Before the light fades

You can always tell when something is coming to an end. You know, by the way events are shaping, that it can’t last much longer, but you think there are still a few days or weeks to go . . . and that’s the moment when it finishes with a sudden bang that you didn’t expect. Come to think of it, that’s probably true of life, or so it strikes me at the age of ninety — but I don’t expect it to happen before tea. Yet one of these days the muffins will grow cold and the tea-cakes congeal as they summon the lads from belowstairs to cart the old cadaver up to the best bedroom. And if I’ve a moment before the light fades, I’ll be able to cry, “Sold, Starnberg and Ignatieff and Iron Eyes and Gul Shah and Charity Spring and all the rest of you bastards who tried to do for old Flashy, ’cos he’s going out on his own, and be damned to you!”


Flashman on the March, p.257, Harper Collins, paperback edition 2005.


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His exterior suggested

Internally, as the quack said, he might be in A1 trim, but his exterior suggested James I dying.

Flashman's Lady, p.56, Pan edition, 1979.

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Flashy and the Angel of Death

…he just lay there, coughing weakly, and breathing in little moaning gasps… after a moment he began to mumble; I leaned close, but it was a moment before I could make out what he was saying – in fact, he was singing, in a little whisper at the back of his throat; it was a sad little song, The Lass so good and true, that they call Danny Boy nowadays. I knew at once, without telling, that it was the song his mother had used to sing him to sleep, for he began to smile a little, his eyes closed. I could have kicked the brute…

Flash For Freedom!, p.101, Pan edition, 8th printing, 1980.

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Flashman, Flashman quotes,deathbed.