curtain lecture

I committed to memory a curtain lecture for my brother, though somehow or other it escaped me and was never delivered.

When my curtain lecture was ended, the owner authorized me to call his outfit together and give them such instructions as I saw fit.

This curtain lecture was accompanied by a few sound generalizations: (1) It is glorious for a Russian to be a soldier and ready to defend his country.

Foreword to Douglas Jerrold's Mrs Caudle's Curtain Lectures (Harvill 1974)

She did not appear at breakfast, and after that meal Mr. Stuart paid Christie her wages with a solemnity which proved that he had taken a curtain lecture to heart.

Punch was also the forum in which he published in the 1840s his comic series Mrs Caudle's Curtain Lectures, which was later published in book form.

Their tempers, doubtless, are rendered pliant and malleable in the fiery furnace of domestic tribulation; and a curtain lecture is worth all the sermons in the world for teaching the virtues of patience and long-suffering.

If a marriage could be dissolved every morning it would not give back his night's rest to a man kept awake by a curtain lecture; and what is the good of giving a man a lot of power where he only wants a little peace?