"Fancy dress" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... devoted to some special entertainment prepared sufficiently in advance to render it an important occurrence. A dance after dinner, a fancy dress ball, or private theatricals are suitable; and often long moonlight drives, ending with a jolly little picnic, are planned ...
— Book of Etiquette • Lillian Eichler
... you met Miss Vost, quite by accident, and danced with her at a fancy dress ball at the Astor House. You wore the costume of a Japanese merchant, I believe, thinking, a little fatuously, if you will permit me, that those garments were a disguise. A little later in the bar at the Palace Hotel, after ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts
... the latter was invited to a fancy-dress ball given to children at the residence of General George Herbert Pegram. At first I was at my wits' end to devise a suitable gown for her to wear, when Mrs. Scott brought out the historic fancy dress worn by her mother so many years before in Paris and gave it to me. It seems almost needless to add that the child wore the dress, and that I have it now carefully put away among my treasured possessions. Many years subsequent to Mrs. Scott's ...
— As I Remember - Recollections of American Society during the Nineteenth Century • Marian Gouverneur
... had, in opening the fete shuffled shamefacedly down the centre of the rink in overshoes and fur coats to the dais, but Lord and Lady Lansdowne, being both expert skaters, determined to do the thing in proper Carnival style, and arrived in fancy dress, he in black as a Duke of Brunswick, she as Mary Queen of Scots, attended by her two boys, then twelve and fourteen years old, as pages, resplendent in crimson tights and crimson velvet. The band struck up "God Save the Queen," and down the cleared space in the centre ...
— The Days Before Yesterday • Lord Frederick Hamilton
... soon after their arrival, a fancy dress breakfast was given by Mrs. Leo Hunter, a lady who had once written an Ode to an Expiring Frog and who made a great point of knowing everybody who was at all celebrated for anything. All of the Pickwickians attended the breakfast. Mr. Pickwick's dignity was ...
— Tales from Dickens • Charles Dickens and Hallie Erminie Rives
... the right foot was crossed lightly over the left. His shoes were of polished black leather with heavy silver buckles, and the whole costume was very old-fashioned, and such as I had only seen worn at fancy dress balls. On the foot of the pedestal was the painter's name, "BATTONI pinxit, Romae, 1750." On the top of the pedestal, and under his left elbow, was a long roll apparently of music, of which one end, unfolded, hung ...
— The Lost Stradivarius • John Meade Falkner
... me. (Grinning.) Silly name, isn't it? (After a pause.) I must apologise to all and sundry for this fancy dress, but it's my working togs. I been on duty this mornin', and my hands isn't very clean. You see, I didn't know as it was going ...
— Night Must Fall • Williams, Emlyn
... therefore, Mademoiselle d'Este assigned another reason for not going to the Stafford House ball, in answer to the Queen's inquiry, I couldn't help laughing, and told the Queen the truth was that Mademoiselle d'Este's pride was hurt at being requested to come in the fancy dress she had worn at the Palace; and so, for this imaginary absurd offence, she was going to give up a very fine and pleasant fete. The Queen laughed, and, turning to Mademoiselle d'Este, said, "Your friend is right. ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... arrived with a herd of cattle. As these danced variously, in camp-dresses, top-boots, silver spurs, ponchos, and shirt sleeves, and as the ladies of the town appeared in picturesque and varied costumes with mantillas and fans, Lawrence felt as if he were witnessing a fancy dress gathering, and soon became so absorbed as to forget himself and his ...
— The Rover of the Andes - A Tale of Adventure on South America • R.M. Ballantyne
... shepherds must have in their flocks! And here are Alexander and Zarius, Pyerhus and Merope, Mahomet, Harlequin, Scapin, Blaise and Babette. They have come from everywhere, from Greece and Rome and blue distant countries, to dance with one another. It's a fine thing, a fancy dress ball, and very agreeable for an hour or two to be a great king or an illustrious princess. It has no inconveniences. You have not to sustain your costumes by actions or even ...
— Our Children - Scenes from the Country and the Town • Anatole France
... imagination. Thus besides relieving him of a host of compliments which he did not enjoy, and enabling him the better to evade an ill-bred curiosity, the disguise no doubt was the same sort of fillip to the fancy which a mask and domino or a fancy dress are to that of their wearers. Even in a disguise a man cannot cease to be himself; but he can get rid of his improperly "imputed" righteousness—often the greatest burden he has to bear—and of all the expectations formed on the ...
— Sir Walter Scott - (English Men of Letters Series) • Richard H. Hutton
... circumstances, will never sing again; maskers had to construct their own masks, and sew their own dresses, the signal flags serving in lieu of a supply from the milliner's; and, with wonderful ingenuity, a fancy dress ball was got up, which, in variety and tastefulness of costume, would have borne comparison with ...
