As so often in the past, I was the victim of my own glorious and entirely unearned reputation – Flashy, the hero of Jallalabad, the last man out of the Kabul retreat and the first man into the Balaclava battery, the beau sabreur of the Light Cavalry, Queen’s Medal, Thanks of Parliament, darling of the mob, with a liver as yellow as yesterday’s custard.
I’d been a political myself, and it’s part of the job to scream at your own shadow…
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Flashman, 
Flashman quotes,
scream, 
shadow.
I should have known that it’s never safe to get within range of princes or prime ministers.
That was Pam - and if anyone ever tells you that he was a politically unprincipled old scoundrel who carried things with a high and reckless hand, I can only say that it didn’t seem to work a whit worse than the policies of more high-minded statesman. The only difference I ever saw between them and Pam was that he did his dirty work bare-faced (when he wasn’t being deeper than damnation) and grinned about it.
…and remembered that Elspeth, poor child, must even now be waiting for her cross-buttocking lesson.
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sex.
…there was the messenger of doom, waiting in the hall. A tall chap, almost a swell, but with a jaw too long and an eye too sharp; very respectable, with a hard hat under his arm and a billy in his hip-pocket, I’ll wager. I know a genteel strong man from a government office when I see one.
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For the rest, I thought La Nightingale a waste of good womanhood; handsome face, well set up and titted out, but with that cold don’t-lay-a-lecherous-limb-on-me-my-lad look in her eye – the kind, in short, that can be all right if you’re prepared to spend time and trouble making ’em cry ‘Roger!’, but I seldom have the patience.
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Florence Nightingale, 
lecherous.
…he and Victoria weren’t getting on too well just then; she had just discovered (and confided to Elspeth) that she was in foal for the ninth time, and she took her temper out on dear Albert – the trouble was, he was so bloody patient with her, which can drive a woman to fury faster than anything I know. And he was always right, which was worse. So they weren’t dealing at all well, and he spent most of the daylight hours tramping up Glen bollocks, or whatever they call it, roaring ‘Ze gunn!’ and butchering every animal in view.
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Prince Albert, 
shooting.
The moral is: don’t put on airs in front of Flashy, and if you do, keep your crinolines out of harm’s way.
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crinolines.
…but her first glimpse of our royal hosts reduced her awe a trifle, I think. We took a stroll the first afternoon, in the direction of Balmoral, and on the road encounted what seemed to be a family of tinkers led by a small washerwoman and an usher who had evidently pinched his headmaster’s clothes.
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Queen Victoria, Prince Albert.
Being a Scotch tradesman’s daughter, my darling was one degree more snobbish than a penniless Spanish duke, and in the days before we went north her condescension to her middle-class friends would have turned your stomach.
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snobbish, 
condescension.
Which was what you’d have expected any half-competent government to stage-manage in the first place, but Palmerston was in the saddle by then, and he wasn’t really good at politics, you know.
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Palmerston, 
politics.
Unfortunately, government picked the wrong men to do the investigating – MacNeill and Tulloch – for they turned out to be honest, and reported that indeed our high command hadn’t been fit to dig latrines, or words to that effect. Well, that plainly wouldn’t do, so another commission had to be hurriedly formed to investigate afresh, and this tome get the right answer, and no nonsense about it. Well, they did, and exonerated everybody, hip-hip-hurrah and Rule, Brittania.
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politicans, 
royal commission.
‘Colonel Fwashman!’ he cried. ‘You are a viper!’
I turned at that, making myself go red in the face in righteous wrath, but I knew what I was about; he was getting no blow or challenge from me – he shot too damned straight for that.
‘Indeed, my lord,’ says I. ‘Yet I don’t wriggle and turn.’
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Lord Cardigan, 
viper.
…little Havvy (the first fruit of our union, a guzzling lout of seven)
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children, 
son.
reputation
beau sabreur
princes
prime ministers
Lord Palmerston
