. Savelli, if I leave you? I get up early to attend to my business. I must be at Billingsgate at half-past five to buy my fish. Besides, I have been preventing your talk with our friends. So pray don't ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke
... red-bearded creature with the cane was a particular and peculiar friend of feathered folks. So he cocked a knowing head, with a cruel beak full of egg, and flirted a splendid tail at his friend; then swallowed the last morsel and rowed viciously with Laurence and me; for the bluejay is wholly addicted to billingsgate. He paid no attention to the distraught mother-bird, fluttering and crying on ...
— Slippy McGee, Sometimes Known as the Butterfly Man • Marie Conway Oemler
... the visit 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
... therefore, was agreed upon; and though the weather was unfavorable, and some difficulty was experienced in clearing Billingsgate Point, they reached the weather shore, and there "had better sailing." Yet bitter was the cold, and the spray, as it froze on them, gave them the appearance of being encased in glittering mail. At night their rendezvous was near Great Meadow ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 11 • Various
... are thronged with 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 ...
— Farmers of Forty Centuries - or, Permanent Agriculture in China, Korea and Japan • F. H. King
... body distinguished for dignity and tolerance, but chivalrous courage was a marked characteristic. Personal cowardice was odious among the bar, as among the hunters who had fought the British and the Indians. Hence, insulting language, and the use of billingsgate, were too hazardous to be indulged where a personal accounting was a strong possibility. Not only did common prudence dictate courtesy among the members of the bar, but an exalted spirit of honor and well-bred politeness prevailed. The word of a counsel to his adversary was his inviolable ...
— Something of Men I Have Known - With Some Papers of a General Nature, Political, Historical, and Retrospective • Adlai E. Stevenson
... did not these good dames make ample amends by adding supernumerary syllables when they talk of break-fastes, and toastesses, and running their heads against the postasses to avoid the wild beastesses. These female orators, brought up at the bar of Billingsgate, have a peculiar way of expressing themselves, which, however indelicate it may seem to more civilized ears, is exactly conformable to the way of ancient oratory. The difference between ancient and modern oratory consists in saying something or nothing to the purpose. Some people talk ...
— A Lecture On Heads • Geo. Alex. Stevens
... acceptable than the low burlesque, because the images of the latter are mean and filthy, and the language itself entirely unknown to all men of good breeding. The style of Billingsgate would not make a very agreeable figure at St. James's. A gentleman would take but little pleasure in language, which he would think it hard to be accosted in, or in reading words which he could not pronounce without blushing. The lofty burlesque is ...
— Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 • Samuel Johnson
... reason to passions on the one side, and to pockets on the other, the debates can hardly be anything but stormy; and if one recollects that most of these encounters take place between the present and the past lower orders, is it astonishing if irony and sarcasm give place to Billingsgate? ...
— Town Life in Australia - 1883 • R. E. N. (Richard) Twopeny
... 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
... 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 ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... 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," facing them with a steady countenance. Such, ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne
... romantic art in the last quarter of the nineteenth century, as Coleridge, Lamb, and Hazlitt had been in the first. The manner of his criticism is not at all judicial. His prose is as lyrical as his verse, and his praise and blame both in excess—dithyrambic laudation or affluent billingsgate. In particular, he works the adjective "divine" so hard that it loses meaning. Yet stripped of its excited superlatives, and reduced to the cool temperature of ordinary speech, his critical work is found to be full of insight, and his judgment in matters ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... 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 Cooper "a superlative dolt, and a common ...
— Stories of Authors, British and American • Edwin Watts Chubb
... at what strange and distant nooks he comes up again for breath. I have known a Pall Mall lounger and Rotten Row buck, of no inconsiderable fashion, vanish from among his comrades of the Clubs and the Park, and be discovered, very happy and affable, at an eighteenpenny ordinary in Billingsgate: another gentleman, of great learning and wit, when out running the constables (were I to say he was a literary man, some critics would vow that I intended to insult the literary profession), once sent me his address at a little public-house called the "Fox under ...
— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray
... 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 he came ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - DERUES • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... submission by the supposed extremity of my situation; and I was obliged to offer them open defiance. I was made an elector for Van Buren and Adams in the Fourth Indiana District, and entered upon the contest with a will; and from that time forth I was subjected to a torrent of billingsgate which rivalled the fish market. Words were neither minced nor mollified, but made the vehicles of political wrath and the explosions of personal malice. The charge of "abolitionism" was flung at me everywhere, and it is impossible now to ...
— Political Recollections - 1840 to 1872 • George W. Julian
... one Peace was anxious to unite under the same roof Mrs. Peace and Mrs. Thompson. Things still prospering, Peace found himself able to remove from Lambeth to Crane Court, Greenwich, and before long to take a couple of adjoining houses in Billingsgate Street in the same district. These he furnished in style. In one he lived with Mrs. Thompson, while Mrs. Peace and her son, Willie, were persuaded after some difficulty to leave Hull and come to London to dwell in ...
— A Book of Remarkable Criminals • H. B. Irving
... of the Danes, and by the short duration of their sovereignty after they had succeeded in obtaining it. There are, however, even during this time, some notices on the subject; as appears from the laws of Ethelred: by these, tolls were established on all boats and vessels arriving at Billingsgate, according to their size. The men of Rouen, who brought wine and large fish, and those from Flanders, Normandy, and other parts of France, were obliged to shew their goods, and pay the duties; but the emperor's men, who ...
— Robert Kerr's General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 18 • William Stevenson
... stream. Above, some water carriers were slowly filling their casks, while the mules patiently waited for their burdens; below, was a throng of washerwomen, beating their clothes upon the stones, just moistened by the scant water which flowed over them, and interchanging Spanish Billingsgate with each other and a gang ...
— Gifts of Genius - A Miscellany of Prose and Poetry by American Authors • Various
... 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 Demagogue is for ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... sea- coast of these three 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 ...
— Tour through the Eastern Counties of England, 1722 • Daniel Defoe
... The theory is perfect, but I'm afraid we need a programme. Now, on my own first visit to London I remember being taken—by the hand—to Madame Tussaud's Waxworks, the Tower, St Paul's Cathedral, the fishmarket at Billingsgate, the British Museum, and a number of other damnably edifying spectacles. You might naturally suppose that after such a round it would be quite superfluous for me ever to come up to town again. Yet, surprising as it may ...
— The Lunatic at Large • J. Storer Clouston
... of popular applause as to allow of a bright glass bead being inlaid for the eye, in the Japanese manner; and that the enlarged, deceptive, and popularly pleasing work had been carved on the outside of a great building,—say Fishmongers' Hall,—where everybody commercially connected with Billingsgate could have seen it, and ratified it with the wisdom of the market;—might not the art have been greater, worthier, and kinder ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... and carefully provides for the comfort of her young long ere she lays her fragile egg. Even look at that vulgar-looking beetle, whose coarse form would banish the idea of any rational feeling existing in its brain—the Billingsgate fish-woman of its tribe in coarseness and rudeness of exterior (Scarabaeus carnifex)—see with what quickness she is running backward, raised almost upon her head, while with her bind legs she trundles a large ball; herself no bigger than a nutmeg, the ball is four times the size. There she ...
— Eight Years' Wandering in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker
... to see the Thames, and therefore threaded our way along Thames Street, towards London Bridge, passing through a fish-market, which I suppose to be the actual Billingsgate, whence originated all the foul language in England. Under London Bridge there is a station for steamers running to Greenwich and Woolwich. We got on board one of these, not very well knowing, nor much caring, whither it might take us, and steamed down the river, which is bordered with the shabbiest, ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... There is a greater difference in the goodness of eels than of any other fish. The true silver-eel, so called from the bright colour of the belly, is caught in the Thames. The Dutch eels sold at Billingsgate are very bad; those taken in great floods are generally good, but in ponds they have usually a strong rank flavour. Except the middle of summer, they are always in season. If small, they should be curled round and fried, being first dipped into ...
