Elgin's fads

      “Synonymous be damned!” snaps Elgin. “H.M.G will not be drawn into war against the Taipings. We’d find ourselves with a new empire in China before we knew it.” He heaved up from the table and poured coffee from a spirit kettle. “And I have no intention, Parkes, of presiding over any extension of the area in which we exhibit the hollowness of our Christianity and our civilization. Coffee, Flashman? Yes, you can light one of your damned cheroots if you want to—but blow the smoke the other way. Poisoning mankind!”
      There you have three of Elgin’s fads all together — he hated tobacco, was soft on Asiatics, and didn’t care for empire-building. I recall him on this very campaign saying he’d do anything “to prevent England calling down God’s curse on herself for brutalities committed on yet another feeble Oriental race.” Yet he did more to fix and maintain the course of the British empire than any man of his day, and is remembered for the supreme atrocity. Ironic, ain’t it?


Flashman and the Dragon, pp.163-4, Fontana Paperback edition, 1986.



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