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When she reached the railway station she looked at the clock. "By the saints! I have barely time," she ejaculated. The old termagant traversed the waiting-room, got her ticket punched it was a return ticket and stepped on to the platform at the precise moment a porter was crying in an ear-piercing voice: "Passengers for Paris take your seats!"
Erasmus assures his readers that "though verging on old age, and not of a yielding temper," she was prevailed upon "to take lessons on the lute, the cithara, the viol, the monochord, and the flute, which she daily practised to him." It has been the fashion with biographers to speak bitterly of this poor woman, and to pity More for his cruel fate in being united to a termagant.
One would think that to meet with such a singular personage, in this wild, lonely place, would have shaken any man’s nerves; but Tom was a hard-minded fellow, not easily daunted, and he had lived so long with a termagant wife, that he did not even fear the devil. It is said that after this commencement they had a long and earnest conversation together, as Tom returned homeward.
"True, my good sir; nevertheless I may venture to say that I know you well, for there's a termagant of an Irish woman down at the camp going about wringing her hands, shouting out your good qualities in the most pathetic tones, and giving nobody a moment's peace because she does not know what has become of you.
It is lucky that Kew is. Calm your temper, at least before marriage; such a prize does not fall to a pretty girl's lot every day. Why, you sent him away quite seared by your cruelty; and if he is not playing at roulette, or at billiards, I dare say he is thinking what a little termagant you are, and that he had beat pause while it is yet time.
MY DEAR L , Friday. Ask yourself, in the name of common sense, why you should go to Petersburg with this sentimental coquette, this romantic termagant, of whom I see you are already more than half tired. As to your being bound to her in honour, I cannot see how. Why should you make honour, justice, humanity, and gratitude, plead so finely all on one side, and that the wrong side of the question?
Rouncival and his stud-groom could almost have sworn to the big slashing brown mare, the image of the long-lost celebrity Termagant, with the same crooked blaze down the face, the same legs, the same high croup and peculiar way of carrying her head. She corresponded exactly in age to the date on which the grand thoroughbred mare, just about to bring forth, had disappeared from Buntagong.
If I break the hearts of five hundred old fathers, by buying with gold or flattery the embraces of five hundred young daughters, that's vice, your servant, Mr. World! If one termagant wench scratches my face, makes a noise, and goes brazen-faced to the Old Bailey to swear to her shame, why that's crime, and my friend, Mr. World, pulls a hemp-rope out of his pocket. Now, do you understand?
There, Peter, bless her! she's sneezing again. I'm sure we had better take her to the lady. 'All right, answered Peter, 'I'll be a termagant again when she's gone; see if I won't.
Students of women, experienced adventurers in matrimony, these plumbers, bird merchants "delicatessens" and the rest looked, perceived and comprehended that here was the very devil of a woman a virago, a shrew, a termagant, a natural-born trouble-maker; and they shivered and thanked God that she was Tunnygate's and not theirs; their unformulated sentiment best expressed in Pope's immortal couplet: Oh woman, woman! when to ill thy mind Is bent, all hell contains no fouler fiend.
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