General Flashman remarks on the capacity of British prime ministers

. . . they took a cab to the famous club, where Sir Harry stared around the imposing hall and remarked that things weren’t what they had once been. ‘Saw Palmerston fall down that staircase — the whole damned way from top to bottom. Tight as a fiddler’s bitch. Finished up wrapped round that pillar there. Can’t see Asquith doing that, somehow. Rotten prime minister. D’you know, I presented him with a school prize once? Must be fifty years ago — ugly little swot he was then, and hasn’t improved over the years. Mind you, Balfour wouldn’t have been any better — “Pretty Fanny”, they used to call him. Only good thing I know about him was that he taught Asquith how to ride a bicycle. Argued some kind of capacity, I suppose — I’d sooner try to teach a whale to play the fiddle.’


Mr American, p.388, Pan Books, paperback edition 1982.



Tags: Flashman, Flashman quotes, drunk.

One-eyed Riley

It was like seeing the Prince Consort or Gladstone taking the width of the pavement and singing “One-eyed Riley”.


Flashman on the March, p.203, Harper Collins, paperback edition 2005.


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Alice's tea party

. . . I, on the subject of bizarre conversation, had never thought to meet a crazier discourser than Hung-Hsiu-Chuan, leader of the Taiping Rebellion who was hopelessly mad, or Mangas Colorado, chief of the Mimbreno Apache, who was hopelessly drunk. I discovered in that hut under Selassie that I’d been quite wrong; King Theodore was both hopelessly mad and drunk, and could give either of them a head start and a beating in the race to Alice’s tea party.


Flashman on the March, pp.202-03, Harper Collins, paperback edition 2005.



Tags: Flashman, Flashman quotes, conversation.

The Mad Sapper

Well, soldiering under Joe Wolseley had been bad enough, but a at least he was sane. Gordon? I'd as soon go to war with the town drunk. The man wasn't safe — sticking forks in people and scattering tracts around railway carriages and accosting perfect strangers to see if they'd met Jesus lately, I ask you! No a holiday abroad was indicated before the Mad Sapper came recruiting.


Flashman and the Tiger, p.49, Harper Collins, paperback edition 2000.


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True words

…the only fly in the ointment as I rolled down to Calcutta had been the discovery that during my absence from England some scribbling swine had published his reminiscences of Rugby School, with me as the villain of the piece. A vile volume entitled Tom Brown’s Schooldays, on every page of which the disgusting Flashy was to be found torturing fags, shirking, toadying, lying, whining for mercy, and boozing himself to disgraceful expulsion — every word of it true, and all the worse for that.


Flashman and the Angel of the Lord, p.23, Harper Collins, 1995.



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Cut up and sold

…he was flat on his back and snoring in an atmosphere you could have cut up and sold in the pubs.

Flashman and the Dragon, p.74, Fontana Paperback edition, 1986.

Tags: Flashman, Flashman quotes, atmosphere.

Don't mend as quickly

           When you’re past the fifty mark, you don’t mend as quickly as you used to. For on thing, you don’t want to; where once on a day you couldn’t wait to be off your sick-bed rampaging about, you’re now content to lie still and let any handy ministering angel do their stuff. When I was a brat of a boy I went through hot hell in Afghanistan, had a fort collapse on me, and broke my thigh—a few weeks later I was fit enough to gallop an Afghan wench with my leg in a splint and old Avitabile egging me on, and get beastly drunk afterwards. Not at fifty-three; if they’d paraded the Folies Bergère past me a month after Little Bighorn I’d have asked for bread and milk instead, and damn little of that in case it over-excited me.

Flashman and the Redskins, pp.330-31, Pan Books edition, 1983.

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Mixing their drinks

...Mangas held an enormous jollification on corn-beer and pine-bark spirit and a fearsome cactus tipple called mescal; they don't mind mixing their drinks, those fellows, and got beastly foxed.

