Flashman on Ireland

Gladstone was standing brooding ove a basin in a nonconformist way, offensively sober as usual, when I staggered in middling tight.
       “Hollo, old ’un says I. “Marching orders at last, hey? Ne’er mind, it happens to all of us. It’s this damned Irish business, I suppose — ” for as you know, he was always fussing over Ireland; no one knew what to do about it, and while the Paddies seemed to be in favour of leaving the lace and going to America, Gladstone was trying to make them keep it; something like that.
      “Where you went wrong,” I told him, “was in not giving the place back to the Pope long ago, and apologising for the condition it’s in.”

Flashman and the Tiger, p.293, Harper Collins, paperback edition 2000.


Tags: Flashman, Flashman quotes, William Gladstone.

Sincerely mourned

…I doubt if any man in the history of the United States was more deeply or sincerely mourned — and I ain’t forgetting friend Abraham, either. He was even more detested in Dixie than J.B., and he was just a politician, while J.B. was a fighting man and a rebel, a combination which no American could resist.


Flashman and the Angel of the Lord, p.348, Harper Collins, 1995.


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Life at the American bar

He was a Switzer, though American-born, named Kagi… He’d been a teacher, and had fought in Kansas, where he’d distinguished himself by shooting a judge — who in turn put three slugs into Kagi, which gives you some notion of what life at the American bar was like in those days.


Flashman and the Angel of the Lord, p.229, Harper Collins, 1995.


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Best eastern colleges

...as he spoke in that lordly half-English accent that they learn in the best Eastern colleges.

Flashman and the Angel of the Lord, p.186, Harper Collins, 1995.


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A sort of larger Glasgow

      So that was my first impression of New York, gained in a few brief hours: splendid women on the go, but nothing else out of the ordinary, for the town itself was a sort of larger Glasgow — there were no sky-scrapers then — and chiefly remarkable for being paved apparently with peanut shells, which were sold by swarms of urchins and crackled underfoot wherever you turned, even in the lobby of the Astor House…

Flashman and the Angel of the Lord, p.153, Harper Collins, 1995.


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Beat their bellies

…I was content to idle my way through the dinner, which like all American meals was gargantuan and over-rich; how the devil they can put away a massive breakfast of steak, ham, eggs, terrapin, or giant oysters, two dinners at noon and five, and still be fit to beat their bellies at supper, is beyond me; even Annette, who wasn’t two pisspots and a handle high, worked her way through five courses without breaking a sweat on her pale immaculate brow.

Flashman and the Angel of the Lord, pp.139-40, Harper Collins, 1995.


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Flashman on American independence

      But try telling that to a smart New Yorker, or an Arkansas chawbacon, or a pot-bellied Virginian Senator; point out Canada and Australia managed their way to peaceful independence without any tomfool Declarations or Bunker Hills or Shilohs or Gettysburgs, and are every bit as much “the land of the free” as Kentucky or Oregon, and all you’ll get is a great harangue about “liberty and the pursuit of happiness”, damn your Limey impudence, from the first; a haw-haw and stream of tobacco juice across your boots from the second; and a deal of pious fustian about a new nation forged in blood emerging into the sunlight under Freedom’s flag, from the third. You might as well be listening to an intoxicated Frog.

Flashman and the Angel of the Lord, p.105, Harper Collins, 1995.


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There is no sky

I’ve seen big countries before – the American plains on the old wagon-trails west of St Louis… or the Saskatchewan prairies in grasshopper time… But Russia is bigger: there is no sky, only empty space overhead, and no horizon, only a distant haze, and endless miles of sun-scorched rank grass and emptiness.

Flashman at the Charge, p.126, Pan edition, 5th printing, 1979.

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Two countries

…I’d learned enough in my brief unhappy experience of the United States to know that it was two countries even then, and they hated each other like poison.

Flash For Freedom!, p.223, Pan edition, 8th printing, 1980.

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Hand feeding Americans

By and large I’m partial to Americans. They make a great affectation of disliking the English and asserting their equality with us, but I’ve discovered that underneath they dearly love a lord, and if you’re civil and cool and don’t play it with too high a hand you can impose on them quite easily. I’m not a lord, of course, but I’ve got the airs when I want ’em, and know how to use them in moderation. That’s the secret, a nice blending of the plain, polite gentleman with just a hint of Norman blood, and they’ll eat out of your hand and boast to their friends in Philadelphia that they know a man who’s on terms with Queen Victoria and yet, by gosh, is as nice a fellow as they’ve ever struck.

Flash For Freedom!, p.117, Pan edition, 8th printing, 1980.

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A variety of jails

I have been in a variety of jails in my life, from Mexico (where they are truly abominable) to Australia, America, Russia, and dear old England, and I never saw a good one yet.

Flashman, p.209, Pan edition, 12th printing, 1979.

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Flashman, Flashman quotes,jail.