Some impossible bet

Not that he wanted to pursue giggling housemaids, or get drunk, or go to sleep over the port, or any of the other unimagined things which the eccentric General might have done — he was the kind who would have wandered off to the kitchens and exchanged drinking reminiscences with the butler, or charmed the cook with recollections of exotic food eaten at the ends of the earth, or started a five-card school with the under footman, or lured Admiral Fisher into some impossible bet over the billiard table.


Mr American, pp.202-03, Pan Books, paperback edition 1982.



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His quiet smile

      There was general laughter at this, and Napier said with his quiet smile that we must resign ourselves to being regarded as callously irresponsible or rapaciously greedy. “Brutal indifference or selfish imperialism; those are the choices. As an old Scotch maidservant of my acquaintance used to say: ‘Ye cannae dae right for daein’ wrang!’


Flashman on the March, pp.286-7, Harper Collins, paperback edition 2005.



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Sherlock Holmes versus Harry Flashman

 . . . “besides, this is a nautical, not a military man; he is not English, but either American or German — probably the latter, since he has certainly studied at a second-rate German university, but undoubtedly he has been to America quite lately. He is known to the police, is currently working as a ship’s steward, or some equally menial capacity at sea — for I observe that he has declined even from his modest beginnings — and will, unless I am greatly mistaken, be in Hamburg by the beginning of next week — provided he wakes up in time. More than that,” says the know-all ignoramus, “I cannot tell you from a superficial examination. Except, of course, for the obvious fact that he found his way here via Piccadilly Circus.”


Flashman and the Tiger, p.310, Harper Collins, paperback edition 2000.


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Rude with impunity

But in my youth and ignorance I imagined that he was one of those to whom I could be rude with impunity – servants, tarts, bagman, shopkeepers, and foreigners…

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

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Flashman, Flashman quotes.

A genius for boot polish

I had got an excellent servant, named Basset, a square-headed oaf who knew everything a soldier ought to know and nothing more, and with a genius for boot-polish. I thrashed him early in our acquaintance, and he seemed to think the better of me for it, and treated me as dog does its master.





Flashman, p. 34, Pan edition, 12th printing, 1979.

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Flashman, servant, thrashed.