Stinging at the memory

It reminded me of the Madagascar forest, and you mayn’t believe it but I felt my eyes stinging at the memory of Elspeth blue-eyed and beautiful, smiling up at me with her golden hair tumbled about her head on the grass, her arms reaching up to me and those lovely lips parting . . . “My jo, my ain dear jo!”


Flashman on the March, p.135, Harper Collins, paperback edition 2005.


Tags: Flashman, Flashman quotes, memory.

Inner Flashman

He paused again. “Shall I continue?”
       At this point, when it was plain that some beastly folly was about to be unveiled, Inner Flashman would gladly have cried: “Not unless you wish to risk seeing a grown man burst into tears and run wailing into the Abyssinian night!” Outer Flashman, poor devil, could only sit sweating nonchalantly, going red in the face with funk and hoping that Napier might construe it as apoplectic rage at the prospect of having my travel plans upset.


Flashman on the March, p.51, Harper Collins, paperback edition 2005.


Tags: Flashman, Flashman quotes, folly.

He was the Governor

But he was the Governor, and had just fed me, so I nodded attentively and said “I never knew that, sir,” and “Ye don’t say!” though I might as well have hollered “Whelks for sale!” for all he heard.



Flashman and the Angel of the Lord, p.34, Harper Collins, 1995.


Tags: Flashman, Flashman quotes, whelks.

Clinging and weeping

…she was clinging and weeping and slobbering over me as though I were Little Willie the Collier’s Dying Child.

Flashman in the Great Game, p.291, Pan edition, 4th printing, 1979.

The death of Scud East

     East gave a little ghost of a smile, and his hand tightened and then went loose in mine – and I found I was blubbering and gasping, and thinking about Rugby, and hot murphies at Sally’s shop, and a small fag limping along pathetically after the players at Big Side – because he couldn’t play himself, you see, being lame. I’d hated the little bastard, too, man and boy, for his smug manly piety – but you don’t see a child you’ve known all your life die every day. Maybe that was why I wept, maybe it was the shock and horror of what had being happening. I don’t know. Whatever it was, I’m sure I felt it all the more sincerely for knowing that I was still alive myself, and no bones broken so far.

Flashman in the Great Game, p.233, Pan edition, 4th printing, 1979.

Damn my eyes

And damn my eyes, she absolutely got out to look. I don’t suppose I’ve cried myself to sleep since I was an infant, but it was touch and go.

Flashman at the Charge, p.50, Pan edition, 5th printing, 1979.

Tags:
Flashman, Flashman quotes,cry, sleep.

That funny Scotch word

…she sobbed and clung to me, calling me her ‘jo’ – it was that funny Scotch word, which she hadn’t used for years, since she had grown so grand, that made me believe her – almost.

Flashman at the Charge, p.49, Pan edition, 5th printing, 1979.

Tags:
Flashman, Flashman quotes.

The coarse art of sailing

…the idyll was marred by the appearance round the southern headland of a small, waspish-looking vessel, standing slowly out on a course parallel to our own. It happened that I saw her first, and drew my commander’s attention to her with a sailor-like hail of: ‘Jesus! Look at that!’

Flash For Freedom!, p.91, Pan edition, 8th printing, 1980.

Tags:
Flashman, Flashman quotes sailing.