— The Cook and Housekeeper's Complete and Universal Dictionary; Including a System of Modern Cookery, in all Its Various Branches, • Mary Eaton
... the three recalcitrants jumped on the bulwarks, and joined by a dozen others, yelled defiance at the authorities. As the Noa-Noa gradually drew out these cries became more definite, and the honor of France and of all Frenchmen was assailed in the most ancient English Billingsgate. Gestures of frightful significance added to the insults, and these not producing retorts in kind from the second in command and the populace, a shower of limes began ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... choice. "Kay on the Psalms" 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 up to him (for this was an essential condition), he was kind, hospitable, courteous, ...
— Fifteen Chapters of Autobiography • George William Erskine Russell
... obscure newspapers, we considered them wholly beneath contempt, but, as the author has chosen to come forward in this public manner, he must expect the lash he so richly merits.... Contemptible slanders.... Vilest Billingsgate.... Has raked all the gutters of our language.... The most pure, upright, and consistent politicians not safe from his malignant venom.... General Cushing comes in for a share of his vile calumnies.... The Reverend Homer Wilbur is ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... hubbub and smiles— The wit of Old Jewry, the grace of St. Giles, The force of the Billingsgate tongue: Till the eloquent Lord Mayor demanding 'Who malts?'— The understood sign for beginning the waltz— In a fright ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 14, - Issue 400, November 21, 1829 • Various
... Thy rhymes are vain; thy Jeffrey then forego, Nor woo that anger which he will not show. What then?—Edina starves some lanker son, To write an article thou canst not shun; Some less fastidious Scotchman shall be found, As bold in Billingsgate, ...
— Byron's Poetical Works, Vol. 1 • Byron
... the end of him, twenty years hence, has carried it far. Nothing but disgust to be had out of business;—mutinous Polish Diets too, some forty of them, in his time, not one of which did any business at all, but ended in LIBERUM VETO, and Billingsgate conflagration, perhaps with swords drawn: [See Buchholz, 154; &c.]—business more and more disagreeable to him. What can Valori expect, on this heroic occasion, ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XV. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... did acknowledge Him. But all the glory of the city neither abides nor can make its owner any the happier. It cannot be laid hold upon. It is not solid; it is but in conceit. Oh learn me to be crucified to all this and the like, and make me wise unto salvation! Nov. 9—Dined at Billingsgate; saw the prison of King's Bench at Southwark, and the workers of glass, in all which I saw the manifold wisdom of God in all the gifts and faculties He hath given to the sons of men. But alas! I am so barren ...
— Samuel Rutherford - and some of his correspondents • Alexander Whyte
... 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, who often ...
— Halcyone • Elinor Glyn
... oyster-shops and stands in Massachusetts, I am told, are supplied and kept by natives of Wellfleet, and a part of this town is still called Billingsgate, from the oysters having been formerly planted there; but the native oysters are said to have died in 1770. Various causes are assigned for this, such as a ground frost, the carcasses of black-fish kept to rot in the harbor, and the like; ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... 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 ...
— Beginnings of the American People • Carl Lotus Becker
... 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 ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Vol. VII - Historical and Political Tracts—Irish • Jonathan Swift
... love to feed and embitter it. It was more a thing of his head than his heart, revealing itself mainly in short, acrid speeches, meant to be clever, and indubitably disagreeable. Nor did Hesper prove an unworthy antagonist in their encounters of polite Billingsgate: what she lacked in experience she made up in breeding. The common remark, generally false, about no love being lost, was in their case true enough, for there never had been any between them to lose. The withered ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald
... 'tis by every sort And sex adored, from Billingsgate to court. But ask a dame 'how oysters sell?' if nice, She begs a pinch before she sets a price. Go thence to 'Change, inquire the price of Stocks; Before they ope their lips they open first the box. ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings
... Hammersmith and Kew; but the main supply of 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
... Senate had brave Vernon rail'd, And all mankind with bitter tongue assail'd; Sick of his noise, we wearied Heav'n with pray'r In his own element to place the tar. The gods at length have yielded to our wish, And bade him rule o'er Billingsgate and fish.' ...
— By-ways in Book-land - Short Essays on Literary Subjects • William Davenport Adams
... Brann with poignant regret, and tenders its condolence to his afflicted family. In many ways he won the admiration of the American people. He was a man of great mental endowments, and in the use of invective, often degenerating into billingsgate, he stood without a rival in American journalism. His mind was broad and he despised religious intolerance. As an American he loved the stars and stripes and was opposed to an Anglo- American alliance. He held hypocrites in supreme contempt and lashed the pharisees ...
