Ingoldsby Legends Quotes

“Bolsover Priory was founded in the reign of Henry the Sixth, about the beginning of the eleventh century. Hugh de Bolsover had accompanied that monarch to the Holy Land, in the expedition undertaken by way of penance for the murder of his young nephews in the Tower. Upon the dissolution of the monasteries, the veteran was enfeoffed in the lands and manor, to which be gave his own name of Bowlsover, or Bee-owls-over, (by corruption Bolsover) — a Bee in chief, over three Owls, all proper, being the armorial ensigns borne by this distinguished crusader at the siege of Acre.”
― Thomas Ingoldsby, The Ingoldsby Legends

“After a preparatory hem! and a glance at the mirror to ascertain that her look was sufficiently sentimental, the poetess began There is a calm, a holy feeling, Vulgar minds can never know. O’er the bosom softly stealing. — Chasten’d grief, delicious woe! Oh! how sweet at eve regaining Yon lone tower’s sequester’d shade — Sadly mute and uncomplaining —”
― Thomas Ingoldsby, The Ingoldsby Legends

“His inaugural essay on the President’s cocked hat was considered a miracle of erudition: and his account of the earliest application of gilding to gingerbread, a masterpiece of antiquarian research. His eldest daughter was of a kindred spirit: if her father’s mantle had not fallen upon her, it was only because he had not thrown it off himself; she had caught hold of its tail, however, while it yet hung upon his honoured shoulders. To souls so congenial, what a sight was the magnificent ruin of Bolsover! its broken arches, its mouldering pinnacles, and the airy tracery of its half-demolished windows. The party were in raptures; Mr. Simpkinson began to meditate an essay, and his daughter an ode: even Seaforth, as he gazed on these lonely relics of the olden time, was betrayed into a momentary forgetfulness of his love and losses: the widow’s eye-glass turned from her cicisbeo’s whiskers to the mantling ivy; Mrs. Peters wiped her spectacles; and ‘her P.’ supposed the central tower ‘had once been the county jail.’ The squire was a philosopher, and had been there often before, so he ordered out the cold tongue and chickens.”
― Thomas Ingoldsby, The Ingoldsby Legends

“there was Mademoiselle Pauline, her femme de chambre, who ‘mon-Dieu’d’ everything and everybody, and cried ‘Quel horreur!’ at Mrs. Botherby’s cap. In short, to use the last-named and much-respected lady’s own expression, the house was ‘choke-full’ to the very attics,”
― Thomas Ingoldsby, The Ingoldsby Legends

“The one allotted to the stranger occupied the first floor of the eastern angle of the building, and had once been the favourite apartment of Sir Odes himself. Scandal ascribed this preference to the facility which a private staircase, communicating with the grounds, had afforded him, in the old knight’s time, of following his wicked courses unchecked by parental observation; a consideration which ceased to be of weight when the death of his father left him uncontrolled master of his estate and actions.”
― Thomas Ingoldsby, The Ingoldsby Legends

“Tappington (generally called Tapton) Everard is an antiquated but commodious manor-house in the eastern division of the county of Kent. A former proprietor had been High-sheriff in the days of Elizabeth, and many a dark and dismal tradition was yet extant of the licentiousness of his llfe, and the enormity of his offences. The Glen, which the keeper’s daughter was seen to enter, but never known to quit, still frowns darkly as of yore; while an ineradicable bloodstain on the oaken stair yet bids defiance to the united energies of soap and sand.”
― Thomas Ingoldsby, The Ingoldsby Legends