'My good sir,' I said. 'I didn't presume to tell you where to aim your shot; don't tell me where I should have aimed mine.'Flashman, p. 44, Pan edition, 12th printing, 1979.
Wednesday, 31 January 2007
I didn't presume
'My good sir,' I said. 'I didn't presume to tell you where to aim your shot; don't tell me where I should have aimed mine.'Flashman, p. 44, Pan edition, 12th printing, 1979.
Red in the face
When I am frightened, I go red in the face, not pale as most men do, so that in me fear can pass for anger, which has been convenient more than once.
Flashman, p. 44, Pan edition, 12th printing, 1979.
Flashman, p. 44, Pan edition, 12th printing, 1979.
Bounced most obligingly
As Forrest said, if you kicked Bryant's arse, he always bounced most obligingly.
Flashman, p. 35, Pan edition, 12th printing, 1979.
Flashman, p. 35, Pan edition, 12th printing, 1979.
A genius for boot polish
I had got an excellent servant, named Basset, a square-headed oaf who knew everything a soldier ought to know and nothing more, and with a genius for boot-polish. I thrashed him early in our acquaintance, and he seemed to think the better of me for it, and treated me as dog does its master.Flashman, p. 34, Pan edition, 12th printing, 1979.
A hell of a swell
I asked him what he meant by plunging.'Oh,' he says, 'a plunger is a fellow who makes a great turnout, don't you know, and leaves cards at the best houses, and is sought by the mamas, and strolls in the Park very languid, and is just a hell of a swell generally. Sometimes they even condescend to soldier a little - when it doesn't interfere with their social life.'
Flashman, p. 33, Pan edition, 12th printing, 1979.
Spoilt child of fortune
His nose was beaky and his eyes blue and prominent and unwinking - they looked out on the world with the serinity that marks the nobleman whose uttermost ancestor was born a nobleman too. It is the look your parvenu would give half his fortune for, that unruffable gaze of the spoilt child of fortune who knows with unshakable certainty that he is right and that the world is exactly ordered for his satisfaction.It is the look that makes underlings writhe and causes revolutions. I saw it then , and it remained changeless as long as I knew him, even through the roll-call beneath Causeway Heights when the grim silence as the names were shouted out testified to the loss of five hundred of his command. 'It is no fault of mine,' he said than, and he didn't just believe it; he knew it.
Flashman, p. 31, Pan edition, 12th printing, 1979.
Tags:
Flashman, James Brudenell, Lord Cardigan.
Vicious amusement
I had already given a good deal of thought to how I should conduct myself in the army. I was bent on as much fun and vicious amusement as I could get - my contemporaries, who praise God on Sundays and sneak off to child-brothels during the week would denounce it piously as vicious, anyway..."
Flashman, p. 30, Pan edition, 12th printing, 1979.
Flashman, p. 30, Pan edition, 12th printing, 1979.
Tags:
Flashman, contemporaries, hypocrisy.
Markedly worse
It is my purpose to show how the Flashman of Tom Brown became the glorious Flashman with four inches in Who's Who and grew markedly worse in the process.
Flashman, p. 30, Pan edition, 12th printing, 1979.
If only they knew
I've raked and ridden harder than most, no doubt, and there are probably a number of middle-aged men and women who could answer to the name of Flashman if only they knew it.
Flashman, p. 20, Pan edition, 12th printing, 1979.
Flashman, p. 20, Pan edition, 12th printing, 1979.
Tags:
Flashman.
Tuesday, 30 January 2007
A first-class drill sergeant
They say he was brave. He was not. He was just stupid, too stupid ever to be afraid. Fear is an emotion, and his emotions were all between his knees and his breastbone; they never touched his reason, and he had little enough of that.For all that he could never be called a bad soldier. some human faults are military virtues, like stupidity, and arrogance, and narrow mindedness. Cardigan blended all three with a passion for detail and accuracy; he was a perfectionist, and the manual of cavalry drill was his Bible. Whatever rested between the covers of that book he could perform, or cause to be performed, with marvellous efficiency, and God help anyone who marred that performance. He would have made a first-class drill sergeant..."
Flashman, pp. 29-30, Pan edition, 12th printing, 1979.
Tags:
Flashman, James Brudenell, Lord Cardigan.
Did you rave?
'I doubt it,' he said. 'The point is, were you silent in your drunken state, or did you rave? A noisy drunkard is intolerable; a passive one may do at a pinch.'
Flashman, p. 23, Pan edition, 12th printing, 1979.
Ten men's share
A lot has been said about the purchase of commissions - how the rich and incompetent can buy ahead of better men, how the poor and efficient are passed over - and most of it, in my experience, is rubbish. Even with purchase abolished, the rich rise faster in the Service than the poor, and they're both inefficient anyway, as a rule. I've seen ten men's share of service, through no fault of my own, and can say that most officers are bad, and the higher you go, the worse they get, myself included.We were supposed to be rotten with incompetence in the Crimea for example, when purchase was at its height, but the bloody mess they made in South Africa recently seems to have been just as bad - and they didn't buy their commissions.
Flashman, p. 22, Pan edition, 12th printing, 1979.
Monday, 29 January 2007
Not the Guards
'Not the Guards,' I said. 'I've a notion for the 11th Light Dragoons.'He started at this. 'You've chosen a regiment already? By gad, here's a cool hand!'
I knew the 11th were at Canterbury, after long service in India, and unlikely for that reason to be posted abroad. I had my own notions of soldiering.
Flashman, p.19, Pan edition, 12th printing, 1979.
Tags:
Flashman.
A nabob's grandson
He was an odd fish, the guv'nor, and he and I had always been wary of each other. He was a nabob's grandson, you see, old Jack Flashman having made a fortune in America out of slaves and rum, and piracy too, I shouldn't wonder...Flashman, p. 16, Pan edition, 12th printing, 1979.
Sunday, 28 January 2007
Honest Scud East
But he was soft: one of Arnold's sturdy fools, manly little chaps, of course, and full of virtue, the kind schoolmasters love. Yes. he was a fool then, and a fool twenty years later, when he died in the dust at Cawnpore with a Sepoy's bayonet in his back. Honest Scud East; that was all that his gallant goodness did for him.Flashman, p. 15, Pan edition, 12th printing, 1979.
Tags:
Flashman, Scud East.
Saturday, 27 January 2007
Holy harangue
Anyway, he gave me a fine holy harangue, about how through repentance I might be saved - which I've never believed, by the way. I've repented a good deal in my time, and had good cause, but I was never ass enough to suppose it mended anything.Flashman, p. 14, Pan edition, 12th printing, 1979.
Tags:
Flashman, repentance.
I never imagined
That you are a bully, I know; that you are untruthful, I have long suspected; that you are deceitful and mean, I have feared; but that you had fallen so low to be a drunkard - that, at least, I never imagined.
Flashman, p. 13, Pan edition, 12th printing, 1979.
Tags: bully, untruthful, drunk.
Thomas Arnold
He was standing before the fireplace, with his hands behind looping up his coat-tails, and a face like Turk at a christening. He had eyes like sabre-points, and his face was pale and carried that disgusted look that he kept for these occasions.
Flashman, p. 14, Pan edition 12th printing, 1979.
Tags:
Thomas Arnold, Flashman.
Friday, 26 January 2007
Thomas Hughes
Hughes got it wrong, in one important detail.
Flashman, p. 11, Pan edition 12th printing, 1979.
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