Chicken broth and flannel

. . .  I'd shared Langtry with him, behind his back, and done my duty by pretty Daisy — as who hadn't ? Not La Keppel, though; she was after my time, worse luck, not heaving into view until I'd reached what Macaulay calls the years of chicken broth and flannel, when you realise how dam’ ridiculous you'd look chasing dollymops young enough to be your daughter, and seek solace in booze, baccy, and books. Regrettable, of course, but less tiring and expensive.


Flashman and the Tiger, p.223, Harper Collins, paperback edition 2000.


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Elgin's fads

      “Synonymous be damned!” snaps Elgin. “H.M.G will not be drawn into war against the Taipings. We’d find ourselves with a new empire in China before we knew it.” He heaved up from the table and poured coffee from a spirit kettle. “And I have no intention, Parkes, of presiding over any extension of the area in which we exhibit the hollowness of our Christianity and our civilization. Coffee, Flashman? Yes, you can light one of your damned cheroots if you want to—but blow the smoke the other way. Poisoning mankind!”
      There you have three of Elgin’s fads all together — he hated tobacco, was soft on Asiatics, and didn’t care for empire-building. I recall him on this very campaign saying he’d do anything “to prevent England calling down God’s curse on herself for brutalities committed on yet another feeble Oriental race.” Yet he did more to fix and maintain the course of the British empire than any man of his day, and is remembered for the supreme atrocity. Ironic, ain’t it?


Flashman and the Dragon, pp.163-4, Fontana Paperback edition, 1986.



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I'd have made President

He considered me, the sharp, sleepy little eyes peeping out under the frayed stray brim. ‘Would that be Tom Little’s wagon you’re drivin’? Seems I know that broken spoke – an’ the horse.’
    For a moment my blood ran cold, and I stopped my hand from going to the pistol in the back of my belt.
   ‘Well, it was Tom Little’s wagon,’ says I. ‘Still will be, if he hadn’t loaned it me yesterday. When I take it back, it will be his again, I guess.’ If I’d stayed in that country, and learned to whittle with a Barlow knife, and chew tobacco, I’d have made President.

Flash For Freedom!, p.207, Pan edition, 8th printing, 1980.

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Flashman, Flashman quotes,whittle, President,Barlow knife.