bear-garden

Her passionate features, well-defined, firm, and statuesque in life, were doubly so now: her mouth and brow, beneath her purplish black hair, showed only too clearly that the turbulency of character which had made a bear-garden of his house had been no temporary phase of her existence.

Wessex Tales 2006

Sir, said I, you indeed behave as if you were in a bear-garden.

Pamela 2006

The last argument in defence of knightly honor no doubt is, that, but for its existence, the world — awful thought! — would be a regular bear-garden.

The Wisdom of Life 2004

The countess looked colder and more angry, and muttered something to herself about a bear-garden.

Doctor Thorne 2004

He had fresh thoughts of leaving France, which being, for the nonce, a bear-garden, he said, he detested, and of going away to America, perhaps to Brazil, where he should soon grow rich.

Balzac 2003

But no sooner was the discussion opened than it degenerated into dispute and tumult; the place became a bear-garden, and, after vainly endeavouring to restore order, he took up his hat and left the room.

Balzac 2003

The badger-ward, who was usually attached to a bear-garden, kept his badger in a large box.

Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" Various

He had not long ago decamped, and was now, perhaps, sucking the meditative paw hard-by in an arbor of his bear-garden.

The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, No. 62, December, 1862 Various

I don't know whether that is any thing to eat and drink or not, but I think they call this here bear-garden the Stock

Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 53, No. 327, January, 1843 Various

In the evening the concert was given, and a wonderful bear-garden the Imperial Palace presented.

The Insurrection in Paris