Old-fashioned gratitude

‘Charming meal, my dear,’ he said as the waitress presented the bill, ‘and I only regret that infirmity prevents me from inviting you out to express my gratitude in the old-fashioned way. Have a couple of quid instead and give us a hug.’



Mr American, p.521, Pan Books, paperback edition 1982.



Tags: Flashman, Flashman quotes, gratitude.

Sporting my tin

‘Sporting my tin, as you see,’ he drawled hoarsely. ‘In the public interest. At a time like this it gives the mob confidence to be reminded of who I am, and that I’m too damned old to mismanage any more campaigns for ’em.’


Mr American, p.518, Pan Books, paperback edition 1982.


Tags: Flashman, Flashman quotes, campaign.

One foot in the grave

. . . after all, the old man was in his nineties, and it must be a great ordeal to have to make his way, even being driven, through all the bustle of London on the brink of hostilities. But a glance across the table reassured him — one foot in the grave he might have, and shockingly ravaged he might look, but Sir Harry appeared in no need of consideration. His flushed satyr face was grinning contentedly, his glossy white whiskers and mane shone in the lamplight, which glinted on the mass of bronze and silver and gold miniatures on his breast, and on the orders which hung on ribbons over his massive shoulders.


Mr American, pp.517-18, Pan Books, paperback edition 1982.


Tags: Flashman, Flashman quotes, old.

True words

     ‘One thing becomes clear,’ said Mr Franklin grimly, ‘and that is that every word she said about you is true.’
     ‘What, about being deceitful and dishonest and rotten to the core, you mean? Of course it’s true,’ said Sir Harry comfortably.


Mr American, p.438, Pan Books, paperback edition 1982.


Tags: Flashman, Flashman quotes, true.

Write to the President

     ‘He is over ninety, you know,’ said Lady Helen, and Mr Franklin said, yes he knew.
     ‘One forgets, sometimes,’ said Lady Helen. ‘He doesn’t behave at all like a very old man — he remembers everything, and his brain is so alert and active. Did you know, that only fourteen years ago, he was staying at the Residency in Peking, when it was attacked in the Boxer Rising, and he took charge of the artillery belonging to your American contingent, and commanded it all through the siege? He was seventy-eight then. And when the Residency was relieved, the officer in charge of the American Marines said he would write to the President to ask for some special decoration for him, and Uncle Harry laughed and asked one of the Marines to give him his hat, and then he put it on and said: “That’ll do better than a medal,” and off he went.’ She pressed the old man’s hand, and Mr Franklin saw there were tears in her eyes. ‘We’re very proud of him, of course.’


Mr American, p.432, Pan Books, paperback edition 1982.


Tags: Flashman, Flashman quotes, siege.

That gnarled old man

. . . at that moment an audible snore erupted from the General’s corner of the cab. He was leaning back, his great head sunk forward on his chest, his hat tilted over his eyes, breathing stertorously; one great mottled hand lay palm down on the seat beside him; Mr Franklin could see the shiny white streak of a wound running from wrist to little finger, and there was a star-shaped scar of what might have been an old bullet-hole in the loose flesh between thumb and forefinger. He shivered; he had looked Sir Harry up in Who’s Who and read incredulously through the succinct list of campaigns and decorations — that gnarled old man sleeping there had seen Custer ride into the broken bluffs above Little Big Horn, and fought hand-to-hand with Afghan tribesman more than seventy years ago; he had ridden into the guns at Balaclava and seen the ranks form for Pickett’s charge at Gettysburg; he had known Wellington and Lincoln — and now he was snoring gently in the corner of a motor car in the busy heart of modern London, and all the glory and horror and fear and bloodshed were small, dimly-remembered things of no account, and when he woke his one concern would not be the fate of nations or armies or his own life in the hazard, but the welfare of one wilful young woman who he was trying to save from her own folly in his strange, unscrupulous way.


Mr American, pp.431-2, Pan Books, paperback edition 1982.


Tags: Flashman, Flashman quotes, unscrupulous.

Let ’em try

A scandal was averted, and Sir Harry, taxed with his behaviour by indignant lawyers — principally his own, a sorely-tried and ready-witted practitioner in Wine Office Court — claimed total innocence of any attempt to pervert the course of justice. On being assured that he might easily have been prosecuted for conspiracy, the old soldier had remarked scornfully: ‘Let ’em try to put a ninety-two-year-old hero of Balaclava in the Scrubs if they dare. There’d be a revolution.’ And there that particular aspect of the case rested, with not a few sighs of relief.


Mr American, p.394, Pan Books, paperback edition 1982.


Tags: Flashman, Flashman quotes, justice.

The old hulks

‘That’s the way we all go — the old hulks!’ The General tugged angrily at his moustache. ‘You can ruin yourself being battered and chased and shot at half your life, and fighting like hell on behalf of a lot of damned lickspittles who infest cesspits like the Athenaeum Club where they put too much damned salt in the damned consommé and try to poison people with curried turtle soup that would make a Bengali privy cleaner sick — not that I ever fought except when I couldn’t avoid it, but any man’s a bloody fool who does otherwise — and what d’you get for it at the end of the day? His voice was rising steadily, and his eyes glaring horribly. ‘I’ll tell you what you get — a set of tinware and a few meaningless titles and a pension that won’t keep your blasted dog in bones, and your niece, a lady of quality, expressing her proper contempt for a worthless travesty of a picture by some mountebank whom you wouldn’t pay to distemper a kitchen ceiling, may be hauled into a police court, subjected to the degradation of a public trial — ’


Mr American, p.391, Pan Books, paperback edition 1982.



