Vicerage morality, nursery discipline

… I just sat muching jaka*, but I couldn’t help listening to her, being reminded of that old harridan Lady Sale, tapping her mittened fingers while the jezzail bullets whistled round her on the Kabul retreat, and demanding acidly why something was not done about it. Aye. it’s comical in it’s way – and yet, when you’ve seen the mem-sahibs pursing their lips and raising indignant brows in the face of dangers and horrors that set their men-folk shaking, you begin to understand why there’s all that pink on the map. It’s vicerage morality, nursery discipline, and a thorough sense of propriety and sanitation that have done it – and when they’re gone, and the mem-sahibs with them, why, the map won’t be pink any longer.

*dried meat

Flashman's Lady, p.283, Pan edition, 1979.

Tags:Flashman, Flashman quotes, empire.

The best troopers

And of course Lady Sale was to the fore, wearing an enormous turban and riding a tiny Afghan pony side-saddle. ‘I was saying to Lady McNaghten that I believe we wives would make the best troopers of all,’ she cries out. ‘What do you think, Mr Flashman?’
‘I’d take your Ladyship into my troop any time,’ says I, at which she simpered horribly – ‘but the other horses might be jealous,’ I says to myself quietly, at which the lancers set up a great laugh.

Flashman, p.178, Pan edition, 12th printing, 1979.

Tags:
Flashman, Flashman quotes,Florentia Sale, Lady Sale.

Vinegary old dragon

Even Lady Sale, a vinegary old dragon with a tongue like a carving knife, was civil.

Flashman, p.154, Pan edition, 12th printing, 1979.

Tags:
Flashman, Flashman quotes,Lady Sale.