Informally attired

Within ten minutes I’d replaced my soiled garments with a fine tussore coat, coolie pants, solar helmet, and umbrella, with a handsome morocco toilet case in my back pocket — and if you think that outlandish, let me tell you that armies were a deal more informally attired in my day. Campbell at Lucknow looked like a bus conductor, and old Raglan in the Crimea appeared to have robbed a jumble sale.

Flashman and the Dragon, p.157, Fontana Paperback edition, 1986.



Tags: Flashman, Flashman quotes, uniforms.

Too chancy

But I’ve never meddled if I could avoid it, where great affairs are concerned; it’s too chancy. Mind you, if I could have seen ahead I’d have sneaked into Raglan’s tent one night and brained the old fool, but I didn’t know, you see.

Flashman at the Charge, p.58, Pan edition, 5th printing, 1979.

Tags:
Flashman, Flashman quotes,FitzRoy Somerset, Lord Raglan.

Usually at high speed

[Lord Raglan]‘…In that time, I believe, you have travelled widely?’
    Usually at high speed, thinks I, and not in circumstances I’d care to tell your lordship about…

Flashman at the Charge, p.30, Pan edition, 5th printing, 1979.

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Flashman, Flashman quotes,high speed, travel.

The heir to Wellington

You will know all about him, no doubt. He was the ass who presided over the mess we made in the Crimea, and won deathless fame as the man who murdered the Light Brigade. He should have been a parson, or an Oxford don, or a waiter, for he was the kindliest, softest-voiced old stick who ever spared a fellow-creature’s feeling… And this was the man who was the heir to Wellington…

Flashman at the Charge, p.29, Pan edition, 5th printing, 1979.

Tags:
Flashman, Flashman quotes,FitzRoy Somerset, Lord Raglan.