Tags: Flashman, Flashman quotes, hulk.

You’re not ninety-two

‘But then, you’re not ninety-two,’ he added with satisfaction. ‘and probably never will be, because you won’t look after yourselves as I have done. Mens sana in corpore sano* as they used to tell us at Rugby, and if you believe that you’ll believe anything.’

*A healthy mind in a healthy body (Speedicut)


Mr American, pp.385-6, Pan Books, paperback edition 1982.


Tags: Flashman, Flashman quotes, believe.

Chasing tweeny maids

     Or her disgraceful great-uncle, for that matter. Now there was a character, and no mistake: still chasing tweeny maids at the age of eighty-seven, treating old age as an advantage rather than a handicap, obviously. What must it be like to be that ancient and just not give a damn?



Mr American, p.202, Pan Books, paperback edition 1982.



Tags: Flashman, Flashman quotes, uncle.

A malevolent eye

     The port did not circulate very long after the ladies had left, however. General Flashman, rendered even more reminiscent by the champagne he had consumed, joined the group around the King at the table head and launched into a vivid recollection of how his majesty, as a youthful Prince of Wales fifty years before, had been compromised by an Actress in Ireland, to the dismay of the other guests and the suppressed fury of the King. To make matters worse, the old man took to calling the King 'young Bertie', and an unpleasant scene was prevented only by Soveral's tactful suggestion that they should join the ladies, who would be eager for bridge. The King, glaring thunderously, took the hint and led the way from the dining room: General Flashman cocked a malevolent eye and observed: 'Bridge, eh? Played it in Russia before you lot were born. Game for half-wits.' and then fell asleep over the decanter.


Mr American, p.198, Pan Books, paperback edition 1982.


Tags: Flashman, Flashman quotes, reminiscent.

An elderly and debauched eagle

He sat glittering-eyed, like an elderly and debauched eagle, imbibing heroic quantities of champagne without visible effect, and occasionally making unnerving pronouncements. Over the consommé he was heard describing, in graphic detail, how a Cheyenne Indian squaw who evidently doted on him had taught him the preparation of soup from buffalo blood, which was highly recommended for its rejuvenative powers; again, the arrival of fried whitebait stirred a reminiscence of a royal banquet in Madagascar at which the behaviour of the female guests had been unconventional to a degree, and might, he hinted, have been copied with advantage by present company, Mrs Keppel in particular.


Mr American, pp.191-2, Pan Books, paperback edition 1982.



Tags: Flashman, Flashman quotes, eagle.

Tea clipper

‘Is the Keppel wench there? Fine buttocks she’d got. But — tea! I’m eighty-eight next May, and I attribute my longevity to an almost total abstinence from tea. Except the jasmine variety — used to drink that out East . . . ’


Mr American, pp.188-9, Pan Books, paperback edition 1982.


Tags: Flashman, Flashman quotes, tea.

Growing old disgracefully

There was the sound of a newspaper being violently crumpled, a creaking of springs, and elderly arthritic gasps, and then a man emerged from behind the screen. He was extremely old and extremely large; Mr Franklin had an impression of stalwart height, and massive shoulders encased in a beautifully-cut frock coat of antique design, with a flower in its button-hole; above, reared a striking head of silver hair framing a lined, mottled face half-concealed by magnificent flowing white whiskers. It was the face of an aged, inebriated satyr, with a prominent, heavily-veined nose and dark, bloodshot eyes which glared past Mr Franklin at the conversing couple . . .


Mr American, p.184, Pan Books, paperback edition 1982.


Tags: Flashman, Flashman quotes, satyr.

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.


Tags: Flashman, Flashman quotes, end.

Antique whiskers

. . . and then I remembered that this same Napier, with his antique whiskers and one foot in the grave, had recently married a spanking little filly of eighteen, which had plainly influenced his outlook on commerce with the fairer sex; no wonder he looked as though he’d been fed through a mangle.


Flashman on the March, p.58, Harper Collins, paperback edition 2005.


Tags: Flashman, Flashman quotes, married.

He will surely do

      They were the kind of words you’d expect to hear from a Brooke or a Custer, spoken with a heroic flourish and a fist on a table. Napier said them with all the fervour of a man reading a railway time-table . . . but I thought, farewell and adieu, Brother Theodore, your goose is cooked; this quiet old buffer with the dreary whiskers may not shout the odds, but what he says he will surely do.


Flashman on the March, pp.53-4, Harper Collins, paperback edition 2005.


Tags: Flashman, Flashman quotes, words.

Bred in the bone

      That, of course, was the point. She was my grand-daughter, and what’s bred in the bone . . . oh, but she’d hocussed me properly, playing shrinking Purity, and I’d been ready to shell out half my fortune — and I’d come within an ace of committing murder for her.



Flashman and the Tiger, pp.310-11, Harper Collins, paperback edition 2000.


Tags: Flashman, Flashman quotes, bone.

Towards an honoured grave

But there I was, I say, at a time when I ought to have had nothing to do but drink my way gently towards an honoured grave, spend my wife’s fortune, gorge at the best places, leer at the young women, and generally enjoy a dissolute old age — and suddenly I had to kill Tiger Jack. Nothing else for it.


Flashman and the Tiger, p.274, Harper Collins, paperback edition 2000.


Tags: Flashman, Flashman quotes, kill.

Second thoughts

You think twice about committing murder when you’re over seventy.



Flashman and the Tiger, p.273, Harper Collins, paperback edition 2000.


Tags: Flashman, Flashman quotes, murder.