Flashman and the Redskins, p.164, Pan Books edition, 1983.

Tags:Flashman, Flashman quotes, drunk.

Terrifying yearning

She looked at me with a truly terrifying yearning; I’d seen nothing like it since the doctors were putting the strait-jacket on my guvnor and whisking the brandy out of his reach.

Flashman and the Redskins, pp.42-43, Pan Books edition, 1983.

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AKA intoxicated

      Tight as Dick’s hatband, of course…

Flashman and the Redskins, p.37, Pan Books edition, 1983.

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Club members

      I’d never seen this before, although I’ve seen it more times than I care to count since – one man, mad as a hatter and drunk with pride, sweeping sane heads away against their better judgement. Chinese Gordon could do it, and Yakub Beg the Kirghiz; so could J.E.B. Stuart, and that almighty maniac George Custer. They and Brooke could have formed a club.

Flashman's Lady, p.139, Pan edition, 1979.

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A Baptist hermit

Russians, in my experience, are part-drunk most of the time, but if there’s a sober soul between the Black Sea and the Capsian for weeks after the Rostov kermesse he must be a Baptist hermit.

Flashman at the Charge, p.211, Pan edition, 5th printing, 1979.

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Flashman, Flashman quotes,Russians, drunk.

Intoxicating

There are ways of being drunk that has nothing to do with alcohol.

Royal Flash, p.145, Pan edition, 8th printing, 1978.

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Flashman, Flashman quotes,drunk.

Flashy got beastly drunk

I learned in later years that the only safe place to get drunk is among friends in your own home, but that evening I made a thorough pig of myself, and the long and short of it was that ‘Flashy got beastly drunk’, to quote my old friend Tom Hughes.

Royal Flash, p.85, Pan edition, 8th printing, 1978.

Tags:
Flashman, Flashman quotes,drunk.

Simply followed suit

Everyone else punished them [the wines] tremendously, as the Germans always do, and I simply followed suit.

Royal Flash, p.85, Pan edition, 8th printing, 1978.

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Flashman, Flashman quotes.

I was sober, so I toadied

If you’re morally as soft as butter, as I am, with a good streak of the toad-eater in you, there’s no doing anything with people like Bismarck. You can have all the fame that I had then , and the good looks and the inches and the swagger – and I had those, too – but you know you’re dirt to him. If you have to tangle with him, as the Americans say, you know you’ll have to get drunk first; I was sober, so I toadied.

Royal Flash, p.28, Pan edition, 8th printing, 1978.

Tags:
Flashman, Flashman quotes,Otto von Bismarck.

Subtly laid schemes

Scholars, of course, won’t have it so. Policies they say, and the subtly laid schemes of statesmen, are what influences the destinies of nations; the opinions of intellectuals, the writings of philosophers, settle the fate of mankind. Well, they may do their share, but in my experience the course of history is as often settled by someone having a belly-ache, or not sleeping well, or a sailor getting drunk, or some aristocratic harlot waggling her backside.

Royal Flash, p.11, Pan edition, 8th printing, 1978.

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Flashman, Flashman quotes.

The Scottish custom

When it was done, and the guests had begun to drink themselves blind, as is the Scottish custom, Elspeth and I were seen off in a carriage by her parents.



Flashman, p.63, Pan edition, 12th printing, 1979.

Tags:
Flashman, custom, wedding.

Did you rave?

'I doubt it,' he said. 'The point is, were you silent in your drunken state, or did you rave? A noisy drunkard is intolerable; a passive one may do at a pinch.'





Flashman, p. 23, Pan edition, 12th printing, 1979.

Tags:
Flashman, drunk, rave.

I never imagined

That you are a bully, I know; that you are untruthful, I have long suspected; that you are deceitful and mean, I have feared; but that you had fallen so low to be a drunkard - that, at least, I never imagined.





Flashman, p. 13, Pan edition, 12th printing, 1979.

Tags: bully, untruthful, drunk.