— Stray Leaves from an Arctic Journal; • Sherard Osborn
... Wordsworth; and thence, frequently, his power. The poet who keeps all the appearances of external nature, and even all the passions of humanity, at arm's length, that he may gaze on, inspect, study, and draw their portraits, either in the garb they ordinarily wear, or in a fancy dress, is likely to produce a strong likeness indeed; yet shall his pictures be wanting in ease and freedom—they shall be cold and stiff—and both passion and imagination shall desiderate something characteristic in nature, ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... not precisely Mr. Polly's literary admirations; he thought books were written to enshrine Great Thoughts, and that art was pedagogy in fancy dress, he had no sense of phrase or epithet or richness of texture, but still he knew there were books, he did know there were books and he was full of large windy ideas of the sort he called "Modern (kik) Thought," and seemed needlessly and helplessly ...
— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells
... gave a very large fancy dress ball, at which two or three hundred people were present. The ball was in every way a success, but as the giver did not belong to the 'sacred circle,' the members of that body only condescended to go for a short time. I have no doubt ...
— Sketches From My Life - By The Late Admiral Hobart Pasha • Hobart Pasha
... McVeigh promised he would attend unless his mother had made conflicting engagements. Dumaresque informed him it was to be a fancy dress affair; uniforms would be just the thing; and he parted with the American much more pleased with him than in the salons where they ...
— The Bondwoman • Marah Ellis Ryan
... drawn up at the piazza and the two runners, after the personage in fancy dress had descended, lifted out a very aged and no doubt extremely costly dwarfed apple tree growing in a green vase, and ...
— The Motor Maids in Fair Japan • Katherine Stokes
... know. She is very amusing. A very funny thing happened last week. Out of sheer devilry, she and a friend and two men went to the Covent Garden Fancy Dress Ball, disguised of course, and just for an hour or two. To their horror, after the procession, the friend was handed a large glass-and-silver salad bowl, as a prize for being the best 'twostep' dancer ...
— Winding Paths • Gertrude Page
... suspicious of advice from that quarter; so he "stooped to conquer" and lost all. The shako tumbled from its precarious perch, and hung ignobly suspended by the cap-lines. A lancer with a pair of grey spectacles, and a shako hanging round his neck, would have been a very fancy dress indeed: so he was endeavouring, at the risk of choking himself, to disentangle, by main force, the complication of knots which we had woven with some dim hope of the result. In vain did we exhort him to take it patiently, and remind him how ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 334, August 1843 • Various
... instead of knee-breeches you would have been written down a vulgar fellow. Even the great Duke of Wellington in 1814 was refused admittance to Almack's because he presented himself in trousers. Now we relegate knee-breeches to fancy dress balls and ...
— Pebbles on the Shore • Alpha of the Plough (Alfred George Gardiner)
... spent a busy morning reading, writing, receiving interviewers, and trying on my fancy dress for the Jubilee Ball. Lunch was early in consequence of Sir Henry and Lady Loch having to lay the foundation-stone of the Genevieve Ward of the hospital. I did not go to the ceremony, although I discovered afterward that I had been expected. The ladies of the committee sent me ...
— The Last Voyage - to India and Australia, in the 'Sunbeam' • Lady (Annie Allnutt) Brassey
... at best, Though deck'd in vernal bloom, By hope and youthful fancy dress'd, What, but a ceaseless toil for rest, A passage to the tomb? If flowrets strew The avenue, Though fair, alas! how fading, ...
— The Poetical Works of Henry Kirke White - With a Memoir by Sir Harris Nicolas • Henry Kirke White
... Fancy dress being the rule, it was only right and proper that there should be prizes for the best costumes; and since the lady who shed her beneficence over this prismatic throng does nothing by halves, she had called in the assistance of two artists ...
— A Boswell of Baghdad - With Diversions • E. V. Lucas
... people go about the streets in fancy dress, sometimes with their faces hidden by masks. Often they are dressed as clowns, and make a great noise, blowing horns, dancing, singing, and making fools of themselves in every possible way. In the shops bags of confetti are sold—little bits of coloured paper, ...
— Peeps At Many Lands: Belgium • George W. T. Omond
... Tess in man's clothes—a young Rajput's—a suit Yasmini had worn on one of her wild excursions, and what with the coiled turban of yellow silk and a little black mustache adjusted by cunning fingers she felt as happy as a child in fancy dress. But she found it more difficult to imitate the Rajput walk than Yasmini did to copy her tricks of carriage. For a few minutes they played at walking together up and down the room before the mirror, applauded by the giggling ...
— Guns of the Gods • Talbot Mundy
... his usual gay mood. He strode about among a mixed company of Louisianais, Cubans, and Americains, keeping them in a great laugh with his account of one of Ole Bull's concerts, and how he had there extorted an invitation from M. and Mme. Devoti to attend one of their famous children's fancy dress balls. ...
— Old Creole Days • George Washington Cable
... to go round and knock up the grandmothers to come to it, then," said she. "You'd better make it a fancy dress affair at once, and then it will be ...
— Real Folks • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney |
