A malevolent eye

     The port did not circulate very long after the ladies had left, however. General Flashman, rendered even more reminiscent by the champagne he had consumed, joined the group around the King at the table head and launched into a vivid recollection of how his majesty, as a youthful Prince of Wales fifty years before, had been compromised by an Actress in Ireland, to the dismay of the other guests and the suppressed fury of the King. To make matters worse, the old man took to calling the King 'young Bertie', and an unpleasant scene was prevented only by Soveral's tactful suggestion that they should join the ladies, who would be eager for bridge. The King, glaring thunderously, took the hint and led the way from the dining room: General Flashman cocked a malevolent eye and observed: 'Bridge, eh? Played it in Russia before you lot were born. Game for half-wits.' and then fell asleep over the decanter.


Mr American, p.198, Pan Books, paperback edition 1982.


Tags: Flashman, Flashman quotes, reminiscent.

Bailing her out did

‘Cost me my membership of the United Services Club, bailing her out did.’ He glared resentfully. ‘Not that I cared a dam about that — place had gone down scandalously of late . . . well, dammit, the King’s a member, and you can’t do much worse than that, can you?’


Mr American, p.187, Pan Books, paperback edition 1982.



Tags: Flashman, Flashman quotes, club.

The United Service card room

. . . I was cut stone dead by someone a deal more important — the Prince of Wales, no less, shied away from me in the United Service card room, and hightailed it as fast as his ponderous guts would let him, giving me a shifty squint over his shoulder as he went. That, I confess, I found pretty raw. It’s embarrassing enough to be cut by the most vulgar man in Europe, but when he is also a Prince who is deeply in your debt you begin to wonder what royalty’s coming to.


Flashman and the Tiger, p.292, Harper Collins, paperback edition 2000.


Tags: Flashman, Flashman quotes, vulgar.

They don't like it up 'em

     That did the trick: Bertie started as though I'd put a bayonet into his leg . . .


Flashman and the Tiger, p.244, Harper Collins, paperback edition 2000.


Tags: Flashman, Flashman quotes, bayonet.

Worn uncommon well

      By the time of Tranby, to be sure, Elspeth was of an age where it should have been unlikely that either Bertie or Cumming would try to drag her behind the sofa, but I still didn't care to think of her within the fat-fingered reach of one or the trim moustache of t’other. She’d worn uncommon well; middle sixties and still shaped like a Turkish belly-dancer, with the same guileless idiot smile and wondrous blue eyes that had set me slavering when she was sixteen — she'd performed like a demented houri then and who was to say she’d lost the taste in half a century?

Flashman and the Tiger, p.224, Harper Collins, paperback edition 2000.


Tags: Flashman, Flashman quotes, sofa.

Chicken broth and flannel

. . .  I'd shared Langtry with him, behind his back, and done my duty by pretty Daisy — as who hadn't ? Not La Keppel, though; she was after my time, worse luck, not heaving into view until I'd reached what Macaulay calls the years of chicken broth and flannel, when you realise how dam’ ridiculous you'd look chasing dollymops young enough to be your daughter, and seek solace in booze, baccy, and books. Regrettable, of course, but less tiring and expensive.


Flashman and the Tiger, p.223, Harper Collins, paperback edition 2000.


Tags: Flashman, Flashman quotes, broth

Babbling Brooke

. . . Daisy, who was known as Babbling Brooke, was a sort of mad socialist — even today, when she's Countess of Warwick, no less, she still raves in a ladylike way about the workers, enough said. At the time of Tranby she was a stunning looker, rich as Croesus, randy as a rabbit, and Prince Bertie's mount of the moment — indeed, I ain’t sure she wasn't the love of his life . . .

Flashman and the Tiger, p.223, Harper Collins, paperback edition 2000.


Tags: Flashman, Flashman quotes, socialist.

Scandal, disgrace, and general devilment

      So this baccarat nonsense, with its splendid possibilities of scandal, disgrace, and general devilment, looked made to order for diversion, provided it was properly mismanaged — which, with Bertie in a fine funk, Coventry and Williams advising, and myself ready to butter the stairs as chance offered, it probably would.


Flashman and the Tiger, p.222, Harper Collins, paperback edition 2000.


Tags: Flashman, Flashman quotes, butter.

Just five words

. . . I begged leave to withdraw and loafed off, leaving the three wise men to blink at each other and resume their chorus of “What is to be done?” — five words which are as sound a motto for disaster as I know. I've heard ’em at Kabul before the Retreat, at Cawnpore, on the heights above the North Valley at Balaclava, and I won't swear someone wasn't croaking them as we laboured up the Greasy Grass slope behind G.A. Custer, God rest his fat-headed soul. No one ever knows the answer, you see, so everyone looks blank until the man in command (in this case Good Prince Edward) makes up his mind in panic, and invariably does the wrong thing.


Flashman and the Tiger, pp.221-2, Harper Collins, paperback edition 2000.

 
Tags: Flashman, Flashman quotes, disaster.

Shaken and desperate

. . . if it had shaken him to the point where I was his dear Harry, he must be desperate. I'd steered him out of more than one scrape in the past, and here he was again, looking at me like an owl in labour.


Flashman and the Tiger, p.216, Harper Collins, paperback edition 2000.


Tags: Flashman, Flashman quotes, labour.

A notorious wastrel

When you're a queen of unblemished virtue, devoted to Duty and the high moral tone, and your son and Heir to the Throne is a notorious wastrel who counts all time lost when he ain't stuffing, swilling, sponging off rich toad-eaters and rogering anything in skirts, you're apt to be censorious . . .


Flashman and the Tiger, p.213, Harper Collins, paperback edition 2000.


Tags: Flashman, Flashman quotes, censorious.

God save the flash cove

There I turned and waved, for the last time, and wondered why people will make such a fuss over royalty. It’s the same with us; we have our tubby little Teddy, whom everyone pretends is the first gentleman of Europe, with all the virtues, when they know quite well he’d just a vicious old rake – rather like me, but lacking my talent for being agreeable to order. Anyway, I was aboard Lily Langtry long before he was.

Royal Flash, p.152, Pan edition, 8th printing, 1978.

Tags:
Flashman, Flashman quotes,King Edward VI, Lillie Langtry.

Lower the moral tone

It has never been the same since [the early Victorian Age] ; they tell me that young King Edward does what he can nowdays to lower the moral tone of the nation, but I doubt he has the style for it. The man looks like a butcher.

Royal Flash, p.13, Pan edition, 8th printing, 1978.

Tags:
Flashman, Flashman quotes,King Edward, butcher.