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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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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Sane in solitary confinement

I’ve heard of chaps who kept themselves sane in solitary confinement by singing all the hymns they knew, or proving the propositions of Euclid, or reciting poetry. Each to his taste: I’m no hand at religion, or geometry, and the only respectable poem I can remember is an Ode to Horace which Arnold made me learn as a punishment for farting at prayers. So instead I compiled a mental list of all the women I’d had in my life, from the sweaty kitchen maid in Leicestershire when I was fifteen, up to the half-caste piece I’d been reprimanded for at Cawnpore, and to my astonishment there were four hundred and seventy-eight of them, which seemed rather a lot, especially since I was counting return engagements. It’s astonishing really, when you think how much time it must have taken up.

Flashman in the Great Game, p.309, Pan edition, 4th printing, 1979.