A belted earl

      But I suspect he had another reason, which he may not have admitted to himself: I believe that the Summer Palace offended Elgin; that the thought of so much luxury and extravagance for the pleasure of the privileged, selfish few, while the coolie millions paid for it and lived in squalor, was too much for his Scottish stomach. Odd notion for a belted earl you think? Well, perhaps I’m wrong.

Flashman and the Dragon, p.281, Fontana Paperback edition, 1986.



Tags: Flashman, Flashman quotes, stomach.

Odd fish, no vandal

He was an odd fish, was Elgin. He was no vandal, certainly; indeed, bar Wolseley, he was probably the most sincere lover of the arts in the army — not that I’m authority, you understand; give me Rubens and you can keep the rest. So how could he bring himself to destroy so much that was rare and beautiful and valuable? I’ll tell you. He was avenging our dead with cold-blooded fury, striking at their murderers (the Emperor, Sang, Prince I, and — although he didn’t know it — Yehonala, who probably shaped Imperial policy more than all the rest) in the way he knew would hurt them most.


Flashman and the Dragon, p.281, Fontana Paperback edition, 1986.



Tags: Flashman, Flashman quotes, vandal.

The mystery that binds

“…no. He’s teaching China. The word will go to the ends of the Empire — how the barbarians came, and smashed the chalice, and went away. And for the first time all China will realise, that they’re not the world’s core, that their Emperor is not God, and that the dream they’ve lived in for thousands of years, is just . . . a dream. Gros was right—it’ll bring down the Manchoos, no error, not today, perhaps not for years, but at last. The mystery that binds China will go up in smoke with the Summer Palace, you see. And just by the way — China will break no more treaties; not in our time.”
      I thought about Yehonala, and wondered if he was right. As it turned out, he was, almost; China was quiet for forty years, until she roused the Boxers against us. And now the Manchoos are gone, and who’ll deny it was the fire that Elgin kindled that made China’s millions think thoughts they’d never thought before?

Flashman and the Dragon, p.279, Fontana Paperback edition, 1986.



Tags: Flashman, Flashman quotes, Elgin.

Doctor Thorne, I presume

Elgin himself looked ten years younger, now that he’d cast the die, but I thought exuberance had got the better of him when he strode into the saloon later, threw The Origin of Species on the table and announced:
      “It’s very original, no doubt, but not for a hot evening. What I need is some trollop.”
      I couldn’t believe my ears, and him a church-goer, too. “Well, my lord, I dunno,” says I. “Tientsin ain’t much of a place, but I’ll see what I can drum up —”
      “Michel’s been reading Doctor Thorne since Taku,” cried he. “He must have finished it by now, surely! Ask him, Flashman, will you?” So I did, and had my ignorance, enlightened.


Flashman and the Dragon, p.170, Fontana Paperback edition, 1986.



Tags: Flashman, Flashman quotes, Anthony Trollope.

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.



Tags: Flashman, Flashman quotes, Elgin.

Hard as a hammer

. . .he listened with his bare forearms set on the table, John Bull to the life; he’d be fifty years then, the Big Barbarian, as the Chinese called him, bald as an egg save for a few little white wisps, with his bulldog lip and sudden barks of anger or laughter. A peppery old buffer, and a deal kinder than he looked — how many ambassadors would call on a colonel’s wife to carry a letter to her man? — and the shrewdest diplomat of his day, hard as a hammer and subtle as a Spaniard. Best of all he had common sense.


Flashman and the Dragon, p.162, Fontana Paperback edition, 1986.



Tags: Flashman, Flashman quotes, diplomat.