— Volume 12 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... were the descendants of a little Flemish colony, which long ago settled at Newhaven, and that they are celebrated for the readiness and point of their jokes, which, like those of their sisters of Billingsgate, are not always of the most delicate kind. Several of these have been related to me, but on running them over in my mind, I find, to my dismay, that none of them will look well on paper. The wit of the Newhaven fishwives seems to me, however, like that of our ...
— Letters of a Traveller - Notes of Things Seen in Europe and America • William Cullen Bryant
... Westminster had long laboured under the want of a fish-market, and complained that the price of this species of provision was kept up at an exorbitant rate by the fraudulent combination of a few dealers, who engrossed the whole market at Billingsgate, and destroyed great quantities of fish, in order to enhance the value of those that remained. An act of parliament had passed, in the twenty-second year of his present majesty's reign, for establishing a free market for the sale of ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... was 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 the number of herrings, ...
— Little Folks (Septemeber 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... from a very early time, their two ports of Billingsgate and Queenhithe, both of them still ports. They had also their communication with the south by means of a ferry, which ran from the place now called the Old Swan Stairs to a port or dock on the Surrey side, still existing, afterwards called St. Mary of the Ferry, or St. Mary Overies. The City ...
— As We Are and As We May Be • Sir Walter Besant
... myself upon hitting the 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 ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... 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 appear as the representatives of good society, and who, at the end of the fifth act, marry ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 2 (of 4) - Contributions To The Edinburgh Review • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... a brewery, into a stockbroker's, into the law again, into a coach office, into a waggon office, into the law again, into a general dealer's, into a distillery, into the law again, into a wool house, into a dry goods house, into the Billingsgate trade, into the foreign fruit trade, and into the docks. But whatever Tip went into, he came out of tired, announcing that he had cut it. Wherever he went, this foredoomed Tip appeared to take the prison walls with him, and to set them ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... into expressions of savage hate; but for my poor mother it was ALWAYS hatred. It was, 'The she-dragon is sick to-day; I wish to Heaven she would die!' or, 'The hideous old Irish basketwoman has been treating me to some of her Billingsgate to-day,' and so forth: all which expressions, read to Mrs. Barry, or translated from the French and Italian, in which many of them were written, did not fail to keep the old lady in a perpetual fury against her charge: and so I had my watch-dog, ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray
... day, when morning broke, in all parts of London gallows were found erected, from Billingsgate in the east to Hyde Park Corner in the west, and in nineteen different places were these instruments of death set up; and ere the close of that black day, forty-eight men had been suspended on them, all accused ...
— The Golden Grasshopper - A story of the days of Sir Thomas Gresham • W.H.G. Kingston
... were about till past ten o'clock, with a great deal of pleasure. Then to Westminster, where I met with Mr. Sheply and Mr. Pinkney at Will's, who took me by water to Billingsgate, at the Salutation Tavern, whither by-and-by, Mr. Talbot and Adams came, and bring a great [deal of] good meat, a ham of bacon, &c. Here we staid and drank till Mr. Adams began to be overcome. Then we parted, and so to Westminster by water, only seeing Mr. Pinkney ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... sale and utterance of wine, Besides beere, and ale, and ipocras fine, In every country, region, and nation, But chiefly in Billingsgate, at the Salutation; And the Bore's Head, near London Stone, The Swan at Dowgate, a taverne well known; The Mitre in Cheape; and then the Bull Head, And many like places that make noses red; Th' Bore's Head in Old Fish Street, Three Crowns in the Vintry, And now, of late, St. Martin's ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19. No. 538 - 17 Mar 1832 • Various
... sponges, mollusca, star-fish, worms used for bait, insects which destroy spawn or which serve as food for fish, etc.—on turning to the left, we find ourselves in the fish market, which will probably vie with the aquaria on the other side in attracting popular attention. This model Billingsgate is to be divided into two parts, the one for the sale of fresh, the other of dried ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 385, May 19, 1883 • Various |
